COLONTOWN Presents: Flush the Fear: Let’s Talk Wills (2025)

Lauryn Cooney 0:01
Good afternoon to everyone. I know it’s not an afternoon for Julie our speaker. It’s early morning out in Alaska, but I just wanted to thank everyone for coming today. And if you didn’t know, August is “Make a Will” month. So grateful today, to have Julie Wrigley here with us to present and answer our questions. She is the Associate Professor, and she’s an Interim Associate Dean at the College of Business and Public Policy at the University of Alaska, and she is also a colon cancer survivor, and you are a mom of three, I believe?

Julie Wrigley 0:43
Yep!

Lauryn Cooney 0:47
She is also the co-chair of the PALTOWN Board of Directors. And if you don’t know, PALTOWN is the nonprofit that oversees and supports COLONTOWN, and I always think of it as like a little umbrella. That’s probably not right, because it’s a giant umbrella at this point. But there’s this whole infrastructure, if you don’t know, behind COLONTOWN, that gets everything done for us and allows us to do these programs. So we are grateful to Julie for being here today and for her willingness to discuss this topic. It’s not always an easy one. I know talking to other people, sometimes it feels especially as cancer patients or caregivers, kind of defeatist to think about these things. But I always like to think of wills, end of life, planning as something that is good for us as people. It’s just normal, everyday people. Nobody knows what their timeline is, and so I think it’s always good, no matter what your situation is, to have these things in place. So I’m excited for Julie to break it down for us today and make it more accessible and hopefully more easy to digest. So I will let Julie take over from here.

Julie Wrigley 2:14
Thanks, Lauren. All right, so I guess I’ll start with this, I’ll say hello and welcome, thanks for taking the time to talk about something that is, I guess, something that we pretend that we don’t need to talk about as humans. So I’m talking to you today, not just as a lawyer, I’ll talk about myself in a second, but just as a as a fellow colon cancer person, and cancer advocate. I come to PALTOWN, not just as a colon cancer survivor, but mostly as an advocate. I believe in advocacy. That’s why I’m a lawyer, and so advocating for people to take care of themselves, so I see this as part of the plan. But I’ll go back…I did not come up with this very fancy name, “Flush the Fear.” I thought that was really cute. Thanks, Lauren. I mean, why not talk about anyway, right? Everyone else who’s got colon cancer talk in their house. My 20 year old boys still, I feel like they’re still quite sophomoric, and we have a lot of flushing discussions. So anyway, but I said “ahem” estate planning, because that’s what I think of it as.

Lauryn Cooney 3:28
I’m glad that you liked it Julie, because I was like, “I hope I don’t offend her.” So I’m very glad.

Julie Wrigley 3:42
It’s really hard to offend me. I’m unoffendable. So, I titled this slide, ‘Why do I care about estate planning and why I’m here?’ So I am in Alaska. It is 10:06am, here, and I did do everyone a favor and have two cups of coffee starting my day here at the University of Alaska Anchorage. I, before coming here, I worked in, so funny to say this, but ever since I started law school, I wanted to do estate planning. It’s a really broad field. It actually incorporates all the things I named here. It’s business planning. So, if you have an estate, you worked or have an interest in a business, you never know. Real estate: we all have real estate, whether we’re renting or leasing or or owning or we’re landlords, whatever. That’s a big part of estate planning taxes. Unfortunately, that’s a reality of being a human in the world, there’s likely a tax associated, and then probate. Probate is the part where we help after after death. Families move on and transition with all of those things. So I wanted to do that since I started law school, which is kind of funny, but it came from my belief, as I shared earlier, that I want to be an advocate. I want to help people understand a system that seems insurmountable and difficult to understand. And I thought it was I’m sure, as we all do, we all know people who’ve had great, terrible experiences with probate and estate planning, and hopefully, some people also who said, “Wow, that wasn’t such as as big of a deal as I thought it was going to be.” And that’s my goal for people, is to help be another advocate during that time of transition. So I’ll explain how you can help your family later. But my cancer involvement as directly, of course, it was indirect prior to this, but in 2013 I was diagnosed with colorectal cancer at the age of…it was my 40th birthday present, and I was working full time, of course, and had three children and my wonderful husband helping me through it. And so I think of…that’s why I’m here. That’s why I still care about estate planning, because I recognize that all of the parts of estate planning, they don’t just help in that moment, if I hadn’t been an estate planner prior to that, and had all these documents in place, it would have just been an extra layer of things to be on my mind. So that’s a picture of my family from last Christmas. You can see we had a very, well, maybe you can’t tell, but we had a very low snow year up in Alaska, which nothing makes an Alaskan more cranky than a winter without enough snow to do all the fun things we love, but we are all there. No, there’s no snow on the trees, and that’s our Newfoundland dog too. It’s really hard to take a picture of a black dog. I don’t know if any of you have a black dog, but there you go. That’s why I do what I do every single day. Aren’t they cute? Okay, moving on. Okay. Why plan ahead? I’ve kind of done some foreshadowing, and before I get into this meat part, I want to say that I also accept questions as I go along. As a professor, I have since 2017. I recognize that students of all types, you, me, we’re all students in life. Let me know, when you’re thinking about it, put it in the chat. Or even, I can even sort of, I think, see your hand raised if you want to be so bold as to ask the question directly. I would love to take the question as you’re thinking about it. Don’t worry about holding the question.

Lauryn Cooney 7:48
Thank you. That’s really nice.

