 Welcome to everyone here and now we are recording so whatever we're going to be doing with this afterwards. This is primarily on a PowerPoint so I'm going to share my screen and move to the PowerPoint. This is the title of this is a state planning basics it's got a subtitle that was given to me by someone who attended this this workshop at one point, how to take the bitch out of obituary. Oh, there we go. All right. So, a lot of people think that they don't have to plan their estate because they don't have an estate they don't have a lot of money they don't have a big house. So they don't think it's necessary to plan their estate but but that's that's actually wrong to have an estate you don't have to have a lot. You just have to have something to pass on when you pass away. So, if all you have to your name is your car and yesterday was in a wreck and now it's only worth 100 bucks, you still have an estate and that's it. You have something to pass on when you pass away. What can you do to plan to pass your estate when you pass away. Well, there are a lot of things that you can do. There are a lot of approaches that that you can take. I can't cover every last thing in this in the seminar but but I'll cover the most popular things but probably the most popular thing the most common thing that people do to plan their estate is nothing. The article in, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, at one point a little while ago that said almost two people out of three, don't do anything to plan their estates. And I think part of that is that there are some people who just don't think they have enough to worry about and other people just have trouble dealing with their own mortality. Whatever it is, everybody here is concerned enough to want to learn something. So, everybody here, you're automatically in the top one third. So congratulate yourself on that. One of the things you can do to plan your estate is to make a will. There are there are different kinds of wills and we'll talk about those in in a little while. Hang on. Another thing you can do is to make a trust and people have heard about trusts. They're supposed to be better than wills. One of the things about wills is that if you have a will or whether you don't have a will or not, your estate may go through probate. Having a trust can avoid probate. Another thing that happens when when your state is in probate is that it can take a while. It can take a year or two sometimes even longer. One person come to me actually was a group of people who came to me and said that that they had been left some money in an estate by this lady who died and her estate had gone to probate. They hadn't heard anything. And she died 21 years ago. So I was able to get them their their money within six months, but. And delays like that are are unusual. But at the same time, they sometimes do happen. So avoiding probate. Is a can be a good thing. And using a trust is one way to help with that. Also, because wills can take a while using a trust can also can can short circuit that time period. You don't have to go to court. You don't have 1690 120 day waiting periods. So using a trust or some other way of avoiding probate can make things run a lot smoother. Another thing about about probates is that. Everything is public record everything that's in the probate file is open to anybody who wants to look at it. I was I filed papers in one probate one time. And I got back to my office and within two hours I got a phone call from a real estate agent. I read the probate file and wanted to sell the house. I mean, it's that public, which is kind of scary in some ways when you have a trust it's all private. And nobody has to know about what's in there. So what what exactly is in that probate file. Well, your will is in there if if there is one. But what else is in there is that your, your executor or whoever is appointed by the court to be your executor is required to fill out some papers that give a lot of information. And they list all your assets, all your bank accounts including bank account numbers, all your relatives all your close relatives, their names, their addresses, and they're even supposed to put down how old they are on the on the form it says what how old is this person. So, if you have a sister who doesn't want people to know how old she is you better make sure that she dies before you do because if you are a state goes through probate anybody can go to your probate file and find out how old your sisters. With a trusted avoids probate and you don't have any of those kind of issues. So why avoid probate. Well, in addition to what we were talking about there's a high cost of probate in California probate has a thing called statutory fees, the executor gets a fee and the lawyer gets a fee. The fee in California is basically 2% plus $3,000 of the size of your state up to $1 million and then 1 million. I mean 1% over a million dollars. So that can add up to quite a bit of money and a lot of times lawyers get way overpaid. If you avoid probate when you use the trust for example you don't need as much lawyer services, you may not need any and you can avoid a lot of that cost. Again the average probate can take a year or two can take longer with avoiding probate you can avoid a lot of that delay and all again all the information is public. What in the world is probate in the first place we've heard that it's something that happens when you die. But what really is it what's it really for well probably it is primarily about one thing in particular