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

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity to be at Camp Meem.

Lord, those words that I say today, let them horrify you and let them be your words.

As we discuss issues of stewardship and estate planning, we just ask that you guide us in all that we do.

The who, what, when, and where of estate planning.

We're not gonna talk about technical terms.

What I wanna do is I wanna give you a handout, and this will give you some basic terms.

Now, what this seminar is about is it's about to educate you about estate planning.

I'm going to use more realistic terms, but don't be confused.

The stuff that you're going to learn is going to be pretty advanced.

Okay, we're going to use simple terms that we can all relate to.

Afterwards, we're going to have a time before closing prayer to do questions and then I'm gonna stay around for about a half hour afterwards and We can talk about more in-depth things more personal things if you'd like, okay, but this is your seminar The reason that we want to have terms is so we speak the same language.

So a number of years ago, my family and I were at the Dominican for a mission trip with ASI.

And the first day, we were doing a construction project, and I needed a generator.

Sometimes I wonder how good my English is, but Spanish I'm not great at.

So I went to the maintenance person and, you know, I'm miming things, I'm using my Spanglish, and it's not going well.

And I had 1 of our translators come over, but they spoke Spanish, they didn't speak the dialect that we were at, and it just wasn't working out.

And finally, the person that came there that was from the Dominican, I said, Geo, I need a generator.

He said, generator in Spanish or Dominican is the same as English.

Number 1 is you have to speak the language to communicate well, right?

Number 2 is sometimes it's easier than we think it is, right?

Sometimes the terms that we use shouldn't be that difficult.

As long as we understand the language that we're saying, it should work out.

And I think that principle works well throughout.

When we look at this week, we're going to talk about estate planning made simple.

On Tuesday, if you want to come back, we're going to talk about who has the power.

So we're going to talk about powers of attorneys, guardianships, conservatorships.

Wednesday, we're going to talk about who do you trust.

Thursday we're going to talk about what is your will.

And finally Friday, when and where do I start.

We are going to literally need all the time that we have.

When I say the word estate planning, what do you think about?

Or if you don't know, that's even better, right?

All you belong to, do you house, and boats or whatever, I mean, or whatever you value, maybe.

Where you want your assets to go when you pay up.

What I like about this slide and those that are listening, unfortunately you can't see it, has the word estate planning, it has a bunch of words around it.

You know, it talks about probate, and talks about special needs trust, talks about wills and estate, talks about executors.

I didn't count the words here but I'm guessing that we have between 50 and 75 words.

In preparing for this I was looking at terms and I looked up the term estate planning and you know what the definition was?

And I think the reason why is we make so much out of estate planning.

So when we look at a state planning, we don't want to talk about boring terms.

You know, we don't want to talk about living wills and advanced directives, but you need to know what those are.

So what our goal is, is going to be kind of talking about estate planning.

So let's talk about the very simplistic part of it.

Estate planning is about stewardship, being a steward.

Sometimes we're blessed more than we know.

But estate planning really at its root is stewardship.

I love this verse from 1st Corinthians 4.2.

Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must provide faithful.

And I think that gives us kind of a definition of what estate planning is.

So if you think about estate planning as stewardship, that's pretty easy, right?

If you see a term or if we talk about a term that you're not sure what it is, it's on your handout.

Now I have to warn you, these terms are not legal terms.

I didn't go to Black's Law dictionary and pick out these terms and write them out.

I didn't use the terms that I learned in law school.

These are terms I think that we can all relate to and it gives you kind of a basic idea but it gives you the opportunity to Kind of understand something as you go through.

So this term sheet will help you and it will give you more basic and practical terms.

Estate Planning - Part 3: Who Do You Trust

Dear Holy Father, thank you for this day.

Lord, we ask that you provide us with guidance and your Holy Spirit as we go through camp meeting.

Lord, please be with those that need your guidance.

We ask that you pour out your Holy Spirit into this week.

Let us connect closer to you in all that we do.

Lord, as we spend an hour just talking about estate planning and other things, we ask that you provide us with wisdom and let me speak words for your glory.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, Amen.

What we did in our first segment is estate planning made simple.

We talked about terms of estate planning.

And we talked about just about every aspect of estate playing.

And I intentionally tried to hit everything that we talked about this week.

