Episode 13 – Stand, Fight, Win! LIVE: Real Lawyers, Real Answers – Stepparents & Inheritance, Pt II

[Music] Hello and welcome to another version another episode of the Sam fight win live stream real lawyers real answers I'm Keith Davidson I'm Stewart Albertson how you doing they Stewart I'm doing good so today is part two of our step parent stepchild episode so last week we talked about step parents and stepchildren and this week we're gonna continue that discussion but before we do you look like you're about to go on vacation Stewart well you informed me that I had to wear this Hawaiian shirt and I've been highly embarrassed today as I walk around everyone's asking me why am I wearing this shirt but why we weren't sure do you know I I think it has to do with Hawaii but yeah no okay well actually you look good in that sure you're more colorful than I am so Stuart and I are gonna be talking in November actually at the Hawaii Tax Institute which is a big deal it's a lot of everybody from the wealth transfer community so lawyers accountants professional trustees it's a whole group of really great people and we'll be talking there like we did last year and this year if for those people who are interested you can sign up for the Hawaii taxes to get a discount code be a guest of Albertson and Davidson and you give $500 off the registration fee Wow that is I mean that makes it worth it right there yeah so it's a pretty good deal so we're gonna have a website up this week and you can go as we want to say our website you're talking about the Hawaii Tax Institute website we were gonna have a webpage on our on our website where you can get the discount code so keep your eyes open for our YouTube page so on our YouTube page you'll see a video advertising the Hawaii Tax Institute and if you're interested you can click the link get your discount code SAVE hundred bucks and take yourself and probably your family to Hawaii very nice you can't really go by yourself if you have a family right well you can come with you doesn't make them happy I learned that the hard way so this broadcast is going out live on Facebook and YouTube and after our live is over you can watch a recorded broadcast of this on Facebook and YouTube you can also get an audio-only version of it on itunes so that's how you find us and so let's get started today on our ass and answered sequence and we're gonna go right into the questions because there's a lot of questions that come up with these stepparent relationships and in particular today we're going to be focusing a little bit more on problems that arise between the stepchildren and so last week we were talking a little bit more about the children versus the stepparent relationship and the problems that arise there so here we're kind of looking more towards the two different sides of the family as it were and what can you do as a parent what can you do to try and protect disputes from arising so this is a chance for everybody out there to learn from the problems that we have handled through our practice because we only deal with the problems we don't do planning we only do disputes but we know a lot of great attorneys who do do planning and we used to do a state planning years ago and so it's a chance for us to kind of give our opinion on some things that you should think about when you're planning because it seems to me that the disputes lead to better planning or better thoughts on planning yeah and if we had known all of the pitfalls and landmines you run into in this area after doing all the litigation we would do a state plan much differently today than we did many years ago even yeah absolutely yeah there's just so many problems so why don't we start with Kayla hello Kayla how being an issue between the siblings after I pass away so you can imagine if you have one child especially with a second marriage one child has borrowed money so not only is his siblings his natural siblings gonna be upset but the step siblings are gonna be even more upset or as upset who knows or not writing on who they are so how would you plan for something like that well I think probably the best way to do it if both you and your spouse or an agreement is that you want to treat your children fairly so you start from that premise and let's just call it two kids on each side so that would be 25% age and let's say that that's ultimately how you want to distribute the estate on the second spouses death you can do some estate planning to make sure that happens but the bypass trust the survivors trust but specifically for the child who's the spendthrift who has gotten more than the other children you have to be careful with how you do this you actually have to put a provision in the trust and it's an advance on inheritance provision or you have to at the same time you're making the loans to this child have a contemporaneous writings showing that this is something that that's supposed to be coming out of their inheritance well it's a little problematic to have that contemporaneous writing every time you're making lows to this person so the easiest way to do that is either through an amendment to your current estate plan your trust or if you're creating a new trust just put in there look we're giving this four ways to our four children I have two children from one spouse two children on the other we've got one between us the lawyers one that's not real responsible and we've had to really fund them with the let's call it $500,000 over the last ten years we want that to be what we call an advance against their inheritance what do you think of that so yeah I think it I think the best way to go is with terms of the trust or a trust amendment I think the contemporary aeneas writing has some problems because number one when parents loan a child money nobody sits down and writes anything right it's very awkward to do that number two the child's going to say after death once the parents are gone the child's what are they gonna say when you present them it was a gift no it was a gift yeah as a gift or I paid it back you know you're not giving me credit for the amount I paid back they may or may not have paid anything back who knows it's very hard to know that especially over a long period of time so