#87: Irreversible Mistakes After Death

Full Episode Transcript
With Your Hosts
Micah Shilanski and Christian Sakamoto

Micah: Welcome to another amazing episode of the Plan Your Federal Retirement podcast. I’m your host, Micah Shilanski, and we got a special episode today because we have guesting in with us another great advisor, Christian Sakamoto. Christian, thanks for joining us again, bud.

Christian: Hey Micah, super glad to be here and excited to go through our topic today. We were chatting a little bit about it beforehand, but I know I’m really passionate about this subject. So I’m looking forward to it.

Micah: Yeah, this is really good. This is something that almost cannot be talked about enough. Now. I know what our listeners are thinking taxes, so don’t you worry. We will talk about taxes but it’s not just about taxes. But this is something that in our financial planning process that where we go through, this is a key thing you got to start off with for many important reasons and share some stories as to why it is that, but it’s also something that a lot of people think they have done because mentally they’ve thought about it and they’ve worked a little bit towards it, but they don’t actually have it done, or they don’t have a correct and what they want. And it’s one of the irreversible things, right? If something happens, there’s not a lot we can do to fix it when it’s done wrong. So it’s worth a little bit of time and attention to put it together.

Christina: Yep, Yep, I agree. 

Micah: Yeah, so I was gonna say on that. So the biggest thing that we’re talking about human relationships; probably guess it since you knew it wasn’t taxes. It’s estate planning, right? It’s irreversible mistakes that happen when you pass away. Now, most of the time, Christian, because Christian is a financial advisor and our team as well. Most of the time, Christian, when we’re working with clients, we get to see this in advance and fix problems, right, because clients are coming to us when they’re still alive, which is really nice. But when we get either, and we’re talking about when things go wrong, a nice little segment on that. But when we talk about this with clients when a loved one has passed away, and they’re not in control, and things are happening, or if a new client comes into us, and someone who’s passed away, we can’t really change what’s already been done. We have to work within the laws that we have. And so it’s really important to spend the time and energy and effort to make sure that this is set up correctly.

Christian: 100% agree. While we’re working with our clients, you know, they’re still alive, we have the opportunity to work on this together and plan ahead, as opposed to working on the other side when we’re putting, trying to put out fires and those sorts of things. So the irreversible decisions, key word there. Let’s focus on that today. Some of the some of the concerns that we’ll have, some of the concerns that we’ll face, and then talk about some of the other documents we need. And at the end, we’ll talk about some of the things that can go wrong with this stuff.

Micah: I love it. So, let’s go through timelines. Let’s talk about documents. Let’s talk about things that go wrong and always in action items, right? What are things our listeners can do with this week to help improve them in that situation? So Christian, kicking off, let’s talk about timelines. One of the things the questions I get asked kind of frequently when people pass away is like, what is my timeline? What do I have to do? Most of the time, the answer is you don’t generally have a rush timeline. Sometimes that’s a different story. And we’re gonna go through that. But most of the time, there’s not financial things, you have to get done right away. You can have time to go through the grieving process and to go through the funeral process, etc. But there’s a couple of exceptions to that rule. So let’s go ahead and kind of run through those.

Christina: Yep. So the first one is, when it comes to the TSP, there’s actually a 90 day rule with the TSP that we have to make a decision right? And within those 90 days, we’re either choosing to keep it as the IRA. If it’s going to be from a spouse, it’ll continue in that spouses name, or we’re gonna have a choice to get it out of the TSP. So you want to chat a little bit more about that 90 day rule?

