Ted Gudorf (00:27.096)

Have you ever thought to yourself, I need to get my estate plan done, but aren’t sure what it all involves or how to go about doing it? Today, we’re diving into a real world estate planning case study that could very well reflect your own situation. I’m Ted Goudar from Goudar Law Group. And in this video, we’re going to explore how one couple, just like you, face the daunting task of securing their financial legacy. With so much at stake, it’s essential to understand how to protect your assets, not just for your peace of mind, but for the well -being of your loved ones. Stay with me as we uncover the strategies that can make all the difference in ensuring your hard -earned wealth is preserved for generations to come. Let me introduce to you a case study for Bill and Mary Jones. Let me tell you a little bit about them as a couple. First of all, they’re 65 years old and recently retired. They have a very lengthy and happy marriage. Now, just as an aside, as you might expect, not all of my clients are married. In fact, some of my clients, while married, are not in the best of marriages. Some individuals come to me and are single or are divorced. Some have a blended family. We’ll represent individuals from all walks of life, and you just need to understand that. But for purposes of our case study today, we’re going to talk about Bill and Mary, a happily married couple, age 65, who are recently retired. Let me tell you a little bit about their situation. Bill and Mary have about a $3 million estate. Almost half of their estate is made up of their retirement accounts. You know, the alphabet soup, the IRAs, the 401ks, the 403Bs, that kind of thing that their financial advisor manages. In addition, they have an equal amount in other assets made up primarily of their home,

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their brokerage account and a couple nice vehicles. The two children are now over 30 years old, John and Susan. And you know, John and Susan, like many of my clients’ families, are very different one from another. Susan was the consummate daughter who went to high school, was salutatorian of her class, was a cheerleader. graduated with honors, was very popular. Susan decided to go into college, but when she went to college, she decided to leave Ohio for another jurisdiction. When she went to the University of Seattle, she met the quarterback for the university’s football team who had his eyes on becoming a pro football player. They did get married while in college and currently have four children all under the age of 10. Susan went on to get an accounting degree. She is a CPA and is on her way probably to becoming a partner in the CPA firm. Now John on the other hand is much different. John’s not really ever had a full -time job. He picks up odd jobs here and there. He does frequent the local gambling establishment. He does drive a Corvette. He likes fast cars. He’s not married, does not have any children. In fact, interestingly, while Susan is out in Seattle, John remained at home. He’s got a great relationship with Bill and Mary. In fact, it’s such a great relationship that John lives in the basement of their home. but he’s really close with them. Well, Bill and Mary have been talking to their financial advisor about the need to do comprehensive estate.

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They are first and foremost wanting to get something done to replace the wills that they did over 30 years ago when they first had their two children.

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They want to make sure that their plan isn’t overly complicated, but their primary goal is to make sure that when both of them pass away, the assets that they worked so hard for can go to their children in ways that can possibly be protected and preserved. So that’s their primary responsibility. after hearing them talk, their other primary goal is to make sure that each other is taken care of in the event of their incapacity or death. Wanting to take care of your spouse is truly an act of love. And I think as a part of comprehensive estate planning, it can be the most important thing that we do.

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When we sit and talk with Bob and, I’m sorry, Bill and Mary, what we asked them to do was to complete a client organizer detailing all of their assets. And that’s how we know what it looks like. That’s how we know what the value of their estate is and who their advisors are. But it doesn’t give us really insight into their other goals. So we like to sit down and have a conversation at the initial consultation about what are possibly their other goals and then maybe suggest a few things for them to consider. Well, Bill and Mary’s first question was, what is the difference between a will and a trust? What we wanted to make sure they were aware of is that if they rely only upon wills, that will will only take effect when they die. Therefore, it doesn’t do anything if they’re incapacitated. On the other hand, a living trust takes effect immediately when they sign it. So it’s a living document and it will help in the event they become incapacitated. Why is that? Well, the law says that if we have a trust and it’s fully funded with everything that we own and we become incapacitated, it doesn’t have to go through the probate court process. Instead, the successor trustee gets sworn in by signing a certification that they are the named successor trustee. And that’s all it takes.

