Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Estate Planning

Matt Romashko

Estate Planning - Part 1: Estate Planning Made Simple - No Boring Legal Terms

Estate Planning - Part 3: Who Do You Trust

Estate Planning - Part 4: What is Your Will

Estate Planning - Part 5: When and Where Do I Start

Estate Planning - Part 2: Who Will Have the Power

Heavenly Father, we want to thank you first of all that you are the owner of all things and that even our own lives have been bought with Christ, the precious blood of Christ.

We pray that as we walk through this day, we walk in the light of your word and to your honor and glory.

We thank you for Matt, Thank you that you've given him talents, intelligence and skill.

Help us to grasp the things we need to grasp today and bless our time together in Christ's name.

So I guess start with the unpleasant part.

Pastor Hall says I'm supposed to introduce myself.

I hate doing this, but my name is Matt Ramosco.

I've been working with estate planning for a little over 20 years now.

I've got a certificate with the state of Michigan as an estate planning attorney, so it's my focus.

I also do real estate or property law, and I do business law.

I think to be a good estate planning attorney you have to meld all of those because most people will come in and say that they have a business or they have property and you have to be attuned to all those things.

As far as business, I sit on about 3 or 4 profit boards.

So it brings a kind of different perspective to this.

As far as the church, I'm third generation Adventist, so, but also Michigan.

Today we're going to continue on with our topic and that is the who, what, when, and where of estate planning.

Last time we talked about estate planning made simple.

You should all have a handout that talks about terms.

So this is why you're receiving a term sheet.

They're not what you're going to find in a black swan dictionary.

And the reason why is I want us to speak the same language.

Now yesterday what we did is we talked about generally estate planning.

And intentionally we hit just about every aspect of estate planning from property to wills to trust the powers of attorney to what do you do to keep things out of probate and in probate.

So what we're going to do the next 3 days is we're really going to delve deeper into some of those issues.

This is intended to make state planning simple for you, but this is not basic.

The things that we're going to be talking about are really more in depth.

The easy answer is who has the real power?

All your answers were correct, But it's based on what perspective, right?

So it depends on what we're talking about.

This is 1 of my favorite verses from Job.

The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power, in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress." So when we talk about power, we need to look at what aspect of your life that we're talking about.

Now there's going to be come a time where we have to talk about guardians and conservatorships.

Now this is important because this is going to lead into our next topic.

Guardianships is over the person, conservatorships is over the property.

When we talk about guardians and conservatorships, we're really trying to break those 2 out.

So For a guardianship, the court will appoint a fiduciary to act on behalf of a person.

So a fiduciary is just somebody that is acting on behalf of another.

So how a guardianship works is somebody makes a petition to the court.

And how we get it to the court is we pay a fee.

So What you do is you bring a petition into the court and you say, judge, this person can't act on their own accord anymore.

They've got some issues, either physical or mental or both, where they cannot act efficiently or effectively on their behalf.

Now I got to say in practicing I hate doing guardianships.

The reason why is they're incredibly depressing to do because you're doing a number of things.

When you prepare a petition you have to have a petitioner, right?

It's not the attorney, it's usually a family member.

The last 1 that I was involved in was a contested guardianship.

She wanted to live at home, she was having issues living at home, leaving the stove on, not eating.

So what we ended up doing is her daughter wanted to come in and petition.

Daughter said, I need you to have the court appoint me or somebody else.

It doesn't have to be me, but somebody needs to take care of mom.

So what ended up happening is we had to get a physician's report because what you do is you fill out an affidavit from the person that's making the petition and it says this is what mom is doing, this is what I've observed, these are my concerns.

But we also get a report from the doctor and the doctor says based on my examination this is the issues that the person is having.

You would think that that's pretty cut and dry, right?

So what happens is we present it to the court.

The court then points what's called a guardian litem to act on behalf of the individual who we're seeking to have a guardianship.

So that guardian litem is usually an attorney.

Because you're potentially in this conflict.

So the guardian ad litem meets with the individual and they make a report.

What they usually do is they also meet with the family members.

We would have an hour discussion on what the word day means.

So the other daughter, the brother, got an attorney.

We went into court, and this is where the problem lies.

The judge has to hear all this and sift through.

The judge has about 45 minutes to do this.

So we're bringing up decades of family history, 45 minutes in an arena that's open to the public.

So what happens is the petitioner gets up.

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Estate Planning

Estate Planning - Part 2: Who Will Have the Power

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