Writing Your Tulsa Estate Planning Blog

When someone says that you should trust them to handle an estate and be fair to you, it is not usually a good idea to agree to that idea, without first seeing the estate plan so you know what you are supposed to receive.

Barry White passed away in 2003. To date, his estate has stayed out of the news.

For a celebrity estate it has been a smooth estate administration by all appearances. However, Darryl White, Barry’s son, has now filed a lawsuit opening up the estate to public scrutiny.

Darryl claims that when his father passed away, his widow told Darryl that she would make sure he got his fair share of the estate, as long as he agreed not to challenge the estate. For his part, Darryl claims he never even saw his father’s will to know what he was supposed to receive.

He received regular payments until 2015, when they suddenly stopped. He believes the money is now being wasted by his stepmother.

Darryl has filed suit and is demanding to see the will to know what it is he should be receiving.

TMZ reported on this story in “Barry White’s Son Sues My Dad’s Widow Can’t Get Enough of His Dough.”
In one sense, this is not an unusual story.

It is very common for children to have fights with a step-parent over an estate. On the other hand, this is an extremely unusual story.

It is not at all common for a child to trust the step-parent enough to agree to her terms, without at least seeing the estate plan and knowing what the child is supposed to inherit.

If nothing else, this case illustrates why it is an obviously bad idea for the child to agree to that.

Reference: TMZ (May 24, 2017) “Barry White’s Son Sues My Dad’s Widow Can’t Get Enough of His Dough.”

Elderly people in the early stages of dementia would be well advised to take walks.

Alzheimer’s disease receives a lot of attention. However, that attention often comes at the cost of other forms of dementia.

While treatments and cures for Alzheimer’s are widely sought after and discussed, there is often correspondingly little research and discussion about other forms of dementia. Therefore, it is refreshing to see that a study has recently been conducted into something that might help people who are in the early stages of vascular dementia.

The New York Times reported on this development in “A 1-Hour Walk, 3 Times a Week, Has Benefits for Dementia.”

A six-month study found that vascular dementia patients who took one hour walks, three times a week had better brain activity than a control group that did not go on walks. Even relatively mild exercise was beneficial.

This suggests that elderly dementia patients who go on walks, while in the early stages of the disease, could see the disease progress at a slower rate than they would if they did not go on walks.

This study will need to be confirmed by further research and it does not offer a cure for vascular dementia. However, anything that helps slow the disease by even a little bit is of great benefit to patients.

In case you were wondering, earlier research revealed that taking walks also helps people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.

In the end, maybe all elderly people should considering walking for some exercise, just in case.

Reference: New York Times (May 24, 2017) “A 1-Hour Walk, 3 Times a Week, Has Benefits for Dementia.”

Many wealthy people are torn between wanting to leave a large inheritance for their children and fears that their children will not be able to handle the wealth.

Wealthy parents whose children do not get independently wealthy on their own, often fear that leaving those children a large inheritance would be a mistake. The children might not be able to handle the money and it might cause them to give up their own careers.

In some cases, the children might also waste all of the money and leave nothing for their own children. Despite this common fear, the wealthy parents do want to leave their children large inheritances.

This tension creates problems for many people as they plan their estates, as the Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog points out in “New Focus for Estate Planning.”

The key to resolving this tension is to understand that estate planning can be about more than just transferring a lot of assets to heirs. With a traditional will, heirs get all of the assets at once, which leaves open the possibility that assets will be misused.

There are many kinds of available estate planning tools that can be used to make sure that heirs do not waste everything.

Many types of trusts will help preserve the assets.

Of course, this can only be done, if an estate planning attorney knows that the client fears his children will waste an inheritance. The attorney needs the client to express these fears, so the attorney can devise the best plans.

Reference: Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (May 17, 2017) “New Focus for Estate Planning.”

Alan Thicke’s sons are fighting with their stepmother over their father’s estate.

Two of deceased actor Alan Thicke’s sons have entered the probate case to settle their father’s estate with a unique claim. The have filed a claim suggesting that Thicke’s third wife, Tanya Callau, is attempting to get more of the estate than she is entitled to receive and that she has threatened to go to the tabloids, if she does not get her way.

