Episode 320: Beyond the Documents: Estate Planning, Family Communication, and Legacy with Nicole Adkison

Most people know they need an estate plan. Far fewer actually have one, and even fewer have had the conversations with their families that make that plan meaningful. Melissa Joy, CFP® sits down with Nicole Adkison, estate planning attorney and wealth strategist, to talk about what thoughtful estate planning really involves, from the foundational documents to the deeper family conversations that give those documents their purpose.

Nicole works with families and their advisors to design forward-looking plans that protect assets and preserve family harmony. In this conversation, she brings both the technical framework and the human heart of estate planning into focus, including why the why behind your decisions matters just as much as the what.

What You'll Learn

• What estate planning actually is and why a will alone is rarely enough
• Why probate is a process worth avoiding and how a revocable trust helps you do that
• What powers of attorney and healthcare directives do and what happens without them
• Why complexity in an estate plan does not just mean complex assets
• The most common source of family conflict after a death and how to address it before you are gone
• Why being named trustee is rarely the honor it is treated as and how to choose the right person for the job
• How to have age-appropriate conversations about money and legacy, even with young children
• What purpose statements inside your estate plan can do that the documents alone cannot
• Why unequal distributions are sometimes the fairest choice and how to explain them to your family
• How dynasty trusts work as a family bank rather than a windfall and why that matters for long-term legacy
• Why your estate plan should be reviewed regularly and what a good advisor relationship looks like over time
• The role your financial advisor and estate planning attorney should play together

  Connect with Nicole Adkison: 

Website: adkisonlaw.com

LinkindIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-adkison-7236408/

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only.  No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https...

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Nicole

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate make money decisions with confidence, and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money, and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. And I'm thrilled to be joined by Nicole Adkison. She is an estate planning attorney and wealth strategist who helps families and their founders design thoughtful, forward-looking plans that protect their assets and preserve family harmony. She works closely with financial advisors like me and helps clients to navigate complex tax and estate planning strategies with clarity. And I love this word, practicality, because estate planning is it can be both documents, but it's also how does it work in the real world? Nicole, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Well, when I we were introduced through a mutual friend and I heard about the work that you do. You're an estate planning attorney who works in California, soon to be Nevada and Florida. And I just love practical estate planners because we often intersect and work together to help families, often in moments of need. But a good estate plan is often set up in a time where everything's sunny and you're just kind of shoring things up when it comes to your risk. Can you just define what estate planning is in practical terms for our listening to audience as we kick things off?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Absolutely. So estate planning at its very core is a set of documents that governs what's going to happen when you can't make decisions anymore. And so what we the basic thing that we need to know is who you are, what you have, who you want to control it when you can't, and where you want it to go when you're gone.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

I love that. And I expand it when I'm thinking about it to be all of those documents, but also the account titling and some of the other considerations that, you know, don't necessarily get wrapped into a document, um, but are still very important for continuity and practicality if you can't manage things on your own or if you pass away.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Yeah, it's a big deal. So there's there's two parts to it, right? There's the creating the thing, and then there's actually the funding of the thing and we will fund it function.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

Well, describe the process of actually creating that thing. Um, just so that we can kind of we're gonna go into some of the the conversations that I think in the communication that's important um to consider amongst the family. But but let's get um take one more step and say if you don't have an estate plan, which I find so many people are like, oh, I know I need a will. And um oftentimes, you know, a will is a term for probably several documents in in many cases. But how do you go about, you know, drafting that estate plan to begin with?