it's a lot easier for the parents just to create a trust say we want to deduct X dollars from this one child share and that's how we're gonna equalize it and that's the way it is and the interesting thing about that too is that if the Trust says we're gonna deduct five hundred thousand dollars from one kids share it doesn't matter if there's a contemporary contemporaneous writing it doesn't matter if there's any monies paid back it doesn't you know the trust just says that's what has to happen and that's what has to happen so it's the cleanest way to do it but it rarely happens in my experience well it's also hard to because you're you're looking at one moment in time when you're doing that amendment or you're doing the trust right and for 10 years from now the child may have paid everything back and if that term still in there well what do you do now and so now you have a child trying to prove that they paid I mean it can be problematic and so sometimes if you are a little bit more generalized in the language of the trust such as the trustee has the ability to in their the way they're looking at this and they're they have discretion as to accept documents from any child who feels that they have paid back an advance on inheritance so that they don't improve they improve if they can prove it to the trustee right and but then again you get trustees that maybe want to favor one child over another so this is problematic but it's something that should be addressed in the trust terms and I agree with you that if you try to do it any other way like we'd had cases where people have said these are truly loans between the parent and this one child but nothing's in writing right and there's nothing the trust who's gonna win that case yeah the the child is not gonna have to pay back that loan because it's not documented a lot of times they were done what five six ten years ago well it's passed the statute of limitations in any of them right so I mean it's it's a real problem but I think if you sit down you have this discussion with the estate planner and with the child who's taking the loan I think that you have some chance of being able to figure something out but it definitely has to be planned out as can be a disaster right all right Kayla what we have next our next question is is it a good idea to have step-siblings as co-trustees I had to laugh when I read this question because my mom actually made my brother and I or my step-brother and I co-trustees and I've mentioned that to Keith and he said that's a terrible idea so why is that key that really sums it up doesn't it I mean I know the thought process is I'll make one of my children trustee and one of my wife's children trustee and that way both sides are represented and they'll both come together and do the right thing which probably happens sometimes I don't know I've never seen it work but then we always see the worst of the worst well you don't see the ones that don't work right I mean assuming Kayla Kayla super nice and I don't think about her stepbrother but hopefully he's nice and hopefully they'll be able to work it out but no it's a disaster it's a disaster to even put two people of any relations and as co-trustees in my opinion even if they're kids from the same parents or just two you've got two neighbors you like her to anybody because the minute you put two people in they're gonna have a divergent view about how the trust is to be administrated and then you're gonna they're gonna have some conflicts right and that makes it hard to have a seamless administration and so many people think they just need to name a kid or in this case they're naming a one killing both sides of that everybody has a voice maybe in that case you should look outside the family maybe even a private fiduciary yes they're more expensive but you get a bank or you get somebody that actually act is an expertise and a private trustee especially if you have a large enough estate but putting two people in that are gonna be opposed to each other almost from the get-go it's not a good idea people are really opposed to having professional trustees whether it's corporate trustee or even professional trustee well I don't know that that many people know about professional trustees I think most people are thinking I don't want a corporate trustee a trust company and a lot of corporate trustees won't take these administration's unless the trust is over million yeah some have to be 5 million sometimes they won't take it yeah it's crazy but there is a class of professional a professional trustee they're not trust companies but they're not your neighbor they're actually professionals and there are some good ones out there there's a few bad ones but most of them are pretty good at what they do why not just name a professional trustee as opposed to two children right and people are just so opposed to it I think number one it's the cost and number two I think that there's this sense that well I just want my kids to handle it you know I want them and they'll they'll figure it out I'm sure right and and yet a lot of times they don't right so you should really think about having a professional trustee named in your trust and I used to when I did planning I used to always tell people about it 95 percent of the time they would say no I want my kids okay but at least I had that discussion right Kalyn was this your mom it did this plan my mom and my stepdad okay okay well but but the thing I think you should do is I think you should unduly influence them to getting him out and then you take over and then make sure they give you everything at the end I think that's the way you should set this up that's what we see happening okay one child is living in the home well and we do see this a lot Keith and I'll give you an example there's three kids of the family and two of them have gone on to be very successful in their own right whether they're doctors lawyers engineers architects whatever these kids have moved away from the home usually early on finish their education finish their master's degree they are in a very busy profession so they don't have a lot of time to come back and spend with mom and dad they still love mom and dad they still come for the holidays and those