 All right, welcome everyone. I'm Leah Hillman, fourth floor manager at San Francisco Public Library. Thank you for joining us today for State Tax 101. If you need Chinese or Spanish interpretation, please click on the globe icon in your menu bar and select the language that you need. All participants will be muted during the program. Please type your questions into the Q&A. This program will be recorded and live streamed on YouTube at this URL. We have enabled closed captioning if you need transcription on your screen. And now it is my honor to introduce our partner and presenter, Assessor Joaquin Torres. Assessor Torres leads an organization of 176 committed professionals to efficiently and fairly identify and assess all taxable property in the city and county of San Francisco and apply all legal exemptions. His office also records and maintains official city records and collects transfer tax from changes in property ownership. Torres is inspired to a career in public service by role models who believe that the best of government is realized when it listens closely to the people it serves and then responds with policies and programs designed to make their lives better. As the former director of San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Torres led the city's COVID-19 economic relief efforts from workers and businesses. During the pandemic, he led the creation of immediate and ongoing support for small businesses, including directing more than 50 million in grants and loans to more than 3,500 small businesses. Tens of millions of dollars in fee and tax deferrals and assistance applying for state and federal funding. Torres is proud to have helped focus the city on building a more equitable economy, including the launch of the city's first African-American Revolving Loan Fund and the increase in resources for women, minorities, and immigrant entrepreneurs. As part of the city's economic recovery task force, he has been instrumental in laying foundation for additional economic relief. Torres is a graduate of Stanford University and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and the proud grandson of Mexican immigrants. He lives in the inner sunset with his wife Ruibo Chen. Please welcome Joaquin Torres. Thank you so much, Leah, and to the library again for hosting our financial wealth series and to all of you who are joining us today. We have a great program for you and we're very much looking forward to sharing that with all of you. So this is, as I mentioned, the fourth and final webinar of the Family Wealth Series that we have been doing digitally over the past few weeks. In this four workshop series, we covered the nuts and bolts of the changes in property tax law from the new voter-approved Proposition 19. We explored financial resources and the importance of credit building for first-time home buyers. And last week, we reviewed how property tax is determined in California, my office's role in assessing property values, and important dates related to property taxes that homeowners and you should be aware of to avoid any kind of surprises. To complete this financial fundamentals for homeowners, today what we're going to talk about is the importance of a state planning. We want to make sure that you know that your assets can be passed on to your loved ones as you intended. Next slide, please. And just as a quick disclaimer here, this is intended to provide general information about a state planning to you. It's not intended to be official guidance for your specific situation, so we encourage you to consult with an attorney for advice followed with our office on any specific unique needs that you may have, so you can either be connected directly to someone who's on the call with us today who will introduce shortly to present some of this information or you can reach out to our office and we can connect you that way as well. Next slide, please. Before we dive into that, I just wanted to share a little bit of the role of the assessor recorder's office, how to get in touch with us, and some additional resources. So please write any questions that you may have in the chat section here so that my office, Shiree Misagi, Derek Anin, can help answer any questions related to the assessor recorder's office in real time by you putting those questions in there. If we don't answer your question, we can be sure that we can get back to you, so please do provide your information or reach out to us again directly. Next slide, please. So quickly, the basic functions of the office. There are two, the assessing side, the recorder side. On the assessor division side, we value all the property and the counting and we apply all the exclusions and exemptions as are required by state law. Last fiscal year in 2021, we identified approximately 211,000 parcels in San Francisco with a total assess value of about $328 billion. When you consider the budget amount of this year of $13.1 million and you consider that $3.7 billion of those dollars are due to the direct work that our office does, you can see and realize how important the functions of our office running smoothly are to the overall safety, security of the city. So we successfully completed for the third year in a row the presentation of our role on time. And again, that's a single largest source of general fund stable revenue for the city and county of San Francisco. A super majority of that goes to the general fund. About 34% of it goes to the school district and 2% goes for transportation and air issues through the Bay Area Rapid Transportation System, BART, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management Descript. Then you have the recorder side where we're responsible for recording real estate transactions like a deed of trust or lien, related documents, mortgages, public documents, including power of attorney. And of course, everyone's favorite when we see all those marriages happening in city hall, your marriage certificates. There's over 200 document types that our offices handles. We record approximately about 150,000 documents annually, and we're responsible for collecting transfer taxes and collecting fees on these recorded documents as well. Just last year, in the fiscal year of 2021, we collected $345 million in transfer tax. In addition to that, to ensure fair assessment and taxation, we audit transfer tax documents from large corporations and legal entity ownerships to look for any under reported value. Since we started that program in 2015, our transfer tax audit program has recovered almost $70 million in additional revenue dollars for the general fund. That's because of that proactive effort. Next slide, please. So please, we're open for business. We're very happy to be able to serve you in-person if you're comfortable with that. If you're not, you can reach out to us at our front desk, 