Trusts Versus Wills And Probate

SPEAKER_02 3:27

Well, um I what I do is I spend time with people. I get to know them and what it is that they're aiming at. So traditional estate planning is you come in, you fill out a questionnaire, and the estate planning attorney drafts a pile of documents, hands it to you, we review it to make sure it says what you want, and then off you go. So, right, those four things I said at the beginning. What I do is spend time with my clients. I get to know them well, I treat them like family, and I end up with about 15 sets of parents because of this, because they kind of adopt me back. But it's it's a way of getting to know what it is that you're trying to do. In fact, one of the biggest failings, I think, of traditional estate planning is focusing on the what and not on the why. And of course, we'll get to that in a bit, but it's largely the culminating of the information. So estate planning really is a revocable trust if you live in a place where probate is bad. And in my opinion, probate is bad in all 50 states.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

I haven't found a situation where I really thought probate was in the best interest of the client, but sometimes you can't afford not to end up there or you you don't make the time.

unknown 4:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

And it's mostly not making the time. Um, and so in my world, it's a revocable trust is the centerpiece. A trust functions just like most people think that a will would function. A will is the common testamentary document that everybody thinks of to govern what happens when they're gone, right? So what that does though, a basic will, a complex will, is a roadmap for the probate judge. And so it has to go through the probate process. Now, in my state, in California, it's a horrendous process. It's time consuming, it's expensive, it's public, and it drags your family through a court process.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

And when you say expensive, we're talking like a percentage of the estate.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Yep. So in California, it's statutory fees based on the gross estate not on the net. So in in my my world in Santa Cruz, you know, a million-dollar house with a$900,000 mortgage, and you're gonna pay$60,000,$75,000 in fees on$100,000 in equity. It's insane. Wow. Yeah, it's bad. And so probate is bad. That's my mantra. Um, so we use trust. And a trust, what makes a trust different? It operates the same except that you retitle your assets currently after you create the thing. And it's basically a big long contract between you and yourself. I'll not go there, but it allows you to retitle your assets into the name of the trust currently. So instead of you holding title like you as a person, you hold title as you as trustee of your trust. And what that allows for is a non-judicial process. In other words, if something happens, you're incapacitated, you pass away, someone, your successor that you already named comes in, takes over, no court process. And you're allowed to govern a lot more uh complex issues with a trust than you could with a will. You can bury testamentary provisions for a testamentary trust, it's often what they do in New York, um, into a will, but still has to go through a court process. And the rest of your estate plan is all the stuff that facilitates those things. So you still get a will, but it's called a pour over will. And it's just meant to grab assets and put them in your trust if they get missed. And then you've got your powers of attorney and your power, your health care directive. Those two things, of all the things we do, besides information gathering, which in my opinion is the most important thing that we do in estate planning. The health care directive and your power of attorney allow for someone to take care of you if you become incapacitated. If you don't do that, no one can take care of you. So they have to go through what's called a conservatorship process or a guardianship process, is what a lot of states call it. And that's where you have to go to that probate court again. Probate is bad. Remember this? So you have to go to the probate court and it takes forever. In my state, it takes forever. It's expensive, it's time consuming, and it's just so someone can pay your bills and talk to the doctor for you.

SPEAKER_03 7:33

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yes, it's um it's not a good day typically when you're like at the point where you're like, we need a conservatorship or a guardianship. Like bad things have happened typically. And so then to have to wait for the court process to see you creates all sorts of other issues and stresses, at least in my observations.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

Um boy doesn't.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

So somebody picks up the phone, they call an office, they're recommended as state planner. This is someone typically who is state specific. So you're not just picking up anybody across the country. You're also typically, at least in my opinion, and you can weigh in, looking for someone who does this frequently. It's not the town lawyer who also does the, you know, court cases for traffic violations and um criminal defense. And, you know, you're looking for someone who has a lot of experiencing experience drafting estate documents, and that might be one of their primary areas of practice. Yes.

Picking The Right Estate Attorney

SPEAKER_02 8:35

So there's a lot of GP lawyers that will do estate planning because at its at its basic level, like I said at the beginning, you fill out a questionnaire, you make some documents. And I mean, I know of paralegals who draft them, the document production, like LegalZoom, and I have a funny LegalZoom story, but the idea of especially if you have any complexity in your estate at all, you really need someone who knows all of the rules. So in California, one of the things that you have to watch out for in estate planning is um property tax reassessment. And so, because it's a big deal, we have Prop 13 that allows your property tax base to stay where you bought the house and it's, you know, gets little tiny increases. And so you can get reassessed if you don't do things properly. If you're using entities to shield risk, you have to be aware of the rules. And so it is very, very important um to find someone who practices in the world of estate planning, preferably someone who does estate planning and business planning, um, because the two things go go hand in hand so much.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

