The Essential Components of a Good Estate Plan – Episode #436

When it comes to planning for an estate, it is not only what is needed for an orderly dispersion of assets when a person dies. That is just one facet! On this episode of the Dentist Money Show™ Ryan interviews Natalie Perry, JD, CPA, who covers the basics of estate planning, including what is needed for many major life events—birth, marriage, divorce, partnerships, and more.

Show notes:
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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hey ho, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fee-only fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists. It’s all we’ve done for 15 years. Folks, dentistadvisors.com. If you have any questions today on the show, Natalie Perry, CPA, attorney Background in estate planning, part of a big firm has offices in a handful of states all over the country. We talked about a lot of things with estate planning. These we talked about questions that we get from our clients, dentists on what does estate planning, when should I do it? What does it mean? What should I expect? How often should it be updated? What are common myths and misconceptions? Pros and cons, downfalls, common mistakes. Natalie was very, very helpful on this episode. So many thanks to her for spending some time educating us today on a very, very important topic. I would encourage everyone as they listen to this, if they have not done so or it’s been a while, have a conversation with your advisor, your attorney, make estate planning an important part of your financial plan. Thanks for being here. If you have any questions for us, really simple, go to dentistadvisors.com. Lots of content on there. You can even book a free consultation. We will answer your money questions. We’d love doing that and point you in the right direction. Again, thanks for being everybody. Enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consultant, advisor, conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors, a registered investment advisor. This is Dentist Money. Now, here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dentist Money Show, where we help dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host, Ryan Isaac, and I’m here with Natalie Perry talking estate planning today. Natalie, thanks for joining us today. How you doing?

Natalie Perry:
I’m good. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes. Okay. So this topic of estate planning, it comes up all the time with our clients. Just for some context here, and then I’d love for you to give an introduction to yourself and the work that you do and how you got into this. I always think everyone’s careers are really fascinating, but we work with, there’s more than 500 dentists that we work with across the country now that grows every year by a 100 to a 120 new people. And it spans from brand new graduates, probably with very little estate planning needs all the way up to retirees that are worth 10s and 10s of millions of dollars. This estate planning question is asked all the time. It’s asked a lot in the context of how do I, can I set up a trust or estate plan that helps me avoid taxes? And some other questions. So that’s the basis of today’s conversation. I’m really excited to dive into it. There’s a lot of, so many questions to come to us from this. You, this is your field. This is your expertise, which is why you’re here, and we’re excited to hear from you. How about introduce yourself, your firm, and I would love to hear actually how you got into your career. I love the story of what made people get into what they’re doing.

Natalie Perry:
Okay, great. Yeah, so I’m Natalie Perry. I’m actually a CPA by background. So I started in the accounting field doing tax work at Arthur Andersen many years ago, and I did that for a few years, but the accounting industry was kind of contracting at the time. So my father had always encouraged me to go to law school. He was also an accountant and thought it was a great stepping stone for someone with a tax background. So I did, and I really enjoyed law school, although it’s really different than accounting, you know, accounting is yes or no, and law school is maybe, or it depends. So, it was definitely an adjustment, but it’s a great skillset. And I got into estate planning. I was doing a lot of tax work, but ended up focusing, somewhat more on the personal tax side, and then it just was a natural progression into the tax planning. So when we talk about estate planning, not to get too far into it yet, but we are thinking about taxes, the actual documents, probate, there’s a many different components. So this is what I love about this area is it’s just really interesting to be in, because every estate, every estate plan, every family is just a little different.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah.

Natalie Perry:
Some clients like yours have businesses, some don’t, there’s always something different.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure. So I’m just gonna throw some basic questions out there that are common things we hear. I think there’s not a high level of understanding of what estate planning actually means to dentists out there. So questions I get are, let’s, and you can tackle these in any order, however you like. Basically what is it, what does it even mean to have an estate plan, to or to have like wills and trusts and to do estate planning? What does that even mean for somebody? How is that different along different stages of career? I wonder as an advisor, when I do annual reviews with people and throughout the year this thing’s five years old, they’ve bought a building since then or they had another kid. How often should I encourage my clients to make changes here? So let’s just begin with what does it even mean to have wills and trusts and to do estate planning? What does that even mean in concept?