and that is that we all have certain kinds of property that have written title written ownership. So if you have real estate, you have the deed, and you can't transfer title to that real estate, unless you sign your name on a new deed. There's money in the bank you normally can't get money out of the bank, or at least traditionally without signing your name on something. So if you want to transfer it to somebody else without signing your name on something or doing some electronic things that that are equivalent to signing your name. And if you have your card, you have a pink slip. And you can't transfer title to your car unless you sign your name on the pink slip. That is primarily what what probate is for is to take care of that situation because after you die. You can't sign your name anymore. Well, most of us can't sign our name anymore. So probate takes care of that problem by substituting your signature with the signature of a judge on a court order transferring title to those properties. That's pretty simply what it is. Now as long as we're in probably we're doing some other things to to make sure that all your creditors get paid before your greedy relatives. But this is primarily what it's for. I have a will people said that to me I have a will it says where my stuff is supposed to go. Why do I need probate. Unfortunately, having will does not avoid probate because your will doesn't do anything by itself. Think of it this way. Let's say you go on vacation for six weeks and you come back and you go to the bank. And you try and take money out of your account. And it says your accounts closed. You go in and you talk to the banker and ask what's going on and they say oh yeah well this guy came in about a month ago and he showed us this document and he said it was your will. And he said you died and it said that we were supposed to give it give all your money to him and so we did. That's what could happen without proper procedures like probate probate will help protect against that kind of thing. So, having will does not avoid probate. Now when I said that your estate will probably go to probate. It's a threshold and it does change every once in a while but at the current time. It's $166,250. And if your state is under that amount. Then it may not need to go to probate because the legislature figures are that's too small to worry about so we'll just let it go and if people fight about it then. And if your state is over that there are ways to get it under that for example. If you have bank accounts. And you add a beneficiary to your bank account it'll go to that beneficiary automatically when you die without probate. So it's not counted against that $166,000. If you have a stock account, and you have a beneficiary named on that account. So it'll go to that person automatically when you pass away. It's not counted against that $166,000 until recently, the biggest reason for people to have to go through probate is their house. Because who's got a house that you can find for under $166,000. Well, in recent years the legislature and it's still a pilot program. But the legislature has been working on this project called the transfer on death deed. You can now essentially name a beneficiary on your house. And when you do that, then the house will go to that person automatically when you die without probate and the value of the house is not counted against that $166,000 amount. Now, there has been a way to avoid probate with your house. Before this, and it's called joint tenancy people would make their children joint tenants on their house, and when they died then it would automatically go to their children without probate. But there are problems with joint tendencies. One of the problems is that when properties and joint tendency. It actually becomes owned by your joint tenant your joint your joint tenant becomes a full owner. So if you ever want to downsize or sell your house, you have to get your kids permission to do that. If they're a joint tenant. Also if they're a joint tenant, because they're a full owner of the house. If they get into financial trouble. Their creditors can get at the equity in your house while you are still alive. So if you're if your kid gets into a traffic accident, they're in a hospital for six months and they run up $2 million in medical bills. And you only have $1 million of insurance. The hospital can come after your house. Because your kid is a joint tenant. So transfer on death deed avoids all of those problems, but still allows you to avoid probate transferring your house. So we've heard of trusts trusts are one way to vote to avoid probate. We've heard that they're better than probate we've heard that they're good. But what really is the trust. What's it for how does it work. Well, I like to think of having a trust is like having your own private corporation, because legally they're essentially the same. The corporation doesn't actually exist. There's nothing you can look at or touch that is a corporation corporations own property but the corporation itself doesn't really exist. But the law says that if you have the right paperwork. Then we'll pretend there's this corporation and it's allowed to own property and transact business and do a lot of things that people can do. A trust is the same way there is nothing tangible that the trust but if you have the right paperwork. Then we will pretend that there is this entity called a trust. It can own property and it can transact business. If you set up a trust, it will own your property and it will