This afternoon I was able to visit with a client when he came in to pick up his estate planning portfolio. He remarked that “we sure did have to get a lot of things cleaned up. Thank goodness we found out about that. We would have hated to leave that mess for our daughter.” What he meant by that is that in the processing of transferring property to his trust, we discovered several issues with land he owned in Kentucky. Now I am a Missouri attorney and focus on Missouri law so when clients need a real estate deed drawn up to transfer land in a different state to their revocable living trust, we often work with attorneys in the state where the land is located to get the real estate transferred.
In this instance, the land was a vacation house located near Kentucky Lake. While working to transfer the lake house to the client’s trust, several issues with the current deed were discovered. It took a couple hundred dollars and about 3 weeks to get these issues cleared up. Yet, had my clients not taken care of these issues and left it for the daughter to deal with, it would have likely cost her thousands of dollars and taken months! There is an important lesson here – if not addressed by you, issues typically become more expensive and difficult to fix, not easier.
So often my clients tell me that they have procrastinated doing estate planning for years. Perhaps in part because of that procrastination, when they finally choose to get their affairs in order, they almost always report feeling relief! If the time is right for you or a loved one to get your affairs in order, we’re here to help. Each day we help educate individuals what their options are and help them implement solutions that make things easier on their spouse and children.