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, you definitely hit the nail on the head. If there are a number of things to plan for when you’re doing an estate plan. So having an estate plan mean… It can mean anything from how you’ve titled your assets, because asset titling will trump an estate plan. It can mean that, or it can mean a will, a trust, powers of attorney, a plan for a guardian if you die when your kids are little. All those kinds of things are part of an estate plan. So it’s not just we do the will and trust and we stop. We have to address incapacity, which is the, where the powers of attorney come in. And then we have to address where do the assets go with retirement accounts and the like. We often aren’t using a will for those we have to name a beneficiary. So there’s really multiple areas to consider.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So you said something interesting there, and this is definitely not my world. So, I’m probably asking the same basic questions, our clients have, which is good. You said account titling trumps an estate plan. I don’t know if that also means it trumps, a trust or a will. Can you expound on that? What you’re referring to?

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, I can, I’ve been giving some speeches locally on this topic because I think it’s really interesting. And the Wall Street Journal just had a little article about how a will isn’t enough. You have to also look at how your assets are titled. So let’s say Ryan, you and I have a joint account. We set up a bank account together that we both can access. And obviously this is a little more common in the, marriage context or say mother-daughter kind of context. You put somebody on your bank account so that they can access it when you die, that person gets that bank account. And that is really not state law specific. I would say generally if there’s a joint bank account, the joint owner gets the account. So even if my will says everything to my husband, if I have a joint bank account with you, Ryan, you’re getting that bank account, my husband isn’t getting it.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. If your will says that.

Natalie Perry:
Yep.

Ryan Isaac:
Even if that is stated in the will. Okay. So I think if someone heard that right now, they would say, well, what’s the purpose of a will then? How would that… How would you answer that question?

Natalie Perry:
Well, when we do an estate plan, we generally don’t want to name a bunch of people on our assets. I don’t want… Like I have two daughters in their 20s, so I don’t want my 20 year-olds on my bank account. Money might go missing, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yeah.

Natalie Perry:
Without me knowing. So I need an estate plan because I’m gonna have my assets titled in my name or possibly in my trust name. So when I do my estate plan, I wanna make sure that my assets are titled properly, either in my individual name or potentially in my trust name if I’m doing a trust. And that way the trust will govern those assets. And I’m gonna have a will that says, “Give everything to my trust” So that if I missed anything or had anything separate, the will kind of… We call it pour over, pours it over to the trust and, but on my life insurance and my retirement accounts, those I have to be more careful with because I may not name my trust for tax reasons. Income tax can get complicated with tax deferral built into an IRA. So there I may name my husband and then my 20 year-old daughters. ‘Cause they’re not minors, but it might be different for someone who has minor kids.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. And I think that it feels straightforward when we’re talking about an account because there’s titling, ownership and then there’s beneficiaries. I think life insurance is probably fairly straightforward in most people’s minds for the same reason. What does feel more complex, and I don’t know if this becomes a state specific issue and how this, relates to probate or titling or ownership, is when it’s, let’s say a piece of real estate or it’s a business. All the different types of business entities, LLCs, S Corps, C Corps, or it’s a lot of our dentists own the commercial buildings that they work in. They’ll own it in the name of the business. Some of them own it personally. I don’t often see spouses being, listed as owners on the S Corps of the entities or of the business or of the buildings if they own a building. I don’t see that that often. So can you speak to maybe those kind of assets that aren’t as like, title beneficiary specific?

