The Elder Law Coach

Ep. 38 The Future of Elder Law Part 2 - One Solution, Financial Planning

• Todd Whatley

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Unlock the secrets to effective elder law and estate planning as we host Ian Weiner, a Certified Financial Planner, who shares his expertise on the critical risks of using templated legal documents and "do it yourself" financial advice. Discover why DIY and advisor-mediated estate plans often fall short and how improper documentation can lead to serious consequences. Ian and Todd Whatley expose the ethical concerns of financial advisors inflating legal service costs and stress the importance of consulting certified elder law attorneys for comprehensive estate planning.

In our advanced segment, we dissect sophisticated estate planning strategies tailored for high-net-worth individuals. Learn how integrating robust financial and tax strategies, such as charitable remainder trusts and AB trusts, can result in substantial tax savings. We emphasize the continuous need for personalized client relationships and collaborative teamwork to ensure strategic, effective estate planning. Tune in for an enlightening discussion that promises to equip you with the knowledge to safeguard your estate with expert legal guidance.

Check out our new website www.TheElderLawCoach.com.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Specialized experience, Whether you're an established attorney looking to refine your expertise or an emerging lawyer seeking a successful foray into elder law, this is your masterclass. Now let's get started with the luminary in the field. Here's Todd Whatley.

Speaker 2:

That's right. This is the Elder Law Coach. My name is Todd Whatley, I am a certified elder law attorney and I am the Elder Law Coach, and I am so thankful that you have joined me today. And today I'm continuing from the previous episode. You probably should go listen to the previous podcast and get some information there, because we are continuing. Basically, we presented the problem, what's the problem, what's going on, and then today we're going to hopefully provide some solutions to that. And when I say we, I am here with my good friend, ian Weiner. Hey man, how are you?

Speaker 3:

Todd doing well, this is a fun one. Okay, I'm excited for this one Good good.

Speaker 2:

So last time we talked about the issue of people can do a lot of things by themselves.

Speaker 2:

Or think they can, can do a lot of things by themselves, or think they can. Well, yeah, I think they can. They can do a trust, but it probably stinks, but they can. They're getting bombarded by Dave Ramsey, susie Orman, just general companies that rocket lawyer things like that that you can do your own trust Makes total sense, right? There's nothing major there going on, and so they're doing it. And now they're even being bombarded by their financial advisor and probably their CPA. We didn't talk about that the last episode, but there are companies out there that are marketing to financial advisors to say, hey, this will help you get your clients estate planning order without the need for it.

Speaker 3:

Higher end clients. If you do estate planning Companies like Trust and Will, wealthcom Get Vanilla. Estately, I think is another one. There's a handful of these, there's a lot, yeah, and what they're doing is and we'll be brief with this but what they're doing is they're just doing templated documents for the state. You know, some attorney somewhere has drafted them a template and they've got the plugins and it happens. What's interesting is, advisors will, like some of them will actually bill the advisor, you know, a certain dollar amount to create them and then the advisor will then mark it up and sell it to the client. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 2:

I don't know how that's not practicing law without a license.

Speaker 3:

I find it to be reprehensible, frankly. Okay, it's a strong word, but it's appropriate, but it's just not the way that I think right. I can think of maybe a couple of very unique instances where we would potentially do something like that, but it's like look, we can't find a competent attorney in New York and we got to get something drafted quickly. Okay, well, you know it's seven 50, get the thing done. So you know we don't get in trouble. Fine, okay, but yeah, I don't need to make. I don't need to make a thousand bucks on that. I mean, come on, give me a break.

Speaker 3:

Sure, sorry, it's these fee only guys that are my colleagues that you know they're like how can I take as many vacation days a year, do as little work as possible and bill my clients as much as possible? But they're fee only. They only build their clients and I'm like to the client. So, wait, you're paying the maximum amount for them to anyway. So this is an issue. This is an interesting issue and I think it's going to be something that continues to evolve over time. The bigger big wire houses, big banks, have been doing this kind of thing for a long time, but now it's coming to more asset aggregators, even the life insurance only guys, the mutuals and what have you, are starting to do this more and more and, from my perspective, this is a concern for estate planning attorneys. Yes, and why wouldn't it be?

Speaker 2:

It's a huge concern that these people are not coming to see you. They're getting it done elsewhere.

Speaker 3:

Oh, we got that done.