415-554-5596. We'll also include that information in the chat section for you. And if you have any issues, you can just call 311. They can also connect you as well. You can also email us at the emails provided here. We will also put those in the chat section for you. And we can also just kind of contact you and answer any of your very specific questions. Or if you want to come in, please do come in. We very much care about the resiliency and financial resiliency of you and your family. And this webinar is just the beginning of that work. My staff and I will be creating more learning opportunities both online and in-person as we're able to when we can safely do that. So if you have any programming recommendations, if there are certain things that you would like to know of or know more of, please do reach out and let us know. Next slide, please. So in addition to this, regarding financial resiliency education, I highly recommend that you start with these resources that are available to you for free. First, I'd like to mention our partners in the Family Welfare Series, of course, the San Francisco Public Libraries Business, Science, and Technology Center. The library has a wealth of knowledge, resources, and ongoing workshops like the webinar we're doing today. And you can click on that link there, which we will also put in the chat section for you. Around financial coaching, I know that that's always useful whatever level you are at. Make use of it. Another free resource available through my colleague, Jose Cisneros, the Treasurer and Tax Collector's Office, who set up the Office of Financial Empowerment. They offer free financial coaching. Again, you can click on the link that we will provide in the chat section as well. And then our partners at Homeownership SF. They're a great resource for anyone who's just getting started in the process of purchasing a home. They're a citywide collaborative of nonprofit agencies so they can also help direct you to someone within the nonprofit community who is best suited to meet your needs and answer your very specific questions. You can reach them at homeownershipsf.org. And then finally, today's partner, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, is another valuable resource. They're a not-for-profit legal service and advocacy organization that provides free legal services, workshops, and they can help you on this path to estate planning. So next slide, please. Let's jump right into it, estate planning. Did you know, like so many things in life, that the top reason people give for not doing this, not creating an estate plan, is procrastination. And I'm so glad to see many people in attendance taking that proactive first step. It's an important tool. Estate planning is an important tool on a personal level and on a community level. It's an effective way to ensure that our families and communities can preserve hard-earned assets and use them as a basis for building intergenerational wealth and making sure that you have everything you need to ensure that happens. You don't have to be wealthy to have an estate. An estate consists of all the property a person owns, including real estate, cars, cash, and any other asset. So for many of us and many of you, the home is a single largest asset that will be owned. On a community level, estate planning is an underutilized tool to address the disparities in home ownership and inheritance and most specifically in communities of color. The negative impacts of wealth disparities, they're well studied. We have various factors among income and racial groups including years of home ownership, pre-existing family wealth, and historic and real predatory practices such as redlining or how those manifest in today's environment. Anyone who wants their assets to be transferred to one or more surviving loved ones after they pass away should establish a formal estate plan. This is an important set of legal documents, legal documents that make it easy for you and your family to honor your wishes and make sure that your needs are met if you're unable to speak for yourself. And so with that, I am very happy to welcome Kendra Bowen who is a counsel to the organization Housing and Economic Rights Advocates and she provides estate planning services to individuals, educational workshops, and training for attorneys. So Kendra, thank you so much for being with us and all of you in attendance please join me in welcoming Kendra for this next part of the presentation. Thank you very much assessor Torres for the warm introduction as well as all of the very important points that you just made. All of that is true. I'm from Housing and Economic Rights Advocates. We do all kinds of legal work concerning home ownership and other financial situations, financial abuse, identity theft, etc. And we were very thrilled to start an estate planning department there several years ago. Today we're going to speak about estate planning and I'm hoping that at the end of this presentation you understand that estate planning concerns of course what happens when we pass away. It includes drafting wills and trusts to handle that scenario, but it also addresses what happens when we're alive but incapacitated. Let's say we were to become involved in a bike or auto accident and we're not able to handle our medical or financial affairs. Do we have someone in place to handle those? So I think we're going to jump right in next slide and today discuss the what, who, when, why, and where of estate planning. So let's dive into a couple of true or false statements and each of you can assess what you think about this. So one thing I hear from people is I don't own anything Kendra. I don't need any estate planning. Well as Assessor Torres just indicated that is false because there's this other group of scenarios and legal documents that handles what happens when we're alive and incapacitated and unable to advocate for our ourself, our person, our health and unable to handle our financial affairs. We need someone in place to handle that. So I think at the end of this everyone will understand that all of us need estate planning if we're over the age of 18. Next slide please. If you have three kids and you want to only leave your assets to one child for various reasons, is that possible? You can certainly do that if you have a properly executed will or trust indicating so. If you don't the state of California will decide where your assets go and your assets will most likely go to all three kids equally. So through proper estate planning documents you can really decide what is best for yourself and your family. You just have to take the steps now while you're feeling good and able to execute those with legal capacity to make sure that your desires to eventually take place. Next slide please. Another comment that I frequently get from people are I have a will so this