Julie Wrigley 7:51
Yeah, for sure, for sure. So why plan ahead? It’s more than just estate planning, but I think of estate planning, and I’ll talk about all the different parts I see, but in general, as an umbrella. You’re thinking about the future of what’s going on, it provides control. One thing we experience, I think, as cancer patients, is the lack of control. You don’t know when your doctor is going to call back, whether the lab actually got your lab order or you’re going to have to go back to the doctor’s office. You don’t know what your disease process is going to look like. You don’t know, right? I can go on and on about what we don’t know. Estate planning is this really funny thing where you actually have control. It’s your assets, it’s your life planning. It’s your legacy. So it’s an opportunity to seize a little bit of control in an uncontrollable situation. But the funny companion to that is how that control that you’re providing, that guidance you’re providing to others actually about your assets, offers comfort to others, to your family, to your spouse, to your partner, to your children, to the grandchildren you may or may not have yet, right? There’s some sort of comfort when they think back and think, “Huh, I wonder what, Mom, Dad, what they – or what our good friend, our partner wanted.” It’s writing things down, or at least communicating in some fashion is such a comfort to those who are faced with making really difficult decisions on your behalf. And so communication, while awkward, sometimes difficult, is super important. Another thing to acknowledge, I don’t mean to use words that are could be triggering for some people. I want to recognize that this kind of planning uses words that give us all sorts of emotions. My words come from, just imagine, I’m a little desensitized, because since I’ve wanted to be an estate planner, since I was a baby lawyer in 1990, well, I was a lawyer as of ’99 but I started law school in ’96 – that’s a really long time of me getting used to using the words ‘estate planning’ and making jokes. One of my coping skills is humor. It’s probably number one for me, and it’s probably awkward and inappropriate humor. So I’ll just apologize for that. If something I say comes off as insensitive that’s not how I mean it. That’s just one of my coping skills to talk about a situation that is really, you know, challenging, and so I don’t mean to trigger anything in anyone else. I take this very, very seriously, but life can be fun. Estate planning can be fun. Taxes not fun, but there’s humor there. So I’m always looking for an opportunity, so I use words like estate planning, and I might kill people off in this discussion, and I might use the word death without hesitation, because it’s practical reality and they’re just words, so let’s not give the words more power than they deserve. That’s my perspective. So I hope that’s okay with everyone. Anyway, I digress, I apologize. But anyway, back to more: why should you plan? You want to ensure that your wishes are honored, right? It goes back to the control part a little bit. I think one of the proverbial questions comes back to, where you want to be buried, or where you want your ashes spread. I have stories for days from people about really interesting, creative ways. In Alaska, you can do all sorts of crazy stuff with ashes. But you know, people all over the country, I know from colleagues, it’s a really big conversation with clients who are doing estate planning. Put that, I don’t know about put that in writing. That’s another judgment question we can talk about later, but talk to your loved ones about that. That’s how you get your wishes honored. For me personally, I want to be cremated and I want my ashes spread in this particular area, well, a couple places, but one area in Alaska, if I hadn’t conveyed that to my family, then they will never know. So I feel a sense of peace because I’ve talked to them, I’ve made it a very normal conversation, “Hey, pass the milk, and by the way, did I remind you that I want my ashes spread in Broad Pass?”. They all know every time we drive through Broad Pass, I’m like, “Oh, it’s gonna be so nice to think of me here someday.” Anyway, someday… It protects your family. It protects them because they don’t have to make that decision without knowing what you want. So I think I’ve talked about that enough…Real talk: I’ve been told I’m direct. I’ve been told I’m all sorts of things. And so, you know, as I age, I am proud to be a survivor and I’m proud to just say what I think. So you can’t help but be yourself, so let’s clap for ourselves. Everybody…I mean the best, right? Okay, so there’s death time planning, and there’s lifetime planning, and here’s a little bit of the lifetime planning we’re going to talk about both today. So another reason why it’s good to make a plan for your lifetime, all those decisions that come up. So there’s this phrase that I didn’t put in here, but the version of incapacity, or just, do you have capacity? Does the patient have capacity? And while I’m not going to go in to that extensively, because each state has a different technical definition for what capacity is for a person, or a patient. I’ll allude to that. It’s a great word to think about. But the great part is, if you’ve done your lifetime planning, if you’ve done certain documents, then you are far ahead. You don’t have to go to the court to ask for help, for supervision of you or someone else that you love that may become incapacitated. ‘Incapacitated’ means they cannot speak for themselves. And that could be, I think the easiest example of that, that is universal, is a minor. If someone is a minor, under the age of 18, generally speaking, that’s someone who’s considered incapacitated for legal reasons so they can’t sign a contract to buy a house or, without special permissions, they can’t generally get married. You can still talk to your kids’ doctor, because you’re the parent, right after they turn that magic 18, all of a sudden they need a release of information, some sort of HIPAA release, and all of those things in order to talk to you. That’s what we’re talking about. So if someone becomes incapacitated as an adult, what happens is the court intervenes, because if you don’t have these really fun documents that I’m going to share with you… Don’t be afraid of the court. They really are there to help. It’s just there’s other, more simple, direct ways to do it, with a plan you choose. So again, these documents that I’m going to talk about in a little bit, they give you the chance to write down who you want to act on your behalf, not the state statutes. You can imagine that anything associated with a court has a statute or a regulation. If you have a document that you’ve executed on your own behalf that takes care of these situations, then we don’t even have to wonder who the court gave, the statutes give priority to make the decisions for you. Maybe you don’t want your spouse to do it, and your spouse doesn’t want to make decisions on your behalf. I’ve definitely had clients with that scenario. They want their sister, their brother, their kid, to make the decision, not their spouse. (And I’ve got stories for days, as we all do, but as a lawyer, you can imagine all my lawyer stories) Family conflicts: If you decide, and if you say, “Hey, I want my-I want my husband, my daughter, to make these choices, healthcare decisions on my behalf”, then guess what? Then your son doesn’t. He’s like, “Oh well, there you go.” It’s already worked out, and so there’s no conflict, because you’ve, of course, already talked to your kids and said, “hey, it’s going to be the daughter, not the son. You live across the country. She lives near me.” Then he’s not offended, and then everyone’s harmonious and focusing on the important thing, which is making decisions that are in your best interest as a team. Any questions?…

Lauryn Cooney 17:01
Julie, we did have one question: how do people start having these conversations?