kind of things but they're busy people and then there's one kid that from the same stock but for some reason doesn't want to go to school that falls on hard times continually and ends up moving in with mom and dad you know or as you can say or they had a career and then they fell on hard times and that's where they're right now and that's true that can happen as well and so then this person's in the in the home and there's a trust and mom and dad died and maybe they made this person the trustee I mean what are some of the things that we're seeing is problem and dealing with the trustee who lives at home with her parents past well they don't want to move out and they don't want to pay rent and really what they want is for everything to continue the way they always have and so that way you know if you're living in the parents home and you don't have any income for whatever reason either because you never had a job or because you fell on hard times and lost a career through no fault of your own you don't really want life to change just because the parents died and so they wanted to remain the same and sometimes people are you know more sympathetic like they're trying to work with their siblings and they can't quite come to an agreement and sometimes they're just militant about it just I'm living here and I'm not selling the place and that's just the way it is right and of course you can't do that if the Trust says that outright distribution to kids and one of them's living there so you either got to buy the other one out or you get a sell those are your two options right so it can become a real problem and I know we talked in the past about well when do you start charging rent and can somebody live there first you know a short amount of time before the rent kicks in which might or might not be okay depending on what how the court sees it but the bottom line is is that the person one beneficiary is not allowed to occupy a trust property all by themselves right right so what's the best way to plan this then well there's a couple of ways so one is is it possible to give that child the home and give the other children other assets of equal value a specific gift that'd be one way so you say you can't do that the only real asset of trust is the home then the other thing I would say is do you want to give that child a life estate a right to live there for the rest of their lives and then everybody else doesn't get a dime from that house until that child dies now that's really onerous to the other children because it keeps money out of their hands which is an entirely fair and they're not gonna view that as being fair it's very upsetting yes so then the other option is well what if you allowed the child who's living in the home a certain amount of time a deadline so you can live there for one year rent-free because that takes the rent issue off the table right it also gives them some time to live there and not get kicked out like the next day but after that year then they have to get out and I like that option it's also short enough time that while the other siblings aren't gonna be happy about that one year it's a definite one year it's in the terms of the trust make it six months make it nine months whatever but it's a it's something more there's light at the end of the tunnel for the kids that have gone on with life and they're usually willing to accept that right because there's a parent you don't want to throw the kid out on their ear that's living at home right but on the other hand you don't want the other kids to feel that you didn't care about them as well yeah so you have to come up with some compromise that's right yeah all right Kayla the next question is from Facebook does a stepson have a right to see the trust just like a blood heir oh that's a good question there's a stepson have a right to see the trust well in most cases the answer is gonna be yes and the reason I would say and the reason for that is if the trust was created by your parent and the step parent then once your parent dies you have a right as an heir of your parent to see that trust whether you're a beneficiary or not what do you think so let's go back to the statute the statute says that once one of the parents died let's sue much your dad that dies yeah the rule is you get a right to see your father's trust no matter who he's made it with yeah if you are an heir of your father so if your blood relative or if your were a named beneficiary of the trust okay and so we're gonna look at those two criteria as we analyze this so I can see we need a little bit more facts in this case but I think what we're hearing is I have a stepson let's say that wants to get and see a copy of my trust yes they're gonna be able to see that if their father was your spouse or their mother was your spouse and it was part of their trust because that is an heir of the son the son is an air of the mother you're talking about like a joint trust that that mom and dad or that dad and and spouse did together that's right but then let's be careful here there's some times where we will bypass trust and a survivor's trust right and here if the survivors Trust is the stepparent the good news for the survivor for the stepparent is you do not have to disclose anything about your survivors trust to the steps child especially if it's still revocable it's much of them are and most of them are and so you're gonna have it's a little bit of a you know it's a little bit of a compromise you're gonna have to show what the decedent's assets were because that's an heir and then also think about this if you've named anybody in your trust that's not an heir let's say that they named their next door neighbor and next door neighbor wants to see a copy of the trust if they were named as a beneficiary they're entitled to the irrevocable portions of that trust which is the probably the bypass trust for a portion right we don't have enough facts here it's to say but it sounds like the answer is more than likely gonna be yes at least to one-half the trust for all the every part of the trust that represents dad's portion of the estate you'll be able to you should be able to see that and in the and if this step parent wants the best news possible that trust would