Speaker 2:

Right, we got that done. And so how do you combat that? Okay, how do you? I was at a health fair yesterday morning in Tulsa with my Tulsa folks and a lady came by and I handed her our magazine and the nine powers of the power of attorney. I said here. She said no, no, no, you can take that, I've already got this done. I said, oh, okay.

Speaker 2:

She said my son's an attorney and he found someone in his office to do this for me. I said, oh, OK, and I said were they an elder law attorney? She said I don't know. I said, well, please take this and go through it and compare your documents to the things we talk about in this, we talk about in this. And so you know, and I can almost guarantee you, if she does that, unless this guy was an elder law attorney, and ideally a certified elder law attorney she's going to find that her documents don't do a lot of the things that it should have done, and that's done by an attorney. Imagine the people who do this by themselves. It's like who do you want to be trustee? Oh, I have three kids. Let's name all three as trustees. Well, as estate planners out there, elder law attorneys.

Speaker 2:

You know that's a horrible idea let's just do outright gifts, you know yeah outright gifts and when I die and my son's going through a divorce, half of my money goes to my no-good daughter-in-law.

Speaker 3:

You know so soon-in-law, you know so soon to be ex-daughter-in-law and so you know it's, but that wouldn't happen to any of your clients. None of your clients would ever go through that stuff. All of our clients are perfect.

Speaker 2:

And so it's a struggle and I do a lot of presentations, I do a lot of education for the public to help counter that. And I think one thing that I have done to further counter it and we're working together on this his clients, his Ian's financial clients, are coming in thinking that they're just doing financial stuff and he's like, hey, how would your power of attorney, have you not done a power of attorney? What about your will? And I walk in the room and there it is. We're having a meeting between the financial person and the legal person. It's collaborative and we get the thing done and vice versa.

Speaker 2:

I have clients. I'm like you know they might make a derogatory comment about their investment advisor or how their money's invested. I like well, would you like a second opinion? Yeah, that'd be great. I walk out the door, walk down the hall, grab Ian. Ian comes in, sits down and again we're solving legal issues and financial issues at the same time in the same meeting. And man that just glues the client to the office. And man that just glues the client to the office.

Speaker 3:

The way that I want folks to start to think about this is you can either look at the rise of technology, ai, some of these solutions, as you know, something scary or you can look at it as an opportunity, and I need you to hear me out on the ladder here, okay, so what Todd and I are describing, the way that we work together is something that was typically reserved for folks with $10, $15, $20-plus million. You may have heard of this term. It's called a family office, and so sometimes people talk about this is how the wealthy do things. In this case, this is how the wealthy do things. In this case, this is how the wealthy do things. At a certain point, up until recently, you know, once a family gathered a certain amount of assets, it made sense to have all the professionals in-house working together, you know, and typically that was 50 plus million dollars. You know, we're in Walmart's backyard. There's a very famous family office here that serves that family, right?

Speaker 3:

But what's interesting, and so the concept is, you've got the entire. You've got the legal, the accounting, the finance, the investments, the insurance. You've got the entire team in-house working together for the same client. They're collaborating, they're proactive, they're planning together. Sounds great, right? Well, until recently, it's just been cost prohibitive to do that. And the reason is, in order to really do that model right, you've got to have A players. You can't just have, like the neighborhood insurance guy or the neighborhood financial guy who took the test and did some sales training and puts people into. You know, whatever the mutual fund flavor of the month is, it's just not going to work. You got to have, you got to have true A players. Right, the way that communication has been enabled a little bit more through things like Zoom or Teams, what have you? We can create virtual family offices and use this model and provide these services for clients at a significant discount and at much lower asset levels.

Speaker 3:

And so I want you to just begin, if you will, to kind of dream about what this could look like for your clients. We could have every professional at the table, and what ends up happening is Todd and I sit in the seat of the coordinator of this or the quarterback of this. You've got your investment person, your insurance person, maybe you have a real estate person, a lender banker. You've got, potentially, a corporate attorney. You've got the estate planning attorney. You've got the. What else did I say I don't know. I think I said all of them, but these are people that they accumulate in their life, right, but the problem is they don't communicate with each other and they don't work together Never. It just doesn't happen, and one of the reasons why is because attorneys don't trust a lot of financial advisors, because many of them are incompetent and so you guys don't know any of those.