Julie Wrigley 17:01
That’s a great one. Well, the first thing that I would recommend is thinking about – I think you’re just talking about difficult conversations in general. Is that right?

Lauryn Cooney 17:01
Yeah, I think probably, your wishes, yes.

Julie Wrigley 17:16
So there’s a couple ways to do it. One is to make the document and then bring the document back as an agenda to talk to everyone. Because you’ve already done it, and you get to choose, and everyone else has no say. You have all to say, because it’s your document, which is very important. It’s your life. It’s your choice. Another approach is when people gather, everyone, whoever everyone is, the important people they can think of, that might want to be part of that conversation. Or you can do it one at a time, and you just have a very frank conversation about, “hey, I’m about to execute this document. I’m filling these papers out”… however you want to say it. “And these are some of the decisions I’ve made. I’ve made these decisions. Do you have any questions?” I don’t even know if I would ask if they have any concerns, because that invites them asking you, you know, a little squeak into to asking/questioning your decision. It’s your decision. You make those decisions. That’s a really important part to remember. As you’re thinking about estate planning, this is 100% all about you, and just like in every aspect of our lives, not everyone is going to, no matter how close you are to them, they’re not all going to agree with the way you want to do it. But guess what? They’re your assets. It’s your life. It’s your choice, it’s your will, it’s your it’s your estate planning documents, it’s you. So remember that this is 100% about what you want, and other people can have feelings and thoughts and concerns, but in the end, it’s your choice, but sharing with them really goes a really long way in having a conflict later. Does that help?

Lauryn Cooney 17:15
That was helpful for me, so I think yes, Stacey said, “Thank you”.

Julie Wrigley 17:16
Okay, great. Okay, okay, awesome. Okay, so now we’re into the death time planning, or estate planning. That’s more of the word we would use for ‘who gets what, when and how in the future’, there’s a lot of ways, and I’ll talk about that a little bit, but mostly the questions that I’m asking when we’re doing estate planning, the questions you’re asking yourself is, who receives the assets and how? How how did they get them the control and the timing? There’s, I put in my ‘three strikes, and you’re out’. And there’s different ways assets that get passed to minors. For instance, that’s the ‘three strikes, and you’re out’ per the: I’ll give you a third at 25, a third at 30, and a third at 35, of the assets of this trust. So anyway, it starts getting a little more mired, but there’s different ways you can give assets to people in your life. It’s not just you know, when it’s time to pass the assets out, everybody gets a big check. And there’s a lot of reasons for that, which I could do a whole second Zoom meeting about. So let me know, I can talk about estate planning for hours, and then unwanted distribution. So there’s this thing I’ll talk about. It’s on a couple slides, and I alluded to it a little bit, but the technical term of something called ‘Intestate Succession’. So here’s the lawyer joke. You can see how funny we all are if you don’t have an estate plan, don’t worry. Whatever state you’re living in you has has one for you, which is 100% true throughout all of the United States. Every state has something called ‘Intestate Succession Laws’, and that means, in short, that someone has passed away with assets and they did not leave a directive in the form of either a will or a revocable living trust that tells the state basically how to distribute the assets. So you may or may not want your state plan to look like what the state of, I like to say the state of Alaska, because it’s my home. I love my state, but what the state of Alaska wants me to do, I might agree – I might not. That’s really state dependent. So getting to know your state laws is pretty important. So there is, you do have an estate plan, whether you know it or not, it’s just dependent on the state laws of the state that you are domiciled in.

Lauryn Cooney 22:50
Julie, is that almost like a, “if this, then that” checklist type thing that they have? I was just curious.

Julie Wrigley 23:01
No, let’s see the most general version. And of course, I’ll pick on Alaska. So, a short legal lesson is that Alaska’s laws are based on Oregon’s laws. Certain states are a certain way, and certain states are another way. And so if you look across the country, there’s a lot of similarities, but there are also these really, everybody likes to be special and different, so they make things just a little bit different in every state and that’s why it makes it really hard to just say, “Well, in the US, you know, if you’re living in the United States, then intestate succession laws are X, Y and Z”, because they just shift them enough. They’re not generally a checklist. The most general way to summarize what happens in intestate succession laws, is it’s some version of: some goes to your spouse if you have one. Some versions, some amount goes to your kids if you have them. Some amount, if your kids are not kids of the spouse you’re currently married to, that’s another conversation handled differently among the states. And then, of course, then if you don’t have kids or a spouse, who they go to and who’s got priority, and other conversation also. So that’s the general rule of, there’s something called ‘the table of consanguinity’…It’s really fun. It’s like how you figure out if that relative is your second cousin once removed or not, that sort of thing. How that actually works is with this table. And that’s a you can rely on, how that goes for a distribution of assets, if there isn’t a parent, and then there’s also the debt question. Did the decedent have debt? And if there’s debt, that’s another sticking point as well. So it’s definitely a conversation piece.

Lauryn Cooney 24:59
I appreciate that. That’s helpful. I just was kind of curious.

Julie Wrigley 25:07
Yeah, absolutely, it’s complicated. I wish it wasn’t, but I really can’t think of an easier way, except for doing it yourself.

Lauryn Cooney 25:30
We do have one other question. This person currently resides in South Carolina, and they have a will there, but they’re moving to Georgia in the near future. So does Georgia’s laws impact the will?

