How to Protect Your Partner, Kids, or Chosen Family With the Right Legal Documents​

Jenni: Hi. Welcome to the Modern Family Finance Podcast, where we explore all things money, career, and life. I'm your host Jenny, a San Francisco Bay Area financial planner, specializing in the needs of women and L-G-B-T-Q professionals. So estate planning is one of the most critical and often most overlooked steps when it comes to building a secure financial future and protecting the people that you care about the most.

Jenni: And especially for women, LBTQ, families, singles, unmarried couples, the stakes can be higher with unique challenges that require thoughtful planning. I. So that is why I am thrilled to welcome Jamie Santos of Santos waling to the podcast today. Jamie is an experienced estate attorney based in the Bay Area.

Jenni: She's a native of the East Bay and a graduate of uc, Berkeley School of Law. She has over 20 years of experience helping clients navigate the complexities of estate planning, business law, and tax strategies. So I love it because she does it all and her passion is really helping people protect their families and their futures.

Jenni: So thank you for joining us today, Jamie. Hey, thanks for having me, Jenny.

Jaime: Nice to be here. Awesome.

Jenni: Did I miss anything in the introduction?

Jaime: No, you made me sound fantastic.

Jenni: Awesome. Cool. Well, Jamie and I have been working, we've shared a lot of, we've, we've been talking for quite a while, so I know that you have a lot to share.

Jenni: So I will just start out with, you know, why is estate planning essential for everyone, regardless of their net, their net worth? Or maybe it is. Maybe it is relevant to the Reddit worth. You tell me, tell me.

Jaime: Well, estate planning is a broad is a broad description, right? And when people think about estate planning, they mostly think about wills and trusts.

Jaime: And when it comes to leaving your stuff to the next generation or to, to whomever you want to give your gifts to. Sometimes the, the value of someone's estate is, is relevant. But mostly it's about making sure that your wishes now while you're alive, are actually carried through once you've passed. So estate planning can include how you want your things to be passed on to someone after you've passed away.

Jaime: But estate planning also includes some. Interests that you may have during your lifetime. Meaning for exa for example, you know, is there someone that you want help from? If you're unable to manage your finances on your own a durable power of attorney can help with that. And for your medical medical agency, you might wanna pick people now that can help you later on in life when you need help making medical decisions.

Jaime: So it's really for everyone. And it's not just about death. It could be for help during life as well.

Jenni: Awesome. Can you walk us through what happens if someone were to pass without a will or a trust in California? What if they don't have these documents in place? Actually, let's take one step back.

Jenni: Let's say they're incapacitated for a period of time and then they pass away. They don't have any of these stocks in place. What would happen to them? Yeah.

Jaime: Right. So California is the, the trigger word here, right? Every state has their own rules about what happens when you die with without a will.

Jaime: But I have to say most states, are. Alike in that just as in with California, there are special rules for who gets your stuff if you didn't lay out your desires in a will or a trust. And so in California, these laws are called intestacy laws, and they dictate the order in which someone will get something, and it'll sound familiar to anyone who came from a biological family.

Jaime: It lists all of your biological relatives in a particular order. So for example, if you're married and you don't have kids, the spouse gets everything. If you're married with kids, your spouse and your kids will share stuff. And then if you're not married and you don't have kids, then the state starts looking at degrees of, of familial relationships.

Jaime: So they'll see if you still have parents who are alive. If you don't have parents, do you have siblings who are alive if you don't have siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, et cetera. But. The point of the matter is that you had no choice in this, and if you didn't want your, you know, your brother, Jeff to get everything that you owned and you didn't write it down and didn't write that down in a will, you now no longer have a choice.

Jaime: Jeff's gonna get everything.

Jenni: Got it. And what about, what happens if let's say in this example I become incapacitated. I am in a car accident and I'm in the hospital and I'm not conscious and I don't have any of these, I don't have a durable power of attorney. I don't have any of these things.

Jenni: Then who, who would be the default to make these kind of decisions or, you know, be able to pay my medical bill? Like what happens then?

Jaime: Well, okay, so if you're incapacitated, you're still alive, then a will and a trust, even if you had one, wouldn't necessarily jump into action when you're alive. What the what the institutions will look for is who is your agent, right?

Jaime: So who is your agent for financial decisions? Who is your agent from medical decisions? And these documents are called a durable power of attorney or a power of attorney for medical decisions. And if you don't have those, then the state goes through the same order that we just went through with the intestacy laws.

Jaime: If you're a spouse, a spouse, if you're if you have kids, then kids, but it's not as easy even if you have these folks for someone like a hospital to sort of give up their control to someone who's not used. So, so for example, if you don't have a document that says, Hey, I don't wanna be on life support I don't want to use feeding tubes, it will take a hospital a lot longer to come to the conclusion that they should turn, flip off the switch than if you had the documents.