essentially say that dad gives everything to the surviving step parent to his surviving spouse right and if he gives everything to the surviving spouse then yes the kids going to be able to see that the step child is gonna be able to see that trust but then they're not gonna be able to ask for an accounting or any of those other things although in that case you're more than likely going to see a trust contest flow out of that but the the point being you wouldn't have to disclose anything about the assets at that point in time yeah so it depends on how the trust is structured if there's a bypass and survivors trust or if it's just all survivors trust it can get a little complicated in terms of the answer but they I agree so in general to that answer very likely you get to share a copy the trust right is are there any other ways to protect my trust from code trustees who do not get along so we do see this a lot where there's two trustees that don't get along and there's a specific Probate Code section on this and so what do we do when we have two trustees that don't get along and we need the trust administration to move forward well so if you're in that situation already then you're gonna have to probably go for removal one of the trustees wat so remove the other one or the easier approach is let's say you and I are Co trustees we don't get along I would ask the court to remove you and I would say I'm also willing to step down if we can get a neutral professional trustee to step in and the reason you make that arguments because courts are very receptive to having a neutral professional step in because then they feel like oh good somebody will be there who who could take care of things is that what you were thinking yeah and that's really when it comes down to is it's a probate probate code provision that says that if you have a deadlock between trustees that's one reason you can remove somebody and I think you're exactly right on this most courts whether both trustees agree or not if they see two feuding trustees they're going to say we're gonna put a neutral in and we'll let the mutual take care of it so let's talk about it from the planning side so let's say you you know like if we're advising Kayla's mom that her and our stepbrother are gonna be Co trustees but we want a safety valve and that's where you get into this idea of like trust protectors so Trust protectors are something that you don't see very often at least we don't in our trust that we review we review what a couple thousand trusts a year maybe more and very rarely do you see anyway trust protectors or anything like that but what do you think of that concept I mean it's a nice first step I think I can tell you that if we have a trust like that and we don't like the trust protector we're still gonna file a petition for instructions with the probate court and say judge we need you to step in here because this trust protector has no idea what they're doing so you can draft that in it might work I don't know would you be receptive let's say that you and I are feuding trustees and Kayla is a trust protector she's a non-lawyer she's just a very nice person she's reasonably smart she's college-educated all those things and she comes and says okay well I'm gonna remove Keith and I'm gonna leave Stuart in what's your response to the trust protector yeah that she's been somehow tainted or unduly influenced or she doesn't know what she's talking about right she's making a bad decision so judge I need you still to bring it right off yours all right but if she decide to remove you then I think I would but yeah I mean and just for people who don't know a trust protect or that concept there's also a concept of a special trustee they work a little differently although they're similar a trust protector is somebody that you would name who has very specific powers such as removing a trustee or appointing a new trustee or something like that so they have these kind of extraordinary powers where they can hopefully step in and and and help fix things before they go to court but you're right I mean the problem with the trust protector is the person who's in battle then being removed is going to fight against them just as much as they fight against the other code trustee the special trustee is slightly different in the sense the special trustee actually can be given powers like a trustee and they usually kick in for example if you want to do distributions to family members sometimes they'll have a special trustee who has to weigh in and decide whether a distribution to a family member is going to take place or not that'd be like a special trustee you don't usually see removal powers with a special trustee they usually see the the power to make investment decisions or distribution provisions or to break a tie so let's say you and I generally get along but we can't agree on one particular aspect of the administration and we're deadlocked a special trustee that could come in and break the tie right between the two I know how to solve all of this really and if you think about it I mean this would be the best planning tool you could ever do let's say you have three kids you make them all three trustees code trustees okay they all not off to a good start we make them all equal code trustees all have equal power equal say if the trust administration is not completed twelve months from the decedent's date of death they're all disinherited so it's an equal distribution the judge is gonna like that it's not gonna be likely undue influence there and if you can't figure it out between the three and twelve months right I'll bet you that will force people work together yeah all of a sudden everybody sees I die real quick especially when you get to nine months right I've got three months left folks what are we doing here yeah well you know it's kind of like in our litigations once you set a trial date what happens good things happen yeah all of a sudden everybody wants to go to mediation and settle because they don't actually want to face the music we want to get an attorney down to San Diego that he said in court open court to the judge he would never and so yeah I've heard that before that's always an intimidating statement yeah but it would