Julie Wrigley 25:46
There’s this funny thing called ‘domicile’. That’s how we decide, and really domicile is weighed in at the time of death. So I’m just going to go on a limb and say you’re not dying anytime soon. And so what you want to do is, it’s always smart if you’re moving permanently somewhere, you’re uprooting from South Carolina and moving to Georgia, you’re going to take your will and just have another lawyer in Georgia, look at it. So there’s funny things that make things make wills valid or invalid that you just want to make sure you’re complying with. Because if you’ve taken the effort, the time and money to put something together, it’s just comforting to know that it’s correct, and that it’s going to be accepted, and you’re not going to have any additional legal hurdles for your family or anyone else later on. But if you are primarily staying in South Carolina and you’re just hanging out in Georgia for, I don’t know, five months of the year intermittently, then I would make an argument. You’re still domiciled in in South Carolina. It just depends. How’s that for a lawyer answer?

Lauryn Cooney 27:02
Thank you. Yes, they said it was helpful. Thank you.

Julie Wrigley 27:06
Okay, great. Okay, let’s go on. Let’s get to the real fun stuff quick. Okay, so one version we talked about wills. But there’s two versions of, two vehicles that we primarily use for estate planning, and one is ‘the last will and testament’. That’s the most well known version. I’m going to equate these two things to – And am I showing my age? And who has a crock pot? Anyone? – Okay, I have a crock pot, and I call the will, “the fix it and forget it” version of estate planning. That was a big cookbook that I used, especially, actually, when I was in cancer treatment. We did a lot of crock potting. And so the will is a fix it and forget it. You go and you make this will. It’s a big contract, and it says who inherits what and how, and you talk about it at this snapshot in time, that you’re making this will, and then you’re going to do all these other things. You’re going to name guardians, if you have minor children. You’re going to appoint an executor. In Alaska, we call it a personal representative, but different states call it different things. Again, every state wants to be special in its own way. So you probably heard of an executor, but it can be called different things. And so that’s what the will does. It says I have all of these assets, and when I die, take all of the assets that I have at the date of death and pass them out, like I’m telling you in this contract. It’s like, “oh, okay, I’m going to give this to this now. Now that the death has happened, I’m going to pull up this document and follow the directions”. So the ‘fix It and forget it’ is that once you’ve done this will you’re not revisiting it very often. It’s a comfort to know that it’s done, that everybody’s going to be able to figure out who’s in charge and who to pass the assets to, and who’s going to take care of the kids and the dog and the cat and the horses, all of that sort of stuff, right? And the business interests, all sorts of things. And the charitable distributions, all of that sort of thing can all be put in a will.

Julie Wrigley 29:33
(Reads a question from the chat.) “If someone had little to no estate. Is there reason to have these discussions and put wishes on paper?” So there’s two answers to that question. One, well, yes, because, well. Yeah, actually, I’ll start with no, no. The answer that, you wouldn’t care, is if you didn’t care if there were so little to the estate, or in your perception, there was, you just were going to let the state laws take care of whatever there was, if it didn’t matter to you. If you don’t care, I don’t even know what the value could be. But let’s just say there’s some little value. If you want the state law to take over for you and you really don’t have an interest, or say you don’t care, is kind of dismissive. But you know, it really doesn’t matter to you in some really fundamental way, then don’t worry about it. I mean, I would say that no matter how big your estate is, if it really doesn’t matter to you and it’s too much of an emotional burden or something, I mean, depending on the situation, you know, there are the state laws to lean on for a reason. Maybe learn what they are and see if it really matters to you. I would make a pretty compelling argument that most people care about what happens to their assets and so I think putting it on paper is always worthwhile. There are more simple versions. There are lots of different versions of this will. They’re very simple versions, and there are more complicated versions depending on what your situation looks like. We had a conversation Lauren, and I think Stacy was there too. We were talking about these online wills. There’s a lot of things online these days.

Lauryn Cooney 31:43
Yeah, like a generator, or a general fill in the blank.

Julie Wrigley 31:47
Fill in the blank. And I will tell you, so I one of the reasons I volunteered to do this was that I don’t work as an estate planner directly anymore. I still work with people, but I’m not paid by anyone to do any estate planning anyway, lots of stories there, but I don’t. And so, why? I have no interest in whether or not you bring – and for my lawyers across America, I don’t care if you use a lawyer or not, except – this is what I care about: And call it 18 years of paranoid probate lawyering; I just want it to work out like you think it’s going to work out, or like you’re promised that it’s going to work out. So the problem, sometimes I’ve experienced with online legal documents, all kinds, including wills, is that the person who filled them out thinks it means one thing, but the legal implications are not what they thought they were, and you may or may not know what the result is, and there’s really no one to get… so things go wrong and a lawyer does it wrong, then your family can go to that lawyer, and at least you have somewhere to go, and you can say, “Hey lawyer, my mom said this and that in her will that you prepared for her. You owe us money because you screwed it up”. Oh, excuse my language, but if you do it on Legal Zoom or whatever, all those other ones that I don’t even know the names of, well, that’s what it goes, guess it’s just forever messed up, or you’re paying a lawyer out of pocket. I have cases with beneficiary designations that I had to handle because someone put it in. I’ve had conversations with the IRS. It’s just spending money with somebody else, on a lawyer to unravel the Legal Zoom that you thought was saving you all that money. So I don’t want to say don’t ever use one, because they can be really helpful, but they might be just what you need and want. They also might not be what you think they are. So I would encourage you, if you’re going to use that, to go over it and make sure you’re comfortable with it the best you can. Talk to as many people as you can. Lawyers aren’t really very excited about reviewing Legal Zoom wills. We’ve all imagined where you think, oh, I’ll just do it and give it to the lawyer, and I’m sure I can pay them some smaller fee to just review it and tell me that it’s good or not. And, unless you’re moving from one state to another, like that earlier question, I found it really difficult to find lawyers who are willing to do that. But, you know, I wouldn’t really recommend that but you can go to a lawyer and say, “Hey, I have a simple will. I filled this out. This should make it quicker, less expensive”. There are a lot of other options out there. I know in Anchorage where I live, there’s a lawyer. Her whole business model is doing simple wills for people. It’s pretty interesting. So I know there are lawyers around the country that are doing that. All sorts of fun business models. So maybe look at it that way, but relying on those things make me nervous. That doesn’t mean they’re bad or wrong, but you know you can’t – please excuse 25 years of paranoid lawyering – I can’t change my directness or my paranoid lawyer brain.