Jaime: And that's because they're worried about liability, they're worried about, you know, doctors are, are, are supposed to keep us alive. They're not supposed to turn off the switch. And so if you want your di desires to be listened to and upheld, it's really worth it to have these documents in.

Jenni: Got it. I mean, you've kind of mentioned some of these core documents.

Jenni: Maybe you can just run that list again, but when does somebody need to have a trust versus relying on just a will or like, you know, what, what are kind of the. That everyone should have and then the extra ones that some people should have.

Jaime: Right. Let me, well, let me do it in reverse order, right? Sure. Let me end up with the trust.

Jaime: So, 'cause most people don't think about this, like if, if you have kids who have reached 18 and they're going off to college, or they're just going out on their own, everyone who's 18 and older should have a durable power of attorney and a medical power of attorney because, if they're away at college and something happens to them and they're no longer able to speak for themselves, you wanna make sure that the parents, or if they want their siblings to be in charge, that they're sort of named in these documents.

Jaime: Most people don't think about 18 year olds needing any documentation, but but they do. Right? And it, in the rare case that something would happen to your kids those would be good to, to have in place. So after the durable power of attorney and the medical power of attorney, we think about wills and trusts in terms of how to give away our stuff after we've passed away.

Jaime: And a will gives away your stuff. If you are a parent of minor children, a will is also where you name the guardians for your children. If something were to happen to both, both parents, assuming, assuming there are two parents, and a will must go through probate. Procedure, procedure. Now, probate is just the name for a particular court division.

Jaime: We have civil division, criminal division, and probate is the division that takes care of, of wills. And with a will, it's gotta go through probate. It's a procedure that takes at least 12 months to 18 months. It can be very expensive unless you do it yourself. And, and most people wanna avoid that, which is where trusts come in.

Jaime: So a trust is like a will, a document where you can stay state who you want to get your stuff after you've passed away. It leaves instructions for someone after you named your, named your trustee to deal with the distribution of your stuff. But also a trust deals with what happens if you are also in incapacitated and who can make decisions about giving away gifts while you're still alive, et cetera.

Jaime: And when is, when would a trust be better than a will? Well, if you want the people that you're, you've, you're giving gifts to, to avoid probate, you absolutely wanna do a trust. And also in terms of, of wealth, we suggest that once you own a home, especially in California, you're going to save your beneficiaries tens of thousands of dollars in fees if you use a trust instead of a will.

Jaime: So we so we use that as a, as a, as a major marker for when you should have a trust. But even if you don't have. A home in the state of California, if you are leaving someone over, say, I think this year it's $184,500, right? So if you're a state, if all you have is you know, vinyl record collections that are worth only $10,000, you may not even, you may not need a trust, right?

Jaime: You can do stuff with a will because the people you've just left your record collection to can go through what's called simple probate. But if you own not just your record collection, but now all sorts of electronics you have computers, you have, you know, rare guitars and all this stuff adds up to 80, $184,000.

Jaime: Now people are gonna be forced into probate. And so if you own a lot of stuff, even if you don't own a home, we say a trust is, is worth it to the people that you're, that you're giving these gifts to. 'cause it's not quite a gift if you've given someone something and then they have to pay, you know, five, 10, $15,000 to an attorney to deal with the probate.

Jaime: Court. Gotcha. What about like, just speed or access of this stuff, right? So I've heard a lot of clients who maybe have, or people who have received stuff from their family member from like maybe a deceased parent, parent didn't have anything in place. It takes forever to get the stuff right? Like, if you have a trust, then can you get it right away?

Jenni: Or like, tell me about, you know, how long it takes if you have just a will and go through probate versus if you have a trust, you know, to actually access checking accounts, bank accounts, you know, change ownership of the home to you, et cetera, et cetera. Or to your heirs, I guess in this case.

Jaime: Dealing with a court, you know, a court is just supervising what it is that the executors are doing with the estate.

Jaime: But the court has certain timeframes during which you can't do anything. So, for example, in the first four months. After, after you've been named the executor of, say, your parents', parents' estate you can't do anything because you've gotta wait for creditors to come and make a claim in the court.

Jaime: So you can't touch anything, nothing. No bank accounts, nothing. You just, you can't spend anything. Just in case some creditor comes in and says, Hey, I need to take all of this. Now, with the trust, you still have to pay creditors' claims. But because you don't have a court supervising what it is that you're doing, as long as you're making sound competent and within the law decisions about the assets, you can use some of the assets.

Jaime: So, for example, if you're still waiting to hear from creditors in an estate, but you as the trustee of the estate need to do some other things, need to pay some other bills, you can at least take the money from the estate and pay those other bills instead of just making everybody. Everybody waits. So it's not immediate.