handles all of my estate planning. Well in California and other states if you have a will a will needs to go through the probate process of that state and in California the threshold is around $166,000. If you have a will and you're going to distribute over that amount unfortunately your family would need to go through the long relatively expensive probate process here in California. So that is a false statement and we'll discuss how to prevent probate down the road a little bit. Next slide. People think they have a trust and by virtue of just creating a trust and maybe not taking the step to put assets into the trust this avoids the probate process. Nope that is not true you have to fund your trust with as assessor tourist just indicated with your property perhaps with your financial assets and then you will avoid the probate process. Next slide. Many people come in stating we are a very tight close family the kids will handle it I don't have anything to worry about. Well all of us have probably heard of situations where the horns come out when it comes to money and people are feeling very vulnerable given a death in the family so we want to avoid that by taking control now when we have the wherewithal to do so and executing proper estate planning documents to keep the peace in our close tight family. Next slide. So estate planning is a process that concerns the people in your lives and your property it will address future needs what happens when we pass away but also what happens if in a year we were in a bank accident and were legally incapacitated for several months we want everything in place so that when we hopefully get better everything is as it should be. Next slide. So as indicated earlier estate planning can be divided into two sets of documents two types of situations what happens when we're alive and getting incapacitated and there are essentially two documents that are very important for everyone a health care directive handles and names someone to act as our agent if we lacked legal capacity it gives physicians the ability to speak with our agent about our medical care and gives that person to make the best decisions possible for our medical care likewise a power of attorney allows someone that we nominate now to pay our bills for us finish filing our taxes for us represent us in a lawsuit if we pursued if we once again did not have proper legal capacity one day when we pass away the power of attorney and health care directive our void but then a trust or a will will be in place to handle distribution of our assets at death and we'll discuss the threshold as to when you need a will and then when you need a trust in just a couple of minutes okay next slide and this is what we just touched upon estate planning includes what happens when we're incapacitated managing assets managing our health care and then what happens when we pass away as well next slide so we're going to discuss this first group of situations and legal documents that happens what happens when we pass away so in as I indicated earlier the threshold in california is $166,250 if our the gross value of our estate exceeds this amount whether you have a will or don't have a will there would be a probate a probate the process typically takes at least a year and a day it can be public you typically have to hire an estate planning attorney and it is expensive the fees are actually statutory because back in the day apparently lawyers were charging even more than the statutory rates and the state had to rein that in if you're under that amount you can typically get by with a will then all of the assets are valued on the date of death of the decedent so each of us can kind of look at what we have and see if we can avoid assets that are outside of a trust or don't have beneficiaries on them and then that will indicate whether or not you should have a will or a trust next slide so we can avoid probate in several different ways we can of course create a revocable trust and put assets into the trust so you can put a financial account bank account into a trust you can put your real property into a trust and that avoids probate we have in california a transfer on death deed and that's a quick way to indicate a beneficiary on a piece of property and that avoids probate a couple of these bubbles here indicate placing beneficiaries on either a bank account a retirement account life insurance and once again placing beneficiaries on an asset avoids probate if you were to pass away a death certificate would be presented and that entity would be able to transfer funds to the beneficiary indicated on those accounts it must of course be a living beneficiary and then we can also hold assets either in joint tenancy surviving spouses can have certain rights so that can be a way to avoid probate as long as that person once they own property singularly does takes active steps to avoid probate at that at that stage next slide so let's discuss creating a trust next slide so a trust is a a document that we create and it is you you are the settler the grand tour trust or you are the primary beneficiary you are everything you are the only person who can change that document you're accountable to no one if you decided to create a trust and put your home in the trust and thereafter wanted to sell your home that's okay you don't have to let the beneficiaries know about it you don't need to get anyone's approval it is you it's just a different way of holding title to your assets so a frequent concern that people have is oh if I create a trust and put my assets into the trust I'm accountable to the kids or I don't own anymore I can't sell my house untrue it is you and that's why typically the assessor's office does not reassess if you put your home into your trust because they view your trust as you if you are the primary beneficiary and trust or next slide so if we own a piece of property in California most likely we own an asset that's worth over $166,000 so the probate court looks at that gross value doesn't even look about look at any mortgage against it looks at the gross value of that asset so that would be a very good reason to create a trust you own a piece of real property in California and the difference at someone's passing will be varied first of all with the trust if you have taken the time to put your assets into the trust there will not be a probate if you just have a will there will be a probate a will is public when someone passes away the will is filed so anyone can look up at the probate court where your assets will go where who the guardians are a trust is typically private and the check and balance with the trust is you have a successor trustee who is accountable to all of the beneficiaries for the distribution a will will have an executor and typically that executor needs to hire an attorney to handle the probate