be interesting though if you could do something like that I'm not sure that I've never seen that number one I don't know if it'd even be legally enforceable because of the way our no-contest Clause laws works but that'd be a huge incentive I love it well you think about it if you did it equal distribution between everybody I mean the chance of undue influence being there mostly with undue influence we're seeing one person favor themselves over so over other individuals right beneficiaries right here it's an even cut and if you guys can't get this time it's certain amount of time then you're a thing that I don't understand is that if you see kids who don't generally get along during while you're alive why do you think they're gonna get along once you're gone yeah and that's what you always see these parents like they'll name three people as co-trustee three co-trustees three siblings who never got along during life right they're suddenly gonna get along we're gonna come together after the parent passes okay yeah that's not my experience but okay I guess Hope Springs the turtle it does okay and and the other thing too you just be kind of fun like if I don't know about what your thoughts on the afterlife but if you're there you could watch your three kids fight it out for well if that's what if that's a situation you're trying to set up then people are doing a great job of that you know we come across that raises an interesting concept in my mind we've come across some pretty screwy trusts in our career and it seems like sometimes these are drafted in a way that they want litigation to come out of it right it's so ambiguous as to what was supposed to happen here it could be three different ways right well in all three different ways give a different result to the beneficiaries oh I know and you know it's funny because even attorney drafted trusts can be read different ways and I've had two cases now one where an attorney drafted trust really didn't make any sense and unfortunately that attorney had died before we got the case so he could never ask him like what is this language supposed to mean and then recently we had another case where the drafting attorney said that the language well this language isn't clear so I can't really administer it and they're the ones who drafted it right it's like well if you're the one drafting it and I don't think it's clear how's anybody else gonna survive in this in this business so it's it can be tough getting the language right so that it can be actually properly administered it's not easy I've left everything in my estate to my friends okay good so I don't know I'm suddenly your friend I wasn't your friend before that but now I have a lot of friends on Facebook who's really the friend you know what I'll judge that I'm the one true for who cries hard enough at my funeral I'm your what is it who's your best friend who's your best friend yeah we've had that discussion yeah right all right Kayla save us from ourselves over here yeah this is a tough one because that's where somebody you know let's say your dad dies and his share of the estate goes into an irrevocable bypass trust so it can't be changed and he wants to benefit his spouse while the spouse is living and then the assets are gonna go down to the kids sounds simple enough so it never works that way unfortunately and I think it's just human nature there's I don't judge people anymore I used to think there was good bad and trust administration and trust litigation I think people are hurting I think families are dysfunctional I think that people feel there's inequities unfairness going on and when you feel that emotional response to something it doesn't matter how much logic you bring to the table you're having an emotional response to it and you're gonna you're gonna cling to that here let's use me as an example I have a son and so I love my son and I care about him but then I get married to somebody well that person I want them to be taken care of until they die right that's natural right and so when I die you're the lawyer explaining to my wife that oh yeah fifty percent of what you and your husband had we're gonna transfer that half of it over here and put in this locked box that you really can't access oh you get the interest from it they never hear that they you get the interest from it a couple times a year but we're gonna lock that up and it's a very uncomfortable conversation and so the majority of these bypass trusses go unfunded right they're not even created and so and when the second spouse dies that's when people like you and I come into it saying timeout folks 10 years ago you're supposed to fund this bypass trust and it's difficult to figure out how much should have gone into the bypass trust right but it still could be recreated so now you're trying to go back and recreate this thing that should have happened 10 years ago right and then if you did add those assets in the bypass trust 10 years ago what should they be worth today right but it is a tough conversation I and I can imagine just you know if something happened to my spouse saying okay half your assets have to go over here including half your house right we really we literally have to slice off half of the home you live in right and and lock it away in fact we're probably gonna take the home and put it in a bypass trust when I life estate you're gonna live there and then you're gonna get all the cash outs that's in your survivors trial right and again that's the the spouse the spine espouse does not enjoy this conversation know and ask you why was this lousy plan ever drafted up for taxes of course which most people don't bear a state tax anymore cuz it's the the state tax limit is so high it's 1 million but now what we're trying to do is keep the money so that we go we haven't go down to the deceased spouse as children right ultimately one day in the future well because that's what happens if the bypass trust isn't funded then the surviving spouse essentially keeps everything which you know it's not supposed to happen and then they do some amendment to the trust that leaves everything to their kids and excludes the other kids right and now we we have a that's a good case we can go back we can claw back half of