Natalie Perry:
Yeah. So if you have a business, your spouse, like you said, isn’t gonna be a co-owner most of the times in the business or even in the real estate. So you would wanna have a trust that names perhaps your spouse as the successor trustee. If the dentist himself or herself can’t manage the asset in the event of incapacity, something like that. So those assets, we would put in a trust so that they would avoid probate when the person dies. And to kind of expand on that point for a minute, we might even name a special trustee, like the dental partner or the partner of the dentist, somebody like that. Maybe the spouse wouldn’t manage those assets.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. If there is one. Sure. Right.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah. If there’s a partner, that might be a good thing. So in that situation, the titling is important too, because we wanna make sure there isn’t a joint owner or something like that. But we do wanna accomplish the eventual goal of getting that asset to the family members, perhaps through a buyout or whatever is in place on the corporate side.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. And I think a lot of our listeners will start to maybe be hearing echoes of the life insurance buy-sell agreement or disability insurance, buy-sell agreements when there are partnerships involved so that buyouts are as smooth as possible when there’s an untimely unfortunate death. I’ve actually had a client in the last year, be a part of a joint owner practice where his partner died, but there was a very clear and clean, ownership structure set up. There was an estate plan in place and there was buy-sell insurance. So it paid his partner’s estate his share and then ownership transferred and it was, it was really clean. You said the word probate in here. I think people have heard that word a lot. Can you describe, just generally what probate means and why we’re trying to avoid this weird word called probate through estate planning?

Natalie Perry:
Yes. So probate is the court supervised process of transferring assets. So if I die and I have my assets in my name, how are they gonna get to my husband or whoever I named, a court or someone has to sign on my behalf when I die because I can’t sign anymore. So when my husband calls Fidelity and says, “Hey, my wife died, please put her account in my name.” They’re gonna say, well, who can sign? So there’s probably an executor or an administrator, sometimes personal representative named in the will. That person is gonna go to court, seek the appointment in a judicial proceeding, fairly routine, and then they are empowered by the local court to sign on my behalf, me being deceased now. So probate in… It really varies differently in states. Some have smaller state size proceedings where you can really avoid it or it’s some sort of summary proceeding.

Natalie Perry:
Other states it’s more cumbersome. Might take a year to two years, really, depending on how people agree, how people consent, getting the family members looped into the process so it can add a little delay time and expense. So if you have the chance to do an estate plan for even a few $1000, you’re really gonna save money in the long run when you talk with the attorney, like your example about the buy-sell. That sounds like some really top-notch planning that was able to be effectuated when the person died. So probate isn’t terrible and people do go through it, but it does add some time and expense.

Ryan Isaac:
And expense because it… Okay. So it does have to be paid for. I think and we can talk about common myths or misconceptions. I think that would be interesting, but that might be one of them where I think people just figure like, “I’m married, so if something happens to me, everything’s gonna go to my spouse and it’ll be clean and easy and it’ll just… One day to the next, the transfer will happen,” But this probate process can drag on. Also, you just brought up something that I do think people have seen a lot, which is family members maybe not seeing eye to eye on what to do with certain assets. I’ve heard, I’m sure you’ve heard your share of stories of family fights that probably don’t turn out so well. So, what you’re saying is a clean, updated will and maybe trust ownership structure can help avoid probate very easily.

Natalie Perry:
That’s right. You have to have a trust to avoid probate. A will will not do it. And your point about having jointly owned assets, that can work for probate if people have assets titled jointly, but it may not work for taxes depending on their net worth and whether they have estate tax. So that’s something to think about.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So tax situation comes into play at certain wealth thresholds as well. And again, yeah, the joint titling thing is very clean and easy with an investment account or a life insurance policy with beneficiaries and titling, but yeah. Putting someone on a business or a lien on a piece of real estate or that’s just not as common or as easy sometimes changing mortgages around and retitling those things. So, very good.

Natalie Perry:
Right. I would definitely recommend the trust and your point about the contest or somebody contesting an estate plan is another good one. We can sometimes put in a will or trust that they can’t contest it, or they, if they do, they lose their share. Not all states will enforce those. But they are out there and sometimes can be a deterrent. Because that does happen more and more, I think with our new modern family, maybe a marriage or two. Business partners can also sometimes things can not go well.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay. As you’re saying some of this stuff, I’m thinking, do you see a lot of people be pretty shocked with the disposal of assets when somebody passes not realizing how complex it can get? I’m thinking that it sometimes just gets… It feels like it’s gets a little bit sloppy with all the asset people own different businesses. They have partners in this thing. They don’t have partners in that one. They have this building, but real estate and then accounts. Are people surprised sometimes when somebody passes and it is like a little messier and more complicated? Does it take… Do it catch people off guard?