Speaker 3:

And so there's this trust dynamic. But even if you have all of those professionals, they don't communicate and they don't plan collaboratively together. But what if you change that? So what if you could bring all of those professionals to the table? And if they have great, you know, if they've got a great accountant, okay, great, keep them. If they don't have a great accountant, okay, could you help them find a better one and quarterback that relationship. They have a good financial advisor great, keep them on and communicate with them. But if they're not an A player, they're not being proactive okay, we can replace that. And so now you go from being someone at the table, one of their many professionals, to being the person who is driving their planning team.

Speaker 1:

Look, it's a little bit more work.

Speaker 3:

Realistically it's a little bit more work, but you are proactively driving these conversations in a way that no one else in their world has ever done and none of their friends have, I guarantee you. And so all of a sudden, in the absence of value, price becomes an issue. But when we sit across the table from someone and we go, hey, we'll do X, y and Z for you. Yeah, we can coordinate with the tax preparer for you, we can do this for you. We call it concierging. It's kind of funny, we'll concierge this for you. I mean the folks that this works for.

Speaker 3:

It's like what I say look, we'll get together probably four times in the next year and then the year after that will probably be a few less times as we get some of these things in place, and our conversations are going to be different. We're not talking about what happened in the past and how your accounts were. We're not talking about the. You know what happened in the past and how your accounts were. We're just talking about you know what is, what travel plans you have coming up, what's going on and some other ideas that are important to you, and it's a different philosophy and it's a different, but that's what people want. That's what you would want Absolutely, and so you know what we're encouraging you is to build out your team, and they don't have to necessarily be in your backyard. This is the challenge. I do this with folks all over the country.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, there's a few coaching clients out there that use Ian as the financial planner for their clients, and okay, I'm going to say it this strongly I sell trust for them.

Speaker 3:

And okay, I'm going to say it this strongly.

Speaker 3:

I sell trust for them because you know they're used to going to, you know the attorney, and going okay, we've got a revocable living trust, fine, okay, we've got that, maybe we need to update it. And we start to ask a couple more questions like hey, what's the plan for long-term care? We have to pay for that. What's the plan for that? Okay, what's the plan for estate taxes? Well, we don't have that problem. Are you sure? Where's the balance sheet? You're like well, we don't have a balance.

Speaker 3:

Okay, so you know, we put that together and go well, you might not have an estate tax problem now, but in two years, when the limit gets, you know, basically cut in half 40%, all of a sudden we might have a problem. And you know who else is bringing these problems to their attention? Nobody, absolutely nobody. But all of a sudden you went from being just another attorney, another one of their professionals, to being the lead professional on their team and you say, look, this could be a potential issue, we need to explore it. What would you want to happen if you did have to pay 40%, if your beneficiaries did have to pay 40%, if your beneficiaries did have to pay 40% in estate taxes. How would we pay for that? I don't know. Let's solve that problem, do you know? I mean, they will love you forever.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've got a client that I seriously. Had Ian not been with me, they would have come in. I would have done revocable living trust. I would have done the AB trust because he told me, yeah, I'm probably worth 10, 12 million. Okay, well, that's going to be a concern, particularly in two years, and so I would have done an AB trust. Powers of attorney. Thank you, appreciate your business. Call me if you need me Done. Okay, ian's there. They have some concerns about taxes or different things that their financial advisor was not bringing up.

Speaker 3:

Neither of their. They actually had three financial advisors, three financial advisors.

Speaker 2:

None of them addressed this. We get to talking with them, they bring in their financial stuff and we figure out they're probably pushing $30 million, okay, and that opens up a whole array of things.

Speaker 3:

They are charitably inclined. They want to give, you know, 32% of their estate to charity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and so that opens up. Before two months ago I had never done a charitable remainder trust. I've done a few, and I think there's a bunch about to come down the way I've never done it.

Speaker 3:

We're doing like at least two a month right now.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've never done an allot and those are coming down the road and Ian's going to get the big head here, but it's because of him, it's because he's opened up my eyes and my client's eyes to say, whoa, you do nothing. Like with this one client doing nothing. He was going to pay was it eight or nine million?

Speaker 3:

I mean it's probably a $10 million best case scenario, that's, with no asset growth. I think the estate tax conversation is so interesting to me because for some reason, that's the one time we forget about compounding interest, like the advisors, the attorneys, the clients. They're like oh I'm not there yet, I'm not talking about right now.

Speaker 2:

Are you defined today?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, 7% rate of return over 10 years, the asset is going to double, right Oops.