And complexity can be like things that many of us experience. Like to me, complexity is having minor children or children who you don't know that you would want to write a check for your entire state outright at, you know, a young age, or blended families. Um, you know, there's a lot of different examples of complexity that aren't, you know, only for the 1%, I guess I would say. Right.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Complex doesn't necessarily mean complex assets.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And then I'm curious when you say it's not the how, it's the why that is most important or what you should spend more time on. Can you tell me a little bit about perspective of the types of conversations you're having with your clients that um might not be in every estate planning conversation? Um, how you get to, you know, the deeper meaning of what you want to transpire with your estate.

SPEAKER_02 10:35

Yeah. So, like I said at the beginning, one of the biggest failings of traditional estate planning is it focuses on the what. Like what do you have and who you want to control it and where do you want it to go.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

It's like very transactional. Like point A to point B, who's writing, who's signing, et cetera. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 10:55

And it doesn't happen in a vacuum. So the first thing, and I I know I just went on this whole thing about what, but one of the first conversations is what do you have? So if you work with high net worth clients, and I know you do, one of the things that happens is the kids win the lottery because the parents never told them anything. I have this client, bless their hearts, millionaires next door, nicest people you'll ever meet in your life. They're worth so much money, and their kids have no idea whatsoever. And I'm trying to counsel them to talk to their children because they're about to inherit a bucket of money. And they have no clue. And so that creates all sorts of problems. So talking to your kids about what you have, so that's that's a big deal. And start it early. It this is not this is not grandparent level planning. I my kids are five and seven, and it it matters to start having these conversations very early. Communicate. You know, it's it's something that we as a society maybe don't do as well as we should, but communicate about what it is that you have. I was listening to one of your podcasts and you said something about teaching your kids about the bond markets. That's what I'm talking about. And but it's important. So, what you have and and why do you have those things? So some of my clients are heavy in real estate and they have worked really hard to have rental properties, and they sacrificed a lot of their weekends with their kids doing other things to do repairs and to do maintenance and to do all of these things to build up this family wealth and to be able to leave a leave a legacy behind. Um, and so the the what you have is actually very important. Um, it's just not the be-all end-all.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

And then when you get into the why, um every like I know we probably have opinions on what um legacy means for our family or what our intent would be with our own state plan, because we get to also get a lot of it bats of seeing, you know, different examples. But what are some of the, you know, like deeper conversations that you are trying to create with your clients?

SPEAKER_02 12:59

And so that's the why part. And so why are we making these decisions? And the number one thing that I have found that causes more family drama than is at all necessary is why did we choose one kid as trustee and not another? And it's not oftentimes the heirs, the beneficiaries, will think of being the trustee as, oh, we get to control the family wealth and it's this like badge of honor. No, it's a horrible job. It's a horrible job. Being trustee sucks. And so, but you have to make a choice. You could make them all co-trustees. I have one client, bless his heart, he made all his kids co-trustees. Thankfully, the three of them get along. But normally, having co-trustees is a monumental pain. So you can't do that with any administrative ease. And banks don't want to talk to you. They want to talk to one person, they want to know who one person is in charge. And so you gotta pick somebody. And so I'm a big advocate for neutral third-party trustees because of this. Um, but you have to pick somebody, and oftentimes it's not the oldest person, maybe is an artist, and maybe they have would have no idea what to do as trying to be able to do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Because the default is often the oldest or the oldest male in in some cases as well.