the assets and give it to the kids who are left out that's right that's a perfectly good legal case but it also means that that group of people have a lawsuit in their future but because it wasn't planned well if I'm one of those beneficiaries why do I have to hire a lawyer I mean the Trust says what it says how can the bypass trust wasn't created well do you have money in your hands cuz if you don't you're gonna have to hire a lawyer yeah people don't give up money easily you know myself included so yeah it's it's to go back and recreate one of these things it takes time it takes effort it takes the help of the court it takes a lawsuit because it's the only way that you're actually going to convince people to do the right thing I think but so you have this bypass trust and it's set up and normally the surviving spouse so let's say somebody does fund the bypass trust they put assets in there and the surviving spouse is usually the trustee of that trust they're managing it so now you've got this situation where the person who gets the assets during his or her life is also the person managing it how does that make the stepkids feel in that situation very vulnerable because our is the trustee using the bypass trust assets that are meant for those kids for themselves during lifetime when maybe they should be using the survivors trust assets and exhausting those prior to invading the bypass trust and some trusts will have terms that'll tell you that's what's supposed to happen obviously interest is going to come off of the bypass trust and that goes to the surviving spouse but if they're coming in up to the principle they're selling the house and taking money out of principle that's a problem they can't do that and that hurts the kids of the deceased spouse and it pits the kids against each other - right because now you've got the kids from either spouse not really liking each other because they're thinking well you know this person's taking my money and I said of using the money that would go to you and right it just breeds all sorts of problems back and forth so what would be a better way to handle that then if you have a bypass trust you you want to you want to benefit your spouse during the life time but you also want to make sure that the terms are being followed properly now we're back to professional trustees so if you have a professional trustee who knows what they're doing and does the right things then the bypass trust can be funded the assets that go to the spouse will go out and whatever's not supposed to go out to the spouse will be protected to go the kids and I can take the kids that of the sea' spouse who are the beneficiaries of the bypass trust the last thing they want to do is force the mom to account right they feel like they have to sometimes because they're not sure what's happening with those assets right and of course then that makes mom upset and now mom's gonna do anything and everything she can to take assets from the bypass trust if she's entitled to do that so it's one of those things that it's almost better to let sleeping dogs lie if possible but if you have to sometimes you have to come forward to get an accounting one imagine you said that the spouse doesn't like having to divide up all the assets and put half in the bypass trust and then on top of that the kids come to her her stepkids come to her and say we want you to do an accounting right and that's rubbing salt in the wounds and she seen though that leaves is her assets and yeah you don't get those until it's time you're almost saying in her mind died so I can have my assets right yeah I think so so I think professional trustees make a huge difference in these scenarios all right Kayla one last question from Facebook how do I find out if a family member created a trust whoo that's a good question so you have a trust that may be floating around out there after somebody dies it may may have made its way to the shredder right maybe somebody's hanging on to not producing it what do we do Keith it's not so easy because trusts are not recorded documents so you're not gonna find them at the county recorders office you're not gonna find them at the courthouse you're not gonna find them at any government agency they're private documents what could you find at the recorders office perhaps that would leave you down the trail though there may be a trust deed and so it's fairly often that you'll have a house that is titled in the name of a trust that's your first clue that there must be a trust somewhere at least there was at one time and so the first thing you want to do is look at any real property that the decedent owns and pull a copy of the deed and see what the D title is and if it's on trust now you at least have some idea that there must be a trust out there but that doesn't mean that you'll see the trust give us an example of what that title was so I own my house as an unmarried man it's a Stewart Albertson comma an unmarried man how would it look if I my house was in my trust so then it's a Stewart Albertson comma trustee of the Stewart Albertson revocable trust dated whatever date so and there's no magic words there it's just a C trustee of a trust on the title yeah it's something along those lines and so then you have a hint that there must be a trust now then the question becomes okay there's a trust where is the trust document because that's not necessarily recorded with the county record and when we used to do our trusts we ended up recording many times the deed for our client and where would we have the deed sent back to to us to us our office and we're lawyers and so perhaps maybe you'll strike lucky and you'll see that there's a lawyer's address on the deed and if there is then that would be my next phone call yeah so call the lawyer's office now I I've had people before where they're like I called the lawyer there either deceased or they're no longer in practice and their files got transferred to some other law firm but they don't have it either so that's not necessarily guaranteed but it's a you know in a lot of cases you'll be able to find it by tracking down the lawyer who drafted it funny enough we had a case just recently that we worked on where that that's exactly what happened