transact your business. That's how it works the trust only works for what it is the legal owner of. So if you set up a trust but don't transfer ownership of all your assets into the trust. It will not work to do anything, including avoiding probate. Now a corporation is run by its president the president is in charge of the corporation, the is responsible for for signing all the contracts for paying all the bills for doing all the business of the corporation. The president's can delegate authority but the president is really the one who is ultimately responsible and in charge. A trust has someone exactly like the president of a corporation and that's called a trustee. If you have a trust, you will be your own trustee so you will in effect be the president of your own corporation. The corporation will own all of your stuff and you will still be in charge of it because you are the trustee you are the president of your corporation and the corporation owns all your stuff. So how does a trust work to pass property when you die. I'm going to use an example but I'm going to talk about a corporation, not a trust. Let's say there's a small corporation got one owner and the corporation has a dozen employees and every week, the president's secretary brings brings him payroll checks, he signs a payroll checks, and everybody gets paid on Friday. It seems like a reasonable thing to do. Well this particular Thursday. The president secretary brings him is the payroll checks, he picks up his pen starts to sign but doesn't have a chance to sign any of them, and he hears this loud bang on the door. But he's a little surprised because he's not expecting anybody. So he goes and he opens the door to his office and he's blinded by this bright light shining in his eyes. And he can't really see anything. So he steps back to see if that can help. And the light is so bright he still doesn't see anything. Somebody say, my name is Anderson Cooper and I'm here to ask some questions about your corporate practices. Well, he wasn't expecting that. He didn't want that. He feels a little weak. He falls back in his chair has a heart attack and dies on the spot. We can tell that we have a problem here. In addition to the problem with the dead guy in the chair. The problem is we have a whole bunch of employees who want to get paid tomorrow. And the only person whose name is on the signature card who can sign those payroll checks just died. So what can we do. How do we get those people paid. Well, in a corporation, there is a person. Who is by law, the person who takes over when a president dies. That is a vice president. Vice president automatically becomes a new president. As the new president, he uses a letter to the bank, telling them that there's a new president. He goes down to the bank gets his name on the signature card. And he can then go sign those checks and everybody gets paid on time. But trust has somebody exactly like a vice president. We call him a successor trustee. When the original trustee dies. The successor trustee becomes the new trustee. Now, just like how the vice president from the corporation had that to to do some paperwork. When he became the president, the successor trustee has some paperwork to. The successor trustee has to show people two things to validate his being new trustee one of those things is a notarized copy of the trust showing that he's the next one in line. In the trust document. The other thing that he has to show them is a certified copy of the other trustees the old trustees death certificate to show that person actually did die. And those two things together. Make that person the new trustee and then he can do whatever he needs to do to follow the trust rules to distribute the trust assets. Now in the state planning there are some other issues that people run across as they're doing their estates. What is that some people like to leave something to charities. Now, if you want to leave something to charity that's great. But you need to be careful. And a lot of people don't realize this but if you ever go to the IRS website and look up approved charities, you'll find a ton of lots and lots of charities, and you'll find a lot of them have similar names. But if you're not really careful in making your gift to a charity, it might end up going to the wrong charity. I've seen it happen. There was one case a bunch of years ago, where a lady from Connecticut left a rather large gift to a university in California, and nobody knew why she did that. She never lived in California, she didn't have friends in California, she didn't go to school here, neither did her children. She had no contact that anybody knew with anybody in California, but she left in her will quote $5 million to the University of Southern California. It's so known as UCLA. If you don't know that already those are two different schools USC and UCLA and both of those schools decided they wanted that $5 million. So they sued each other. And this lawsuit went on for seven years. They sent lawyers and they sent investigators to Connecticut to interview people and do research and try and figure out which school that lady really met. After seven years. They still haven't figured out which school she was talking about. And after seven years, half of that money was already gone in lawyers fees. So at that point, the two schools decided to just split what was left. But the bottom line is that the school she actually intended to get her money got one quarter as much as she wanted them to get because of that little mistake. So