Trustees Fairness And Unequal Gifts

SPEAKER_02 14:16

Yes, that's right. And and in a lot of cases, it's just not a good fit. And mom and dad know that. So, you know, and it's not who is necessarily the most financially adept, and that is something that I have to counsel my clients on continuously. Uh, it's not necessarily the person who's best suited money-wise, it's the person who's going to be the most fair. And so I I can teach anybody finance. I can't teach you how to be fair, though. And so that is a really big deal because we largely handle the trust administrations. You know, most of the good estate planners, they do trust administration as part of their practice. And so we guide the trustee anyway. So what they don't understand in the trusteeship part, which can't teach that fairness, you can't teach them to get along well and to work in each other's best interest. And it's always siblings, let me tell you. But another thing, another why is unequal distributions. And it's a lifetime of fairness, not fairness in the moment. So fair is not always equal. And it's because sometimes I have clients who have had kids with really expensive graduate degrees and they paid for all of it. But one of the other kids didn't get as much. So they give them a bit more to kind of equalize that over their lifetimes. So that at the end of the day, when they're both gone, you know, these two siblings have gotten about the same amount from mom and dad. Just some of them get it during their lifetimes and some don't. Another reason that we do unequal distributions is because one of the kids ends up taking care of mom and dad when they're incapacitated. And they want to provide for that. And we do outline that in the documents in a way that allows it, if we don't know who's gonna take care of mom, let's say, because right, you want to make these decisions while you have the ability to make the decisions so that your kids don't have to make the decisions. They just have to carry them out. And we'll say, all right, so an additional 10% of the estate is gonna go to whomever takes care of mom and dad, you know, just because we want to make sure that if they've given up job opportunities, if they've moved back home, if they've done a bunch of different things, we want to be able to equalize for that.

Preventing Trust Fund Baby Syndrome

SPEAKER_01 16:18

That makes sense. Um and then in the cases of your clients who have in, you know, accumulated significant wealth, um, which I know were many of them, are there additional conversations or considerations about legacy or what the, you know, what this wealth means to them and where they want it to end up? How do you avoid, you know, kind of trust fund baby syndrome? You know, what are what are those types of conversations?

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Well, the trust fund baby thing is real and I have a no trust fund baby rule. So what we do in those instances is counseling clients, like when they get to me and I have all this money, oftentimes they've had a good long time of not communicating well with their families because they're busy building this wealth up. Like I have this one particular client who has built an incredible empire. Three kids can't stand each other because they were always vying for dad's time. And it wasn't because he didn't love them or didn't love them equally. It was just that he was building, he was busy building and and then so trying to go back and and kind of rectify that is a little bit more difficult. Um, and so I counsel them as soon as as soon as they get to me, start talking. Tell them, tell the people that you love that you love them. Any chance you get, and it makes all the difference in the world to all those different little conversations. And so in the hired outverse space, we do a lot more legacy building in the nonprofit space and in foundations and um in outside the family legacy. Um, but we also allow for this the the in my in my world, the elimination of the trust fund, baby. We create the long-term dynasty trust with the trust acting more like a bank than a slush fund. And so what we do is we say, okay, look, if you want, you know, there's a hundred million dollars in this pot. If you want to buy a house, you have to come in with skin in the game, 10% or whatever it is. And we have incentive provisions that we build into all of them, and everybody has a different legacy. So some people want to be able to facilitate real estate purchases and investments and starting businesses and all of those things, charitable giving. Um, and some of them just want to give their kids just enough that they don't turn in, you know, they be that their lives are a little a little bit easier. You know, we worked hard for all this money, you need to work hard for it too. So a lot of times we build it as a bank. It's guaranteed funding, but and at favorable rates, but they still have to come in with something so that they're showing the trustee, which is in those cases almost always a third party neutral, they're showing the trustee that yes, they are intending to use the money wisely.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And in the case of the dynasty trust, this is a trust that is in some cases available for gifting, still while you're the, you know, kind of generation one is living as well as post-death in some of those cases? Yep. So there's two types.

Dynasty Trusts And Asset Protection

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Um, there's an inter Intervivos dynasty trust or GST trust. Um, we use a lot of Grantor trusts because Grantor trusts are brilliant. And I could do a whole podcast segment on them. They're so cool. Um, but so there's the the one that we create while mom and dad are still alive. And um, that allows them to use the annual gift tax exclusion and the unified credit to fund this thing. And that will help, you know, give net income to their kids during their lifetime. But for traditional families, for the people that are just, you know, they have a house and two kids. We I set those up almost across the board, actually. I set up this dynasty trust inside their revocable trust, and it comes into effect once the thing becomes irrevocable. So that there's no ongoing administration during their lifetime, because a dynasty trust created during life has its own EIN number, it has its own tax return, so it's just like a corporation that way.