Lauryn Cooney 35:26
So I did have another question Julie. What are the options if you don’t have an heir or someone to leave your assets to?

Julie Wrigley 35:40
Your assets? Yeah, so many options. You can leave your assets to anyone, and there’s different ways. Let’s see here, what have I seen? Of course, the number one thing I see in that scenario is our charitable giving. It’s a really common time, frankly, for people to do charitable giving, whether they have frankly, heirs or not. There’s a lot of reasons. One, it’s just giving of a generous heart. Sometimes that’s just the time because you don’t need it anymore, but because you’re not around. But on the other hand, there’s all these organizations, or charitable organizations, that have meant something to you, and it’s a legacy that is a really meaningful thing. And so people will do that. Not only do they get the benefit of that sort of heartfelt giving, but also their estate can get a tax benefit, which, depending on the tax climate at the time of death, can really make a huge difference. It just really depends, I was trying to keep this simple, but there’s federal estate tax, which is the publicized one that people make a really big deal about that. Right now, it really doesn’t affect very many people. But then check your state law, because every state differs in this. Where I live in Alaska, we do not have a state law, a tax burden. We do not have a tax burden at death. But Oregon, where I’m from, and where my mother lives and my father is currently living, there is a gigantic, very burdensome estate tax, so that charitable gift can offset that tax at a state level. So anyway, that’s one reason people give charitably. Also of course, you can give to your friend. You can give it to your grand niece. You can give it to any person that you want to give it to, or people. Frankly, we could go on a whole tangent to talk about pet trusts. I’ve had people leave things to animals. I know they don’t live in this country, but I I think of how Queen Elizabeth gave the dogs to Fergie. I hope she left her some money too. There are versions of that in the US, where we set up trusts for pets. There’s all sorts of crazy things you can do or not. I love my Newfie, so I’d want her to be well taken care of.

Lauryn Cooney 38:31
Thank you. That was helpful, I was thinking about the pet situation too.

Julie Wrigley 38:37
It’s very common, more common than I realized back in the day. But we’ve been doing that since I’ve been in practice. So okay, I said, “fix it and forget it.” And now we’re going to the next version, which is a trust, so it’s really important to talk about trusts. There are, I don’t know, I’m just gonna say 8 million kinds of trusts. So when you hear the word ‘trust’ and you’re like, “Wait, I thought it meant something else.” That’s because there are so many different kinds of trusts. Unless you’re immersed in the world of that – I’m immersed in to some degree, or you have the time to spend learning more about them, it’s confusing. It’s just confusing. The kind of trust that I talk about in that, is an option from the, ‘if you’re not going to do a will, you’re going to do a trust’. That kind of trust is called a “revocable living trust.” So you’ll see an RLT: revocable living trust, or just so it can get thrown around if somebody says trust to you, oh, you need a trust. That’s just an invitation to ask more questions. Because in a “now, I’m really going to use everyone.” No, I’m not. No, I’m not. In a will you can have, that comes into being like magic at death. So you can have a will that has a trust in it. This kind of trust is a -revocable living trust is something that you have instead of a will, okay, you can have a “pour over will”, but now I’m getting technical, but you can have so you can have either a will or a revocable living trust as your primary document to transfer assets at death. Remember, the will was the crockpot. It’s the ‘fix it and the forget it’. The revocable living trust is is a little trickier. It does the same things, but instead of collecting assets at death and passing them out, then you collect assets when you’re creating this trust, because a trust is ultimately a contract and one of the essential elements of making a trust a valid document, is giving what we call a ‘corpus’, or, assets, within the trust. So that’s a legal requirement to have something in it, for it to be valid. Some lawyers love wills, some lawyers love trusts. Some of us see the application for both, depending on the situation, but you will see, as you’re perusing your websites in your area, of different lawyers, you can at least can get kind of a sense of who’s pushing what, and neither are wrong. Nobody’s wrong. It’s not wrong to want a will or a trust, or for a lawyer to tell you to do a will or a trust. It’s not wrong. It’s thinking about what you want in your life. So I use the example for these trusts, because you have to fund them during your lifetime. That means you have to manage them during your lifetime. So for instance, if I create a revocable living trust, they’re not for asset protection. So that’s a whole different conversation. This is just for estate planning purposes, death time planning since you fund them during your life, you need to change things over, like the deeds to your house, they will not be owned by you individually, but rather by your trust. You’re the trustee of your trust, but still you’re changing that deed. Or the lawyer, whoever you’re working with, is helping you do that. Your checkbook – it’s not just your individual name. Your checkbook is going to be in the name of the revocable living trust, whatever you decide to name it, and you will be the trustee of that trust. So all of these things – there are a lot of good reasons to have a revocable living trust, and I’ll just highlight a couple of them. One is, if you have complex estates or minors with special needs. All of these things, people like them because if you have a revocable living trust, can consolidate assets in a way that wills don’t. You already know what’s happening. We do them. I’ll tell you when I recommend them: I recommend them if you have assets in different states. So if I own a house in Alaska, and if I were so lucky to own a house in Arizona or Hawaii, or some other state besides Alaska, then I would consider a revocable living trust, because I’m consolidating for real estate purposes and probate purposes, my assets. The closer to death I am, the more I’m thinking about a revocable living trust because I know what my assets are going to be. At a young age. I’m only 52, I just have a will because who knows what I’m buying and selling, and I might get a new car, I might open a new bank account, and I don’t want the pressure of remembering. I just don’t want the extra step of maintaining this revocable living trust. My father, on the other hand, who is still with us, he’s ninety. My whole life, I’ve remembered that he loves to play on his spreadsheet. Before they had spreadsheets, with his trust, he loves estate planning. Maybe that’s why I became one… anyway. I don’t know, but he loves this whole tinkering thing and making sure his his assets are titled correctly. And it’s just something that’s fun for him. I’m just not built that way. So that’s another reason, how do you live? Do you have assets in different places? Time between, you know, estate planning process and perceived death, is it your your desire to tinker with it or know about it, or, to pay special attention to it, because a lot of times the common thing is we’ll have people who do a revocable living trust, 10 years go by since they funded the trust, they’ve forgotten to put in their new motor home, their cars, their new bank account, the investment account, they didn’t title them correctly. So then we’re spending all the money to correct that anyway. I can go on and on, but I’ll stop.

