The Secret to Living Forever

There are very few truths in the world we live in and plenty of uncertainty. Among these truths are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. However, one more truth was left out of this declaration, death. The inevitable death is rarely talked or thought about. People want to think of themselves as invincible and think that by avoiding the topic it will never happen to them. In reality it is quite the opposite. The secret of living for eternity and making yourself and your legacy invincible is through proper planning for the inevitable.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to get your estate planning documents in order. Recently a client who I only recently inherited passes away before we had an opportunity to review his estate plan. It has caused me quite a bit of concern for the family because his deceased father was the beneficiary of a life insurance policy and his sister was the sole beneficiary of both an annuity and investment account. His brother was left out of any beneficiary arrangements. The client had a Will, but the family was unable to locate it. The client was unmarried and had no children, so the next of kin was both his brother and sister. The life insurance policy is going to paid out to his estate, go through probate, and after attorney fees and probate costs are taken out, the brother and sister will split the rest. If the client desired to leave the brother out entirely, his withies are not fulfilled. If he wanted his brother to get half of everything, his wishes aren’t granted because he doesn’t get half of the annuity and investment account. Either way, there is no way of knowing what the client truly wanted and frustrations and miscommunications develop between the family, creating friction between surviving brother and sister. The stress of the passing of a sibling is painful, the stress of the financial result may painfully split the family apart.

What we can learn from this, everyone needs to have their estate planning in order and review it on a regular basis. Give a copy of the documents to your expected executor, attorney, and financial advisor.  This could involve either a fully fledged estate plan provided through an attorney, or simply a statement of wishes drafted by the individual. Anything is better than nothing. However, the time, energy, and resources put into your financial plan will determine how entact the plan will be. The more ambiguities, the more opportunity for court battles, and the more money will dissipate towards attorney fees. The first place to start is by making sure your beneficiary arrangements in your life insurance and retirement plans are how they should be. With regards to the rest, you can save some money by starting with some of these documents below and taking the completed versions to your estate planning attorney. Both your financial advisor and estate planning attorney can assist in helping you.

http://resources.lawinfo.com/en/articles/wills/wisconsin/basic-requirements-for-a-last-will-and-testam.html

Rules: http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/853.pdf

Included in your estate planning documents should be Living Will and Health Care Power of Attorney. Just click the link here to find those documents.

http://www.dhs.wisconsin.gov/forms/AdvDirectives/ADFormsPOA.htm

Finally, I encourage everyone to create a “death kit”. Things to include in this kit are a list of all your assets, a list of you passwords to your accounts that you would want accessed by a trusted person, contact information of the people who you would want notified of your death (attorney, financial advisor, relatives, friends, pastor, business partner, etc), include your desired funeral arrangements, and finally your entire estate plan documents. Please take care of these things while you are alive, because once you aren’t you are dead. If you need advice on some good estate planning attorneys that I have done work with, please get in touch with me and I can introduce you.  

Related articles

• Why Young Adults Should Have an Estate Plan (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Five Pitfalls Overlooked in Estate Planning (lawprofessors.typepad.com)
• Estate Planning: A Family Affair (risurreyhillsblog.wordpress.com)

Fairness in Football and in Life

On Saturday night, the Wisconsin Badgers played Arizona State in the second game of the year. This was a hard fought game that ended with a controversial call. Wisconsin was down 2 points and was marching down the field in the final drive. They got the ball down to the 13 yard line to set up a game winning “chip shot” field goal with 18 seconds left. In order to give Kyle French an easier kick and kill some more of the time off the clock, the quarterback Joel Stave took the ball to the center of the field, took a knee, and set the ball on the field for the officials to reset. After doing this, one of Arizona State’s players jumped on the ball thinking it was a fumble, even though the whistle had already blown. This caused the time to trickle down and made the Badgers to run out of time to get the next play off, therefore losing the hard-fought game.

Frustrations and anger over the controversial ending of this game erupted instantaneously and caused me to reflect on the end result. This was a non-conference game and so it won’t terribly affect Wisconsin’s chances of making the big Rose Bowl game or Big Ten Conference Championship. Since Wisconsin isn’t projected to go to the National Title game this year, it didn’t effect those dreams. Depending on their record, it is possible that it may effect Wisconsin’s chances of making certain bowl games. Losing this game doesn’t make or break Wisconsin’s football season this year, however it is still extremely frustrating because the players on that team battled to put themselves in a position to win the game. Rewarding their efforts properly with a victory is out of the hands of everyone except for the officials, whose sole purpose is to make the game fair and create an equal playing field. The biggest frustrations come from the “fairness” and “neutral” aspect that officials are supposed to bring to the game being swayed in the direction of the opposing team.

It’s a code of not doing the correct thing that really gets people angry, just as much in life as it does in football games. These include those actions, when you find out someone has taken performance enhancing drugs, when a car next to you speeding excessively and not using turn signals, when people cut in line, when someone leaves a poor tip, when people cheat on exams, when you get charged extra for things like sharing a meal, taking money out of an ATM, closing out accounts, or when a person is swindled or taken advantage of. Many times these are things that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of things and shouldn’t piss us off as much as they do. But they piss us off nonetheless.

This really speaks to how important fairness is in the society we live in. Although you may be able to get ahead quicker if you cheat, lie, or steal, in the long run it will prevent you from experiencing the true successes in life.  Do what’s right even if the industry you work in constantly presents you with a situation in which fairness can be skewed in favor of yourself over clients. Not only will you appear more sincere and professional, you will feel better about your actions (or victory). Just as the officials in the football game had one shot to be properly prepared to do the right thing in the very moment of the game, we need to make sure that we are properly prepared and trained to do the right thing in the moments of our business interactions. Once an action has occurred, there is rarely something that can be done to overcome the result of that action. Eliminate poor unprepared actions and you will eliminate your regrets.

Related articles

• Wisconsin vs. Arizona State: Refs Hose Badgers in Bizarre Finish (bleacherreport.com)
• Pac 12 admits Pac 12 refs screwed Wisconsin (bloguin.com)
• UPDATE: Officials from Wisconsin-ASU game reprimanded (nbc15.com)