Natalie Perry:
I think it can for sure. Especially if things weren’t entitled properly or maybe something they thought they were getting might’ve been joint with somebody else. Or, I mean, less with a dental practice kinda thing in a building, like you’re saying. But what if there are taxes but some of the money went right to the kids, or there’s not money to pay expenses things can really go awry. If the planning isn’t kinda buttoned up and then maybe updated every few years as people age or people come and go from our lives.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So that’s a perfect segue because now I’m wondering, and this is something our clients wonder all the time, when is the appropriate time or what are the life events or triggers that make someone say, “Hey, I need to think about this. It’s time to work on this?” Again, we have people, as clients who are brand new out of school. The only thing they own is like a half a million dollar student loan owns them. So, there’s no assets. A lot of these people are still single. They might not be married, a partner to have, kids yet. All the way to the end of the spectrum of multi-generations and lots and lots of wealth. How and when should people think about engaging with estate planning for the first time?

Natalie Perry:
Well, for the first time I think it can be more asset driven. Although if you have… Maybe you need a certain amount of wealth to feel like you need an estate plan. But I think if you have minor children, another common misconception that people have is that everything will go to their spouse when they die, even if they don’t have a will. And that really varies by State Law. So if you had a young dentist with a practice with a wife and minor kids and the dental practices in spouse one’s name, it’s not automatically gonna go to spouse two without a will. It might go to spouse and children. It really depends on the State Law. So you definitely wanna have that buttoned up. But then to your point about when to update, I tell people every 3-5 years, they should really give it some thought. Even if it’s a calendar reminder. But the big life events that can cause someone to update are a death, a divorce, I’d say aging parents. Maybe you named your parents as guardian of your children when you were younger, but in 10 years your parents are in their 80s might not look the same.

Natalie Perry:
Same with money management. If you’ve got a friend or a brother-in-law who’s your trustee, that relationship can be going along well, and that may change or maybe that person gets divorced just no longer in your family, so moving out of state or to a new state, often can trigger an update.

Ryan Isaac:
How about income or wealth thresholds, are there any notable thresholds to keep in mind that might trigger some of these things?

Natalie Perry:
Well, the estate tax exemption right now is just about 13 million per person, so it’s quite high and [0:19:12.6] ____ a lot of wealth and may go down when the tax cuts and jobs expires. It might get cut in half, that’s a little TVD depending on what the administration does, so…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Natalie Perry:
That could cause a trigger if there’s a state estate tax that might… In Illinois, where I live, there is a $4 million exemption for each spouse, so for somebody who starts approaching four or five million, now we have to really plan for taxes, we can’t just leave everything to spouse or we may need to use a trust for the spouse that is not included in the second spouse’s estate when he or she dies.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Natalie Perry:
So there’s a lot to think about.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, yeah. And that brings to mind, I guess it depends how somebody builds their net worth, if somebody’s net worth is made up of a lot of illiquid assets. Real estate or businesses that they don’t necessarily want to or even able to liquidate to pay taxes could be… Do you see that a lot where people are very illiquid, they might have high net worth, but are very illiquid and not prepared for taxes?

Natalie Perry:
Definitely, that’s a definite trigger, maybe some life insurance or buy-sell structured buy-sell, but yeah, people can definitely get caught off-guard, not realizing they might owe taxes, especially if you have a spouse who’s not involved in the business and doesn’t really know what to be aware of definitely an issue to plan for.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, yeah, this is such helpful information, how about the non-financial or non, maybe tax-related issues as part of estate planning, you were touching on some of them, maybe that was everything, but things like guardianship or medical decisions, what are some of those non-financial things that end up as a part of a will that maybe people don’t think of that often?

Natalie Perry:
Yes, the guardianship for minor children is a big one, if you don’t have a guardian named in a will, the court gets to decide what’s in the best interest of the child, so some people do feel strongly like even if it’s, I never want this person to be guardian, I don’t want my kids going to that, let’s say second spouse of my dad or whatever, something like that, and then also I think it’s important to have a medical power of attorney, and that’s a document that takes effect when you’re alive, but incapacitated.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
So if you can’t make medical decisions for yourself, you would name someone to make them, and I think where you were going is that this might not be the same person who makes your financial decisions, right? It could be somebody different.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay, so there’s another question. You mentioned this before, trustees. Now, we’re talking about guardians, who are some of the people that are involved in this? That people need to be thinking about as part of estate planning?