Jaime: It still takes time. You have to wait for death certificates, you have to get open up a, a bank account. But you certainly are not gonna be waiting for months or even years as you would be with a probate, which is when there's a will involved. So you have a lot more access. You have a lot more freedom.

Jaime: You have a lot more control

Jenni: got it. Okay. And you mentioned a little bit about guardianship and the need for families with minor children to have a will to name a guardian. You know, what happens if, like, how, how, like let's say, God forbid the parents both die in a car accident. If they have not named a guardian, then what happens?

Jaime: So yeah, we, we, we like to say that, you know the, the risk is low that both parents are gonna die at the same time, but the outcome is catastrophic from the point of view of, of the child and people left behind. So don't sort of leave it up to leave it up to chance. And parents tend to travel together.

Jaime: They get in cars together, they get in airplanes together. So, you know, even though the risk is, is low, it's, it's definitely not zero. , so. What happens? Well anytime guardianship is an issue, it's also supervised by the court, right? The court's always interested in the best interest of the child.

Jaime: And in California we have laws that say, who's first in line when it comes to guardianship of both parents are deceased. And in California, the first people in line are the grandparents. Now, of course, the court will see whether or not they're the best people suited to, to be guardians for the kids.

Jaime: But if you've got two parents and now you've got two sets of grandparents, how how's that gonna work? Right? And what if the grandparents, one set of grandparents isn't in California, but perhaps they're more affluent versus the parents, the grandparents who are in California who aren't as affluent.

Jaime: What's the court gonna do? You have no choice here now that if you don't have a will that names guardians, you're leaving it up to the court to decide which set of grandparents is gonna take care of the kid. And what if you didn't want your parents? To take care of the kid. What if you had siblings or best friends or, you know, a, a, a neighbor that these kids like grew up with.

Jaime: Those people don't have a chance against grandparents in the state of California. Got it. Okay. Super important guardianship. Okay. And, and tell me how about like for L-G-B-T-Q families, like we have marriage equality now. Is that all good? Are we all good now or are there certain gaps and challenges even with marriage equality for kind of these kind of families?

Jaime: Right. So before marriage equality right, it was a much bigger issue for lgbtq plus folks.. What we have gained since we have marriage equality is that our spouse is the first person in line through intestacy laws to, to get stuff.

Jaime: So in, in that sense, we are equal. However, what if both spouses are gone, then we still go through this process of looking to biological family and biological kin as the, the next people in line to receive, to receive things. And in lgbtq plus families. Still today, in 2025, there are a lot of us that are experiencing rejection from our biological families.

Jaime: So unless you come from a family where you know, you want your parents to be the next ones in line, or you want your siblings to be the next ones in line to get your stuff or to make decisions for you it's best to to to have the proper documentation in place where you get to take control now and name the people that you want to be your trusted your trusted go-to folks.

Jenni: Got it. Okay. Let's kind of move from families to, how about single folks, right? If you have single folks who don't have a spouse, maybe have or don't have children, don't know, like, how, how should they be thinking about estate? Like, what are some of the particular considerations for them?

Jaime: Yeah, so for single folks, I like to say, you know, that it's time for them to start thinking about it now, right?

Jaime: Most of us, myself included, right? Didn't start thinking or didn't start acting on my estate plan until after I got married. And then, then certain decisions become default decisions. Well, I'm married and so I wanna make sure that my spouse is taken care of. We have, we still have a parent who's alive.

Jaime: So together we wanna make sure that that parent is taken care of until, you know, unless, and until you know that that parent goes before us. These, these are default decisions, right? It's, it's the way that we think as a society of how things should happen. Well, as single people, we really have to think, we have to sit and think about what's important to us, who's important to us, and what is it that we would want, especially if we're younger.

Jaime: And, and, and I imagine we're gonna talk about, you know, the difficulty of having to, to deal with the emotions of doing an estate, an estate return. But I, I feel like. It's easier perhaps to think about the farther away you are from, from from your death if you're gonna live a long life. Mm-hmm. And but the, the, the, the issue for single people is don't wait until it's a default moment.

Jaime: Right. Don't wait until you get married. You know, think about it now. Who are your specific people? Maybe it's not your siblings. Maybe you've got a best friend, someone that you went to college with, or your childhood best friend that you've known for the last, you know, 20 years. Talk to them. Have discussions together about, you know, what you would want to happen if you were incapacitated, what you would like to do with your stuff.

Jaime: If some, if something happens. The, the point of the point is, is that single people have to be more proactive than the right people.

Jenni: Got it. I mean, what advice would you give to people who, you know, are struggling to identify, you know, that best friend or family member that they trust? Because it's a hard thing and also maybe all of their friends are their age or older, so they're thinking by the time this happens to me, we're all gonna be 85.