Speaker 2:

Oops, yeah, and 7% is very doable nowadays. And so, yeah, their estate doubles in 10 years and a few of your clients are going to die tomorrow. You've got to think down the road, and so these people. So, with Ian's planning, he's going to cut that down to what two or three.

Speaker 3:

I mean, it'll be right. Now we're getting some stuff. In this particular case, the bulk of their assets is in real estate single-family rental real estate which is a challenge when you're in your late 70s to manage 50 properties, right, yeah. And so we're consolidating that, and it'll be. If they do it, I tell them they'll pay no estate taxes. Wow, from $10 million to zero, yeah, and it's going to cost them probably $100,000 to get it done. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Between my fees and your fees, they're going to pay $100,000.

Speaker 3:

That's it Between my fees and your fees. They're going to pay $100,000.

Speaker 2:

It's 1% of $10 million. Yeah, I was trying to do the math there.

Speaker 3:

That's 1%, 1%. I mean, that's where now you have to. You've got to get to the point where you can have these conversations with your clients. But this is the easiest sale in the world. We talked about sales in the last one and I think it's absolutely in the client's best interest. This is the conversation. Mr and Mrs Client, if you do X, y and Z, if we execute this plan, we will save you $10 million in taxes. Be quiet, it's only going to cost $100,000. I mean, and that wasn't even the price that I quoted them, it was even less, you know. But there's going to be some more stuff to do because we had to figure some stuff out. But she's like I'm done quoting and she's getting out the checkbook. I'm like hang on, we're not ready. And she's like, well, do I make a check out now or what do we?

Speaker 2:

you know, and I charged three times more than I've ever charged for a trust because of the complexity and the benefit that it was getting them. And that's just one of the trusts. Yeah, we're probably going to do two or three more. And I charged three times what I normally charge and he didn't blink.

Speaker 3:

He's like yeah great, let's do it and it's absolutely in the best interest of the client they are going to be. I mean, $10 million is a lot of money in tax. I mean, that's a lot of money that goes to the charity, that's a lot of money that goes to the kids and the grandkids. Now we have a whole host of other issues here. How do we make sure they don't screw that up? And then really there's an ongoing relationship there and probably at that asset level, the estate the attorney needs to be involved in that, you know, cause we've got family planning dynamics and some other stuff. But you know, that is not a that's not a challenging sale.

Speaker 1:

It's not hard to sell that plan not at all.

Speaker 3:

But what's hard is getting to the point where it makes sense to do that Right, and that takes frankly, I think it takes a team in most cases. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 2:

And so these people you know, typically for 25 years I've done, they call, we bring them in, we get the information, we do the documents, they come in, they sign. Thank you good to see you call me if you need me, but hey, you probably should come back five years, no longer than 10 years. Okay, thanks bye, and they're gone and you move on to the next client. There's about four clients right now that it's like they're coming in again. They keep coming in to see us, or Ian, or there's always something to be done and we're not overcharging, we're not overdoing it, we're solving their problems, honestly, undercharging.

Speaker 3:

I need to overdoing it. We're solving their problems Honestly undercharging. I need to raise my price. That's another story.

Speaker 2:

But these people are good clients and they talk to other people and they are very appreciative of what you're doing and I tell you all the time it's the best job in the world. And these people are very appreciative of what we do and they write the check. They don't think twice about it, they just say, yeah, you've shown me value. And I will say that only occurred because Ian and I work together and we see these clients with two different focuses to truly solve their problem, and it results in more business for him and results in more business for me. But the key thing is we're solving the client's problem and it's a problem that I would have never seen.

Speaker 3:

And you know most. I'm painting with a broad brush here and I have to be careful. But most advisors and most of the estate planning attorneys that I've worked with, this isn't how they collaborate, but the type of clients that everyone wants, that can write that kind of check, that wants to solve those problems. And I don't know, maybe you guys have experienced this, maybe you haven't those problems, and I don't know, maybe you guys have experienced this, Maybe you haven't, but the you know you, you can have a client with an extra zero on the on the fee, and typically they're easier to work with. Yeah, like the, my least profitable clients tend to be the hardest clients to work with. You know the, the ones where there's an extra zero, uh, they'll send K thanks, fee paid, k thanks and they're and you're like what zero? They'll send K thanks, fee paid, k thanks and you're like what? And they're like, yeah, I already paid the invoice, it's a different. And so these are the clients that you want to have and these are the people that you want to serve. And if you don't have these skills and the ability to bring these relationships to the table, this is your opportunity to begin that and we can help with that. We can help. There are professionals that I'll bring in on things, and the way that we explain it is look, you're building a team we call it a wealth team that has all these components, and if you've got current professionals, they're great. We'll work with them, but you need one person to quarterback and coordinate that team and address these challenges, and that will save you time, that'll save you money and we'll get a lot of it done. The clients love it. I'm doing one for someone today, actually in another state, and they have the kid is the financial advisor for the parents and the grandma, which is a nightmare. But and I say kid cause he's like 22. Sorry, but you know, I'm 24 now so I can say that I'm just kidding, but you know. But these are the. These are the types of things that are going to be.