Lauryn Cooney 45:46
We did have a question, are trusts very expensive to manage and facilitate, which you kind of touched on.

Julie Wrigley 45:55
Yes, during your lifetime, no, because you’re doing all of that during. The funny part about them is, during your lifetime, you’re running it. You’re called the trustee. Instead of signing your name as your name, instead of me writing Julie Wrigley, I’d be writing Julie Wrigley, Trustee, when I sign my check. So they’re not expensive in that sense, but they’re more expensive than wills to set up. But when the original trustee, or trustor is, after you’ve set it up, and you’re moving on, there’s a lot of different reasons why. Well, are they expensive? Every trustee who’s not you is allowed to take a fee. That’s just business, right? Because these are business elements, essentially. So are they expensive? It depends. Not every trustee, like, would your child if you appointed them as the trustee take the fee? I don’t know, maybe, maybe not, most children, most family members, don’t, but they can, is what I’ll say. I’ve seen it both ways. (Julie now reads the next question in the chat to herself and then answers…) A special needs trust can be done inside or outside of a — I don’t know if you need a Miller trust or if you just need a special needs trust, but there’s a lot of different ways to do those. They’re manageable. They’re necessary. Are they expensive? It depends. That’s how I love and hate that lawyer answer. But if it’s expensive, it’s hopefully because you have so many assets that there’s a lot to do, right? Nothing should just be expensive just to be expensive. Are they free? No, but nothing really business-wise is, and except for when you’re doing it yourself during your lifetime, once you’ve created this revocable living trust, they’re not expensive because you’re doing all the work, just like you would running your life day to day. It’s at death or after the transfer of the original trustee has happened that fees can be charged and they should be. I think maybe it’s my woman-ness, but I think it’s fair that we all get compensated for whatever’s fair if we need to be. But as I said, not everyone accepts or charges a fee as a family member. But I think expecting that someone wouldn’t is really not reasonable. The law provides that, I think in every state, I think someone would someday prove me wrong, but makes it so that a trustee can always charge a fee, that’s just fair. So yeah, does that answer that question?

Lauryn Cooney 48:59
Yeah.

Julie Wrigley 49:01
Now these are great questions.

Julie Wrigley 49:09
Finally, I’m going to talk a little bit more about the lifetime planning documents themselves, and I call them just trying to find more long term planning, comprehensive planning, personal future planning, these are documents that are useful during your life. And my favorite one that I have spoken about all across my state and do actually with my students – this document is really important. It is an Advanced Healthcare Directive. This is a document that only applies during your lifetime, and you’ve heard it called different things, like a Living Will or Durable Power Power of Attorney for Health Care. Anything that’s directly related to health care, it gets all these different words. The most important part of this document, every state does it differently, has to do with the person you’re appointing to make decisions on your behalf when you cannot speak for yourself in a healthcare setting. It’s super important. That’s the most important. Our document here in Alaska, I think is really cool. It’s gotten so much better than it originally was. This is a quick historical because I like context, so maybe you do too. These documents, or this question, originated out of the Terry Schiavo case in Florida. Fascinating, that conflict just broke my heart between a husband and the parents of Terry Schiavo and there’s a lot of conjecture about what Terri Schiavo really wanted if she had had the luxury of having these kinds of documents prior to that. Think of the time, money and anguish, more importantly, that people would have been able to save because they knew what she wanted. That’s what this these documents are. So these are often free. In our state, in Alaska, one of the reasons I feel comfortable doing it with my students is that they could go to the website and pull the document off of the internet to pull off for for free, for themselves. So look at your own state. Go to the state bar association where you live. You can Google that and see if you can find the state one, there’s some for-profit companies that say, “Oh, this is a state form”. I mean, you’re welcome to do those too, but I’d also just look, there should be a free form if you’re going to do it yourself, and it’s really worth having. I’ve also seen them, depending on the state, at the medical institutions. I think a lot of us get asked, “Do you have one and who have you shown it to?”. The other piece of advice I have about this form after you fill it out is don’t just lock it in your lock box. Don’t put it in your fireproof safe. I mean, do, but maybe show copies to all the people that matter. If you’ve named someone, talk to them about it. Better they hear from you, they’ll take it more seriously. I’ve never in all of my years practicing, which is now over 25, had anyone who’s been appointed to act for someone in this capacity say “no”, because probably the person you’re thinking of naming and the backup, you always think of, see if you can think of a second person to make decisions on your behalf. They are-they are first they’re usually really honored, and also, they’re probably the right person, because they care about you so deeply and they want to do right by you. That is the most important thing you can possibly have in someone who’s making those health care decisions for you. You’re unable to speak for yourself. A lot of times, also, I want to mention these documents, if they can be in use because you’re unable to speak for yourself, and then the second you can speak for yourself again, the healthcare professionals will are obligated to ask you. So if you can speak for yourself, everyone should legally be asking you. But when you can’t, that’s when these kick in, and so they can fluctuate, come in and out, depending on how you filled out the form with when they are used. But it just it provides a lot of comfort and clarity for a lot of people. And as this slide demonstrates, there’s a lot of different opportunities in these documents to note all sorts of different wishes depending on the situation. And so that just depends.