process with the trust there's a successor trustee oftentimes the trustee does not necessarily need to hire an attorney and they certainly are not hiring the court if you will to oversee the process where the opposite is true with the will that needs to go through probate assets subject to probate can be subject to a state recovery where the opposite is true of a living trust there's more money spent with probate than there is from the administration of a trust so again if you own assets gross over $166,000 and remember there are a couple ways to avoid that you can either put beneficiaries on an asset or put them in a trust if that total exceeds that amount you might think seriously about creating a living trust and putting your assets in it if you're below that amount you might not need a trust and we certainly don't like creating documents just for the sake of creating documents it would be important to create a trust if you were over that amount or anticipated being over that amount next slide so both a trust and a will distribute property at death a trust avoids probate a will can be a good tool it distributes property at death and can name guardians of minor children but a will is subject to probate if it's handling assets that exceed $166,000 if you're under that a will will distribute property at death and there won't be a big probate needed next slide and the probate process is expensive because you're you're essentially paying the court to oversee the process uh they're checking on the executor they're validating the will they're looking at the distribution the executor is filing accountings he's publishing things in the paper um he or she is notifying creditors you don't need to do all of that with a trust administration next slide if you do not take the time in either a will or a trust you decide who is going to handle your estate at death or where your assets are going to go the court of california will do so through the probate code and so typically in test date succession is if you pass away things go to spouse if there's no spouse it goes to children and grandchildren if there are no children grandchildren or great grandchildren it would go to your parents and then if there were no parents it would go to brothers and sisters so you may like that scenario you might not so if you take the time now while you're with it and can execute proper legal documents you can make sure that when you pass away your estate will go to whomever you wish on your terms next slide and this is just another little chart that kind of shows the line of succession from the left side to the right so if you don't like this scenario it's uh it's a good idea to prepare your own will or trust to make sure that once again your assets are going to those that you wish to receive them one day next slide probate is expensive and these are some of the things that an executor needs to do when going through the probate process so they need to publish a notice they need to um file a bond they need to prepare an inventory and get appraisals of all of the assets they need to send notices to creditors they don't just just check the mail but they need to send out formal notices pay debts of course file accountings and a file petition for the final distribution show up at hearings so that's why they're going to charge um a chunk of change in order to do that work for you and the attorney involved will do the same next slide so let's pick a round number here so let's say someone owns a home gross value of a million dollars they don't have any other assets the fees to the executor with a probate are going to be 23 000 the attorney that the executor hires to help her through that process is also going to earn 23 000 dollars um to avoid this if you if this individual let's say who had a home worth a million dollars had created a trust and put the home in the trust these fees would probably be um 35 percent of this amount next slide so let's look at it a little example here with the same million dollar house let's say there is a loan against the house of 300 000 so the net value is 700 000 the cost of administration does various things whether there's a trust or a probate is 20 000 so on the trust administration side a balance of 680 000 would be distributed to whomever the trust states on the probate side because a statutory fee of 23 000 will go to the executor and a statutory fee of that same amount will go to the attorney handling the probate a balance of 634 000 will be distributed to the the people stated let's say in a will or in test state succession according to the charge we just saw so if this individual had just created a trust and placed that million dollar home in the trust they would have saved a little bit over 45 000 next slide let's do a little example here so we have Pamela and she has the following assets she has a home titled Pamela Anderson trustee of the Pamela Anderson rebel global trust she has two retirement accounts and someone named Ben is a beneficiary on those accounts she has a life insurance policy naming her mother as the initial beneficiary and then as a secondary or contingent beneficiary she indicated that Leo would be the second beneficiary unfortunately her mother died and then she has a check in savings account and she's put Tommy as a beneficiary there so with this example given what we've covered do we think that there will be a probate here okay there will not be because she had created a trust and properly placed her home into her trust she had a living beneficiary on her retirement accounts as well as a living beneficiary on her life insurance and then with her checking account she indicated a beneficiary there as well so there would not be a probate here next slide so now and here we go we have Alex and he has the following assets a home worth 300 000 titled in his name an unwaring man two retirement accounts he opened them up but he never completed the beneficiary designation form apparently life insurance he named his father as the only beneficiary but did not take the time to name a secondary or contingent beneficiary and then had a checking account but was very vague and apparently the bank let him put my girlfriends down as beneficiaries there so in this instance given what he has do we think there would be a probate here whether he had a will or didn't have a will there would be a probate yes and so fees would be charged on a little over a half a million dollars because everything here is subject to probate there is not a living beneficiary on these various accounts the life insurance and retirement account and then his home is in his name and he never created a trust and placed his home in the trust so unfortunate but we see it happen quite often next slide this is another way to avoid probate for people who own homes so you can prepare and sign a notarized signature