Then we talked about who has the power yesterday and when we talked about who has the power, we're talking about powers of attorney.

Today, I love that text not working alright this morning.

Today we are going to talk about who do you trust.

So, in that aspect, we're going to talk about trust.

It's 1 of those proverbs that some of us hold on to when we need kind of an uplifting.

It says, trust in the Lord with all thy heart.

In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy path.

When we talk about trusts, this is probably 1 of the most, I'm going to say, discussed topics of estate planning.

Because this is the greatest question that you always get.

Last 2 days, whatever confidence I built up, I just lost, right?

The reason I don't know is it really depends on your goals.

I have to tell you everybody does not need a trust.

And the reason why is everybody's circumstances are different but nobody is going to fit in this room into the exact same circumstances in which you have to have a trust.

So what we do as estate planning attorneys and what I challenge you to do is outline your needs.

On Friday we're going to talk about kind of a wrap-up in how do you make determinations.

And what I will ask people when they first come in after we do the usual conversations, the small talk, get to know each other a little bit, is what's your goal?

Because your goal is going to define what your documents are.

The other thing that's going to happen is your life is going to change.

What works now, under your circumstances, may not work next year, and it may not even work 5 years from now.

So, some of the key factors that you really need to look at in a trust is drafting.

Drafting is important for a couple things, because there's really 2 trusts when we look at them.

If you're married, we can have 2 separate trusts.

We can have a trust for the husband, we can have a trust for the wife.

And a lot of times they're mirror images but maybe they aren't.

What I mean by a mirror image document is except for the name, except for the he or she, they literally look the same.

My wife and I have mirror trusts, mirror image trusts.

Except for our names in the he versus she, in the designation, our trustees are the same, our successor trustees are the same, and where the assets go are the exact same.

What really makes this interesting, so what makes this unique is when we get into non-mirror image documents.

Let's say if I die, everything goes to my wife, and if she doesn't survive me, it goes to the United Cat Foundation.

Let's even be more specific, the United Siamese Cat Foundation.

My wife, on the other hand, she likes those other furry creatures that drool and stuff like that.

So if she were to die, everything would go to me, and then it would go to the United Dog Foundation.

Now I don't know if there's a United Dog Foundation.

It is a funny looking mirror because it's not the same.

So what happens if I pass away first, everything goes to the dogs.

If my wife passes away, ultimately everything goes to the cats, right?

So this isn't a bad thing, but the separate trusts gives a little bit more flexibility.

Where you see separate trust are usually in 2 situations.

First, you see them in business situations, and that's why I have a separate trust from my wife.

1 of the businesses I was in, it was a requirement that I keep all of my ownership in the trust or in the company in my trust.

They never wanted my wife to become a partner.

Nothing against my wife, it's just how our business was set up.

The other reason that we had talked about doing it is because of liability.

We talked a little bit about this the first day.

If I were to be sued in my business, we would turn it over to our insurance carrier.

If something happens to the insurance and that fails, the backup is it was a professional limited liability company.

So the company hopefully would defend me because they would sue the company not me individually.

But if they somehow pierce the company veil, which is a legal term to say the company was a sham or wasn't handled correctly, then they were to go to my assets.

Well some of my assets were actually not mine anymore, they were in my wife's trust.

So because the debts of the husband are not the debts of the wife and vice versa, those assets were protected.

So our house was protected, it was in her trust.

Some of our other assets was protected because it was in her trust.

Not everybody needs that, but that was our goal, that was our need at that time.

We may be changing our documents in the near future.

So once you spend all this time, you draft the documents, the attorney drafts it, you go through it with the attorney, you read it, or the trust professional.

I've gotta say, Times have changed since I first started practicing 20 years ago or 21 years ago, I forgot how long it's been now, where I used to sit in the room for every single word.

I used to meet with the client, I was in there the whole time.

And occasionally my secretary was in there and you know if there's any changes she would scribble them down and she would run upstairs.

She would run upstairs and make the changes and bring them down and she would show you the changes and then we would send you home with your documents to reflect on them, to review them, then you'd bring them back.

Estate Planning - Part 4: What is Your Will

Lord, we thank you for every blessing that you give to us, both great and small.

I ask that you be with everyone in this room, Lord.