Speaker 3:

These are the types of clients that are very resistant to the DIY services and the. You know even the templated advisor services, right, because you know they. At a certain point, you get to understand that money is a tool and the clients understand that and what's most important to them is their time and they will pay to not have to waste time and if you can connect to that. It's like if you can go, okay, that's my service, as I save wealthy people time, you'll have as many clients as you want, but it takes relationships, it takes a network and it takes some knowledge. And so if any of the folks that are listening to this, whether they're a coaching client of yours or not, I'm happy to consult on some of these cases, and you've got to not be a jerk but the you know the way that I don't work with jerks. That's my, that's my thing, and none of the folks that listen to this would be would be jerks anyway.

Speaker 3:

We know that, you know. But the way that it works is, you know, I'll have a conversation with you, the attorney, and then we'll have a, a Zoom call or a video call with the client, and it's just a data gathering call and what will happen is and hopefully you've done some intake so I have enough to look at to be able to ask some good questions but really you're going to introduce me as the planning specialist that helps on advanced cases and all I'm going to do is just ask questions they may not have thought to ask and see if there's any outside of the box solutions. This is a state tax, Medicaid, these kinds of things and if there's not, great, it's no big deal. But you look like an expert because you can bring someone in who specializes in this. All of a sudden, your equity just went up with them and I will tell you, ian understands Medicaid better than I.

Speaker 2:

I would say Prima Genie financial advisor. He did the marital split spin down at an event that I could not get to and my attorney was there and it was her first time. I gave her some credit and she kind of froze and he was like I got it.

Speaker 3:

My guy's most of the way there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, he did almost the entire marital split, medicaid spin down, and so he understands how Medicaid works and I would encourage that. Yeah, call him. Let him be involved with your folks and just ask people hey, do you want a second opinion? Let me. I know this guy. He understands what I do very well. Let him talk to you. Let's just see what goes on.

Speaker 3:

And the way that we integrate, even if they have existing advisors, is, you know, and this is an easy conversation for me to have with them Look, most advisors either focus on insurance or gathering assets, and that's great and I think that's important. I act as a planner and so I coordinate the big picture and deal with things on a 30,000 foot view that sometimes they don't have the expertise in. So I'm not coming in to disrupt anything that you're doing, but to help coordinate that. And so you know, if that makes sense, great, we can work through that. And then the way that I actually am paid is if there's a reason for me to engage with the client, they will engage me directly and we will work together and we'll and I will, you know, give them transparency on what the fee is and what's going to happen, and blah, blah, blah. So I'm happy to, for most people, you know, jump on a call and talk to the clients and I won't charge to do that at this point.

Speaker 2:

So so how did they get in touch?

Speaker 3:

with you. The easiest way to get to me is ian at justretirenowcom. Is my email, ian at justretirenowcom. Or they can call the office, 479-601-4199. Again, that's 479-601-4199. Or you can call Todd and if he likes you then he'll send you over to you. He'll rent me out for a day.

Speaker 2:

You can always contact me, todd at theodolawcoachcom, or Tricia. I would probably email both of us, just to be safe. Tricia checks her email way more than I do. But yeah, give me, shoot me over an email, give me a day or two to answer it. But yeah, todd at theodolawcoachcom, and I encourage you to do this. I think I've said in the last podcast, my three best months have been during the last six months, and I suspect that that will just continue to grow, and it's because of these clients that we just talked about. So, give us a call, subscribe and we will see you on the next podcast. Okay, thanks.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining this episode of the Elder Law Coach podcast. For those eager to take their elder law practice to new heights and are interested in Todd's acclaimed coaching program, visit wwwtheelderlawcoachcom. With Todd Whatley by your side, the journey to becoming an elder law authority has never been more achievable. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing and stay passionate about elder law.