Estate
planning isn't just for the wealthy
Garner Sherrill is certified financial planner
and the wise president of the Wealth Strategies
group for Northern Trust bank of Florida in
the Sarasota-Bradenton market. In addition to
advising real estate investment clients about
their portfolios, he often talks to them about
estate buying and selling planning. Recently
he sat down with business Writer Rich Shops
to talk about wills and trusts.Tell me about
the opinions available to some one who wants
to leave their estate to their spouse or children.
Let me start real estate investment by saying
there are two different areas to look at. There’s
dying and there's becoming incapacitated. There
are certain areas you might look at for incapacity,
such as durable power of attorney, which would
be allowing somebody to act the investment on
your behalf, say, for your finances in case
yoyo become incapacitated. There's a health
care surrogate, which allows people to make
decisions for you medically if you become incapacitated.
Or you could have living will, which basically
states when they can pull the plug on you, what's
your intention as far as, do the doctors to
use every last option keep you alive?
That can take care of in capacity. Once someone
has passed away, you’re basically Looking
at wills and trusts of Investments , and trusts
are basically third party legal entities that
you can move your assists in to. A Will dictates
everything that is not in the trust. You can
also have a pour-over provision that says anything
not in the trust when I die gets poured into
a trust. The things to consider with wills is
they are subject to probate, and probate is
the state's way of dictating how those assets
are distributed. These are certain investments
that have will substitutes, qualified plans,
insurance, and annuities.
All those have a feature in them that when you
purchase real estate investment annuities or
when you purchase insurance or qualified plans,
they will ask who is your beneficiary designation
When you fill those out those all take precedence
over the will or the trust. They will automatically
be distributed without going through probate.
Anything remaining outside your trust will be
going through probate.
IF you do nothing, have done no real
estate planning, what typically happens to your
assets?
Basically, the state will dictate how your assets
are divided up with real estate investment return
process. It will basically be a judge. The matter
will go through a probate court, and State of
Florida real estate statutes of how probate
work will go in to effect an will distribute
your assets. There's really no gray area there.
It's just a black and white system that automatically
transfers your assets.
How do you when you need to consider a will
or trust. Is there a certain point nib life?
There really is no time limit, propably when
your responsibilities include more than just
yourself, when you get married, when you get
kids, when all of sudden you have interests
that exceed your own personal needs. If you
should die, how would you want things to be
left for the remaining members of your family?
That's probably a simplest way to look at tether’s
is no real dollar figure associated with it.
When u starts getting in to complex trusts
of investment , then you look at dollar figures.
But at a basic level, the issues of living will,
health care surrogate, power of attorney and
a will are just basic planning issues for anybody
who has a spouse or a significant other in their
life.
Tell me about the distinctions between
wills and trusts.
The will is your intent in how you want to distribute
your property. If you have a will, then it will
supercede probate. Probate will go through the
will to say this is how the person Wanted his
estate distributed. A trust avoids probate because
a trust is legal entity, so if I gave assets
to a trust, it’s like if I gave assets
To my spouse. For all legal purposes, it’s
an entity. And it gives you more control beyond
the grave. You can write certain languages into
the trust saying that I want my spouse to receive
income but I want my children to receive the
principal. There are all kinds of ways of ways
of carving up what is principal and interest.
There are all kinds of power associated with
trusts. The more power you give somebody the
subject it is the estate tax.