a transfer on death deed and you would indicate a beneficiary on the bottom of that deed you would file it and then if you were to pass away the property would go to that individual if you had placed several beneficiaries on that deed the home would go to whoever of the beneficiaries were alive at the time of your passing so that can be a tool that you can use it doesn't handle everything there are certain limitations next slide please it can handle of course condos and homes it would if you own a multi dwelling of let's say five units or more it would not it would could not be used for that sometimes people when they indicate beneficiaries let's say they have two kids and one of their kids predecessors them they would want that 50 share to go to the children of those kids it won't handle that situation so it does have limitations but it can be a good tool in certain circumstances next slide and here's just an example of the document it's something that you could probably create yourself you just have to always remember to have a document like this notarized wait and sign it in front of a notary and thereafter file it within 60 days of execution next slide okay so let's talk about the other group of documents bundle of documents and uh legal issues and life scenarios that indicate estate planning documents that are needed so if we were incapacitated and we needed someone to finish filing our taxes pay our bills stand in our shoes in a lawsuit or we needed someone to advocate with our medical providers what we want and what we don't want with respect to our medical treatment we need two documents next slide and keep in mind that when we're being assessed when it's being determined whether or not we have legal capacity and when that next person should be the person with whom physicians speak or the person who would thereafter file your taxes for you we can decide if we want two physicians to decide that we're incapacitated we can decide if we want a panel of people to decide that so once again if we take the time now we can uh state what is appropriate for ourselves next slide so with a healthcare directive we're going to nominate someone who we trust to advocate for us in a medical setting and we're going to pick someone who's not going to implement what they want for us but hopefully implement what we want for ourselves so a good healthcare directive will address dementia how much we want to have done to ourselves if things were looking bad and very dire someone who could be strong with medical practitioners and make sure that things were taking place on our terms so keep that in mind when you're deciding upon a proper agent for a healthcare directive next slide and then with the power attorney document we'll have a couple of choices here as well so we can give that individual broad authority we can give them automatic authority I've had people who travel abroad for three months and they want their daughter to be able to do anything for them while they're gone well that's more of an immediate power of attorney we can have a power of attorney that kicks in when two physicians state that we are incapacitated so once again if we take the time now we can craft documents that fit our situation and that makes ensure that we are signing documents with being very comfortable with the statements in those documents and the the situation that kicks them into place next slide so on both of these documents we're going to hopefully name a primary agent that we trust and once again it's good to have someone who is relatively assertive it's best to have a an individual and then a secondary choice as opposed to having two people act together if you think about it if you were in a medical setting and doctors needed permission to do a certain treatment to if they had to track down two people they could delay treatment so I think it's best to have a first choice and then if that person was you know incapacitated his or herself the medical protectioners would go to the second choice all of those are good things to think about when drafting or crafting these estate planning documents if we take the time to draft these documents that is what will happen if we're incapacitated the first person will be called let's say in a health care directive and that person will be couched with the duty to act in your best interest and to be your health care designee if we do not take the time to do this there would have to be typically a conservatorship hearing where a court would appoint someone to act in your best interest to be your fiduciary that can take time typically families notified several family members may think they are the best person for you and want to do the right thing but again a judge will be deciding that with very little input from you I'd rather have all of you decide for yourselves who is best in your circle or in your family to advocate for you down the road if that type of power and fiduciary status was needed there are some other types of health care documents that can be important especially for older adults so there can be a post and basically it's on a bright pink piece of paper particularly so that if emergency personnel were called and if this person indicated that they didn't want CPR there would be a higher chance that the emergency personnel would not give that to an individual again this is typically something for older adults but it does not take the place of a health care directive because oftentimes health care issues are not emergency situations but let's say someone has Alzheimer's or dementia this document would not kick in but an advanced health care directive would address what should happen to this individual and who would advocate for that individual also a DNR do not resist to take clause can be in a health care directive but once again just having a DNR document will not take the place of a much more comprehensive health care directive sometimes you can obtain a health care directive from your medical practitioners they will have forms and you can download those complete them typically they're signed either in front of two disinterested witnesses or a notary and if you do take the time to do that make sure when you go back to your medical practitioner or your physician to bring that with you so that they can scan it into your system so that's always on file in case there was an emergency next slide and here's a picture of what a pulse looks like it's bright pink to get the attention of medical practitioners or EMT personnel and here it is in white next slide okay so now we understand that all of us need some type of estate planning at a minimum we need documents that will handle what happens when we're alive but if we unfortunately became incapacitated so we need a power of attorney and we need to nominate someone to step into our shoes to handle financial matters and