be careful when you do that. Where do you keep your will. People ask me that a lot and you want to keep your will in a place that's safe. Where you keep your other important papers. You can get a fireproof waterproof safe, you can get small ones. Nine by 12 inch fireproof waterproof safe so you can get them like at Home Depot, or Costco something like that for about 50 or $60 you can get larger states for a couple hundred dollars that'll keep your, your document safe. One place where you do not want to keep your will is in a safe deposit box. And why don't you want to do that. The reason is that if you normally, the only person who can get in that safe deposit box is you. After you die, nobody can get into safe deposit box without a court order. So unless there's somebody that you allow to get into the safe deposit box, while you are still alive. Nobody can get into it after you die without a court order and if you have to will in your safe deposit box. You can't get a court order without your will and you can't get the will without your court order and so there's sort of a little problem there. There was, there was a case years ago in San Francisco this was when Neptune society first got started and cremation wasn't new. It was sort of new to modern society, it was very unusual and Neptune society wanted to change that. And so they made a big deal about cremation they they advertise a lot they tried to make it a lot more acceptable than it had been. I remember a an article on the front page of the Sunday Chronicle talking about the Neptune society getting started in the Bay Area. And there was this one family that got together to have a family meeting to talk about it. And everybody in the family decided they love the idea of cremation was a lot cheaper was more environmental. Everybody thought it was a good idea except the dad. The dad was just really creeped out by the whole idea of the Neptune society, or of cremation. But he was one of these people who just would sort of go along and get along didn't want to rock the boat so he didn't tell anybody, because he thought it would cause trouble in his family. But what he did do was he went to a lawyer and he had a will draft that said do not cremate me. Well, you will really doesn't do anything other than distribute your assets. So saying saying do not cremate me in your will really doesn't do a whole lot. So to put teeth into it. He wrote, if I am cremated. My family gets nothing. Nothing as a way to try and prevent them from cremating him. Which sounds like a good idea at the time. But then what did he do he still didn't tell anybody. He took his will and stuck in a safe deposit box. Nobody found until six weeks after he was cremated. So safe deposit box is not the best place to keep your will amending your will wills can be amended. These days, with word processors, we usually just make small changes and print a document that you can have an amendment to your will and and the amendment is called a cortisol. Now in California we recognize two different kinds of wills, there are formal wills, which can be typed or printed or handwritten or any combination of those things. And formal wills have to have two witnesses. And then we have a thing called a holographic holographic will is a will that's all in your own handwriting, it's, it has to be data at the top, signed at the bottom. And in the middle you say where you want your assets distributed when you pass away. And the great thing about a holographic will is that it does not need to be witnessed. But you have to be careful wills have a long history in the law and there are a lot of little nuances that people don't realize that if you aren't careful you could violate and could cause trouble. For example, your will has to speak in the present tense. This is a problem I've seen with a lot of holographic wills people write them in the future tense they write down, when I die, I will leave my car to my friend George. Well, you don't want to do that. Because you're speaking in the future tense, instead of the present tense your will speaks of the time after you pass away so it has to be in the present tense, or court may not accept it. There was a situation where there was one guy who did his own holographic well. And he's a smart guy. He went to Stanford. He enjoyed Stanford got a really good education. So he was pretty smart. And after he got out of Stanford he got a great job did really well. He was really grateful to Stanford for all they had given him so at one point he went on their board of directors. And as he got older. He decided he wanted to write his will and he wanted to leave a gift to Stanford to thank them for everything that he had done. Again, he was really smart. He was too smart to have to go to some lawyer to write a will for him he knew about holographic wills. So he wrote his own will. And in that he wrote, I leave $100,000 to. And then he was going to write Stanford, but the legal name for Stanford isn't Stanford right. So I just wrote Stanford, or even Stanford University, it might have gone to the wrong place, because the legal name for that university is the real and Stanford junior university. That's a mouthful. I suspect he came to that point and didn't want to write out that whole thing. Maybe thought there was too much and would give him right to strap or who knows. And once he was on the board of directors at one point he had a rubber stand that said be willing stand for junior university so he wrote, I leave $100,000 to, and then rubber stand be