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for the successor trustee to have access to all the assets in the trust. On the other hand, if all we have is a will, we’re going to have to rely upon the probate court to appoint a guardian. And we really want to avoid that guardianship, that living probate. Now, some people will try to avoid that probate process by having a durable power of attorney. The problem we’re having with the durable powers of is first of all, there’s no requirement under Ohio law that any financial institution recognize the power of attorney. Second, our local banks are not recognizing powers of attorney that don’t contain certain provisions. One key provision they insist upon is that the local bank would be indemnified in the event they relied wrongly on the power of attorney. And if that language is not in the document, they won’t recognize the power of attorney. Well, it won’t surprise you to learn that most powers of attorney don’t contain that clause. The other reason why banks or financial institutions won’t recognize the power of attorney oftentimes is because of the age of the document. These days, any document that’s more than two years old is called into question many times. So the first question for Bill and Mary to decide upon do we do a will -based plan or do we do a trust -based plan? And in our office, we’re going to highly recommend a trust -based plan. Now, when we talk about trust, we’re going to have to educate Bill and Mary about a revocable trust because they’ll initially start off with a revocable trust. But we also want to make sure, depending on their circumstances, whether there is or is not a need for a near revocable trust. For some of our clients there is and for some aren’t. And we’ll talk about that a little bit later. Once again though, when we talk about goals for Bill and Mary, number one, they want to make sure that if they become incapacitated, the other is taken care of and they don’t have to go through the probate process. Secondarily, they want to make sure that when each one of them passes away, they don’t have to deal with the probate court process. Why is that? Well, upon death,

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The probate court process here locally, it takes about two years to get through, sometimes longer. It runs approximately 5 % of the value of the estate. So if you have a million dollar estate, a 5 % fee is $50 ,000. You have a $3 million estate, well, you can do the math. So it’s expensive. Furthermore, it’s public. And the inventory of everything you own is put on the internet by a local probate court for God and everybody to see. So that public viewing of your estate is not wanted by most of my clients. So on the other hand, if we do a trust based plan, it’s going to be private. It never gets filed in the public record. So many of our clients want to do a trust just to avoid both living and death probate. Some of the other goals that they’ve articulated to us are the need to make sure that they save on taxes. How in this comprehensive plan can we save taxes? These days, the tax oftentimes gets focused not on the estate tax. We abolished the Ohio estate tax here in Ohio. It was a 7 % tax on everything over roughly 338 ,000. That has been abolished as of January 1, 2013. And the federal state tax has a large exemption. Currently it is over $13 .61 million. You can literally pass away with a large estate and pay no estate tax. On the other hand, the tax conversation oftentimes leads to capital gains taxes on real estate or stock. Many of us own stock and or real estate that is significantly appreciated in value or the life of

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the holding of the asset. And if we sold it during our lifetime, we would pay a capital gains tax of anywhere from 15 to 20 percent depending upon our level of income. In addition to the capital gains tax on stock and real estate, a lot of planning is going into those retirement accounts, those pre -tax retirement accounts. For Bill and Mary, it’s half of their estate, roughly $1 .5 million. The key to understanding is that either Bill and Mary are going to pay this tax or their children are going to pay the tax. And it will be at the children’s tax rate if the funds come out during the kid’s lifetime, but it will be at Bill and Mary’s tax rate in their retirement if we take the funds out during their retirement. So we have some things to talk about relative to the saving of taxes. Now, the third thing that Bill and Mary talk about is the need to protect assets both during their lifetime and their children’s lifetime. What are they concerned about? Well, they’re concerned mostly about what happens during their children’s lifetime. What happens if John or Susan gets divorced? What happens if John or Susan has a bad financial streak and goes bankrupt? What happens if they get in a car accident and get sued by an injured party? What happens if they become disabled and need Medicaid? Will their entire inheritance be burnt up on their long -term care needs? And worst of all, what’s going to happen if Susan or John pass away. Who’s going to receive their inheritance? Will Susan’s go to her husband Josh? Will it go to her four minor children? Will there be a need for a guardianship? What about John? He’s not married, doesn’t have any kids. Where will his estate go? What happens if John gets married? Will his spouse inherit?