likewise we needed advanced health care directive so that we have someone in place to handle medical issues and to advocate with medical personnel and then we also should take the time to either have a will if our assets are under 166 thousand dollars or a trust if our assets are over that threshold and if we have a home we have an asset over that probate amount those are the documents important when we pass away and they will distribute property according to our wishes when you consider drafting the state planning documents I did mention one document that you can obtain yourself a health care directive you can obtain a power of attorney california does have a california statutory power of attorney and it is okay and it's better to have that than to have nothing so you could at least do that and once again sign it in front of a notary if you do decide that you want to meet with an estate planning attorney to draft your estate planning documents expect to meet with him or her either in person or through zoom nowadays they're going to ask you questions about your family structure they may have sent you a work book that they want you to complete designating who in your life would fit a certain role and where you want your assets to go when you pass away one day they will end up sending you draft documents and feel free to to have the liberty to change those until your final signing because once again the documents need to express your intent and what you want to have happen and then when you're comfortable with the documents you will sign them in front of a notary typically you may or may not go to the attorney's office he or she may send you the documents tabbed and you can frankly go to any notary if you're choosing if you have one local and you don't really feel like you want to go inside an office these days as long as you sign them in front of a notary they should be legally valid and then if you create a trust you're going to fund your trust with your home and maybe your financial assets and keep in mind to avoid probate we either typically put assets into our trust or we make sure that we have living beneficiaries on our assets retirement life insurance and sometimes types of bank accounts and it's also important to review estate planning documents periodically life changes you may not be comfortable with your second alternate on your health care directive every two years or so it's great to review those for a few minutes and make sure you like your choices if you don't you can change them as long as you once again have legal capacity next so here are some people we may or may not have heard about these cases but Heath Ledger Barry White where they had estate planning documents they just forgot to change them and they were had decisions in them that really didn't make sense but unfortunately when they passed away the old estate planning documents guided what happened to their estate so once again it's important to revisit the decisions made in existing estate planning documents and update while you have the capacity to do so that concludes the basics of estate planning I'm very happy to share all of this information with all of you hopefully it's prompted you to think about your own situation and see what types of documents you may need and though for those of you who do have existing documents to at least now look at those documents once again pull them out of that file cabinet and make sure that you still like your decisions well Kendra thank you so much I know you want to touch on this slide first before I dive into Q&A sure so this is our intake line if you feel that you would like to contact our office because we do have estate planning services you can call this number it's 510-271-8443 extension 300 and one of our administrative people will reach out to you and see what you need and link you with an attorney and then we have we handle other housing refinance issues as well so we're happy to to serve our San Francisco folks thank you so much Kendra it's such a pleasure to have you here and I was already receiving some information about how useful this presentation is for people we've received a couple of questions I'll go through some of them that are here before the library also offers them up as well but before I dive into this one here what if the estate value is under that amount of that $166,000 and there's no will in place then the state of California will decide where the assets go there won't be the big long expensive probate but there will need to be an administration and once again it will go according to that that tier of people who will inherit you won't be able to decide that great thank you that scenario take the time to decide for yourself where you want your assets to go and create a will and the beauty about a will is you a will is witnessed so you don't even have to go to a notary's office in order to execute a will you can sign it in front of two disinterested witnesses so two neighbors could come over and watch you sign your will it couldn't be the people named in your will so you certainly wouldn't want one of your kids to be a witness but two disinterested witnesses are all that's needed to properly sign a will that's great and thank you for that I wanted to focus on one of the questions that came in specifically I'm a little bit more focused in the general presentation but was on a below market rate units and how might an owner of a below market rate unit approach their estate planning differently very good question bmr owners can create trusts and place their homes in trusts with a copy that that the draft trust must be reviewed and approved by the mayor's office so if you create a trust sign it put your home in it in a trust without that approval that is a a non-compliance issue so you need to contact the approved attorneys on their list of attorneys and then once you get a draft trust send it to the mayor's office let them review and approve it and thereafter you may sign and execute it and place your home into the trust thank you Kendra and then just to you know reiterate some of that again it's the mayor's office of housing they have a very specific title trust transfer policy application and approval process so for those very specific questions there please you reach out to them to make sure that you're following their guidelines and working with those that they have approved in making decisions um Kendra a quick question here on the concept behind fund your trust what does funding your trust mean that obviously brings up certain connotations in some people's minds but specifically again funding your trust in this situation means very good question sometimes people think it means a trust fund and trusts are not for wealthy people they're really for everyone who own assets over $166,000 so funding your trust means taking the active step to