the lawyer had died had been gone for ten years or so and our client before he was our client ended up calling the wife of a lawyer and she's like oh yeah come on over and got it all right here he had bankers boxes and he went and got the trust and and then when we got higher the case we were not privy to that bad yeah and we ended up being in a round table with what the lawyers that we all discovered that he's got a copy of the trust the other lawyers freaked out yeah we have the originals and everything like you do I didn't know that yeah it's kind of it's odd but it is hopefully the drafting attorney has a copy if not then you're looking through all of mom and dad's papers and the worst place to put a trust or will by the way is in a safe deposit box don't ever put it in a safe deposit box because trying to get into those things is a nightmare well I mean at some point you might have to go and open a petition for probate yeah and you have to get a court to sign off on that that's time-consuming it's expensive and just open up a box that may be empty all right so generally what you should do with your trust let's talk about that if you have a trust and you're gonna make three or four copies of it who do you want to safeguard that trust well I would give it to the whoever's a successor trustee whoever I named a successor trustee so that they have a copy so they would know I personally would give it to my children but you know my trust that gives it to the kids equally Mike only one of my sons as an adult so I wouldn't give it to a minor child but I've you know I have it I also am part of this estate plan financial planner who has a program and part of that program is you upload all of your important documents such as your trust and so now it's there and that it'll always be there so there's there's it's called the living balance sheet and so there's products like that that you can use but a lot of estate planners will tell people don't give this to your children don't give it to the successor trustee because if you make any changes then you know you'll have to tell them and give them another copy and that could be uncomfortable but I'm I'm now after doing so much litigation I'm a big proponent of just give it to the people who need it and just deal with it because it's more important that people have it than they don't have it so again I have the ultimate solution to this and it'll work beautifully I can't wait I know so thankfully everybody's writing the Sam you know Facebook has the like option and they have the smiley face option they've got all kinds of options you can post messages pictures they should allow you to upload your estate plan and it's in a locked vault and then when you die it can be opened up by court order and there's your stay plan there should be more of a way to keep track of these things because what the other thing that happens you know Stewart is and we've had these cases to where you'll pull a deed it's in the name of a trust you can't find the trust document anywhere and you've looked and the people look at the home and they look in the bank deposit vault and they go to call the drafting attorney nowhere to be found and so then the asset has to go through probate right because if you can't find the trust document then you don't know what the trust terms are you can't administer a trust it it just doesn't exist right so imagine you went to all the trouble and time and expense of creating a trust and you still have to go through probate because you didn't give it to anybody right that's so frustrating it is it is and and while that's rare and it does happen the way to keep that from happening is to leave copies with trusted individuals publish it on Facebook immediately whatever you need to do to get the idea out there that you do have a trust I was joking about publishing on Facebook please don't do that but make sure that Facebook priority has it you know all their privacy problems that's pretty nice that's true but anyway I think that ultimately you need to have people that you trust with it maybe not even the trustee sometimes you don't want your kids to know what you're doing and so you just want to get some you trust for example a little personal disclosure you know Keith you have a copy of my trust right so if anything ever happens to me I want everyone to know keith has it and if he says it doesn't have it that means you shredded it and go after him Christopher it's under my pillow I sleep on every night you can also give it to your accountant like if you a long-standing relationship with your accountant I mean there's ways to make it happen right yeah think about it don't just stick it in a drawer and don't tell anybody there's a problem have any other questions Kayla okay when we go on to our final segment on our opinion and we're always happy to give our opinion so it seems and it's worth the money you paid for it the the one thing I wanted to end on so we get a lot of problems where stepkids are fighting amongst each other and a lot of it comes from part well a lot of it comes from bad planning as we've talked about during this segment but what are some of the creative ways that you can help step kids in part of the plan and one of the things that I thought about was if let's say your father passes away and you know he's married to his wife not your mother and everything he wants to support her but he also gives each you and your two siblings a gift now so that you feel like you're getting at least part of your inheritance now so what if each of you got $100,000 for example and then the house went into a trust for stepmom and then upon her death it goes you know according to the trust terms so probably equally to the kids do you think that would help anything in terms of these step kids trying to get along with each other I think part of the problem the reason I'm raising this is I think part of the problem is is if your parent dies and you just get nothing and you're told oh yeah everything's being held for the benefit of your stepmother and once she dies whenever that is then you'll get something I think that's when the problems really crop up I mean it's it's so difficult and I'm just listening to what you're saying and I think