Jag: Welcome to our weekly podcast, The Art of Wealth Unbroken. We provide our listeners with insights, improvement strategies to protect the wealth they’ve built against poor financial planning, investment mistakes, global and national economic conditions, and governmental policies. We discuss the topics in finance, retirement and politics that are on your mind, giving you certainty and uncertain times.

These discussions can help you make better informed decisions so you can make better financial choices with the wealth you’ve built and are continuing to build. Our host are Stacey Andres, registered financial consultant, and Michael Wallin, certified financial planner. I’m Jon JAG Gay. For our topic today,guys, we’re gonna continue on with the discussion we started in our last episode, in a different direction here, talking about the importance of proper planning and the role a legal trust can play in getting the care that you deserve. 

Stacey: Hello JAG. Hey Mike. So outta the gate, hearing today’s topic, some of you might be asking the question, what do trusts have to do with one’s personal care plan? 

Michael: Well, I think the importance of that is understanding what a trust is and trust, kind of at the high level, is really designed. It’s a legal document designed for the purpose of allowing one to maintain control of their assets and maintain control to some degree of what happens if they are unable to make good health or financial decisions for themselves at some point in the future.

Stacey: That is exactly right. Mike. You and I both have stories of clients we have met with that we have encouraged them to take the step of working with an attorney to get proper trust planning in place. And they have not followed that advice. They’ve not taken those steps. And unfortunately, in some of those cases, there have been some very sad outcomes. In the planning and the process and just seeing how their care is being provided. 

Michael: Yeah. We’re asked more often than not about the title of our show, “wealth unbroken.” And when we’re talking about Wealth Unbroken, this is really a critical step because wealth is not just about the assets that you’ve accumulated.

It’s also about the life you’re living now and being able to enjoy your life as long as possible. That’s why you want your wealth to be unbroken. Stacey, recently, you had a situation with a client that we were in discussions with about a trust and would a trust have been beneficial? Would you tell us a little bit about that current scenario?

Stacey: Yes, absolutely. And it’s unfortunate because it is such a sad story. So this is a client, she is out of state., been working with her for about five years now, maybe six years. And over the past three years, she has really been expressing some concerns about what’s gonna happen when she passes away. Who’s gonna get her assets? Who’s gonna control those? 

And I’d been encouraging her to get with an attorney. I’d help her find one in her area and put a trust in place. They’re not that expensive. And unfortunately, in this case, that just got delayed and delayed and delayed and nothing ever happened.

And earlier this year, Mike, you and I were down at the Kingdom Advisors conference in Florida. And she called me and had told me that she’d had a surgery and she was gonna be going into a long term care facility for rehabilitation purposes. Everything else was fine, cognitively. She was very, very sound.

And all at once, got her what she requested, and I start getting calls and emails that my client had some healthcare issues arise, where she was no longer cognitivey “with it” enough to make her own financial decisions and make her own healthcare decisions. And when I would speak with her, she sounded anyway that she was very, very with it.

She remembered everything that we’d ever talked about, and she was very, very concerned about what was gonna happen because some family members were trying to get control of her assets. Ultimately, it was taken to the courts and the courts ultimately gave them conservatorship and guardianship over her entire estate.

And so she lost all control. And in having some conversations with her, she was struggling to even get her family, to buy her a new pair of shoes. 

Michael: So her worst fear, the family members that she had some concerns that they would come in and exploit a situation and take control of her assets. And she would no longer have resources that all came to fruition because she had not taken the steps early on.

She procrastinated instead of taking the advice you’ve given her. And set up those legal documents that where she could have stayed in control or still had the ability to modify or change that person that’s providing her care 

Stacey: 100%. 

Jag: It’s one of those things you have to take care of before and not after. I’m sure everybody listening has heard at least part of the story of Britney Spears, which not a topic we typically bring up much on this podcast, Britney Spears. But we heard the horror stories that she endured when there was a conservatorship taken out on her. So you wanna put something in place while you are still physically and cognitively with it so that you don’t have a situation like that, where it becomes a matter of, he said, she said, and a judge is making a decision that may not go in your favor.

Michael: Absolutely Jag. One of the other things Stacey shared in that scenario is that she had went in for a medical procedure and then really needed rehabilitation, with the expectancy that she would be coming back home after that. Well, once you go in for a surgery, you know, you could have impairment that happens due to medication, or it could even be anesthesia side effects, things of that nature. And so many complications. So many complications can come from it. You need to get these legal documents done in a timely manner in advance. 

Jag: So it’s scary story. The legal trust is so important, Michael and Stacey are gonna get into the two solutions they recommend for individuals right after our break.

At Optivise Advisory Services, they combine the expertise of their seasoned professionals in financial planning, tax, legal, and investment to assist their clients in achieving the lifestyle they’ve always dreamed of through their proprietary Info Right system. They address each of the 10 pillars in their planning process: investment, retirement, income, tax, social security, education, healthcare, personal care, charitable, legal, and wealth transfer.

Their comprehensive approach brings certainty in uncertain times. To receive your free Arc of Life report, you can visit the website artofwealthunbroken.com or call (855) 378-1806. Website and phone number will be in our show notes. Artofwealthunbroken.com or (855) 378-1806. The Arc of Life report will show you how each of the 10 pillars in the info right process connects together to form your unique, personal financial canvas.