Thicke and Callau had a prenuptial agreement and she is already set to get a sizeable portion of his estate. Her take includes 25% of his personal assets, 40% of the remainder of the estate, a $500,000 life insurance payment and she can stay in the residence for the remainder of her life.

The sons have not stated what else Callau wants and it is not known what she would tell the tabloids, if she went to them.

TMZ reported this story in “Alan Thicke Sons Go To War With His Wife To Protect the Estate.”

Other than the celebrity nature of this estate and the alleged threat to get the tabloids involved, this is, of course, not a particularly unusual estate battle.

Adult children are often at odds with a surviving step-parent and that battle often makes its way into probate court to fight over the estate. This is especially true when there are large sums of money involved.

Wealthy people who have remarried and who have children from previous relationships, need to understand how common these types of fight are. They then need to make estate plans with that in mind, if they hope to minimize the problems.

Reference: TMZ (May 16, 2017) “Alan Thicke Sons Go To War With His Wife To Protect the Estate.

It is currently difficult to know what the best possible estate planning method might be in the near future, since tax reform is uncertain. A spousal lifetime asset trust can be used as a way to plan around that uncertainty.

Given recent events in Washington, it is understandable if wealthy people are more than a little nervous about their estate plans. Just as it appeared that Congress was about to turn its attention to long-promised tax reform, President Trump has been distracted by ongoing investigations into his campaign.

While a special counsel has been appointed to oversee that investigation, a continuing steady stream of leaks has kept the pressure on lawmakers. This casts doubt over their plans for tax reform, since it is a contentious issue that has many in Congress deeply divided.

It is not clear what the President wants on some of the key items of reform.

All of this makes it difficult for many wealthy people to know how effective their estate plans might be and how to make changes to them.

Recently, Wealth Management offered a solution to the uncertainty in the form of a spousal lifetime asset trust in “SLATs Provide Flexible Plans for Many Clients.”

Like any other trust, SLATs do not have to go through probate. They also offer estate tax and capital gains tax benefits.

They key thing about them, is that they are an extremely flexible form of trust. They are more adaptable to changing circumstances than many other trusts.

That makes them a great tool for uncertain times, when no one can be certain what the tax future will look like.

If you are interested in a SLAT or want to know what your other current estate planning options are, talk to an estate planning attorney.

Reference: Wealth Management (May 15, 2017) “The Rise of Donor Advised Funds.”

There are many ways to leave a charitable legacy. One of the best is the increasingly popular donor advised fund.

Giving to charity is not as simple as writing a check and sending it in the mail. Sure, it can be done like that, but if you want to make sure you are getting the best possible tax benefit for the charitable gift, then you need to do more planning.

This is especially true for wealthy people, who would like to create a charitable legacy that will outlive them.

While you can create a charitable legacy through several different methods, donor advised funds are popular a good way to do so as the Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog recently explained in “The Rise of Donor Advised Funds.”

With a donor advised fund, you can invest money now that will be used for charity later. The donor gets an immediate tax benefit and can invest however much he or she wants.

Contributions can be made over time or all at once, whichever is more beneficial. The donor does not have to actually advise how the funds are invested, if not interested in doing so. However, they can, if they are interested.

If you are considering a donor advised fund or any other type of charitable legacy, it is important to seek out the advice of an estate planning attorney. That way you can make sure you are leaving your legacy in a way that makes the most sense for your personal situation and the type of legacy you want to leave.

Reference: Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (May 18, 2017) “The Rise of Donor Advised Funds.”

A new virtual reality treatment is helping some elderly people with dementia recall their memories.

It has often been said that the cruelest thing about Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia is the forgetting. People who suffer from dementia forget the important people, places and things in their life.

They do not just forget that the person talking to them is their grown-up child. They also forget the time they took that child to their first baseball game, for example.

Helping patients get back those memories, has proven to be a challenge.

Patients can be told about the memories, but that does not necessarily mean they will remember them.