SPEAKER_03 20:12

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Um, but at the end, if we set it up testamentarily, um, then there's no ongoing lifetime administration for it. But what does happen is an incredible level of asset protection for your heirs. It is the coolest thing ever. So basically, instead of distributing outright at some age or some steps of ages, like some clients will do 25 and 28 and 30, um, we keep it in trust for the kids' lifetimes. And what that does is allows them to have full benefit and use of the assets like they own them, but they don't actually own them. And what that does is provide asset protection. So if they marry a crazy person, if they go into bankruptcy, if they have a startup that fails, if they get into an auto accident that exceeds the insurance limits, if they are persuaded by a new boyfriend, that money is locked up and kept safe from creditors and creditors.

Keeping Plans Updated Over Time

How To Talk With Adult Kids

SPEAKER_01 21:11

So much to think about. We're talking about really complex topics. Going back to basics, um, if we because all of this is very like my wheels are turning because you know, I think about the use cases and and there's a lot of really great use cases. But then going back to the basics, when you're someone who has your estate plan written, you've done you, you've put in the time, you created the thought. Maybe it was a while ago, even. And, you know, one of the really important things to consider, I'm sure you would agree, Nicole, is like you don't just put an estate plan away and let it collect dust. It sometimes needs to be reviewed, refreshed. There's been, you know, changes in rules. Um, some estate plans that were written many years ago were set up for a very low um estate tax. Um It's much, much, much higher today, you know, where you need 15 or 30 million plus for a joint family to be subject to estate plaque taxes on a federal level, it matters state by state. So you do need to review and refresh. But then once you've gotten the estate plan written, and you know, perhaps I know with my families, um, you know, both sides of our family, um, parents are now in their 70s or 80s. So, you know, discussions happen. Sometimes it's amongst kids, sometimes it's mom and dad talking, you know, like down the line. Um what is effective communication strategy to talk about what's been planned? I hear you saying, even for my five and seven-year-olds, there's age-appropriate conversations to prepare them for wealth. Um when you're a family, whether you're in your 50s or your 80s, um, and thinking about communication amongst family members, let's assume for this, for these purposes that the family members are adults. What are some of your best practices for communication?

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Well, one of the first things, and this is about to sound kind of woo-woo, but one of the first things is you kind of need to sit with yourself and like have kind of an internal heart heart of let me get past my own uncomfortable thing with mortality and incapacity and all of those things. So a lot of people don't want to have the conversation because it's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

It's icky.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah, I know a hundred percent. I agree. And so the the other tripping hazard we see is well, we'll figure it out. And there's always a better day later.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

That's it. This is one of those conversations where I'm often like pushing, come on, let's do it now.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

Yeah, yeah. And so, and you don't want to scare your kids, you know, like even when they're in their 20s, for heaven's sakes, mom and dad are gonna die. Sorry, it is just the way it is, and that sucks. But it's a life cycle. If it is, and if your grandparents don't pass away, your kids have nowhere to go. Like it's a life cycle thing. So a lot of it is just kind of sitting with yourself and like having kind of a heart to heart and saying, okay, you know what? It's not about me. What is this about? This is about my family and protecting my family and preparing my family. Because if uh if you don't talk to them about what matters to you, they're gonna measure your life in dollars instead of meetings. And having those conversations early and often is the best possible thing you can do. And again, telling the people that you love that you love them as often as you can. I know that sounds silly, but it goes so far. I have, I can't tell you how many clients I've had come into my office and they have a recording of their parents, a voicemail they got left behind. Hey, it's mom, call me. And they keep that because it's this little piece of mom. They can hear her voice and it's a big deal. And we do a lot of um legacy planning, like memoir kind of stuff. And we do recordings that we leave in their files for their kids, um, interview kind of things, telling stories. And so that's that's a really great place to start, is just start telling them stories about when they were little or tell them stories about their grandparents or tell them stories about a vacation they went on or something. And even if they remember having gone on that Disney cruise, talking to them about it will bring up that lovely and glowing feeling. Like if you talk to someone in the middle of a divorce and you ask them about the day they met, all of a sudden everything changes. And you, even the people in the most contentious divorces will shift because they mentally remember how wonderful that felt. And if you put yourself in that mindset before you have these conversations about, okay, at some point, I'm not gonna be here to tell you these things anymore. Let's talk about how I can prepare you to take care of things when I'm not able to.