Michael: One of the areas that I think is very important for the listeners to understand is when we look at estate planning, estate planning is very comprehensive. It can be very complex. And that’s why you really need to sit down and have an understanding of where your assets are today and then whom you want to transfer those two and how you wanna maintain control.

As we’re using legal documents. I think it’s important that listeners understand that there are two ways of transferring. You’re either going to transfer by beneficiary, which is gonna go by contract law, or you’re going to be using legal documents, which goes by state law. And so contract law, supercedes state law.

We all hear about probate. We hear about assets having to go through a probate process because people fail to implement either a will or a trust. And so now the state has to step in as the decision maker to determine where those assets are distributed at a person’s death. So one of the things that we talk about with our clients is sitting down, doing a full assessment.

We use the life arc plan to do that, and then understanding when are those assets going to be used? And if they’re not used, how do we wanna distribute them? And if you need to maintain control, how do you maintain that control without having the state to intervene? One of the areas that’s really important is if you have minor children and if you have minor children, Then you can’t leave assets to them.

You know, a six year old is not going to have an investment account, making decisions on how they put money in or take money out or investment decisions. 

Jag: Can’t leave them a Ferrari either. 

Michael: Yeah. So those are those things that, where a trust comes in and you have trustees. So you’re the grantor. And then you have trustees that you have put in place to make sure that it’s executed based upon your wishes.

So it’s very important that you put those components in place early on and have those discussions and your trustee doesn’t have to be a family member. You can get a third party entity to come in and be a fiduciary and execute the trustee role on that trust for you. So if you’ve got family members you’re concerned about, you are not limited just to blood in who you have available to execute your wishes. 

Stacey: As you were talking there. Mike, it reminded me of another client that I have that, does have a trust in place now. And her primary concern was that her son who unfortunately got, hooked on prescription medication and then progressed to something worse after that, would get some of her money when she passed away. Some of her estate and that it would just go toward drugs and alcohol and just be completely wasted. And this is where a trust for her is very, very beneficial because she can dictate who gets what, and she can even stipulate that.

Okay. I want him to get something, but if he gets anything, these are the conditions that need to be met in order for him to receive some of this money. 

Michael: And that is the power of the trust. When I was early on in my career, I would tell people, mostly the females I’d say, how many of you had a hope chest?

And you know, my clients would raise their hands and said, “I had a hope chest.” Or my mother had a hope chest, or my grandmother had a hope chest. And I said, well, what did they put in it? Well, they put in it, all the things that they valued and cherished. That’s what went into a hope chest. That’s the same thing that goes into a trust. To have a trust and to not have it funded is to not have a trust.

So the second scenario, if you are gonna be doing a trust or setting up those legal documents, you do wanna meet with a very competent attorney. But you also wanna make sure that you’re working with your financial advisor because retitling assets into the trust is the second component of that. The attorney can establish the trust.

They can write up the legal documents, but if assets are never retitled to the trust, then you have done all that action taken all those efforts, in vain. Because if it’s not funded, there is no shield or protection around those assets. 

Stacey: I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times I have talked to somebody who has had a trust, got all the proper documents in place, but did not move the assets inside that trust.

Jag: That’s really scary, cuz we talk about the importance of having a trust, not putting it off, just like we talked about last week, the importance of having a plan, if you’re physical or mental health declines, and that’s just,,you can’t underscore that enough. Not only do you have to do it, you have to put the nuts and bolts in the contents, in your virtual hope chest to continue Mike’s analogy.

Stacey: Absolutely. 

Michael: That’s the importance of planning and if you are working with a financial advisor that is one dimensional and is only looking at advising you on your investing or an insurance agent that is talking about insurance products, or you’re working with a tax preparer. You’re working with an attorney and you’re working with all these individuals, but it is not connecting all of those professionals together.

Then you likely have a fragmented plan and it would behoove you to go through the life arc plan system Stacey and I have implemented. Do the info right process to make sure that all of the pillars in your life have been addressed, that they are cohesively working together, that you can see the interdependency of those elements of your financial, your legal and your tax plan, as well as that personal care plan, how those are all working in tandem together to get you to the successful retirement and through retirement that you have always desired.

Jag: As you’ve heard in the last 15 minutes and over the last 25 plus episodes, these guys know what they’re talking about. And if you wanna come talk to Stacey and Mike at Optivise, talk about that Arc of Life report, the Info Right process. You can visit our website, artofwealthunbroken.com. Again, artofwealthunbroken.com or call (855) 378-1806. 855 378-1806 Website and phone number will be in our show notes. And again, not only do you need to create the trust, you need to put stuff in it. So important. If you enjoyed the content in today’s podcast, we invite you to check out previous episodes.

Also subscribe to our show in Apple, Spotify, or wherever you’re listening right now. And we also invite you to share the show. There’s probably one person in your life that could really benefit from the information we’ve talked about today. All we ask, send the show along to them so they can get this information as well.

Michael, Stacey, thank you so much. I’ll talk to you again soon. 

Stacey: Thank you, Jake. Thank you, Michael. 

Michael: Thank you guys.