Jenni: So like, how can I trust them to handle all this stuff? What, what options does someone have in this case?

Jaime: Yeah, so two pieces of advice. Number one is, everything can change, right? So if you made the decision today, like I've got a childhood friend named, you know, named Jesse and I, I wanna talk to Jesse today about, or I wanna talk to Jesse about whether or not they're the right person to help me with this.

Jaime: You can have that discussion with them. You can find out whether Jesse's the right person or not, and then next week or next year or 10 years from now, you can make, you can change your mind, right? So thing, the thing about estate plans is that wills and revocable living trusts can be changed. So I think we stress so much about whether or not we're making the right decision.

Jaime: Is this the right person? Well, it might be the right person today. And then down the line, you know that if they're no longer the right person, you can change them. So relax and don't try to be so perfect. And then the second piece of advice I would say is you'd be surprised. Strike up a conversation with your friends at one at a time.

Jaime: Or, you know, if the, if there are three or four of you having a, a glass of wine in someone's, you know, living room bring it up. You'd be surprised we're all thinking about it. And just start the conversation and know that you don't have, have everything figured out today. But if you don't, start talking to folks and, and, and find out for yourself what's important for you and who those trustworthy people are.

Jaime: It may be too late. Got it. Okay. Super helpful. Are there, if, if, are there other options like fiduciaries, can you tell me more about like, if, if they wanted to say, hire a professional or some of these things, what are, what are, what options are out there?

Jaime: So a fiduciary is a person, right, whose profession it is to, to act as trustee after someone has passed away or to act as conservator or guardian if someone has, has become incapacitated.

Jaime: So these folks exist. There are tons of fiduciaries in every city. I found out. I, I live in San Leandro in the East Bay population, 90,000. We have a dozen fiduciaries in, in this town. And I've met almost all of them. It can be expensive, but it's, it's available. If you really don't have people that you, you can trust to do what it is that you want to do after you've passed away.

Jaime: They step in as trustee and they will follow the directions in your trust just like any other trustee would. Got it. You've mentioned the term trustee. We've also heard the terms executor, like all these things. Like what, what does that actually mean? What are the, what are the terms and what's the difference?

Jaime: Yeah. Okay. So many terms. This, this is, yeah. Term, term soups, term stew. So a trustee and executor and agent are all positions of authority and positions of fa of power. And there's really no difference except where that person in what document that person is being named. So, a trustee is the position of power in a trust.

Jaime: When you create your own trust, you are the first trustee. You're the one in charge, and then when you pass away, you have a successor trustee. And that is the person that, that follows the instructions of the trust to distribute your assets. They're not necessarily the beneficiary, they're not necessarily the same person that's gonna get your stuff, but they're in control.

Jaime: They're now the CEO, as it were, and they're gonna make sure that everything goes where they need to go. An executor is the same person, only, that's the name that we use in California when it comes to a will. And a lot of times when we do an estate plan here, the executor and the trustee will be the, the same exact person.

Jaime: It requires the same skills and there's no reason for it to be a separate. Not always. There's no, not always a reason for it to be a separate person. An agent is the person that you name in a document like a power of attorney or a medical power of attorney. And again, they're the person in charge.

Jaime: They're the person making the decisions when you're incapacitated and, and, they that may require slightly different skills than a, than a trustee or an executor. So for example, my medical power of attorney would never be my brother because he doesn't have the same emotional skills. He's got plenty of emotional skills, but he doesn't have the emotional skills that I want from a medical power of attorney.

Jaime: So I've named a best friend as my medical power of attorney because I trust that she can turn the switch off. I cannot trust that my brother would turn the switch off, right? So different skills involved, but the people in power is what they are.

Jenni: Gotcha.

Jenni: So many okay, so we've talked about we've talked about different family times. We talked about single men and women. What about unmarried couples? Right. I think it's getting more and more common for couples. They can be cohabitating for a long time, maybe even have children, but they're not married on paper.

Jenni: And so some, like, does the default stuff still apply? Like what, what should, what do they need to be considering? Yeah. So unmarried couples, even if they're cohabitating in California, unless they're married or they're registered domestic partners, they have no quote unquote legal relationship in the state of California.

Jaime: There are other states that recognize common law marriage, which means like if you've, if you've been living with someone for seven years, you have the same rights as a spouse. That does not happen in California. Mm-hmm. Unless you have the piece of paper from your county or from the state of California, you have no legal relationship, even if you have children together.

Jaime: Mm-hmm. So, yeah. So, so it's, it's, it's very important that if you intend, like if, if, if it's your desire to make sure that your your partner receives something after you've passed away, that you have a will or a trust in place, because those same default intestacy laws will, will come to get you.

