Not too long ago I received a call from a child of a client that hasn’t visited with me in almost eighteen years. We drafted a revocable trust for this client back then. At the time the federal estate tax exemption was lower than it is today, but she also had fewer assets, and those assets had changed.
Although she left financial gifts to her grandchildren, some weren’t born when she created her trust and were therefore excluded from her trust when she died. One of her children predeceased her but was still mentioned in the trust. She also left a specific legacy to a charity that no longer exists.
At the time she did her trust we assisted her with the transfer of her real estate and brokerage accounts to her trust, but those had all changed by the time she died. Her bank accounts, brokerage accounts and homestead all changed.
Since she hadn’t paid attention to making sure that her new assets were properly titled into her trust, we had to open a probate estate to deal with those assets. The Florida Trust Code changed substantially in 2007, and there might have been other items we could have accomplished more easily for her family than the issues we were faced with.
In other words, her estate was sort of a mess, and it will likely take some extra work that wouldn’t have otherwise been necessary had she visited with us every so often as our correspondence urges clients to do after they have completed their estate plan.
Estate plans live on as we do. Our family and financial circumstances change. The situation that we all live in, personal, tax, legal and financial flows like a river. Because our lives are not static but are, in fact, quite fluid it should come as no surprise that once your estate plan is complete you should not put it in your safety deposit box and let it sit for years.
On November 12th I’m giving a workshop at 1pm at the Sanibel Community House to talk about this and other similar issues. It’s open to the public so if you are interested you are more than welcome. Information can be found on my firm’s web site www.sbshlaw.com or you’ll find a paid announcement in this newspaper.
If you haven’t visited with your estate planning attorney in some time, make an appointment to do so.