Stautz Law

Tag: Video

  • Talking About . . . Indiana Advance Directives

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    Hi folks. We’re back. I’m Andy Stautz, principal attorney at Stautz Law. And we are talking today about another basic estate planning technique. This time it’s advanced directives. As they’re called in Indiana. And this is a fundamental. It’s part of every estate plan I prepare. And because it’s the health care side of things, so a lot of people think of estate planning as just passing your property on. But but healthcare decisions are a huge part of it too. So the questions you need to answer are. You know, if you’re incapacitated, who makes decisions for you? If you’re on life support, do you want it to continue or not continue? 

    So sort of planning around disability or incapacity in different ways. I mean that could be. It could be after a stroke; it could be dementia in your old age; that could be a car crash that puts you in a coma. You know, all this . . . all the issues that might come up if you aren’t there to speak for yourself.

    So in Indiana pretty much all of those topics are handled in one document, and that’s the advance directive. Which is a flexible and powerful document. It lets you name a healthcare representative. That’s the person who makes decisions for you if you can’t.

    It also lets you provide instructions for care if you’ve got preferences about what you want done or not done to you in a hospital setting or whatever else.

    And these can go from from very simple to very complicated documents. The state provides some examples and the shortest one is just one page front back. It just says, you know, so and so is my healthcare representative and yes, life support or no, no life support or whatever.

    And the most detailed can be, you know, 10 pages, 20 pages. And depending on your situation, if we talk about this, (we will talk about this in your initial planning meeting) discuss your situation, your values, and and think about what you need in terms of level of detail or if you’ve got strong preferences or strong opinions on on whom you trust to to make those decisions for you.

    But it’s. It’s a real gift. To you. And to your loved ones . . . I have clients. Umm, who have been health care representatives for other people and they say yes, it’s such a relief to know that I’ve got these instructions that I know what they would have wanted instead of being in a crisis and having them having to worry. Oh, is this what mom would have wanted? It’s like, well, you you’ve told them so. [. . .]

    If you’ve if you’ve heard of living wills or health care power of attorneys, this is the document that replaces it. So Indiana simplified its law. Four years ago now. So sometimes you’ll see living wills out in the wild still, but you can’t make new ones. So it used to [be] . . . there were three separate documents. No one knew how it was supposed to work. Was a mess. Even the guidance for lawyers, it was terrible.

    The new law is much simplified: The Advance directive takes care of the living will, takes care of the healthcare power of attorney. So. Again, it’s something that goes into every estate planning meeting. It’s in every estate plan I prepare for my clients. So we will talk about it if you come in for come in for a [meeting]. Which I hope you’ll do. So that’s our overview for today. You can read. I’ll make a text version of this with statutory references. If you’re interested in following those up, but otherwise. 

    Go to the website, book your initial appointment or give me a call to set that up and we’ll talk soon. Thanks for watching. Bye.

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  • Talking About . . . Probate vs. Non-Probate Transfers

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    Hi folks. We’re back. I’m Andy Stautz for Stautz Law, and today we’re having a quick chat about probate versus non probate transfers. And for many clients and many estate planners, probate avoidance is a big part of the job.

    Probate is the court supervised distribution of property after someone’s death. It’s a good thing to have around because it ensures . . . everything’s orderly. Creditors get paid, the right people get the property. But it has to be formal and formal means expensive, and slow, and public. So. It behooves you to know what of your property is subject to probate and what isn’t.

    Because a key piece of crafting a probate avoidance plan is to to move assets from from probate assets to become non probate assets, or to move transfers from being probate transfers to non probate.

    So there are a couple main types of non probate transfers. Umm. And they’re easiest to understand if you understand what they’re not.

    Probate is designed to take care of everything you, like, just you, own at the time of your death. So a house that you own outright, your clothes, the money in your bank account, your car. Whether or not there’s a title, right? So you’ve got a name on a deed, and you’ve got a title for your car. You don’t have a title for you. You know your your law school, sweatshirt or. I mean it’s, but it’s still yours. So it’s still a probate asset.

    Non probate assets and non probate transfers are things that aren’t just yours. So there are kind of three main categories.

    One would be joint ownership. So if you and your spouse are joint owners of a piece of real estate. And your spouse has a right of survivorship. Then when you die, the house doesn’t go through probate because your spouse, the other joint owner, is there to take it, and it happens right away automatically.

    Umm, the other, the second category is beneficiary designations of various sorts, and these work kind of the same way in that they are automatic ways to pass property to. Sub. Some specific other person. Unlike joint ownership, your beneficiaries don’t have rights in the property right away. So examples payable on death designation on a bank account. Beneficiary designation on a life insurance policy. Beneficiary designation on your retirement accounts and transfer on death deeds for real property like your house.