Jaime: Now if you are co-owning something. For example, if you are living with your unmarried partner and you want to own a home together, there are some things that you can do with a deed and you don't necessarily need a, a will or a trust. So for example, in the state of California, unmarried people can own property with what's called a joint tenancy.

Jaime: And in a joint tenancy, just by sheer fact that you've chosen that on your deed, when one person in the couple dies, the other person inherits the property. It doesn't matter what it says in a will, will, no will trust no trust, because that's what it says on the deed. Your partner will get the other part of the house, and that's a great tool to use if you're not ready to do a will.

Jaime: If you're not ready to do a trust, but you've got a house, it's a great way to own the house to make sure that your partner. Gets it and your, your default family doesn't, however, then you have the issue of like, well, what if the both of you die together? Right? And again, the risk is low, the catastrophe is, is, is high.

Jaime: And in that case, , that, that deed doesn't do any, any good. You'll still want a will or a trust, but same, same issues and some things you can get around with, with a, with a good deed.

Jenni: Got it. And speaking of kind of, we have the will and trust to dictate how things go. You can also, it sounds like what you're hear, what I'm hearing you say is that if you have a deed on a, you know, house or whatever, and it's joy with the rights of ownership, that's gonna trump whatever's happening in the will and trust.

Jenni: Tell me also about like beneficiary designations. 'cause that's also like a, some people their primary assets are their retirement or their pension. Yeah.

Jaime: This is the, this is a really good point, right? There really is a lot that we can do outside of drafting a will and a trust. And death beneficiaries are any financial institution, any account that you have, whether it's a checking account with your bank or it's a brokerage account with one of the major brokerage field brokerage houses, you can name a beneficiary for those accounts.

Jaime: And they're called death beneficiaries. And when you die. That institution will wait to hear from that death beneficiary. When that death beneficiary shows up, the account becomes theirs. So again, just like with the deed, it doesn't matter what the will says, it doesn't matter what the trust says.

Jaime: All of this happens outside of your quote unquote estate. And it's also really efficient. It's just can't it just can't deal with very complex gifting schemes. And what I mean by that is if you've got one account and you want your, your nephew to get the whole thing, that's very easy.

Jaime: And, and the bank can deal with that, right? 100% to my nephew. Period. Right? But if you're, if you've, if you're now older and maybe you have kids, maybe you have grandkids, you have a lot of nibbling, right? Nieces and nephews, and you want some of them to get something, like everyone gets something, you know, I want little Jimmy to get 10 grand to so he can buy his car.

Jaime: And I want Alice to get, you know, a, a, a half of the rest of it. These institutions can't deal with that kind of complexity, but simple, simple stuff, definitely. I, I advise everyone to make sure that they have death beneficiaries. The same is true for retirement accounts. Retirement accounts require that you name a beneficiary.

Jaime: I don't know if anyone listening has ever actually physically set up an account, a 401k or an ira. You can't do it without choosing a beneficiary. But your bank accounts, they won't tell you, they won't make you choose a beneficiary. You need to reach out to your institutions and, and name those beneficiaries.

Jenni: Yeah. And that's actually a question like you know, the retirement accounts, they do require you, but when it comes to, say, a taxable brokerage account or a bank account, you know, there's like the whole transfer on death designation or beneficiary designation, is that airtight in terms of kind of receiving the same treatment of avoiding probate?

Jenni: Like let's say somebody does not have a will or trust in place, but has a designated beneficiary on their bank account and on their, taxable brokerage account, is that pretty airtight in going through that? Or could that still get caught up in the probate process? Because I've heard different opinions about this.

Jaime: Yeah. It's, it's not gonna end up in probate by itself. And, you know, if it's, if it was done correctly and nobody wants to challenge it, then it should stay outta probate. But there's, but even if regardless of whether or not there's a will, whether or not there's a trust, if someone dies and someone believes that they should have been the recipient of something they can bring, they can bring a probate case.

Jenni: Good to know. Yes. We make sure to that all, all of our client accounts have beneficiaries. Okay. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm, you've worked with a lot of people doing their estate plans. Can you is there like a story of, do you have a favorite story from your practice where estate planning has made a big difference for a client in a positive way?

Jenni: And if you have a favorite story of a disaster as well, of someone not doing it properly and kind of the beware. Love to hear that too.

Jaime: Yeah. So the disasters unfortunately happen and they usually they usually happen because somebody waited. And or there, there are two types of disasters, right?

Jaime: There's the time element disaster, which we're dealing with a client right now who has a, has a will and has a trust, but they. They created this Will and Trust over 20 years ago, over 20 years ago. They were, they, they were in a relationship. Now th this is the kind of person, th this couple is the kind of person where like, once they decided they didn't wanna be together anymore, they actually stayed married.