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Bill and Mary have a whole lot of questions and want to make sure that if something bad happens to one of their children or their grandchildren, that these funds are all protected. Divorce, lawsuits, bankruptcies, disabilities, and death. Bill and Mary haven’t thought a whole lot about the need to protect assets during their lifetime, but prompted with questions, they begin to think about that. And they realize that in today’s lawsuit world, each one of us is one car accident away from being sued. And unfortunately, these lawsuits can result in substantial verdicts. Hey, let me make the story really bad. This recently happened in Dayton, Ohio. Somebody was driving down Interstate 70 going too fast and rear -ended a school bus. The school bus exploded, caught on fire, and six individuals died. We’re all one accident away. If that happens, what is that lawsuit worth? Well, probably well over $50 million. How much insurance do Most of my clients have, well, most of my clients have. maybe $250 ,000 of coverage. Every now and then I’ll have a client that’ll have an umbrella policy of say a million, but even $1 .25 million is not going to be enough for the bad enough accident. You you injure one person these days, it could be as much as $10 million.

Ted Gudorf (16:52.256)

What protection can we build into this comprehensive plan to protect the assets that they work so hard for? Well, the good news is on the asset protection front, all of those retirement accounts are protected by Ohio law and a substantial portion of the equity in their home is protected. But boy, all of their other assets are fully exposed unless we do something to protect it. One of the things we can do to protect it is through the use of an irrevocable trust, a new type of trust called an Ohio Legacy Trust. And we’ll talk briefly about that down the road. So in addition to these four goals that I’ve talked about, remember number one, we’re going to avoid probate. Number two, we’re going to save taxes. Three, we’re going to protect assets during our kid’s lifetime. Four, we’re going to protect assets from creditors and lawsuits during bill. and Mary’s lifetime. Number five, we’re going to talk about long -term care needs. And we need to make an initial determination what path we’re going to go down on long -term care. You see, all of our clients need to have a plan in the event they become incapacitated and need long term care. Why is that? Well, because the cost of care is skyrocketing. Many of our local nursing homes are charging over $14 ,000 per month. Our assisted living facilities are over $6 ,500 per month. The cost of care for home care is over $35 per hour. The average stay in a nursing home for a female is a little over four years and around three years for a male, unless there’s Alzheimer’s. The average stay for an Alzheimer’s patient is eight to 12 years. The worst part of these statistics is that the cost of care is going to double in 25.

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Maybe the cost of care will double in 15 years. Bill and Mary are 65 years old. In 15 years, the cost of care that we have today is going to double. If they have no plan, they may die very poor or broke if they end up with Alzheimer’s. So we got to have a long -term care plan. And we’re going to talk briefly about how we go about that. How do we do that? So that’s our challenge. Those are our initial goals. So when we think about putting together a plan, what does it begin to look like? Well, again, comprehensive planning has to take into account all stages of life. While we’re alive and well, one of us becomes mentally disabled, both of us become mentally disabled, one of us died, both of us died, children are alive and well, become disabled, die, et cetera. So we have to follow it all the way through. So let me show you this. What I’ll normally do for Bill and Mary.

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is I’m going to want to create a revocable trust. I’ll use the abbreviations R -L -T. And on the trust, we want to identify who are going to be the initial trustees. And normally, when I have initial trustees, the trust makers, Bill and Mary, are those who are named as the initial trustee. So it’s Bill and Mary. That simply means that Bill or Mary can put assets into the trust or take things out at any time. Now remember, a revocable trust has no tax consequences. It is totally disregarded. It doesn’t help you, but it doesn’t hurt you on the income tax issues. But it does have the ability, if we transfer what we own into it, it will avoid probate in the event of incapacity or death. So in this case, Bill and Mary decided to do one trust or a joint trust. Now, when Bill and Mary pass away, when one of them does, that joint trust becomes a marital trust. And typically that marital trust is going to be controlled by the surviving spouse.