retitle your assets to the trust that you've created so with respect to real property you're going to the attorney should handle this for you sign a deed convene your interest in your property to yourself as trustee of your trust and thereafter filing that and that is funding your trust with your real property with respect to any financial assets funding your trust would entail going to your bank and changing title on your bank account once again to your trust um with respect to any other mutual fund accounts you would take an abbreviated version of your trust send it to that institution or bring it into them and request that they change title on your account to you as trustee of your trust the assets are still yours your statement thereafter will look a little different it'll have a t e or a t re after your name it'll still be your asset there's no uh tax implications from doing this but it just means placing your assets in your trust and owning the assets in your trust rather than owning them individually thank you Kendra and you know you you mentioned something earlier about the need to assign someone a trustee who would be more for fright or more I don't know what the exact language was was aggressive why is that important in these situations especially when dealing with so many details that people should feel comfortable asking those follow-up questions you know people are often intimidated by this process and they want to feel that they they have some permission by you in this space to really ask those every single seemingly annoying questions of those that you're engaging with can you talk about that a little bit certainly so I think uh especially with respect to your healthcare directive it's important to to hire someone who is assertive because the medical practitioners might indicate that certain things want to be done with the to the patient that the patient him or herself is indicated they don't want to have mechanical ventilation so choosing an agent there needs to be choosing someone who will stand up for the things that you have chosen are appropriate for your own body especially that person needs to be assertive for a power of attorney designee not so important that person be assertive but that person needs to be good with details doesn't have to be a financial guru but it needs to be someone reliable who's going to pay your bills on time who's going to file your taxes on time if you were incapacitated likewise a successor trustee and a trust needs to be someone who can take care of details well um file your taxes the year after you pass away once again a detail oriented person is good for that role so it was really just for the healthcare role that we need someone who is assertive because I might need to stand up uh and say hey I know you guys want to do this to this patient but you know Sarah said he did not want this done or she did not want this done to herself so it needs to be someone strong in that in that situation for the other roles it really needs to be someone detail oriented oriented they can hire help so they can hire a tax person they can hire a financial person um they can hire an attorney if they needed help but it really just needs to be someone who is good with details who's going to get the job done that's great thank you Kendra um going back to another question that I saw that is specific one moment I just saw something that I missed does a revocable trust make having a last will and testament necessary if someone creates a trust typically they will have a will called a poor river will it will revoke any prior wills the poor of a will will state if someone forgot to put something into the trust that asset will pour over into the trust and be distributed according to the intentions expressed in the trust so ideally there would be a will and one of the first paragraphs will typically state I revoke all prior wills so there should be a will but it will revoke any prior will another probate question um an example stocks held in community property by a mother and daughter with a value of nine hundred thousand dollars named in a revocable trust would that need to go through a probate process um hard to say because held by a mother and daughter as community property that would be odd it's very hard to tell from this question if these people if mom is still alive and okay it sounds like mom needs may need to take an active step because perhaps dad passed away and place this asset if it really is worth close to a million dollars into a trust to state where that asset goes um and to avoid probate great thank you Kendra um where can someone download a template of a trust uh so they can do this uh begin that process themselves before they pursue or choose to pursue an attorney to support them um we don't endorse any to do trusts that are out there and there are many of them out there a health care director for power of attorney can be downloaded and that's a pretty straightforward document I would suggest if this person thinks they're going to eventually hire an attorney anytime that they take and money that they pay to create their own trust and then if they're going to take that self-created trust and bring it to an attorney the attorney is probably going to redo the whole thing so I would probably start with speaking with the attorney deciding at that point if you want to create an interest with the attorney and then if they don't want to you know work on it themselves great um well we have a few more minutes left um and we have a whole bunch of questions here um in the q and a section so I just want to thank those of you who put them in here and again if we don't answer those questions we will respond um do assets with a named beneficiary get included in the 166 threshold for probate they do not because remember that's was in one of those bubbles where it's a way to avoid probate as long as there is a living beneficiary on an asset that avoids probate upon presentation of a death certificate that asset will go to whomever the beneficiary is as stated on that asset so that's a great way to avoid probate great thank you for that question Sarah um this is another question there's a current apartment that's owned by three siblings the value of sold now would lead just under the 166 minimal bank accounts have many beneficiaries have beneficiaries listed need a trust well if an apartment is owned by three siblings it can be owned several ways it can either be held as tenants in common where each of the three siblings owns an individual undivided interest or more likely it's held as joint tenants and that means if one sibling passes away it'll be it'll go to the other two remaining siblings um it's very hard to tell from a question like this but if I think the second part was their accounts but there are many beneficiaries on them so if the owner of the account