willing stand for junior university. When he died they did not get one penny. Why, because that part, their name was not in his handwriting, which is required of a holographic will so if you do a holographic will. Or holographic cortisol. Be careful. Now let's let's go back to trust for a minute because trust are currently the most popular way of avoiding probate. And trust also do some other things. Trusts allow you to keep control to an extent even after you die. You can't do that. So if you have, say a grandchild who who can't handle money. You can appoint someone as a trustee for that person to handle their money and only distribute what the grandchild needs, or what the trustee thinks the grandchild should get to make sure that person does go below all that money all at once. I've seen it happen. I saw one kid whose whose mother died. He inherited a bunch of money. He thought that it was more than it was. He received the check for $250,000 he he thought that that was half of what he's going to get. So he went and he took that money, and he bought a car with it $250,000 car. He went and totaled the car, and he was expecting to get another $250,000 and he didn't. So that's one thing that you can do with the trust. It doesn't have to distribute the money and property after you die, it can stay in there as long as necessary. If you have this kind of a situation when there are children from prior marriages. A trust can help with that too. I've seen a lot of situations. Well, not a lot, but a lot more than one where people are on second marriages where there are kids from prior marriages. Where the couple set up an estate plan where I leave you everything when I die you leave me everything it's you die first. But then after we both go, everything gets split equally among all virtual sounds like a great plan. Sometimes, if I die first, my wife, my widow can change her will, and I've seen people do that. So my kids get nothing and her kids get everything from her side and myself. So with a trust you can prevent that from happening and make sure that if your plan is to share everything with all of your kids. Equally, you can do that. Grandchild's college fund I was talking about that if you want to have. Make sure that your grandchild goes to college, for example, you can give them money to do that. If you give a 19 year old or an 18 year old three or $400,000 in cash and tell them it's for their college. Is that what they're going to use it for. Probably not. So with a trust you can keep that money under the control of somebody who you do trust to make sure that the money is used for the purpose that you intend. Your planning isn't for just after you die. There are some situations, while you're still alive that your state planning can really help for. And these are, these are some documents you can find on my website. What happens if you're temporarily disabled. You can't manage your, your own finances for a while. You break both of your arms you can't write checks. You're in the hospital, you, you can't manage things. You can, you can appoint someone as a power of attorney to do that for you, until you are ready to come back and do it yourself. Alternative to a power of attorney is a thing called the conservatorship. And with the conservatorship you have to actually hire a lawyer and go to court and ask the court to take control of your assets of your finances. And there are a whole lot of things wrong with conservatorships one is having to hire a lawyer and go to court that can get expensive takes time, because the courts are all backed up these days. And the biggest problem of all is that when there's the conservatorship, not only does somebody else get the right to handle your affairs for you but you lose the right to handle your affairs for yourself. So let's say my mother has an accident she goes in the hospital. I want to go help her. But she doesn't have a power of attorney. And so I go to court and ask a judge for a conservatorship and the judge looks at me and he says, Well, you live in a different county from your mother. So I'm not going to let you be her be her conservator. I'm going to appoint one of my golfing buddies. And he does. And not only is his golfing buddy, the conservator, but that person charges my mother 150 or $200 an hour for doing that job. Even after my mother is feeling that until we can go into court and get the judge to lift the conservatorship. Only the conservator has power over her finances. So, if my mother is feeling a little better wants to go shopping. She has to call the conservator. He gets in his car, drives, picks my mother up, goes to the mall. She spent some time shopping. But then who pays for it? The conservator has to come up and pay for it with my mother's money because she doesn't have the legal right to do that anymore. Then he takes her home and sends and writes himself a check for all those hours that it took him to take her to the store and take her back. And for him to get there and for him to get back to his office, I would have done it for free. But no, we had to hire a conservator. So, having a power of attorney is a really good thing to do to avoid that problem. And what happened if you're permanently disabled? There's a document called an advanced directive for healthcare. It's like a power of attorney, but for your healthcare rather than for your finances. And primarily what that is for is to help determine what happens if a doctor says that they think that you're brain dead and there's no hope for recovery. Some people