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and they’ll have that. during their lifetime and will have complete access to those funds. Now in this case, Bill and Mary expressed a desire to do what we call remarriage protection. They wanted to make sure that when one of them passed away and if the other got remarried that the assets left in the marital trust would be available to go to the children and could not go. to a new spouse. So we built into this a remarriage protection plan. The plan that they settled upon was the fact that if one of them died and the other was going to get remarried, they are required to have a prenuptial agreement put in place prior to the new marriage. And if they did, they would continue to have access to the trust. But if they didn’t, then the children would become the trustees of the trust to replace the spouse. So that’s the basic remarriage protection that they decided to build in. It’s not the only way to do it. There’s other ways, but that’s one way. Just having the conversation was really important and really made Bill and Mary at ease because it was one of those topics they had never discussed, but they each were thinking about. So… We decided that the elephant in the room needed to get on the table, so to speak. And so we got that out. Now, they understand the need to transfer assets into the trust to avoid probing. And they can put everything into that trust with the exception of their IRAs that sit off to the side. Now, the way the law works is that we really, these days, end up with two estate plans.

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One for what we call our non -qualified assets and the other for our qualified or IRA assets. Why do we have to have two separate plants? We have to have two separate plants because of the tax laws. And remember, the IRA tax laws have recently undergone some significant changes. Some of the changes were very favorable for taxpayers. Give you an example. For the longest time, your required minimum distribution had to start at age 70 and a half. Well, then they raised at the age 72 and then age 73 in certain cases. And now for some individuals, younger individuals, it’s going to be age 75. That allows us to defer the taxes over a longer period of time. On the other hand, what they took away was the ability of our beneficiaries, not our spouses, but our beneficiaries who were adult children in particular. They limit the stretch out so that the IRA must be paid out to them over 10 years. Now if we have a minor child it’s 10 years after they turn 18. If we have a disabled child we get to use their life expectancy. A little bit of different rules. They said they were going to make the rules simpler when in fact they ended up making them more complicated. Anyway, the bottom line is that we have to have a separate plan for our IRAs. So what happens In this case, Bill and Mary leave behind this marital trust for the other and the other passes. What are their options? Well, one option is they could just transfer one half of the assets to John, one half of the assets to Susan and do what we call outright distributions. Many, many, many estate plans, I think, unfortunately, have outright distributions. Why is that unfortunate? Well, John, And Susan, while they may each get 1 .5 million, it’s not protected. What is it not protected from? Creditors, lawsuits, bankruptcies, Medicaid. And should they die, after Bill and Mary, it will likely go to their spouse rather than to the grandkids. Many people don’t realize that these outright distributions are not consistent with

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the trust maker’s overall plan. When Bill and Mary learned that an outright distribution could end up going to their son -in -law, they decided that what they would like to do is to create a sub trust, one for John and one for Susan. And these sub -trusts ended up being designed a little bit differently. Because Susan is very responsible. They felt real comfortable making Susan the management trustee of her trust. Not so with John right now. He has developed a little bit of an alcohol problem. He’s not gainfully employed. They recently found out he had filed tax returns for three years. So John’s got some problems. So along the way, While they initially decided to make Susan the trustee, we had a lot of conversations about who that ought to be. And should that be Susan or should that be a third party trustee? Third party trustee could be a bank, it could be a lawyer, it could be a CPA, it could be a trust company. And the other thing they thought of is maybe put some restrictions on John Shear.

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maybe simply give John what we call unit trust where he gets 4 % of the trust every year. So if he’s got a $1 .5 million there, he’ll get $60 ,000 a year, or maybe they’ll make it 10%. You know, anywhere between 4 and 10 is what a lot of clients do. But the key here is putting it in the sub trust rather than outright. The benefit is once the money goes into the trust, the trustee has total control over But now it’s protected in the event of divorce, lawsuits, bankruptcies, disabilities, and of course, death. In Susan’s case, rather than going to her husband, they wanted it to go to the grandchildren in trust. And in John’s case, they want the money not to go to Susan, they actually want it to go to the grandchildren. And that was, I thought, pretty neat. Now, In addition to doing this revocable trust plan, that only takes care of half their assets. But what about their IRAs? Well, a special trust called a retirement plan trust ends up being the named beneficiary of their IRAs. And it has special tax provisions in it that allow for the maximum amount of tax deferral on the IRA money. If the IRA is not distributed out to Bill and Mary through RMDs during their lifetime, this IRA trust will be poured into a retirement plan trust. And each of them will have a separate retirement plan trust. when it is, when, let’s say Bill, when Bill dies, his IRA will stay in his name for the benefit his retirement plan trust and Mary is the primary beneficiary and She is only required to take out this money over her life expectancy But there are remarriage provisions put into the retirement plan trust such that Mary if she does get remarried can’t change the beneficiary on Bill’s IRA and by the way, we do this vice versa if both Bill and Mary have IRAs then we will create a

