Fire at will:

[Central Coast residents: You can safely ignore this article because we are here to help you with comprehensive planning.]

Most of our local clients prefer to have the first meeting in person at our office in Morro Bay. After that initial meeting, many of these local clients (unless extremely local) prefer to have subsequent planning meetings online in order to avoid the drive to and from our office, especially after they find out how many meetings are involved with our comprehensive planning.

We also have clients located in remote parts of California, and even more remotely in the states of Washington and Texas, where I am also admitted to practice law. It can sometimes be difficult to engage remote clients because of that preference we all have for meeting in person wherever possible, especially with something as important and personal as estate planning for one’s family. We actually offered remote conferencing over the web way back in 2000 (hence, our “LawNews.TV” domain) using Webex, which back then was very expensive, but no one wanted to use it — again, because of that preference for meeting in person. But one good thing that came out of the horror of covid fascism is that we are all more comfortable with web conferencing. Plus, the technology has improved.

So the technology is there and we can actually, very easily, do all of the planning online. We can even help you sign all of the documents in those online meetings and then send you to a local notary before whom you will acknowledge your signatures. (You can also sign docs in our office and if you do so, we’ll cover your hotel room.)

Some folks will insist on using a local estate planning attorney despite all this new technology enabling remote meetings. The purpose of this article is to point out the downside of insisting on a local law firm (unless of course we are that local firm!), which is that truly comprehensive estate planning may be difficult to find locally without a lot of searching, may be expensive to hire once found, and might not even be available in some areas.

Most trust attorneys operate to some degree as trust mills, cranking out estate plans with software quickly, without much customization. Often an attorney will charge thousands of dollars for a “cookie cutter” trust that is quite similar in structure to a trust prepared by a non-attorney for mere hundreds of dollars.

If you are paying thousands of dollars for an estate plan, you are probably serious about protecting your family. The question is: how serious is your attorney about protecting your family? You are wasting your money if you do not demand a truly comprehensive estate plan designed for asset protection and family protection.

Maybe you will find comprehensive planning locally, maybe not. You WILL with us!

What is a comprehensive estate plan? This is by no means a complete list, but here are a few of the issues we commonly address:

Special planning for gun transfers in California, for example to make sure guns can even pass under CA law from the decedent to the successor trustee
Retention of guns in trust to leave a legacy of firearm training
- lending of firearms for training of beneficiaries and successor trustees
Incapacity planning generally, and with regard to guns; determination of incapacity; regaining capacity
- health care decisions
- financial decisions
- retention of guns in trust; lending of guns for training
Nomination of guardians: are they trained in defensive handgun, like you are?
Planning for digital assets (leaving a list of passwords is not only ineffective, but actually pretty stupid)
Pure dynastic planning vs subtrusts for individual children
- how long to maintain common trust?
Continuing trust for entire life of your child, for maximum protection of your child’s inheritance from potential threats, such as:
- your child himself (biggest threat) — squandering, prodigality
- divorce, lawsuits, predators, undue influence, illness, taxes
- disinheritance by surviving spouse (blended family planning)
- BDOT income tax planning to grow trust efficiently and increase size of protected amount
Beneficiary-Controlled Trust — where you are not concerned about squandering, and your child can be trusted to administer trust properly
Protection of inherited retirement funds
Growing Family Power by transmitting Life, Fortune, Honor, to descendants
- Incentives for values transmission (faith, financial mentorship, charity, family maintenance, education, etc.)
- #DisinheritWoke
- Role of Life Mission for more successful dynastic planning
Transfer tax planning (estate, gift, GST)
- Marital deduction planning
- Portability and reverse QTIP planning
- Planning for state-level death tax — even if your state has none
- Dynastic planning for generations below children, in a GST tax-efficient manner
- Estate Reduction Surgery — advanced planning to reduce size of taxable estate (IDGT, SLATs, GRATs, other gifting, etc.)
- Gun HEET — tax-efficient firearm training for grandchildren where estate is so large all GST exemption is expected to be allocated and further sums can be spent on health and education expenses
Income tax planning to avoid capital gains tax
Property tax planning
Pet planning
Conflict avoidance
Business operations planning
Business succession planning
Trust governance — family control? beneficiary control? avoid trustee shopping?
Trust Protector planning to keep everything working
Client Maintenance plan to keep everything working
Self-Settled Asset Protection Planning (in CA, other states, offshore)