    So just because your child is named on your transfer on death deed or your child is the beneficiary of your retirement account doesn’t mean that they have any power over the money in the account right now. Or over the house right now. Otherwise, though, just like joint ownership. It happens automatically, so you don’t have to go to the probate court and say please can I transfer this retirement account please? I transfer this. The life insurance policy proceeds. They just boom. Which is very convenient because it’s fast.

    Now the danger is you’d forget to update your beneficiaries or you know. They’re wrong somehow. And one child ends up getting everything and not the others. So you have to, you have to keep an eye on them and you should talk to an estate planning attorney like me. To make sure they’re part of your overall estate plan. But they’re a powerful tool and relatively simple because you don’t need special documents (with the exception of transfer on death deeds, I suppose) to effectuate them.

    3rd category is very much formal estate — You know, sophisticated techniques — and that’s property that you have in trust. And a trust is a legal fiction designed precisely to separate, you know, use and benefit from a piece of property and like actual legal ownership of the property. So done. You can have. That’s yours in every meaningful way. But isn’t yours for the purpose of the probate court? Like I said, kind of a legal fiction, very technical. You almost certainly need, you know, professional legal help to get a trust set up for you. But that’s one of the most powerful techniques in our toolbox as estate planners because of the sheer variety. I mean you can craft a trust for almost anything.

    So those are kind of the three categories. To recap, you know joint ownership, beneficiary designations, and trusts.

    If you set your initial planning meeting with me, we’ll talk about your situation and make sure all of those techniques. Work together, or which ones to use, how they should work together to make sure that your plan works according to plan. And that’s my skill set. So I’d love to help you out. But that was just a general background. Call me or set your meeting for specific legal advice and I look forward to working with you soon. Bye now. 

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  • Talking about . . . Transfer on Death Deeds

    Today we have a casual chat with Indiana estate planning attorney Andy Stautz on the subject of Transfer on Death deeds.

    Transcript:

    Hey everyone, we’re back. Here in my office on a fine sunny Friday. Today I’m talking briefly about transfer on death deeds. These are a type of property deed, just like the ownership deed to your house. Except they work to pass your property along automatically as it were.

    So it’s a deed where you get to specify a beneficiary, you specify who gets the property after you die. Just like a will. Except it’s not part of your will. These are pretty convenient because they let you avoid probate on your house. And for people whose house is their largest, most substantial asset passing the house with a transfer on death deed outside of probate means the remainder of their estate, whatever is left, could be suited for an informal probate, unsupervised, or the small estate administration – right now that limit’s $100,000. So, for clients who have a house and not a lot else, sometimes we can get the job done with just a simple will providing for an unsupervised or small estate probate and then pass the house with the transfer on death deed. And that’s all I need. Um, so that’s a really efficient plan.

    Now the worry is, what about your beneficiaries predeceasing you. Let’s say you’re trying to give your house . . . to your two children. Um and both your children have children, so they’ve got . . . you’ve got grandkids. Well, if you leave it to both of them in the deed and then, you know, one of your children gets in a car crash or something terrible. What happens to the deed? Does it break? And the answer, fortunately, is no. There is a nice kind of statutory default. A backup plan. For transfer on death deeds, just like there’s a backup plan if you don’t have a will. So the the rules are . . . Well, it’s technical and you can look at them in the statute. I’m going to post a text version of this with more statutory references. Not to bore you with them here, but basically. If you’re trying to give it to your kids and one or more child predeceases you the grandkids, step up to get the parents share. So you don’t accidentally disinherit someone.

    And if you try to pass it outside your family, though, if your beneficiary isn’t one of your kids, it’s some random person, that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t automatically go to that person’s kids. But those are both [defaults]. So in the in the deed itself you can specify how exactly you want it to go, if for some reason you don’t want that default. But the nice thing is it’s there.

    So, umm, you know, one worry is “how flexible is the transfer on death deed for, you know, for other tragedies that could happen between when you make the deed and and when the deed takes effect?” The answer is more flexible than you might think.

    So you know, if you’re interested in it as a planning tool, we’ll talk about it at your initial meeting and I’ll listen to your specific circumstances and we can decide whether we think it’s the right play for you or not. But that specifically legal advice that depends on your situation. So I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief overview. Set up your planning meeting if you want to talk about your specific situation and get actual legal advice. This has been for background. And your your general information. So. See you next time. Again, this is Andy Stautz for Stautz Law and I hope to talk to you soon.