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plan trust for each of them and we will build in those remarriage protections. And as you might expect under the retirement plan trust just like the revocable trust we’re going to have a separate trust for John and we’re going to have a separate trust for Susan. Again in Susan’s case she’ll be the management trustee and in John’s case there’ll probably be a third party that’s designated. Our goal then is for the IRA money to pass by beneficiary designation to the retirement plan trust. So again, as those RMDs come out, they’re totally protected divorces, lawsuits, bankruptcies, disabilities. And if death comes, the money ultimately is going to go to the grandchildren. The revocable trust and the IRA trust will mirror each other. What will we accomplish? We will avoid probate in the event of incapacity. We will avoid probate in the event of death. We will have significant remarriage protection. We will have sub -trusts created for John and Susan so during their lifetime the assets can’t be taken away. Now, in addition to those items, we want to do a few other things. For Bill and Mary when we’re doing a comprehensive plan, I always want to make sure that I have a healthcare power of attorney. And I would tell you, I like to have as many people listed as possible. Typically, in Bill and Mary’s case, they’re going to name each other as number one. So usually that’s your spouse. Number two, in this case, was difficult because Susan is the one they preferred, but John is the one here locally. Who do you pick? Well, in this case, they decided to go ahead and pick Susan. Susan agreed that if Bill or Mary need them, she’s just going to have to come home. Because if you’re the health care agent, you do have to be physically present. Then they decided to go ahead and name John.

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Now I pushed them to identify two more people and they finally settled upon two of Bill’s family to serve four or five. So we do the healthcare power of attorney. Now remember that healthcare power attorney is all medical decisions. I mean, it’s all. What hospital, what medicine, what surgeries, it even includes what nursing home you’re gonna go to. Your healthcare agent makes that decision. Now, In addition to the healthcare power of attorney, we always do a HIPAA authorization. And in this case, we include all of the five listed on the healthcare power on the HIPAA, but we include other family members as well. It might be, for instance, Mary’s brothers and sisters. Anybody that Bill and Mary want to be able to talk to their doctors, but maybe not make medical decisions should be on the HIPAA. Then we do a living will. Living was really not a will at all It’s what you’re want to happen at the end of life if you are in a permanently unconscious state or terminal Do you want extraordinary measures used to keep you alive or is it okay for the physician? Rather than your health care agent, but for your physician to say no more I do not want any extraordinary measures used to keep me alive. I do not want intravenously provided nutrition and hydration. I want to only be kept out of pain. Pain management is all I want. Allow me to die naturally. That’s what a living will does. It’s your advanced directive saying today, this is what I want to have happen. In the event that I’m permanently unconscious or terminal, remember Ohio doesn’t have assisted suicide. No. The living will only comes into play if you’re permanently unconscious as determined by two physicians or you are terminal where death is imminent. In this case, Bill and Mary decided that they wanted to have a living will because they understood that that’s their wishes. It’s an advanced directive. Now, in addition to those, we’re always still going to do a will, but it’s a special kind of will called a pour -over will. And in this case, what we want to make sure of