Jaime: They didn't get a divorce, they stayed married, but they haven't been in each other's lives for 20 years. They're just, you know, were kinda like, well, we don't really care what the state thinks. We're just gonna go on and be, have our own lives. Well, this client wanted to redo his trust because he was getting older and he knew he was gonna pass away.

Jaime: And he also knew that his old, old trust named his spouse as beneficiary. And a few days before he was set to sign his new trust, he died. So now the children. Have to deal with the spouse who's not really a former spouse and trying to negotiate with them to say like, you know, I, you know, I mean, it, it, it's, it's a mess, right?

Jaime: Like mm-hmm. The spouse is, is legally do everything but not morally because they weren't together. So that, so that's a disaster and that's based on time and waiting, waiting too long before doing something. Another disaster can come from having a trust, but not actually putting your assets in the trust.

Jaime: And what I mean by that is if you have a trust and you own a home, the way that you get your home in the trust is by changing the deed of the house. And you change the owner from you to the trust. The trust owns the house and a lot of times people will create their trust and, forget to put things, put, actually put things in the trust and that can lead to problems later.

Jaime: And that can force someone into probate that didn't, that didn't wanna go to probate. So those are the disasters time and not funding the trust. So one of the things that was like, even though it was a tragedy, one of the things that turned out well is I had a client who was engaged to be married and the plans were to get married like six months down the line, and he decided to do some paperwork before, before getting married.

Jaime: So, as part of the estate plan, one of the, one of the documents that we provide is actually a HIPAA release form the healthcare healthcare release form that survives you. So right now, like you could give your partner access to your medical to, to your medical documentation. But once you die, she would lose that access unless you have this special document in place that says, Hey, I still want my partner to have access to my medical, my medical documentation after I've died.

Jaime: So in, out in this estate plan we did for this guy, we included that document. Three months later, he has a stroke. Two weeks after having a stroke, he dies. The insur, he had life insurance naming his fiance as the beneficiary and the life insurance company did not wanna pay out without looking at his medical records because they thought that it looked kind of fishy, that he had just purchased a life insurance policy, had just done an estate plan, and then was dead three months later.

Jaime: And we were able to provide his fiance with this documentation, she sent it to the insurance company and within, you know, 10 days she had a check. And so she had the money to pay for the pay for the funeral. So without it, it would've been months. And she would've had to argue and argue and argue with the insurance company.

Jenni: Well, yeah. I speaking about morbid things, right. I think speaking about morbid things well, what you're dealing with is people have to think about their own incapacity or death, and how a lot of us don't wanna think about that. How, how, is there a way to reframe so, you know, to, to think about this better, you know, and, and how, and not just for yourself, but also in raising it with reluctant partners or reluctant family members.

Jenni: Like if you're trying, if you're thinking ahead, you're thinking for also for your own parents or whatever, like folks who you know in your life that are closer to this. Like, I could tell you, like, my, my father is, you know, in a state where he's medically, you know, he, it's, he's, he's not well, and, but raising these questions are very difficult.

Jenni: Right. So both for yourself and for reluctant family members, how, how do you advise your approach this.

Jaime: Right. So a lot of times when I do a lot of times when I do workshops for different communities, I will talk about an estate plan in terms of, of being life documents and not death documents, right? And even a will or a trust can be described as a life document, certainly the other documents, right? A power of attorney, a medical power of attorney.

Jaime: These are documents that have nothing to do with your death. These have to do with your life and how you wanna be treated while you're alive, but unable to to, to affect your own agency. And then in terms of a will and a trust, I still call them life docs. And that's because you are alive now.

Jaime: You have agency, now you have desires, now you have a will. Bad choice of word. You have the desire to. Leave things organized for your family members and your, and, and your, and your special people, right? You have the desire and you only have the agency and the power to do that now while you're alive.

Jaime: So these are life docs. These are not death docs. Now, it's a, it's a, it's a play on words, obviously, and a will and a trust actually doesn't become activated right? Un until you die. But the desire to, to make sure that things are organized for the people that come later really has nothing to do with your death. It has to do with your love today, right? And your desire today to take care of people. Now, I, I've had clients in the past and one in particular that said to me, I don't give up.

Jaime: Blank. Right. I don't give, I don't give an f about what happens after I die because I'm dead. Yes. But out of the hundreds and hundreds of people and families that I've helped, it was only that one person who didn't care. Everyone else cared about what they were leaving behind. So maybe hard to think about your death and what comes after your death, but this is, this is more about your life and your love and the people in it right now.

Jenni: Yeah. I hear you. What about helping to bring up this conversation with parents? Right. We work with a lot of folks who are in their forties and fifties, so their parents are in their maybe eighties or so. Maybe they're still in okay health now, but you know, they have seen their friends have to wade through this mess of when parents are deceased and they don't have anything this proper, but they're afraid to bring it up with their parents and, you know, their siblings involved.