say, I believe in miracles. I want them to do everything they can to bring me back. And other people say, I don't want to just be on life support for years and years with no hope of recovery. Which one is up to you? If you don't have this healthcare directive, then that decision will be up to somebody else who you may not know. There have been cases over the years. The most recent one I recall is a lady in Florida named Terry Shival. But there have been others where a person gets into that situation where the doctors think that they may be brain dead or there's no hope for recovery. And in Terry Shival's case, her husband knew that she did not want to be on life support with no hope of recovery. And her parents thought, oh, well, we believe in miracles. We think she's going to come back eventually. And this went through the courts. It went to Congress for God's sakes. I mean, people argued about this for a long, long, long time. Finally, she was taken off life support and an autopsy determined that her brain really was unrecoverable and had shrunk to half its normal size. If she had had this advanced healthcare directive, she could have directed the doctors to take her off life support if they thought that it was a good idea. But she could have appointed her husband to make that decision for her, rather than leaving it up to some fight within the courts. So it's something that you should consider to whichever way you want your, your life handled if you get in that position. You can instruct someone how you want that handled and you can appoint someone you trust to do that for you to make sure it's done the way you wanted him. And I think that's it. So let me see. Okay. So, darling, do we have some questions. Yes, we do. So we were just JP and I were just discussing. Okay, it's not too bad. So we'll get out of here on time. Somebody asked, can you help people that got involved in a Ponzi scheme. That's not really on topic, but I guess that's a yes or no question. Can I help somebody who's been involved in the Ponzi scheme. I'm probably not the best person but if someone wants to call me, I might be able to direct them to somebody who can help. Okay. Remember that's down to earth lawyer.com. So you can reach Steve Ronstein that way. All right. Next question JP want to take this one. Yes, the next question. I can afford not a US citizen or green card holder and be a beneficiary. Yes, absolutely. Someone who's not US citizen or green card holder can definitely be a beneficiary. And children can be beneficiaries. Children can be your own executor. If you want them to do that. That happens frequently. So there, there are very few actual restrictions from that standpoint. Hey, can you also talk about the tax consequences between a corporation and a trust tax consequences. Well, while you're alive. Trust. Trust are transparent for tax purposes for income tax purposes. Everything that is in your trust if your trust earns money. It's treated as, as if it's your money. It goes on your social security number. And so it's exactly for most financial purposes it's like the trust doesn't really exist. If you have an irrevocable trust. Corporation. And it is its own separate tax paying entity. Most of the time, but you do not want to use an irrevocable trust that way because irrevocable trusts have get into the highest tax bracket at only $7500 of income. So you don't want to use an irrevocable trust that way if you can avoid it. These days corporations I think have a top tax bracket in federal tax of about 21%. So there really isn't any any correlation from a tax standpoint between corporations and trusts. So the next one a little off topic, I'm not sure if you have an answer, but a friend just moved into subsidized senior housing. Many of her fellow residents drive luxury cars, like old Mercedes Benz, etc. These one time wealthy neighbors by their assets to qualify for subsidized housing. Every county has its own rules. And it could be that the rules in that particular county just look at the person's income during that year, rather than all their assets. So you need to look at what the rules are in that county. You might want to call your state legislator and see about some some rules at a state level that will make more sense. What if you set up a trust and then you get married. Then it's a really good idea to amend your trust or create a whole new one. You don't have to. There's a problem potentially because once you marry in California any money that you earn. And I'm saying earn as opposed to receive from passive income is community property. So you don't have control over your spouse's half of your community property and if it goes into your trust, then it can cause everything in your trust to become community property. And it can cause all sorts of problems so yeah if you have a trust and you get married. It's a really good idea to to amend the trust at the very least to bring your spouse in. As a co grand tour of the trust. Okay next one. How do I initiate a transfer on death deed. There is a document called a transfer on death deed. And if you look at my website you'll find it. It's got instructions on back. And what you need to do is to get your current deed. So you can have the legal description fell out to transfer on death deed have it notarized. Have it recorded with the county recorder where the property is located you have to do that within 60 days. And then you're all set. And one of the great things about the transfer on death deed is that you can change it anytime if you