Natalie Perry:
Well, this is an interesting point for dentist. I think some people will tend to name their spouse, maybe their, a close family member, a near relative somewhere in the immediate family or upper data generation, but you may as a business owner, want a special person who only manages the business, it may just really depend on how far, you are in the practice or what value is attached to the practice, but in your example with a partner, it could be that the partner is a good person to manage the practice decisions until there’s a buyout or until they’re a sale or whatever that might be. But maybe not.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
It could be your spouse.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, so let’s just take a pretty common client archetype, which would be, let’s say, mid-career practice owner, they might have a partner in the business, they own real estate solo, they have other personal assets joint with a spouse, and the… So that would be… We would need to think about who could be a manager of the business, we might need a separate person to maybe to say who could be the manager of the building even that could be different than the person that take…

Natalie Perry:
Could be.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, we need to think about a guardianship for Children, which is probably a different person, and then somebody who makes medical decisions, that could be somebody…

Natalie Perry:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Different too, liquid assets such as investment accounts, IRAs, retirement accounts, there might also be a separate person who’s the investment manager of those that could be a different person as well?

Natalie Perry:
Could be. And this…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, so… Yeah, go ahead.

Natalie Perry:
Not to scare your audience, you don’t have to have a list of 10 people.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah yeah.

Natalie Perry:
To manage all these things, they could all be the same person, but maybe in some situations, that’s not appropriate.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
That’s more my point. Maybe your spouse is super involved in your business, and knows your day-to-day issues and is familiar with your structure or whatever it may be, but maybe not. Some spouses different, maybe the spouse has a job that’s demanding and they’re not really in the know on all the issues, so I think it’s more of a kind of conversation with your advisor and your financial advisors are great resources for these conversations too, because lots of them see how the planning is set up.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Natalie Perry:
So that can be another person to run these things by…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, they know the life in situation, but I do think that’s a really good point, even if it does scare people because…

Natalie Perry:
Okay.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, because I was just gonna say anecdotally from my experience, most spouses don’t… They’re not that involved in the practice, in the dental practice, unless they themselves or either some type of employee in the practice trained or they’re also a dentist themselves. So most of the time, that’s not true. And I do think that’s probably a healthy scare, if it is scary.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
For people to think about, it might be the person who’s gonna take over for your children in medical decisions and household, which likely to be a partner or spouse, very well might not be the person to takeover for practice decisions. So, I think that’s a very good point to make. Maybe one of the last things to chat about is, how do people get started, and I think there’s a big sense of overwhelm when people think about estate planning it seem… It feels complicated. They don’t know where to begin. I was telling you earlier, it does feel like one of the harder things to refer, most other providers be in accounting, business consulting, brokering of transactions, investment advice, there’s a lot of national providers because of state laws make it easier for us to give advice to nationally versus an attorney who has to get licensed in every state, I think, right? Is that true? Yeah.

Natalie Perry:
Right, yep.

Ryan Isaac:
If you’re gonna do that, so it’s harder to find a central team of estate planning, so it ends up being trying to help someone find estate specific. That’s a long question. How do people get started? What’s the process like? What should they expect maybe in terms of a range of costs, what kind of documentation, how long and how do they find a person to engage with?

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, so I would say you should definitely speak with an attorney and ideally an attorney who specializes in the estate planning, sometimes you might get the attorney who does kinda smaller types of matters like the house closing and whatnot, but it sounds like your audience. There’s some complexity there. So someone who does estate planning day in and day out is really gonna be useful.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
You can oftentimes get a referral from a financial advisor or an accountant, perhaps. I’m also in a national group of estate planning attorneys, it’s called The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. Their website is actec.org, so A-C-T-E-C.org, and there are ACTEC attorneys in every state, so you can go on there and look at their credentials and where their offices are located, and that might be a resource for your clients as well.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, can you repeat that again? That actually would be really helpful.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, and the website is www.A-C-T-E-C.Org.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
And it’s called The American College of Trust and Estate Counsel. So it’s a group of lawyers.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s fantastic. What about where, what’s the process like? What should somebody expect as they begin?