Lauryn Cooney 54:07
And I have a question. So if these are state specific, if you’re doing a clinical trial in another state, or getting care in another state, you should have one for your home state, and also for that state, I would assume?

Julie Wrigley 54:24
No. You only need one. Again, it comes down to kind of funny, but really, isn’t that great that they don’t expect you to make sure you have one in every single state you could ever visit. So if I’m on vacation, we’re lucky in Alaska that people want to come and see our beautiful state, and so often during our tourist season we have an influx of busy hospital visits for all sorts of reasons. It’s kind of a thing around here. And, yeah, we would absolutely honor everyone’s from every state they come from when they have a problem. So it’s a good thing to travel with if you think it’s relevant.

Lauryn Cooney 55:09
Yeah, that makes sense. So you know, I’m gonna just fly to Hawaii and have my new advance or my new durable power of attorney, yeah, doesn’t make sense…

Julie Wrigley 55:18
And then that’d be a whole industry, wouldn’t it? And I’m like, let’s not have that industry. I think okay, because we’re running short on time, because I’m such a talker, we have a durable power of attorney. So this is similar to, they used to have, at least in Alaska, they had these combined, the healthcare with this durable power of attorney. So you will hear Power of Attorney also thrown around quite a bit. There’s a lot of different legal implications of those words. We say ‘durable power of attorney for estate planning’, because durable means when you are incapacitated. This document, this power of attorney form, will still be in effect, so you want to make sure it’s a ‘durable power of attorney’. What used to be combined was healthcare with business. This durable power of attorney that I’m talking about right now on this slide is, is all the business decisions. Who can access your checking account, who can sell your house, who can do all of those kind of businessy things that go on while you cannot speak for yourself, that is what this form is for. So right away you might be thinking to yourself, “Huh, I don’t necessarily want the same person I want to help me with healthcare decisions. It’s not necessarily the same person who I want to make business decisions on my behalf”. Bingo, there you go. So I like to pick on my dad. He knows I do this. So you know, in my family, guess who’s in charge of all the family or all the business decisions? There’s four siblings. Guess who’s in charge for my dad? Yeah, you guessed right, it’s me, but my sister, who’s a nurse practitioner in Oregon, she’s in charge of my dad. She’s the first person named for one of my sisters for my dad to make healthcare decisions. And then my other sister is second in line for her, and then I think maybe he put my brother below me. You can see there are different people. Jobs can be spread out based on comfort and skill. The most important thing that you want to think about with a durable power of attorney is picking someone to act on your behalf that you trust. Trust. Trust is number one. So again, maybe it’s not a sibling at all. Maybe it’s not a child at all. Maybe it’s not well, hopefully a spouse you could trust, but there is no pressure. You can name other people, and in certain family situations, like, my mother, who, I have a really great stepfather, he just doesn’t want to be involved. So guess who’s in charge for my mom? Once again, me. So you can see where this is a powerful document. That person can drain your bank account and go to Hawaii or go to Cook Islands. That’s a good place to hide, I’ve heard. So you want to make sure that that person is selected carefully. They can always seek guidance, and they don’t have to be the same people…

Julie Wrigley 58:37
This other part is part of the lifetime designations. That’s really because this belongs in lifetime planning, or at least it’s where I put it, for lots of reasons, but I’ll just talk about a beneficiary designation. So if you have a retirement plan of any kind, you might have a bank account that has a ‘Pay on Death’ designation, which you might have in some states. In our state, we also have a real estate situation where we can have a beneficiary, believe it or not… These are things you want to review. This is so you get to maintain control of something during your life, but you can always change this beneficiary designation. So generally, if it’s really a true beneficiary, they don’t have control over the asset during your lifetime. That’s when they are the beneficiary and they receive whatever portion of the asset that you have designated. So this is an often overlooked and yet incredibly helpful planning tool. I’ve had clients do everything from, you know, really carefully designating within each document certain people for certain reasons. Like, actually, sometimes we see people put charities here. It just depends, in a retirement plan. This is a really important conversation you should have with your financial planner and lawyer. These can make really big differences. The beneficiary designation is often under-talked about, in my opinion, and yet incredibly important and guiding and can make a really big difference in how your estate plan gets carried out in accordance with your wishes. It can just be much smoother this way. If you have a will, you go through probate. We didn’t talk about this, that’s for next time, can’t have all the fun in this hour, right? But if you have a beneficiary designation, it skips the court process of probate and goes directly to the beneficiaries, which can be awesome, unless it’s wrong. I’m so paranoid, aren’t I? No, just kidding. I’ve seen seen a lot, so yeah, review them. Any questions about that stuff?

Lauryn Cooney 1:01:22
None. So far.

