Selecting the Right Agents, Executors, and Trustees for Your Estate Plan: Expert Tips and Advice
May 28, 2024
Greg McIntyre, J.D., M.B.A.
Ever wondered who should manage your estate when you're no longer able to? Join us, Jane Dearwester and Jordan Bentley from McIntyre Elder Law, as we demystify the process of selecting trustworthy agents, executors, and trustees for your estate plan. We tackle the questions we frequently encounter in our consultations and seminars, providing you with essential guidelines to make informed decisions. From the importance of trust and reliability to the necessity of open communication, we cover it all with real-life examples and practical advice.
We emphasize the crucial conversations you need to have with your potential agents to ensure they are willing and prepared to take on these responsibilities. Neglecting these discussions can lead to unforeseen complications, such as guardianship proceedings where you lose control over who handles your estate. Tune in for our valuable tips on matching roles to the skills of your family members, and learn how to avoid common pitfalls. Don't miss this chance to secure peace of mind for your future.
Ever wondered who should manage your estate when you're no longer able to? Join us, Jane Dearwester and Jordan Bentley from McIntyre Elder Law, as we demystify the process of selecting trustworthy agents, executors, and trustees for your estate plan. We tackle the questions we frequently encounter in our consultations and seminars, providing you with essential guidelines to make informed decisions. From the importance of trust and reliability to the necessity of open communication, we cover it all with real-life examples and practical advice.
We emphasize the crucial conversations you need to have with your potential agents to ensure they are willing and prepared to take on these responsibilities. Neglecting these discussions can lead to unforeseen complications, such as guardianship proceedings where you lose control over who handles your estate. Tune in for our valuable tips on matching roles to the skills of your family members, and learn how to avoid common pitfalls. Don't miss this chance to secure peace of mind for your future.
Speaker 1:
This is Jane Deere-Wester with McIntyre Elder Law. I'm here today with my colleague, Jordan Bentley. Hi, Jordan, hey guys.
Speaker 2:
Hey Jane.
Speaker 1:
We are going to talk today about choosing agents and beneficiaries. We get these questions often. Sometimes we're doing consultations with new clients about who should I choose and why.
Speaker 2:
Right, I mean without other people to act on your behalf and get your stuff, your estate plan doesn't really exist. So choosing the right legal representatives and beneficiaries it requires a lot of thought and care and they're decisions that you want to take seriously, although you can change them, you know, potentially down the road. You want to choose the right people in the first place and those are the people that you trust and there's certain factors that you can weigh into that decision.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, you also.
Speaker 1:
I was giving a seminar in a retirement community yesterday and had some good questions about this specific issue and they were saying you know what if I want to change what if I'm not sure who I want to pick?
Speaker 1:
And a lot of my feedback is you need to have the conversations with even if it's your spouse that you're going to designate. Have conversations with your family members, make sure they know and that they are okay with accepting the designation, because you know, if you don't talk about it and you just pick people kind of on your own volition but you don't have a conversation with them, a worst case scenario would be something happens where you need your agent to step in and they resign. So agents can't be forced to serve, they can resign or waive it, say I don't want to do this, and then all the time energy you put into having your documents drafted, you didn't tell the person hey, I want you to serve as my legal agent. And then once you need the legal agent, they say I don't want to serve, and then you're kind of back to square one, but hopefully you can name some backups who will be able to help you as well. So that's on the agency side, for sure.
Speaker 2:
And we talk a lot about these legal representatives and we're talking about agents or an executor of a will or a trustee in a trust. They need to be someone that you trust, someone that's honest, someone that you know will carry out your wishes, but, more important almost, they need to be reliable, they need to be capable and they need to be willing, and I think that's what you're getting at, jane.
Speaker 1:
Right, exactly right.
Speaker 2:
Managing a trust or a will requires organization and our personal skills. You know you have to handle challenges that might come along the way from the court or from, maybe, your family. It needs to be the right person and you absolutely want to have those conversations. Sometimes they're not comfortable, right? You don't want to be sitting around the dinner table talking about what happens if I, you know, lose capacity, what happens when you know when, when your father dies. But trust me, it's much better to have those conversations while you can and not have them at all, because once it's too late, it's certainly too late.
Speaker 1:
That's right. And then your option is guardianship. You know having to go through a legal proceeding that's slow, that's expensive. When you could nip this in the bud and get your agents designated again while you can.
Speaker 2:
And so. I yeah you look at guardianship just real quick, because I think the key factor with the guardianship is you don't get to choose that person. That's right. You know someone's going to be appointed to handle your estate, perhaps, or your person. I'm going to make your health decisions, make your financial decisions, and you don't know who that person's going to be. You have really no say in who that person is.
