PPR 274 WPTV - You Signed What!

0:00Welcome to the Personal Pension Radio Podcast with the Income Engineer, Craig Strom. Discover unconventional insights into wealth building, spending, saving, and retirement income that you won't hear from the Wall Street Marketing Machine. Break away from the herd and go for the retirement you dream of. And now, here's your host, the Income Engineer, Craig Strom. Welcome back to Wealth Protector TV. I am Craig Strom. I am a paralegal here at Barth Calderone. I'm also a certified financial planner and the host of the Personal Pension Radio Podcast. You can find me on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, but you can also catch this episode and check out what shirt I might be wearing and where I'm recording from on my YouTube channel. You can search for Craig with a K, Strom, and the Income Engineer on YouTube. Let's get into this. Episode 274.

1:00You signed. What? Right. We need to cover this because it is so, so critical. Now, I'm going to start with the riddle, a riddle that we've all heard. If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it still make a noise? Yes, of course. We all know that the tree is going to make a noise, right? It just, that's the way it works. But more importantly, here's a bigger riddle that we need to deal with. If a deal is done in real estate or in business, whether it's worth $10 million, a million dollars, or $50,000, if a deal is done in real estate or in business, and it's not in writing, does the deal exist? No. No, it does not exist. No, most small deals they should be done in writing. All big deals should be done in writing, especially those related to real estate or especially

2:09in this case, estate planning, okay? So I am super fired up about this because I was introduced by a CPA partner locally to two brothers. These brothers are worried that their sister might be doing some shenanigans with mom and dad's estate. So here's what happened. The brothers contacted me and because, again, they feel like there's maybe something not quite right going on. And mom and dad passed away, and now the sister is managing the estate plan. So here's the background, dad passed away in 2010, mom passed away in 2019. That's very important, mom passed away in 2019. Well, the brothers who came to see me said that the estate plan was amended in 2014.

3:09Remember, dad died over here in 2010. Mom died over here in 2019. How in the world do we get an amendment done in 2014? My radar was up in a big way. How in the world did that happen? Okay. That just doesn't make sense. Most estate plans are written in such a way that when one of the spouses passes away, the estate plan itself generally becomes irrevocable. You can't make any big sweeping changes to the estate plan now that one of the spouses who created the plan has passed away. It essentially becomes irrevocable when one of the parties died. Now the brothers shared a copy of the estate plan with me. Now I'm a 25 year certified financial planner, financial services veteran. I've seen thousands of living trust the state plans over the years.

4:12So I have a general understanding of what to look for before I get one of my attorney partners at the firm involved. So that's what I did. I went through the estate plan in the table of contents and sure enough the table of content says on page three of the document in the table of contents section 1.09 says trusts are irrevocable on the death of the first trust or the trust is irrevocable on the death of the first trust or who's the trust or mom and dad are the trust or who created the trust. And it says right there in the table of contents. The trust is irrevocable on the death of the first trust or okay now I'm a caveman. I like to keep things simple. I want to make sure that I'm really crystal clear. So I jump ahead in the table of contents or excuse me I go from the table of contents

5:12to the trust itself. And I want to see the actual paragraph that this table of contents reference is referring to. I'll read it on the death of either trust or the trusts trust plural created by the declaration shall become irrevocable and not subject to amendment or modification. That's exactly what it says and in most situations that's what I've seen. So how in the world it was this thing able to be amended after dad died. It really does feel very scammy to me. Something doesn't feel right again. I'm a CFP a certified financial planning professional. I'm a paralegal. I'm not an attorney. But after 25 years of doing this, I know when it's time now to bring in the big guns, the lawyer guns. I consulted with one of the estate planning attorneys on my team.

6:14And she confirmed my feelings. Unfortunately, she also discovered something in the documents that the brothers had shared with me that I had noticed. Unfortunately, she also discovered a detail that I missed within all the documents that the brothers had shared with me. The brothers had signed an amendment acknowledgement. An acknowledgement that this amendment had been done back in 2014 after dad died. They signed it. They signed this amendment. Do you know what they didn't do? They didn't check with a lawyer. Mom and dad's estate, by the way, is large, very large. And they signed this notification of an amendment at the time of the change with no attorney consultation. They just signed it. Now, does the document that they signed ruin any hope of reversing things? I don't know. I really don't know.

7:15Will my attorney partner be able to help them fix things? I hope so. Should they ever have signed anything related to this legal matter or a state planning without paying an attorney for a little bit of time to double check things? Never, never should they have done that without having it reviewed by an attorney. The parent, the parents, by the way, they left behind a $10 million estate. And the two brothers signed this document without any legal counsel, please anytime you have a question, feel free, contact me, Craig with a K at BarthAttorneys.com, K-R-A-I-G at BarthB-A-R-T-H attorneys.com anytime you have a question, myself and or my team at the law firm we are always willing to see if we can help.

8:15Please, be smart out there, ask questions, share this video, like it. Please leave us a comment as well. Take care, folks. We'll talk to you soon, bye. Now for the wicked fund disclosure, information presented is for educational purposes only and not intended for solicitation of sale or purchase of any security or financial product. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and your tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed here. The term personal pension refers to a marketing name designed to educate future retiree and retirees about the economic principles behind creating their own pension-like income. The term personal pension is not intended to be confused with the defined benefit pension

9:18plan offered by an employer or by a government entity.