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that if for some unknown reason Bill and Mary go through life and don’t maintain their estate plan and happen to open up a bank account or a brokerage account or buy a car and not tie to it in the name of the trust Then it will have to go through probate, but at least there will be a poor over will where the executor will make the determination of filing for probate so that it can be poured over into the revocable trust upon death. So that’s the purpose. We do a pour over will for all of our clients. It’s purely a backup device in case our clients forget to have assets titled in their trust. And our hope is that that will never happen to any of our clients. Next. document that we do to finalize the plan is this financial durable power of attorney that I mentioned. Oftentimes we’re going to ask Bill and Mary if they become incapacity or die, who do they want to be the trustee? And in this case, they decided they wanted to have Susan in charge. So Susan was given the power of attorney after Bill and Mary named each other. Okay, so it was the spouse, then it was Susan. Now when we design these estate plans, we always want to do a comprehensive estate plan. This takes care of most of the legal documents, but we have to have a conversation about law. Here’s what you need to know. Are you going to go the Medicaid planning route or are you going to go the asset -based long -term care route? For Medicaid to ever be applicable for any of us, we have to understand that with minor exception, Medicaid will primarily pay for care in a nursing home and not so much in assisted living or at home. Having said that, most of us want to be cared for at home or in assisted living.

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That means we’re likely not going to like the Medicaid system because we want to be cared for at home or in assisted living, not a nursing home. On the other hand, if you’re a person who’s fine with going to a nursing home upon your disability and you want to arrange your affairs to qualify for Medicaid, that can be done in most circumstances, but it can’t be done for couples like Bill and Mary. Why is that? Well, because Bill and Mary have this 1 .5 million IRA. You see, that 1 .5 million of IRA would have to be spent down on their care to the level of $2 ,000 before they ever qualified for Medicaid. And that simply will never happen. On the other hand, I have farm clients who don’t have IRAs. They might have $3 million worth of farm ground. They might have a million dollars worth of farm equipment. They might have $500 ,000 of either animals or grain on hand. Those assets can be transferred to instead of an IRA trust during life, we can create what we call a Medicaid asset protection trust. and -A -P -T. Now, a Medicaid asset protection trust for Bill and Mary is not practical because we’re not going to withdraw the IRA money and pay the tax on it and move it to the trust. But somebody who either doesn’t have an IRA or has a small amount of IRA or wants to protect everything other than the IRA will seriously consider a Medicaid asset protection trust. Why does it work? Because when you transfer assets to it, somebody else has to be the trustee. In this case,

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It would likely be Susan if we were doing it for Bill and Mary. Susan would likely be the lifetime beneficiary of that trust. The good news is five years after we create it, whatever we’ve put into that Medicaid Asset Protection Trust is no longer accountable for that $2 ,000 limit. So Bill and Mary have got this $1 .5 million IRA. We’re not going to cash it out, pay the tax, move it to the Medicaid trust. other options do they have to protect their hard -earned assets? Well, it’s called asset -based long -term care. How does it work? Well, the simplest way it works is the chassis of an asset based long -term care policy is a whole life insurance policy. And Bill and Mary purchase a long -term care policy.

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Bill and Mary purchase a whole life insurance policy. And by the way, there are three companies that our financial group utilizes for these types of policies. But if Bill and Mary are 65 years old, and let’s just say they have $100 ,000 of their $1 .5 million of IRA money that they’re willing to dedicate towards their long -term care, what will these private insurance companies give them? Well, on the chart, it says that if they put $100 ,000 into a long -term care policy, either over 10 years or single premium all upfront, if they do it single premium, they get a $163 ,958 death benefit, but a long -term care benefit of $324 ,654. Now, if Bill and Mary utilize the money in their IRA, the death benefit is for $100 ,000 is still $149 ,307. The long -term care amount is $295 ,614. So the death benefit and the long -term care benefit, if you pay it over 10 years, naturally it’s going to be less than if you do it lump sum. Now, that is one of the companies’ schedule. When I go to one of the newer companies, On $100 ,000 whole life insurance policy that is an indemnity policy, the death benefit is $164 ,258. In other words, if Bill and Mary never use this policy for long -term care, that death benefit will go to John and Susan. On the other hand, Bill or Mary need long -term care. For every $100 ,000 they put into this policy, the insurance company will pay $328 ,536 for every 100 ,000. think this through logically. If Bill and Mary are in reasonable health, and there is medical underwriting for this, you do have to be in reasonably good health. By the way, if you’re not, there’s an annuity product that is pretty good, but just not as good as this life insurance policy. But if Bill and Mary are 65 years old,