passed away and there are living beneficiaries on the accounts probably it's not going to be subject to probate as long as one or more beneficiaries is alive at the time that the owner passes away great um this one is about clarifying seemingly contradictory statements um in one of the slides around assets um assets assets in a living trust is subject to a state recovery the same slide also said assets in a living trust is not subject to a state recovery so I think the slide said a will a probate those assets would be subject to a state recovery on the other side of the slide it said through a trust a trust administration would not be subject to a state recovery because going through a state recovery um the state really just goes after assets subject to probate well if assets have been placed in a trust there's no probate if there is a probate yes there could be a state recovery through um to those assets great thank you Kendra um cost of admin what does that encompass trust administration encompasses safekeeping all of the assets sometimes it involves putting assets that unfortunately we're not in the trust and trying to um complete these small estate affidavits and putting assets into the trust as long as we're under that $166,000 figure um checking the mail paying bills filing the taxes and eventually notifying the errors at law that there's a trust giving them a certain number of days to object to the trust and then eventually distributing assets per the trust term so that's trust administration work great um another question can I name an organization or say a university as my beneficiary and my durable power of attorney and can the beneficiary be changed anytime well a power of attorney document does not name a beneficiary a power of attorney will designate an agent to do financial things for you if you were unable to do those things for yourself um you can hire professional fiduciaries to act if you don't really have someone in your circle that you trust you can sometimes choose a bank to act in that regard it's it's uncommon but once in a while a bank will be willing to do that of course you have to check with your your institution more likely though if you did not have someone in your circle who could act under a power of attorney you would interview and look into professional fiduciaries if they're talking about a an institution as a beneficiary that would be done through a will or a trust so you can certainly make a charitable distribution at death through a trust um thank you and uh do you still need to put fund your real properties to living trust if you already did the tod on these properties as long as a beneficiary indicated on a tod is alive when you pass away you should avoid probate there and then can you remind us what tod is transfer on death um okay we have some of the similar questions here that touched on how do i fund my trust which we cover um one of the questions is in relationship to i have a condo uh bmr condo in san francisco can i put that in my trust um when a draft trust is created it is very important to send that to the the appropriate office the mayor's office to have them review and approve that if they approve it you can sign the final documents and at that point put your home into your trust but they need to approve that right so so again the approval process to pursue that specifically for bmr's um and uh i know there's some work about at time right now and i just wanted to make sure that everyone remembers that there is follow-up information where you can reach out to our offices um or uh to kendra's organization to make sure that you have a way of engaging there on additional questions um uh that we have not answered today but in addition to that there there is a question on what is the best way or what is the best resource from a nonprofit perspective in pursuing attorneys to help individuals do this work i would typically interview a couple of attorneys if you're a bmr person make sure they're on the approved list and from the mayor's office um see if they specialize in estate planning if they don't sense your comfort level so so essentially there is no cut and dry answer there's no one person that we do or do not recommend rather there are people that are right for you um and then there are certain restrictions that you may be subject to that provide you with an opportunity of a list that you can also pursue in the same way so there is no specific way just to go about it there is in the mayor's office of housing website information on which legal advisors are available to you approved and then you can also ask um other organizations to help reference a group of them so you can find a person that's right for you correct yes very well put um uh anything else kinder that you would like to leave us with generally that any of these questions are prompted uh for you before we close i just encourage people if you took the hour today to listen and think about these topics please um pursue at least getting a power of attorney done if you don't have one and a health care directive done uh because once again when you need them it's too late to create them so you have to create them when you're feeling good and have proper legal capacity so that if something unforeseen happens and you no longer have capacity you have people there who you trust to handle your matters great and then and then again just from a personal perspective i do think it's a very important um assertive assertive assertive do not be shy about asking questions uh when you reach out to our organization our organization at the assessor's office or to any other nonprofit do ask those questions be assertive uh to make sure that you're getting the answers that you need specific to your situation and speaking of that i'm sorry that we weren't able to get to every single question but i just want to thank again uh the library uh to you Kendra Bowen uh for joining us today and giving us your time to answer some of these questions uh and we will be reaching out um we will be waiting for you to reach out to us uh to make sure uh that we can answer any other specific questions that you may have so thank you again so much for joining us today for those of you who did it's great to see so many of you it reminds us this is an extraordinary resource so we can continue to provide and we look forward to partnering with Kendra and others and in your future uh to do more uh in the formats that are available to us and in the meantime i hope all of you stay safe um uh and we look forward to seeing you again soon thank you again Kendra and thank you again to the san francisco public library for helping to make this happen thank you assessor torres and thanks to all who joined us thanks to Kendra Bowen for her expertise and we'll see all of you at the next program bye bye goodbye take care everyone