Micah: Yeah, so the way it works, and we had a great episode with Kim Weaver from the law, I always want to call it the TSP office, but it’s not the TSP office. She is the Director of External Affairs at the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, great podcast with her talking about this and some places where it goes wrong. So you can check that episode out as well. But basically, the 90-day rule from the TSP says after they have been notified upon death, that’s a key point after they’ve been notified upon death. They then will move the money out of the TSP participant’s name into a different beneficiary or inherited account, and then they’re going to notify the beneficiaries. The beneficiaries have 90 days to tell the TSP what they’re going to do with that money. If the beneficiary does not tell the TSP what they’re going to do with that money in 90 days, there could be several reasons as to why they don’t by the way, they don’t tell what they’re going to do in 90 days. The TSP does a forced liquidation and sends a check for the entire amount. There is do no undo button. There is no rollover as our listeners are really savvy; they know when you take money out of TSP, the first person in line is our favorite aunt IRS, right? And IRS is there the IRS, and so this could be a bad option. So this is one of the things that we need to make sure kind of our soon as timeline that’s normally there is that 90 day marker with the TSP. And again, it’s the TSP has rules that they have to follow. Right. So it is the rule that’s there. We got to know we got to know how it works. We got to know what our options are. 

Christian: Yeah, yeah. So another one. Another timeline that we want to look at, is that nine month rule for beneficiaries and you have nine months for notifying whatever account it is coming from, in this case, you know, TSP or maybe it’s an IRA or any other type of account, we got to nine, nine months in order to notify if it’s going to be a trust there.

Micah: Yeah, so if we haven’t named beneficiary as a trust, right on the account, which is how my accounts are we’ll talk about beneficiary naming in a second but my wife and I are first I have a trust is my contingent beneficiary. Christian. I know you’re doing the same concept here because trusts are such a good planning tool. But what that means that my wife and I pass away, you have to within nine months, the custodian knows that you’ve passed away, but within nine months of the date of death, they gotta get a copy of the trust documents to say what’s supposed to happen with the money. No, and most custodians the Schwab, Fidelity, TD Vanguard, whomever, right most of them want those trust documents up front just because they get the documents up front that does not alleviate the nine month rule. Let’s say you’ve had this account for 15 years and Schwab has lost the documents.  I’m just picking on Schwab for fun, right. They’re a great custodian, but let’s say 15 years is a long time they don’t have your trust document anymore. Have you satisfied the nine-month rule? No, you have not. So you have to do that. If not, it really limits the taxation deferral benefits we could have by those nine months. So really important if there’s a trust beneficiary, we reach out to the custodian, we make sure they have a copy of the trust they make we make sure we know how this thing works. Really important. Christian, what about tax returns? Right? This is another kind of question we get. Someone has died. Let’s say it’s a parent has passed away. Now the kids executive personal representative, whoever’s taking over when our tax returns do?

Christian: Well, it’s going to be the same for them as it is for us. It’s going to be April 15 of the following year for their tax return. And of course, we have that six-month extension should we need it to push it into October, but it’s still that April 15 day.

Micah:  Don’t say should we need it like that I use the extension every year. Fair enough. Hopefully, getting my taxes done for last year soon. All right, but on that, so know that the extension is really powerful. There’s also state tax returns, which could have different deadlines. Most people don’t need to file estate tax returns. It is a little bit of a misnomer. It really depends too. And we’re going to talk in this Christian in the documents you need. It really depends on how things were set up. How are they owned, who are your beneficiaries, etc. But there’s normally always a need for an individual income tax return. Now, even if there’s not a need, not not a requirement by the IRS that you have to file one. I am a huge fan of filing a final tax return. Why ? We start the clock on statute of limitations. Right now the IRS has three years for that statute of limitations to run out, assuming we didn’t commit fraud, because then there is no such limitations. So protip don’t commit fraud for many reasons. But then that way we stop it right because what could happen? Well, the IRS could five years later if you don’t file taxes and say hey, why didn’t sue get a texture and create all of this issue that you have to deal with? So I’m a big fan of anytime we can kind of limit things and that statute of limitations. Let’s punch the clock. Let’s get it done.

Christian: That’s good advice. Absolutely.