Guide them, as you will, for this camp meeting experience.

And we ask for the Holy Spirit to come to this camp meeting and touch those individuals that need your influence.

And I ask that those concepts and words I say today be to honor you and they be your words.

We ask these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, the who, what, when, where of estate planning.

We started out talking about estate planning made simple.

And we talked about the general concepts of estate planning.

Day 2 we talked about who will have the power.

We were talking about powers of attorney.

And day 3 we talked about who do you trust, talking about trusts.

So we're going to be talking about wills, but before we start talking about wills, we ran out of time yesterday and I apologize for going a few minutes late.

There's 1 concept that we didn't talk about in trust and I just want to bring everything together and we'll talk about trust just a little bit more today.

But I talked about my wife has a trust and I have a trust and I talked about them being mirror images.

That's not the only type of trust that you can have.

Okay a joint trust would be again an agreement with my wife and I in which we put everything into 1 trust.

When you use a joint trust, you put everything in 1 trust, it's so much easier to manage assets.

Somebody asked an excellent question after the discussion yesterday and that is if you have 2 trusts, how do you put the property in it?

If we wanted to, and usually with 2 separate trusts, you usually try to keep them equal to some extent.

Well what you do is you give a half undivided interest of the house to 1 trust, a half undivided interest to the other trust.

We don't like doing that because it makes it a little confusing but you can split the property.

But traditionally in a trust where you have 2 of them we would have a cottage up north and the cottage would go in her trust and our main house would go in mine or vice versa and we'd even out the money or the rest of the assets by putting maybe money in the trust that's lower.

So on those types of trusts where you have 2 trusts, a husband and wife, a mirror image trust, you kind of split out the assets and you put the assets in what I refer to as the person that has less liability.

When I was practicing law every single day in a firm, we were putting the house into her trust because she had least liability.

In a joint trust you don't have that protection because it's all in 1 trust.

So just a little bit of a nuance and what you're gonna find is you're gonna find most people it's about 50-50.

You talk to some couples and they have a joint trust, you talk to other couples and they have a 2 mirror image trust.

That's why I wanted to follow up with that, we didn't have a chance to finish yesterday.

That's whether you have a will, that's whether you have no estate planning, anything.

I never like owning a vehicle in 2 different names.

Even your children, I would recommend that you have their children own their own vehicle.

If they're over 18, put that vehicle in their name.

It might cost you a little bit more in insurance, but trust me, if something catastrophic happened, you don't want your name on their vehicle.

This is again, 1 of my favorite Bible quotes.

Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

And again, we give thanks in all circumstances even though it is raining today.

This is the biggest question that every estate planner gets.

It's the biggest statement that every estate planner gets.

Somebody comes in and says, I want a Simple will.

And then after you talk to him for an hour and a half to 2 hours, you have 3 pages of notes.

We don't need that many factors in Michigan.

We'll talk about that in a few minutes, but for a will, it's got to be dated, signed, and there has to be some words in it.

My favorite will of all times, and I always forget the president that did it, but the will provided this.

And what he did is he acknowledged his children, he gave everything to his wife, and he left his wife as the executor.

Not being unmindful for my children, I give everything to my wife.

Indicated where his assets were to go, and it named his fiduciary.

That is the only simple will I've ever heard of.

The reason that wills aren't simple on their face isn't because of the words.

This is the first document that we've talked about that deals with death.

Powers of attorney don't deal with death.

This is why people don't go in and do their estate planning.

I mean, let's face it, we start with the words last.

It just, it basically says this is it, you know.

Now I gotta tell you, just like your trust, statistically people will amend their will 2 more times.

So when we're looking at wills, let's look at the type of wills and we'll discuss each 1 of them.

What that means is, if you go into Michigan Compiled Laws, there's actually a page that you can photocopy if you have the right printing and fill in the blanks.

Michigan requires 2 in most circumstances.

And it has to have the provisions that you want.

So it has to provide who your fiduciaries are, and it has to provide where your stuff goes.

So when somebody comes in to prepare a will, they ask, what do I need?

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

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for the rain yesterday, but we really appreciate the sunshine today.

Lord, we thank you for yet another season.

Although we thank you for that with a kind of hearted heart.

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Estate Planning

Estate Planning - Part 3: Who Do You Trust

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