SPEAKER_01 25:59

It occurs to me that I would want to be asked, you know, we've all had important people to us or family members that we've lost over the years. What conversations would you wanted them to have with you in order to put yourself in the right place and and frame of mind to prepare yourself to have those conversations with others?

Purpose Statements And Advisor Teamwork

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah, it it's a big deal. And I my mom she committed suicide when I was pregnant with my first kid. And there's so many things I would have asked her had I even known about them. My mom was very my mom had a very hard life and there was a whole bunch of trauma there. But there's so many things I learned about her after she died that I wish I could ask her about. And it's those kind of things, you know, like it's being transparent, it's not something that like our generation, our our parents, like I don't know about yours, but every set of parents in my world that I know, the baby boomer generation, you don't talk about money, you don't talk about religion, you don't talk about politics. It's true. And because of that, it's set the next generation up for things that we have no ability to communicate about.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

Well, they were raised by the silent generation who were silent in many ways. And, you know, kind of that carryover of the depression era, you know, kind of mindset of their parents really does result in some closed conversations. It's it's not as transparent. And um, you know, that's what I find that my um my clients who are contemporaries of mine are, you know, cleaning house and they had no idea that mom and dad had accounts at 20 or 30 places. So there's a ton of money. They have all the money they need, but the administrative burden of keeping track of them, doing the required minimum distributions, um, estate administration is very, very high. And those conversations about, you know, the legacy of these are, you know, this is this is how I accumulated this wealth. This is why it's important to me. I would love to see my grandkids educated or, you know, whatever the case may be, um, those conversations are sometimes lost because of that um closed mindset. So if this conversation could inspire some more openness um with planning, um that would be an incredible, incredible um outcome.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Yeah. And and I agree, it's we have the ability to change that, to change that rhetoric. It's we moving forward, right? You can't go backwards, but you can always go forward. And like I said, my kids are little and I'm having conversations with them. Your kids are young and you're having conversations with them about finances and all of these things that are so important that we just never had any touch on. And when it comes to the administration of all of this stuff later on, the best possible advice I can give anybody creating an estate plan. I don't care if you're our age, I don't care if you're our grandparents' age, put purpose statements in there. So it's not just here's what I want, it's here's what I want because in law school they teach you why use 25 words when 500 will suffice. Never is that more true than in estate planning. Tell them why. Even if you don't want to have the conversation with them, please do. But if you don't, for whatever mental hiccup you have about it, because let's face it, we've all got mental hiccups about stuff. If you don't want to have the conversation, put it down in writing. Say, I named Tommy as trustee because he lives next door and he's always there. You live in Colorado, you know, like, but nevermore, and I always say this, it's Susie stole Tommy's ball when they were five, and it comes out with mom dies. And it's because one of them, for some reason, throughout their lifetime, doesn't feel loved. And they don't feel like they're as important to mom as the other one was. And that's almost never true. I mean, I I can probably think of one instance in the decade plus I've been practicing where it actually was true that mom did have a favorite. But it's that's not usually the case. It's just that some of them are better suited. Being trustee sucks. Nobody wants to be trustee. It's just we we've kind of built it in as this oh, I have control of the assets, therefore I am the one in charge. You don't want to be in charge, trust me when I say this. This is not something you want. But put purpose statements inside your estate plan and say, look, I made this decision because of this. We have these assets in these 20 locations. Please don't do that. But we have these 20 accounts because your dad and I got this account when we were first married, and we got this account when you were first born, and we got this account because of this. Now, if you want to consolidate those after we're gone, that's okay. But the reason we have all of these things is because they have sentimental value to us. So just those purpose and because statements, it will go so far in the world of eliminating conflict because it's not you make the decisions and it's not the bad, it's not bad decisions that create the conflict, it's the lack of communication.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Makes sense. And I think um, you know, there's so many opportunities to have conversations, but we can't put ourselves in every family dynamic. And so, you know, those conversations may be too complicated, or you may not be ready for them. So absolutely leaving whether it's within the estate planning document or in addition, there can be, you know, posthumous letters um that are left to help to communicate the why, um, to share purpose and you know, sharing that information with your professional advisors as well. I've know I've been in a place in certain instances where um I was able to relay conversations that I'd had with clients to their um heirs or decedents um about, you know, source of funds and where it came from when it wasn't documented elsewhere. Um and so that can be helpful as well, finding an advisor that you really trust and know in a relational manner, as you're describing, Nicole, versus, you know, just transactional, where they're, you know, kind of a farm creating documents.