want to do that. So if you leave your property to three of your kids, and one of them later becomes a drug dealer and you want to not leave the property to him, you can do that. So, so you will find that that document on my website. Go to down to earth lawyer.com click on the link that says free forms. You'll find that you'll find the thing called the statutory well, which is the California legislatures attempt to give you a will that you can fill out yourself. There's also a statutory power of attorney and statutory advanced healthcare directive and those forms are actually pretty good you can fill them all out yourself. I've got one. It went straight to me so no one else can see it but it says can co signers on a bank on bank safety deposit boxes access the box after the death of the owner. That's up to the banks procedure, you have to check with the bank exactly how they have it set up. Just being a co signer may not be enough to give you access to the to the account you actually have to have a key and you have to be specifically authorized to have access but yeah you can get specifically authorized is potentially possible to have more than one person authorized to access the same safe deposit box. So you can do that. Okay, next one. What if you move out of state after setting up a trust in California. Well, one of the great things about a trust in the US is that the rules are pretty much the same every place you go. So, if you set up a trust in California you can use the same trust, even if you move to another state. If you have a trust in California the trust say owns your property. You can have the trust sell your house in California and move to Nevada, or move to North Carolina and buy a house there with the trust. So, again, it's like having a private corporation and it's a corporation that owns everything and you can take that pretty much any place you go. But if you want to go outside the country that's a little different trusts are recognized in in English speaking countries but not very often in non English speaking countries. So if you're moving to a non English speaking country or you have assets in a non English speaking country, then that needs to be dealt with in a different way. It's going to get a little complicated so we won't go into that today. Okay, I think this is in a similar vein. If you have your house upon transfer of death do you put the house in your trust. If you have your house and transfer of death do you have your help put your house in trust. I'll let you try and figure that one out does that make sense. Yeah, you don't do both. You either use a trust and the trust determines where your property goes, or you use a transfer on death deed and that did determines where your property goes. You can't use both. It just won't work. Our next one. Do you put your car title in the trust. Remember that $166,000 you have to look at that. I want to keep the amount that's not in the trust as low as possible, because sometimes things happen that that increase the amount that you have that's outside the trust so my personal rule of thumb is it. If it's an expensive car if it's a car worth more than say $40,000, I would put it in the trust. If it's worth less than that, then it's not necessary. But remember you want to you want to keep all the assets that do not have that do not have a beneficiary under $166,000 or under $100,000 even and and use that as sort of a rule of thumb. Okay, I have another question I apologize the library announcement is playing in the background. Can you hear me okay. Yeah, I can hear you fine. Okay. If your sons have their signatures with safe to put with the safe deposit box. Can they get in after after the death can they get in so similar to last question that we had about co signers on a safe deposit box. Yeah, again, this is up to the banks procedure banker. The bank procedures like to make up rules that don't actually exist. And they do it, because they think it protects them and their, their customers, even though it doesn't always. So you really need to check with the bank to see what they require. Okay, this is not a legal question really it's, it's up to a bank procedure question. Sorry. What's the best way to write up your own will the best way. Personally, I would start out with the California statutory will. It's set up in a way that makes it pretty easy. It's a little more complicated than it should be. So if you want to do that, read through the whole thing before you start to fill it out. You can do a holographic well, but there are some pitfalls with that. But that's another way to do that holographic will is simple. You just take a piece of paper, right hand write the date at the top. Say where you want your stuff to go, and then sign it. And that is your will. Hey, moving right along how to find legal help with the states trusts etc. Well, if you're here listening that's step one. Any other advice. There are different ways to find good lawyers. The San Francisco bar association has a lawyer referral service. You can call them. They have a They'll give you the names of some lawyers and lawyers won't charge you anything but there is a fee last time I checked it was like $25 that the lawyer is supposed to collect from you that that pays the bar association for their service. You can find lawyers on this is actually a good website it's called lawyers.com. It's run by another website called martindale.com. It's, it's, it has almost every lawyer in the country on it and what they do. But the good thing about mark about