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, so I would expect to come with some financial information, some basic… It doesn’t have to be account numbers, but a basic idea of your net worth, how that’s comprised. Do you know. Is it financial assets? Is it illiquid, like you had said, do you have a business? How has your business formed is it an S Corps? Is it an LLC or a professional corporation? Some states have those. You would wanna have that basic information and then maybe an idea of where will your assets go? Is it spouse and kids? Is it other family members? How old are your kids? Have you given any thought to? Do you need a guardian and a good lawyer will talk you through all those questions, so you don’t have to have made those decisions in advance.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
But it’s probably helpful if you’ve kind of given it some thought in advance and then your attorney will probably talk to you about filling out the names of who will act on your estate plan, in the various rules we’ve talked about out, then they’ll draft the documents, get them to you to review and eventually sign. I think it’s hard to predict the cost, especially nationally, I think a will may be as little as $1000 and for trust and more sophisticated planning with asset titling, maybe 5000 to 10000, really, depending where you are, what’s… Could be lower, really, it’s gonna vary by attorney and by practice.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for going through that. About how long does it take to start to finish an estate plan or maybe that probably varies quite a bit too.

Natalie Perry:
I tell the clients, it’s up to them.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
Because we can usually get it done within a few weeks.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, okay.

Natalie Perry:
But they have to do a little conversing between themselves and make these decisions and come up with the people, and some people wanna tell their friends or family that they’re naming them, but it really isn’t required. Kinda might just depend on your own…

Ryan Isaac:
Surprise.

Natalie Perry:
Family dynamic. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay, thank you, that’s really helpful. I am wondering about when people go through this process sometimes… Well, for wealthier clients, I get questions about… Is estate planning and creating some of this basic will and trust and estate planning? The same thing as asset protection, when people develop much bigger net worths, they’re starting to think about that, exactly. Asset protection and lawsuits, they might have multiple businesses and usually net worth is quite high when I’ve seen clients tackle this question through estate planning and asset protection, it does seem like a more a different and more complex process. Can you speak to that at all or say anything about estate planning and the asset protection being similar or very different things?

Natalie Perry:
Yes. I would say generally, they’re different, so a basic estate plan, and by that, we’re talking about a will, a trust and powers of attorney that does not give you asset protection, if you’re in a position where you can make some gifts to a trust, that’s irrevocable meaning you can’t change it, you don’t have the right to get the money back, that is gonna give some asset protection to the beneficiaries of that trust.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
But anything that you put in your name and you control, that is not asset protection.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Natalie Perry:
It’s a good conversation to have that when you’re talking to an advisor, maybe some insurance can help with that, is your insurance up to speed and is it right for you to make some gifts or set up…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
Some other structures, even in LLC for clients of yours who have a building or something, in LLC if you’ve got multiple members can often give some asset protection.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool, okay, and then another question I was just thinking about, is there anything that you would tell us as financial advisors on how we can be more helpful to our clients through this process and to you or a team of attorneys, how can we be of help as financial advisors to the client and the attorneys while going through this process?

Natalie Perry:
I always think it’s great to have a financial advisor connected to the estate planning attorney, because we can have a much more productive conversations, the client may forget some things or you may have some insight to the relationships in the family or the relationships in the practice that we don’t. So it’s really helpful to have the financial advisor involved, they… You also probably see families go through this process, you can kind of speak to what you’ve seen or how people set things up.

Ryan Isaac:
Sure.

Natalie Perry:
And that can be really helpful, having multiple sets of eyes on the process, I think is beneficial to clients.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I totally agree. I prefer that too. In our company, we’ve made a conscious decision to not be a conglomerate of services under one roof, for that exact reason, I like when we can have different professionals who are all very independent and separate be different objective eyeballs on one client situation, so. Yeah, in our company too.