Technology now might be able to help, as the Daily Mail reports in “Touching moment a virtual reality headset helps elderly people with dementia recall previous memories.”

A virtual reality therapy program has been created that lets patients virtually be at a scene.

A therapist asks a set of leading questions to help jog the patient’s memory. The article mentions that an elderly woman was shown a virtual reality beach scene and was then able to recall the time she visited a beach in Scotland as a child. It was a memory which had previously been lost to her.

There are twelve scenes in total, including a view of the Earth from the International Space Station.

For now, this virtual reality program is costly and not available to everyone. However, if it continues to show promise in helping dementia sufferers, then it is likely to soon be more widely available.

Reference: Daily Mail (May 16, 2017) “Touching moment a virtual reality headset helps elderly people with dementia recall previous memories.”

The last attempt by the Social Security Administration to increase online security was a disaster that did not last long. The agency is about to try again.

It is relatively easy to log in to the Social Security Administration and get access to all of the information about your account. A few basic details are all that is required.

This has led to concerns about privacy and identity theft.

Since it does not take much for a legitimate user to log in, it does not take very much for thieves to log in either. The agency attempted to fix this problem in 2016, by requiring a two-step verification process before account access was granted.

That was short-lived, however, as many people were unable to log in to their accounts.

The agency is going to try again with a modified process, as Investment News reports in “Social Security Administration steps up online security.”

In its last attempt, the agency sent users a code via cellphone to verify their accounts before they could log in. That was a problem, since many elderly people do not use cellphones.

This time around, the agency will let people choose to have the code sent by cellphone or email. It is assumed that if are trying to access their Social Security accounts online, then they will almost certainly have email accounts, even if they do not have cellphones.

This change is scheduled to take effect on June 10, 2017.

Anyone who has problems accessing their Social Security accounts online after that, should speak to an elder law attorney.

Reference: Investment News (May 15, 2017) “Social Security Administration steps up online security.”

Technology is changing so rapidly that people and the law are not keeping up. This creates problems in estate planning.

It was not that long ago when the Internet was new and primarily seen as nothing more than a source of entertainment for most people. That has changed dramatically.

More and more people are now conducting business online and our digital accounts have become a large part of our personal lives.

When planning their estates, however, people have not kept up with the pace of technology.

People do not think about how they want any digital assets that they have to be passed on to their heirs.

Laws have also not kept pace, as Investment News discusses in “Most estate plans aren’t dealing with digital assets properly.”

By default, what happens to digital accounts and assets after we pass away is a patchwork of the individual terms of services of the different websites that we use.

Every website has different rules about the accounts and whether they can be passed to heirs and under what circumstances they can be passed down.

Some states have attempted to address this problem by adopting proposed uniform laws, but there is a long way to go for the law to catch up with technology.

If you would like to have a say in what happens to your digital accounts after you pass away, it is important that you speak with an estate planning attorney about it, so you can make appropriate plans.

Reference: Investment News (May 11, 2017) “Most estate plans aren’t dealing with digital assets properly.”

Every few years it seems the federal government needs to do something to fix Medicare or risk running out of available funds for the program. One attempt to fix Medicare was undertaken in the early 2000s. It is now known as Medicare Advantage.

The program privatized parts of Medicare by turning things over to insurance companies. The idea was that insurers would do a better job of controlling costs in the program than the government.

Instead of doing that, however, a whistle-blower alleges that insurers have used the program to make billions of dollars from Medicare they are not entitled to, as The New York Times reports in “A Whistle-Blower Tells of Health Insurers Bilking Medicare.”

The alleged fraud is a relatively simple one.

Insurers are said to have used the medical coding system to make patients look sicker than they really are. As a result, the insurers easily collect more money from the government than they actually should.

The government has already announced plans to sue one insurer based on these allegations and more lawsuits against other companies are expected.

It is important for the government to stop this fraud, if true, and any other Medicare fraud.
The Medicare system is yet again close to running out of funds and in need of a fix. The government cannot afford to lose billions to fraud.

Reference: New York Times (May 15, 2017) “A Whistle-Blower Tells of Health Insurers Bilking Medicare.”