lawyers calm is that for a lot of lawyers has ratings has separate ratings from other lawyers and judges in their community. And sometimes you'll find ratings from their customers from their clients. And if you find someone who does what you need to do and they have good right ratings from other lawyers and from their clients that might be a good personally go to. Okay, okay if you here's another one. If you set up a trust you have to change your checking account to say the trust of Joe Schmo. You should do that that again that's up to the bank to exactly how you do that. Some banks will want you to open up a whole new bank account. Now, you can have large bank accounts in the name of the trust and small bank account. If you use a small bank account for routine purchases you can have that maybe up to $5,000 up to $10,000. That's not in the trust. Because again you want to keep what's not in the trust down to. Well, let's see. Down to under $160,000 or under $100,000. You can do it that way. Have a small account that's not in the trust but put your large accounts in the trust and then you can transfer money back and forth, generally online. I think this is a quick one how's the limit of untaxable for inheritance. In the current moment, the there is a combined gift and estate tax, but it doesn't kick in until you have given away at least 12 million $60,000. So for most people this is not going to be an issue because most people never come anywhere near having $12 million. For people who live past 2025 that number is going to be cut in half. The amount does increase with inflation but the current law says that amount will get cut in half in 2025. So for married couples I still have $12 million that they can save tax free but for individuals, it'll be about $6 million or a little bit more. Okay next is there a good book to read through for more information on setting up a trust will trust or will. I like no low press no low press is a Berkeley self help legal publishing company that does a really good job with a lot of things in fact I am. I know lawyers who set up trust for people using the no low press trust book. So, that would be where I would go you can catch them at no.com that's no.com. There are a lot of bookstores that carry their things to. But that's that would be the first place that would start. And of course the library has a lot of no low press books as well so is your local library. Looks like is a revocable trust doesn't become irrevocable after the spouse dies. Trust is revocable because the person who sets it up. Can change it or revoke it. So when that person dies. It becomes irrevocable. I'm not sure exactly what that question means but if if a married couple sets up a trust. They can do it in a couple of different ways. They can have it set up so that when the first spouse dies, their half goes into a separate trust that then becomes irrevocable. But the surviving spouse can get all the income from it and the surviving spouse can even manage it. And the surviving spouse dies and the second half of the trust also becomes irrevocable. Or they can set it up so that when the first spouse dies, everything is given to the second spouse goes into the second spouse's trust in essence. And that is revocable until the second spouse dies. And then it becomes irrevocable at that point. So as a follow up to the beneficiary taxing is 12 million untaxable for a foreign beneficiary as well. Yes. The, the issue is who is giving the property not who is receiving it. So the, the taxes. And this is a state tax not income tax. The person who's making the gift. So the 12 million dollars can be given to anybody and there's still no tax. Now, if you have somebody who's not a US citizen, and they have property in the US that they're giving away. Then basically that 12 million dollar exemption does not apply. And most there's a $60,000 exemption, and the tax kicks in at around 40% over $60,000. So, if somebody's not a US citizen. Then there are other ways of dealing with this to make sure that the tax is not imposed unnecessarily. In the situation where there's a married couple, and one is a citizen, one is not. That's another kind of tricky situation, though there is a relatively easy fix for that, because what happens in that case is the surviving spouse can can give an unlimited amount to the other spouse. However, if the other spouse is not a US citizen, then everything over the $12 million might be subject to tax, unless you set it up with a trust that makes sure that when the second spouse dies. The government's going to get whatever taxes owed to them at that point. They want to make sure that if there's a surviving spouse who's not a US citizen, that they're not going to take everything and go out of the country and avoid any tax that would have been paid. And there are ways of making that happen. I hope that's clear. I hope so too. Looks like that's it you've got some thanks in the chat. And I want to thank you this was wonderful and informative, as always. For everyone who's listening a follow up email will be sent tomorrow. We have to wait for the recording to process and get everything together but you will be receiving that. I want to thank you for coming today. It's always interesting hearing this I've heard it a few times and I every time I learned something new so everybody. Thank you for coming. Thank you, Stu. Thank you to JP for helping out today. And I want to wish everybody a wonderful evening. And we'll see you all soon. See you on the next stream. All right. Bye bye.