Speaker 1:
But you can choose that person if you do it ahead of time by naming them as your agent under your power of attorney. Yes, that is a really great point and a really quick and easy example I use sometimes is I've had clients that are like look, my son's an accountant, my daughter's a nurse, so I'm going to name my son as my financial power of attorney, I'm going to name my daughter as the medical power of attorney because it's in their comfort zone and in their wheelhouse. And then I people say look, my son's terrible with money, I'm not naming him to be my power of attorney, I need somebody else. So this goes exactly to what Jordan was saying Make sure you're naming a person who is organized and who is up for the task at hand. Otherwise it's not going to be helpful to name someone who doesn't know and doesn't want to do the job.
Speaker 1:
And then, as far as your beneficiaries, again completely up to you. You don't have to leave everything evenly to all three kids. You can disinherit one, you can split everything between the other two. There is no go by. People ask us sometimes well, what does everybody else do? Everybody's situation is unique. So you really get to choose how you want your assets to pass. You can disinherit your entire you know local family group, your nuclear family group, and say I'm leaving everything to charity, so you don't have to leave anything to charity your spouse to your kids. You don't have to. You get to choose. And so that's part of the discussion we'd have with you in the consultation, to just talk about what all your options are. Most people come in with some kind of inclination of what they kind of know or have ideas of what they want to do, and come in and ask us for some guidance along those lines.
Speaker 2:
And to go off of that, no two people or families are really alike. We say all the time that estate planning is in a one size fits all shoe. There's not going to be one plan for everyone. There's not, like you're saying, one kind of rubric to follow. You really want to you as the person making your estate plan and us as the attorneys helping you really want to know and consider all the aspects of your situation.
Speaker 2:
Maybe, know, maybe you have had multiple marriages and you have blended families and there's people who might not be your heirs under law but who you certainly want to make sure are able to inherit some of your assets that you've worked hard for right, and you want to leave to them and you want to support them after you're gone.
Speaker 2:
And so it's very important to evaluate your situation and think about you know the individual needs of your loved ones and whether you know they're responsible to inherit assets, whether you know they're going to use them the way that you think they should. And you know you want to be specific in naming these people and similar to naming a legal representative, and I think Jane mentioned backups and having alternatives. Right, you want to have alternative beneficiaries and you know what if something happens to that person that you named, you certainly still want to control who would get that stuff and you know when we draft documents, I know that we make sure that any beneficiaries listed, there's a backup in place. You know what happens if this person is not around or is otherwise unable to inherit that. You know where does it go. We want to make sure that, no matter what the situation, no matter what assets we're talking about, the right person can manage it and the right person can inherit it according to what you want.
Speaker 1:
Yes, yeah, there's a lot of flexibility. So again, we invite you to come in, have these tough conversations with us, and then we're going to send you out to have tough conversations with your family members. But I think once you get over the hump, I see in my experience overwhelming and overwhelming sense of relief when people come in and sign their documents and they just feel like, all right, I buttoned that up, I know what's going to happen, I've got all my ducks in a row, my affair is in order. And then again, over time, we have an annual check-in. We offer to all of our clients that kind of goes in perpetuity.
Speaker 1:
We're going to get in touch with you each year on your signing anniversary and say, hey, you had any major life changes? Do we need to make any amendments to your documents? And just remember I always mention this that even if there are changes, that doesn't mean you have to start over. We can just do an amendment, which is usually a nominal fee. It's not paying again, you know, 100% of the cost you put in at the beginning. It's just making a little tweak or a change when things change over time.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely yeah. So overall, I think what's important to remember is that your beneficiaries and your legal representatives they're responsible for shaping your legacy. We talk a lot about passing on legacy and protecting legacy, preserving legacy these are the people that are responsible for shaping it after you're gone. I'm a big sports guy. I love sports analogies, so I think you know the way to sum this up is to say those people are all your team, right? That's the team that you're choosing. You're a state planning team and you want to choose a winning team, and the best way to do that is to plan wisely and consider everyone's interests and situations, capabilities the things that we talked about today.
Speaker 1:
That's right. You want the right player in the right position.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely.
Speaker 1:
You don't want your catcher playing second base.
Speaker 2:
And you certainly don't, unless you can play to our strengths. Maybe you have a son who's an accountant and a nurse. You never know that's right. You know for advice on who to add to your estate plan. You know who to set up as agents or beneficiaries, like Jane said.
Speaker 1:
you know you come in and talk to us, we'll have those conversations with you, and I love sitting down with people and having those conversations and I look forward to doing it more. That's right, all right? Well, we look forward to seeing y'all in one of our offices. I'm in our Hendersonville office, I think Jordan's in our. Are you in Shelby or Charlotte Shelby office? And we also have an office in Charlotte and uptown.
Speaker 2:
We have a team of attorneys and paralegals and staff that you know have these conversations all the time and would be happy to talk to anybody about it, and I know we all look forward to seeing each of you there.
Speaker 1:
Great, all right. Well, that's a wrap for this section, and we'll see you all in our next ELR.