Ryan Isaac:
As part of our service model at Dentist advisors, we are pretty heavily involved in the data of our client’s lives, so we do track everything, all of full balance sheet of assets and debts, amortization schedules, insurance policies, entity, tax return, spending, income. So I have seen that be helpful for us to just hand an attorney lots and lots of data and then easily come back with the instructions and retitled things and change beneficiaries, so I have seen that be pretty helpful too. You are in the state of Illinois. I don’t know if you’re licensed in other places, I don’t know if you’re looking for business, there’s a few people that listen to the show, so they might be interested if they’re in your area, do you wanna…

Natalie Perry:
Sure.

Ryan Isaac:
Speak to how they could reach out. Contact you, what that means if you are taking new clients and where you can work with people.

Natalie Perry:
Sure, I am licensed in Illinois. My firm is estate planning focused, so we are a group of really 70-something lawyers that only do estate planning, so it’s kind of an interesting business model. A lot of the larger law firms are kind of getting rid of estate planning ’cause it doesn’t fit as well with the M&A work or the…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
Heavy corporate litigation. So we have offices in Denver, in Florida, Atlanta, and in St. Louis.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
So we do work with clients who are in those states who we can assist and my firm website is www.harrisonllp excuse me, let me say that again. My firm’s website is Harrison LLP, so it’s www.harrison with S-O-N LLP.com.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
And we’ve got all of the attorneys listed on there in the different states, and we do work with new clients, lots of us are taking on new clients, so be happy to talk with someone or answer some questions even on a preliminary matter.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s great. Can you tell me those states again? Can you say those again?

Natalie Perry:
Yes, so we have Denver, we have Colorado, we have Missouri, Florida. We have Illinois, which I said. And Georgia.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, my brain’s thinking to the few conversations I’ve just had in the last few weeks about clients needing attorney, I think one of them might be in those places so we’ll reach out after this.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah. We were adding Nevada too, I don’t…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh cool.

Natalie Perry:
I think it’s okay to say that. So yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, no that’s great.

Natalie Perry:
We’ve just hired some people in Nevada, which is really great.

Ryan Isaac:
Excellent That is so cool. Well, is there anything else you would want to tack on here or add that maybe we didn’t get to, or you feel like it’s important to say it’s okay If there’s nothing else, but I thought that was fantastic. And we covered so much.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah, I think there’s so much to talk about. Your point at the end about creditor protection is a good one, we didn’t really dig into that, but that’s something you can talk with your lawyer about because that can really make a difference in how you do your estate planning, sometimes when you leave the money for the kids and trust even temporarily, until they hit a certain age, that can be a real benefit and protecting you against those son or daughter-in-laws. Everybody worries about that.

Ryan Isaac:
I think there’s a lyric in a Taylor Swift song about that.

Natalie Perry:
Yes.

Ryan Isaac:
She has a dream of the daughter-in-law.

Natalie Perry:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
She was gonna get all the money and she wasn’t in the will or something anyway.

[overlapping conversation]

Natalie Perry:
Yes, yes. That’s such a great video. If You haven’t seen it, it’s hilarious.

Ryan Isaac:
I don’t think I’ve seen the video. Well you bring up… I think this warrants a part two that that would be an excellent part two. Creditor protection and… Yeah. How to leave things to heirs. I think that is a huge question. We have a lot of clients who actively save quite a bit of money for their minor children, and in some of the ways that they’re saving, it kind of… The accounts get forced to put in their kids names by the time they’re 18 or 21, depending on the state, and a lot of people are like, I don’t really want my kids to have that much money when there’re… So this would be a good… That would be a good part two to talk about.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah there’s a lot to talk about.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, alright.

Natalie Perry:
I could go on now…

Ryan Isaac:
Well, if you like doing this, we do too, so I would love to be back for a part two.

Natalie Perry:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, well, thank you, Natalie, for taking some time today and being with us, we really appreciate it, and I hope people reach out to Natalie… If you have any questions, if you’re in any of those states, go to her website, harrisonllp.com, is that correct?

Natalie Perry:
That’s right.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Natalie Perry:
That’s right.

Ryan Isaac:
Reach out with any questions. Natalie, thank you and thanks to everyone for tuning in today, we’ll catch you next time on another episode of the dentist money show, take care now, bye bye.

Estate Planning