SPEAKER_02 32:06

And that is probably one of the most important things in estate planning, besides communication, is finding a good team. So you an estate planning attorney is we we're generally what is it? I'm a sports idiot, but my husband says that I'm like the offensive coordinator. The wealth advisor, the financial advisor is like the quarterback. And the idea is that I create this plan. We we I sit with the family, we create this plan, and you and I have to have a conversation about it. It's not me talking to the client, the client talking to you, and you and I never having any kind of connection because it's the two of us that keep the plan aligned. Your life evolves, your plan needs to evolve with it. So please don't put it on the shelf for 20 years and don't touch it again. We do legacy plans. Um, so it's a, you know, it's a monthly or annual fee, and you get the recent updates from every year, you know, this big packet of all of the things that could could touch your life in the world and estate and tax planning. Um, and it's a change sheet, and but it's a way to keep in connection with your estate plan. They talk to you how often? How often do your clients talk to you?

SPEAKER_01 33:08

Frequently. So um, you know, monthly or quarterly. Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

They don't talk to me like that.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Right.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

And so between the two of us, when something happens, somebody got married and they haven't managed to call my office yet. Somebody had a baby or somebody passed away, somebody got divorced. And I have a whole, if this is happening, this is the things you're gonna want to talk about or think about list. Um, and it's it's just it's a way to keep in constant connection because cohesion and continuity decrease or eliminate in a lot of cases, conflict.

SPEAKER_01 33:40

So, so true. Well, you've l left us with a lot of wisdom. How can people who want to hear more find you or follow you?

SPEAKER_02 33:50

Uh, well, I have a website, it's adkissenlaw.com, and it's got loads of information. Um, I'm starting a podcast. It's been on the works for about a year now. Uh, it's called It Depends, and it's about teaching people about the basics of the law. So it touches your life every single day, and most people don't understand how it works. And so the idea was just to like kind of show people how the law affects their lives, just kind of storytelling. Um, but yeah, it's my office is in Santa Cruz. I've got an office in Tallahassee, Florida. Um, I love answering questions, people can get to me pretty easy.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Nicole, thank you so much for coming and sharing your wisdom on communicating about estate plans. Yes, thank you so much for having me. I love doing this stuff.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom podcast. If you found value in this episode, the best way that you can support the podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to ProPlan.com and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned. This presentation by Pro Planning is intended for general information purposes only. No portion of this presentation serves as the receipt of or substitute for personal investment advice from Pro Planning or any other investment professional of your choosing. Copies of Pro Planning's current rent and disclosure brochure and form CRS discussing our advisory services and fees are available upon request or on our website platform at PerlPlan.com. The information that we share is meant to educate and inspire, not serve as personalized financial advice. Everyone's situation is unique, so be sure to consult with your own financial professional for guidance that fits your life. And just so you know, the opinions shared in this podcast are Melissa's own and those of her guest. They don't necessarily represent any organizations with which Melissa is affiliated. For more important disclosures, please go to our webpage at proplan.com.