Jenni: Like, there's, it's, it's a very touchy subject. How, how do you advise folks to talk to reluctant parents ,

Jaime: so a lot of times, even without them admitting it, what parents are going through is a feeling of insecurity about what they know and what they don't know, and not necessarily the fact that they're going to die and they may not be willing to admit that they're insecure because they don't understand how it works.

Jaime: And so in those instances, you know, bringing it up with a parent and say, Hey, I need to do this for myself, right? Hey, mom and dad, like, you know, I, I'm not sure if you have a will or a trust, but I'm gonna go get one right now. And if you don't have one, is this something that you guys wanna do? Like, we could all do it together as a family, right?

Jaime: We can work with the same attorney maybe, and and, you know, I'll be there to help answer questions or maybe their, their translation issues if parents are not native English speakers. And so doing, doing it as a family actually helps. And some of my favorite clients of all times have been like parents and children who come in together.

Jaime: And I think that that's such an act of, of love for the children to, to do it that way. And if, if that's not the issue, right? If it really is about death, i, I would say, you know, broach the subject with other family yeah, with other family members present and just have it be a question like, is there, you know, is there something that's keeping you from doing this?

Jaime: And is there someone that, that you'd rather talk to besides me mm-hmm. That could help you make certain decisions? You know, maybe there are siblings that are still alive or maybe they don't wanna talk to the kids. Maybe they'd rather talk to the other family members. And in a lot of cultures it's taboo to, to talk about death, especially within.

Jaime: Within the, the nuclear family structure. So maybe help try to find someone in, maybe they belong to a church or maybe they belong to some other sort of community organization. They can have a discussion outside of the family.

Jenni: Yeah. Yeah. I often advise like clients in this situation, you know, one way they can broach it as simply saying, Hey, I'm working with a financial planner on this stuff and these topics have come up.

Jenni: How have you been thinking about this? And also as part of your own financial planning, sometimes, like trying to, it, it would be silly to totally disregard a potential inheritance into your own financial planning. And you know, again, it's up to the you, but you know, it often parents are happy to tell you because they wanna help you.

Jenni: They want the best for you, right? And they don't want you to be stressed out about money. So yeah, I think sometimes engaging, if you're doing it yourself, it's a good chance for you to bring this up with the parents too. Okay. Just a couple more questions. So one is about California actually, because California is pretty special, like around community property and maybe some other things, like what are some of the part California specific issues of estate community?

Jenni: Like, you know, do we have a state tax community property and inheritance that are unique to California since, as you mentioned all this stuff is

Jaime: state specific, right? So believe it or not, California is one of the only states that doesn't have an estate tax, which it's like, whoa, how did that happen?

Jaime: Now there's, there's a federal estate tax right now. It's pretty high. Each individual can give away $13 million during their lifetime or at their death without without the. The person or the estate paying tax, that number may sunset at the end of, it's scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025.

Jaime: But we are expecting that the current Congress will probably extend it so that that number won't come down. California does not have an estate tax, which is great. California you mentioned is a community property state. What that means is that once you get married or domestically partnered in the state of California, from the date of that joyous occasion, everything that you purchase with money that you've earned in that relationship is, is considered owned by both partners.

Jaime: So if I own a house that I own that I've owned for a decade and then I get married, that house is my own separate property. It's not part of my community. But then after I get married, my partner and I buy a house together. That house is community property. So when I die, I can only give away half of it because I only own half of it.

Jaime: So I can't give away my partner's half. And that goes for anything that's been purchased during, during the community, right, during the marriage or the domestic partnership. You can only give away. You can only will away or trust away your half, not your partner.

Jenni: Okay, so let's say somebody listens to all this and like, oh my God, I gotta get all this stuff done. What what do they do? What are the options? You know, there are obviously working with lawyers like yourself you know, you get also a lot of ads for like, or you people do it, DIY with legal Zoom.

Jenni: There's ads for these online services. What makes sense where, when, I guess,

Jaime: okay, I dunno if you'll ever find an attorney that says, you know go use Legal Zoom or go use rocket Lawyer, something like that. Sometimes sometimes it's okay. But what a lot of people don't accept about DIY options is the DIY part, right?

Jaime: So you shouldn't trust the documents that you're getting if you don't understand the information that you're putting into them. Right. And what do I mean by this? Right. So, so, you know, rocket Lawyer and LegalZoom have spent a lot of money developing these technologies for for filling in blank spots on documents with the words that you provide them.