Julie Wrigley 1:01:26
The who and the when: Timing and urgency. I think, when should you do this? You should do it when, I would say when you’re ready, but there’s no time like the present to be ready. I’ve had friends who, when their kids were born said, “Oh, Julie, we really want to do an estate plan, but we can’t figure out who we want to name as the guardians”. And so years go by and now their youngest is five, and they’re like, “Julie, we really want to do it, but we’re just waiting. We’re waiting to figure that out. So this potential guardian’s being a jerk, or getting divorced, or remarrying somebody we don’t love, or whatever. So we’re waiting. We’re waiting”, and the next thing you know – because I’m old enough – now these friends, they’re now doing their estate plan for the first time, but their kids are all over the age of 18, thank goodness that they didn’t need anything. But it sort of points out a really funny question, like, well, oh no, right, that’s my job as an estate planning lawyer to think, “Oh, what if? What if? Well, what if they had needed it?”. Well then guess what they were relying on. They were relying on those laws of intestate succession in whatever state they live in, to tell them who is going to take care of their kids or be appointed as the guardian and conservator. So, when should you be thinking about it? Now. When’s a good time to do it? Now. Also thinking about it now and making a move now, all of these documents are changeable, unless you choose some estate planning document that has the word irrevocable. There are some things like that, but very few, and they’re very purposeful. So for all of our work here today, everything you are thinking about doing is reversible, with exception.

Lauryn Cooney 1:03:21
If you need to update your document, you go through a lawyer and you have them draw up your will or your trust, whatever you decide and you need to update that, is that, usually, typically, less expensive, because we don’t have to go through so much, and we’re just updating maybe a name or a signature? I’m just wondering, because I know a lot of times we’re afraid of the cost of the lawyer.

Julie Wrigley 1:03:48
Absolutely, it’s a great question. And yes, it should be less expensive, especially if you’re just making minor changes, and you’re not changing the distribution. We recommend, as estate planners, you’ll hear them recommend, every five years to sit down and look at it, and it’s, I think I’d say, on average, five to 10. It’s whenever there’s an event in your life that’s significant, or you have a significant change to the distribution, that you make a big change. So for example, you do a whole estate plan, and your kids are 18, and then all of a sudden, your oldest, who is 18, is now 25 you haven’t changed your estate plan, and they they’re getting married, and they have a new name. The new name alone is not a reason for me to want to redo an estate plan. If that’s the only reason you’re thinking, “Oh no, my daughter got married and she changed her name, I need to do…” nope, no, I would say, no. Don’t worry about it, because she’s identifiable. People know who she is. She has an additional name or whatever. But we know who she is, and that’s not a reason to spend money. So it’s kind of this-it’s a funny thing, but I’ve gone through this with my mother, who did her estate plan, and now she wanted to make a small distributive change. She wanted to change a small distribution but we talked it through and we decided it’s going to be fine. We figured out a way without going back to spend an additional, you know, I don’t even do my mother’s estate plan, but she lives in Oregon, and I’m an Alaska lawyer, so there you go. And you know, arms length transactions, I don’t want my siblings getting mad at me, like Julie said. So anyway, I totally understand that. I don’t want to spend/waste money either. That’s kind of an overlying goal. Not only is it, I don’t want to spend I don’t want to overspend money, and I don’t want to overspend emotional capital. And I think when you’re talking about estate planning, saving emotional capital, if you’re interested in saving that for your family, that’s an argument to do an estate plan, to spend more money during your life so that they can focus on what’s important during a time of transition. But does that answer the question?

Lauryn Cooney 1:06:10
Yes, thank you. Yeah, there’s another question, do you have, maybe a step-by-step checklist for the essentials that need to be done? But I think you and I can probably come up with that and have one, if you don’t.

Julie Wrigley 1:06:28
Sure, sure, sure. There are a lot of checklists out there. We can talk about putting one out that would maybe be appropriate for a large group. Well, a national. It’s the version I have for Alaska versus the version that should exist for a national conversation, because that’s what we are. So we can work on that and put it out there absolutely, yeah, for sure. Here’s a reminder about all those documents. They don’t care. You know, doctors, I should say health care providers, right? My sister, the nurse practitioner, is punching me in the arm right now for saying that, but all of our health care providers and anyone else who’s relevant, honestly, that’s who I think you should share these documents with. So I am an open book when it comes to all these things. I share my documents with siblings, my parents, all because I say the word death, dying, estate planning a lot over the course of my career, I’m pretty comfortable, and they can expect that I’m going to be bringing it up with them, so it’s a little easier for me. What I do understand is that this is an awkward conversation, but I remind students of this in my negotiation class. Words have the power that we give them. They’re just words, and so they do indicate something bigger than that. But, unfortunately or fortunately, we are empowered in our lives to make things easier for others by doing this planning, and part of that planning is actually taking the time to share our thoughts and our desires and our documents with the people that it matters to. So please, that’s how things get carried out. Please, have those awkward conversations. Don’t, don’t let the let fear, if you can, stop you, it’s more meaningful. That’s a memory maker, right there. I have examples, but I do not have enough time to give you them, but I have examples for myself, personally, and also for clients who are so glad when they have the hard conversations, it makes a really big, lifelong, lasting memory. So do the documents and have the conversations. It builds trust and peace of mind, and it helps explain they they have an opportunity. People have an opportunity to hear your reasoning when it’s easier. Instead of trying to guess later, why did she do that? She told me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… I just wanted to say that the role a caregiver may or may not be the same person named in the durable powers of attorney or the health care directives, and so this is a general guideline. Don’t assume that a caregiver has all those powers. On the other hand, if you want them to be empowered to do those things, these documents also pave the way for that. It’s an easy thing for people to assume, in a caregiving situation or in a medical situation, that somebody is empowered when they’re not, just because they’re around. So, a thoughtful approach is what I would advise.

Lauryn Cooney 1:10:08
I just wanted to say to everyone watching, and everyone that’s going to watch, I do have some resources that I’ll post with the video, and I can also post them in the app. And a lot of it, Julie and I have talked, I have links to the Bar Association for each state and different resources directly from the Bar Association and I want to really, really thank Julie for coming, and now it’s so easy to understand. It’s definitely made this whole topic very approachable, and I really appreciate that. And I appreciate you taking time, because I know you are so busy, and I know it’s the beginning of the school year, and I just really appreciate that.