Micah: Boy, another one that really comes up again, let’s say a parent’s passing ways these are RMDs, these required minimum distributions. I know it’s been a hot topic this year. We’ve been talking about because of Secure Act 2.0. A lot of laws have changed. But Christian, let’s going to run through a scenario real quick. Let’s say you’re inheriting an account whether you’re the personal representative, so take care of this, or you’re a beneficiary that’s going to get money. And let’s say the person was over there, required beginning date right when they have to start taking RMDs let’s say that 73. They have RMDs that are coming out, but they pass away and haven’t taken their RMD for this year. What has to happen?

Christian: Well once RMD start, they can’t stop. So if the person who passed..

Micah: versus dead… What do you mean? Versus dead? The IRS says they gotta keep going.

Christian: Well, whoever inherits that account, the rule says that the RMD has to continue. And so if that person that just passed away, if they had already taken it for the year, then the person who inherited they do not have to for the year if they didn’t, then the person who needs to take that RMD. Rules are going to be a little different for spouses versus if it’s we’re going to be inheriting you know, from a parent or sibling or that sort of thing. Just because with spouses there’s a there’s a little bit of a distinction between the account being inherited account, versus maybe we take that account and roll it or rather transfer it to our own account. And there’s some planning tips and tricks to think about with when we do that.

Micah: You bet now. I know Christian, when we’re talking on the podcast, we’re talking with clients; sometimes we’ll do the same thing. You set a rule that means a transfer, right? We want to go ahead and use those words together. And really, what we’d ask like our audience, if you could remove one word from your vocabulary, it would definitely be the word rollover, only use the word. We think sometimes we’re gonna say them because we want to make sure we’re talking about the same thing. And just understand those can be two totally different things, right? You call up and ask for a rollover, you may get a rollover, which may is not the same thing as a transfer and transfer is normally what you’re trying to go for. So, but you bring up a great point, on RMDs once they start, they don’t stop. They gotta keep coming out. So it’s really really important. So I think those are mainly the timeline things that kind of catch people, right. So we kind of have that kind of taken care of. Let’s talk about the documents that you need. In a Christian we always say that there’s three documents people have to have. This is of course our opinion, but you have to have some optional ones as well. But run us through those. What are those three documents we have to have?

Christian: Yeah, so the first two are applicable one we’re still alive. And we’re in a situation where we’re incapacitated is when they would kick in so those first two would be an Advanced Health Care Directive. Some states call this a living will. But for general purposes, it’s going to be the advanced healthcare directive. And then the second document is a durable power of attorney. And again, both of these documents are for when we’re still alive. And in situations where we want to have a document for financial decisions, but also health care related decisions. When we’re in the spot where we can’t make those decisions ourselves. Now, the durable powers of attorney that’s a very powerful document. And if we’re married and we’re in a situation where we’re really trust our spouse or whoever it is that we’re going to add to these documents. We don’t have to use the durable power of attorney when we’re incapacitated. We can use them while we’re still in a good spot. But we can also add those rules to these documents where they only are applicable or kick in or rather springing at incapacitation. So I think those are super important documents to have if we’re ever in a situation where we can’t make those types of decisions for ourselves. Now, again, on the healthcare side, what are those health-related decisions that we want to have made for us? Do we want to stay plugged in or not? Right? Do we want to have artificial nutrition or not? Right? These are very important decisions that we don’t want to put the burden on our loved ones. To make for us and it’s a lot better for us to make those decisions now, instead of not having them have to think about them after the fact. It’s kind of the same thing on the power of attorney side. That’s more for financial-related situations. And it’s very helpful if let’s say, you know, there’s a happens to be like a utility bill that’s only on one person’s name or a spouse’s name. You know, who’s going to be able to go in there and pay that bill and who’s going to be able to have access to those kinds of types of accounts if we’re in a hospital incapacitated, right?