Jaime: But if you don't understand what it is that they're asking you're not gonna get, you're not gonna get what you want out of it. So I went to LegalZoom last night in preparation for this, and I tried to find instructions on the website for what I needed to do to prepare to fill out their information for a will.

Jaime: It took me four clicks to actually get to a page that had instructions, and those instructions were not complete, in my opinion. And. I counted, I, I, I estimated how much time it would take to read all of the pages that included instructions just for a California will. It wasn't all on one page. They were on multiple pages and blog posts and stuff, and it would've taken me at least an hour to read all of them.

Jaime: So, my first, so my first bit of advice is if you wanna do DIY, be prepared to read all the instructions just as if you were to, to, to want to use any kind of fill in form. Read the instructions first. If you have a simple estate plan, meaning if you own less than $184,500 worth of stuff maybe you want, might wanna think about A-A-A-D-I-Y and not have the expense of, of paying an attorney to draft a trust up for you.

Jaime: But if you have a home, if you have minor kids, if you have things that you would be really, really sad about if they ended up not going well. I don't recommend using using a DIY. And it's not because these companies are scams, it's because it's not you, you shouldn't lay it at the feet of the company, right?

Jaime: You've gotta know what you're doing. They're not always going to explain it to you. And a lot of times the mistakes that are made aren't even in the documents. They're in the execution of the documents, meaning did you sign it correctly? Did you have it witnessed correctly? Was that supposed to be notarized versus being witnessed?

Jaime: And, and a lot of times folks, don't, they, they, they, they expect to receive a complete package once they've downloaded that document. And you're not, you're not done yet. You, you still have stuff to do after you've, after you've gotten that,

Jenni: yeah, and I'll add to this, it's like it's kinda like what you said earlier, which is like, okay, well maybe you did it right, but if you did it wrong, the, the consequence is very significant for your heirs.

Jenni: You know, I have talked to people who unfortunately due to an in a wrong incorrect beneficiary designation failed to receive the pension of their former partner, right? And so there's nothing you can do about it. Like once it's done, it's done. You know, the, if the partner has passed and the wrong and your name wasn't on it, there's nothing you can do.

Jenni: And that money, like, which could have supported you, you are out of it. So, you know, that's an example of a beneficiary designation. A little bit different from this, but it's just an example of like doing your estate plan properly with somebody will would've. I'm sure would've identified that problem early on, you know?

Jaime: Right. And that's, that's something that, you know, I wanna reiterate for folks is, is that, you know, you're, when you, when you hire an attorney to work with you on an estate plan, you're not hiring them to type out a bunch of documents, right? What you're doing is you're hiring them for their advice, for their counsel, for help with complexities that you may not even understand exist yet.

Jaime: And what you end up getting in return is not a set of documents, but some sort of sense of, of, of relief and that, that you did your homework by talking to someone and that you can trust that the people that you wanted to be taken care of are going to be the people taken care of when, when you're no longer around to, to to vouch for them.

Jenni: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so last question is like, what is the process of working with you? Like, as you know, kind of just what is it like to work with a stater? What happens?

Jaime: Yeah, so I think it's, it's pretty common across across, across the industry. You know, we, we meet with folks and have an initial consultation to make sure that, that we're a good match, right? That, that we're good attorneys to work for you and you're the, the kind of clients that we can help the best. And, and if you're not, we we're happy to give referrals. And then if we are a good fit and you wanna hire us, we move on to being engaged. And we start collecting information.

Jaime: We collect information using a questionnaire. If folks are not confident using online technology, we don't force them to, we'll, we'll get on a Zoom call or sometimes we'll even show up in your living room if you want us to, and get the information that we need to create your, your documents. Then we create your documents, we send them to you to review.

Jaime: That can be overwhelming. Because you know, you didn't, you didn't you, you didn't expect to have to read a, you know, a 50 page trust or a 15 page will. But we work through it with you so that you don't get caught up on the boilerplate language. But instead we just make sure that we've gotten everything the way that you want it.

Jaime: Then we print everything out. We use these really cute binders. Mm-hmm. There they are. When we deliver them to folks, we make sure that you execute them correctly. We notarize them for you, or we send a notary to, to your home, to notarize for them, for you. And if you have real estate or other assets that you want put in the trust, you can, you can have us do that.

Jaime: So you don't have to worry about whether or not you've done it, you've done it correctly. And you can sleep at night. And I have to tell you, I didn't think that I was gonna be affected when I was done with my estate plan with my partner. But the moment that we signed and had it notarized, I, I shed a tear because I felt like I'd finally done the thing that I'd said I was gonna do for years.

Jaime: And that was, you know, make sure that my family was taken care of. And so it's a significant thing, it's a significant gift to yourself as well as to your, to your family and friends. Awesome. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jenny. I love working with you guys.

Jenni: Yeah, we, we do too. Love working with you too.