I'd like to agree with it but then I start thinking about the conversation that the husband while he's still living is having with his estate planning attorney with his wife present and generally wives understand that they're they're gonna be the surviving spouse it's not always the case but in more cases than not it is and trying to explain that to somebody I think is gonna be problematic cuz again she's gonna see that as her assets after the death it's also a traumatic time for her she just lost her spouse and so she's gonna have a hard time giving that gift up I think to run towards your argument though if you're the estate planner you can tell the wife but we don't know if you are gonna be the surviving spouse so it works both ways so we're gonna be fair to your kids and fair to your spouse's kids and so that may be the thing that gets it over the hurdle right what do you think about having like a meeting with all the kids while they're still alive on this on these estate planning issues you know that goes a long way I think even if the kids aren't getting along I think that would go a long way and you can say look ya'll don't even have to say anything I'm just gonna sit you down my lawyers gonna be here and I'm just gonna explain what's going on again the problem with that is what happens with subsequent changes in the future you got to make sure you're informing everybody going forward I've read about the idea of a living trust contest III haven't looked into it too much data perhaps as a statement just yeah there's a few states that are experimenting with that right and so you could do it that way but ultimately really what this comes down to Keith and I've said this a lot is that probably it's a high percentage I don't know that I don't know if it's ninety percent of us but it's a high percentage so let's call it eighty percent of the population is not going to get much for their parents right and so there's this cream of the crop we'll call it that actually end up getting assets just be happy you're getting assets if you don't get everything that's coming to you you know you there's a lot of people that aren't getting anything and so if you can put your mind frame around that it can be helpful if you're surviving me personally if my dad did marry somebody and I liked them I would want them to use the assets for let me heed that my dad chose them and so and use the assets for your well-being there's anything left over in the end and you want to be fair that's great if not well it's not I mean I'm gonna try not to get caught up in that because it's very painful I mean how many people come to us hire us and even in the most successful cases have say man I'm really glad we litigated yeah we had a blast boy that was fun no very few but and I think most people are willing to accept that I may not get everything I think the problem arises when when you face that I'm not gonna get anything right and that's not just a lack of money but it's a lack of love and respect it's a legacy legacy from the parents so I really like the idea of having a family meeting I know it's kind of awkward probably to do that and uncomfortable but at least it allows the children to hear from the parents directly this is what we're gonna do and this is how we'd have it set up so that everybody can hear it that this is how we're doing it but it does raise problems I mean if somebody you know a lot of people aren't willing to do that because it is uncomfortable or you know maybe they have a difficult situation where they are gonna disinherit a child you don't you don't feel like you really want to talk about it right one last comment I'll make is that you know this idea in California that when a man and a woman or two domestic partners get married everything that they gain from that point forward is equally there's no matter who is the breadwinner so we have a very successful female lawyer thinking three or four hundred thousand dollars a year and her husband stays home it takes care of all of their kids which are a blended family now and there's a 10-year marriage there everything they have earned the law says that's going to be presumed to be a 50/50 split yeah and so let's say that you're in a situation where you have three kids and your wife has two kids I think personally I know it's hard to swallow sometimes is just do an even split just do a notify amongst all five you're gonna split it up 20% each even though her kids are gonna end up getting a little bit better deal in that it just makes it so that it's an even split along along the way judges seem to like when a judge sees something that just seems fair on paper boy it's gonna be hard to dislodge that plan yeah and I think a lot of people actually do that they actually do share it among all the kids a lot of people don't and it depends on the circumstances too so if you have a marriage later in life and marriage only lasted a couple years it's one that that's different from a marriage when the kids are all young and the marriage lasts 30 years so it depends on the circumstances there - but these are not easy issues to navigate no matter who you are no matter what your financial situation is and it affects everybody across the board so I mean doesn't matter rich poor like everybody has to deal with these step parent and stepchild issues and there's just no easy answer right but man you should spend some time thinking about it because the more time you put into the planning the less chance you or your children are gonna meet the likes of albert's and Davis which is unfortunate from our perspective that's true but good for them yes so great do you have any other thoughts she wants yeah well I want to thank everybody for joining us again you can find our recorded broadcasts on Facebook and YouTube and you can find a audio only version on iTunes or at pod bean for our podcasts I do want to remind you to keep an eye out for our on our YouTube page for our ad for the Hawaii Tax Institute if you're interested in that sort of thing and you can get a link to get the discount and get $500 off and send yourself to Hawaii why not very good awesome all right we'll see you next week see you next time. 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