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and they want a million dollar bucket, it means they’re going to have to set aside $300 ,000 if they do a lump sum payment. And they’re going to have to do more than that if they’re going to use their IRA money and pay it in over 10 years. But these asset -based policies are great. They will allow you to leverage your money, whether it’s money that you currently have in your brokerage account or your savings account. or another life insurance policy, you can use that cash value. Or what many of my clients are doing are using their IRA money to buy these policies. They’re meeting with our financial group. We’re walking them through the underwriting process, getting them approved, and having their long -term care needs met. What is that going to do? Well, it’s typically one policy that covers both the husband and wife. If we can get If we can get $500 ,000 worth of long -term care, if we can get a million dollars worth of long term care, that, we believe, will cover the bulk of the expenses. Our goal? We want every one of our clients to have at least 50 % of their long -term care needs met by either long -term care insurance or through a Medicaid asset protection trust, one or the other, minimum of 50%. Insurance piece you do have to be insurable because it is does go through underwriting and if you are over the age of 80 you’re unable to either get the life insurance product or the annuity product So there are some age restrictions as you might expect the younger you are the bigger Long -term care benefit and death benefits you get when you buy the policy the older you are it decreases as each age goes by. Our firm has been utilizing these policies for well over 15 years. We’ve had a number of people go on claim and has met a great deal to many of our families. So there you have it. This is what we call a comprehensive estate plan. It is all premised upon that revocable trust plan, that retirement plan trust as well.

Ted Gudorf (44:23.948)

And then possibly adding either a Medicaid trust or asset -based long -term care while making sure that we have all of the ancillary documents completed. Health care power, the HIPAA, the living will, the poor over will, the financial power returning. One last thing. I feel really fortunate to have been in practice for well over 37 years. One of the things I enjoy the most are my clients who really believe that they need to give something back to this world. They feel like they’ve been blessed and they want to give back and they have a spirit of generosity. One of the things that we can talk to our clients about that I think helps instill your values and your legacy into your children and grandchildren is if during your lifetime you consider establishing a donor advice fund, perhaps at the Dayton Foundation or the Troy Foundation. There are certain tax benefits that you can get by making a contribution to the donor advice fund. Typically, we’re going to recommend that you don’t do a contribution every year. We’re going to have you group it maybe three years at a time. Oftentimes, depending upon your age and your income level, we might make also other charitable contributions directly out of our IRA, not into a donor advice fund, but directly to a charity through a qualified charitable distribution. My point is this. If you do a donor advice fund, perhaps you could create a tradition each year at Thanksgiving where you and the family could get together. and make a decision on what charities you want to support this year. And maybe you take a small amount of money. It doesn’t have to be a large amount of money. But in the spirit of giving back, and in the spirit of helping others, and in the spirit of generosity, charitable planning, whether it be to your church or to your other favorite charity, really in the grand scheme doesn’t matter. But charitable planning should be a part of everyone’s overall estate plan.

Ted Gudorf (46:43.264)

It’s a way to give back and I’m a firm believer in it. For those of you who have some interest in that, let’s have a conversation. Hey look, I have really enjoyed presenting the Bill and Mary story. It’s a story that we at Gudorf Law Group are very familiar with. This is kind of our bread and butter. This is what we do every day. We enjoy our clients. We enjoy being their guide. We enjoy working them through our process. Typically to put a plan like this together takes no more than 90 days. It does take a little bit of work, but we’re always here. We’ve got a great team here to work with you to pull it all together. I wish you well. Thank you for being with me today.

Ted Gudorf (47:37.484)

I’m going to do the last sentence. Thank you for watching and taking the time to learn about how proper estate planning can protect your financial legacy. If this something you’re interested in and you’d like to explore how it applies to your own situation, we’d love to help. We’re offering a free initial goals and responsibility conversation with one of our experienced estate planning attorneys. This is your opportunity to get personalized guidance. and start the process of securing your estate for the future. Simply visit gudorflaw.com forward slash get started. That’s gudorflaw.com forward slash get started to schedule your session. Thanks again for joining me and I look forward to helping you protect what matters most.