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Micah: You know on that you know Christian talking about a hot button item right is I forget which which utility it was but it was only in my name and I didn’t really think about it since before my wife and I got married and and after we got married I just kept it only and I didn’t even think about it’s on AutoPay right so it just keeps going. And then years later Kelly goes to the call utility company and her name is not on there and she has no access to the account. Talking about a spicy topic for us to chat about that, too. But sometimes like in real life, that’s going to happen right this wasn’t I was trying to keep her off of an account. It was just it’s on auto page. Nobody thinks about the I don’t think about us changing utilities over but this is where that power of attorney is super powerful that she can step in and go ahead and do this and take care of it which is great. The Advanced Health Care Directive I’ll tell a little personal story with this one as well is when my grandmother passed away on my mom’s side, everybody knew what she wanted to have happen. She didn’t want to stay plugged in. Everybody was every thought everybody was on the same page. But she hadn’t taken the time to fill out the Advanced Health Care Directive with what her wishes were. She said, my mom’s in charge. That’s what she said. So, Rosa, my mother, was the one that could make these decisions, etc. So, you know, hospice, all those things. My mom made that tough decision, etc. Then plugger she’s passing away and whatnot. 3am my crazy aunt Mary come storming into the hospital for a reason. And she comes to me, this is what my mother wanted. She didn’t want any of this. What do you do in your calendar, blah, blah, throws this massive fit in the hospital. Drugs come back on my support comes back on like all of these things come back on and we got to spend kind of a week going through this again, and talk about the frustration and hassle that it caused inside of the family. What if my grandma would have taken the time and checked the box on what she wanted? It could have freed us from a lot of hassle and a lot of strife in this conflict and again, this is just our personal experience. And so it’s not enough to sign the form and to say somebody else should do this. It says no, what are your wishes especially don’t put that burden on your children. All right, that’s my personal story on that one. So we got the advanced healthcare directive, super powerful, that durable power of attorney also really, really important probably the most powerful document ever gonna sign. What’s the third one?

Christian: Well, the third is one where we have passed away right and that’s when the the will the last will and testament, is going to be that third, you got to have documents. And depending on if we have, you know, beneficiary designations or different titling, you know, we might think that the will isn’t necessary or isn’t needed. And I couldn’t disagree more with that. The will is what I would consider to be a backstop for a lot of the things that are in our lives. Whether they’re physical assets, or financial assets that again, we might have missed a beneficiary designation for, or we just want to split up a little bit different the will is something that you absolutely need to have to direct where you want your stuff to go through the probate process. And so, that would be something that we can chat about a little bit more as to when, when when it makes sense to instead, you know, focus more on a trust based plan or whatnot. But I think  is definitely something that we got to have

Micah: Amen those top three documents or something we have to have. Now, let’s talk a little bit about order of operations, right? She’s talking about how this applies also to your TSP and your federal benefits is order of operations. Number one, when you pass away things first transfer my title, how was it owned, individual joint, etc. Now, joint tenants with rights of survivorship is a spouse term so I own a joint with my wife, we both own 100%. I died. Kelly gets 100% of that. If I own something joint with Christian, it’s not the same. It’s probably tenants in common. That means I die Christian keeps his half, but he doesn’t own 100% I still own my 50%, so where does that 50% go? So titling is really important here, which is where trust can be super powerful, because trust comes in right at the time in the level. So, ownership number one is how they transfer. Number two is a beneficiary designation. Beneficiary designation is so important we talked about all the time you have four designations, four beneficiary designations as a federal employee, you have your last paycheck, your TSP, your FEGLI, Federal Employee Group Life Insurance, and your pension. Those are four separate forms to go to four separate places. You need to make sure those get filled out because, guess what you cannot put your spouse on as an owner as a title. You can’t have joint with any of those things we just mentioned. Can your spouse be on joint with your TSP? No. Can your spouse be on joint with your IRA? No, should your spouse be on joint with your FEGLI? No, these are all those individual things you can’t have joint right not saying you don’t want to you just can’t. That’s why you got to have these beneficiary designations in there with beneficiary designations. Christian you and I talk about this all the time, you should at least have two a primary and a contingent. Primary something happens to me; everything goes to my wife. If something happens to both of us, where does it go? Now if you’re thinking to yourself and says Look, I got a primary beneficiary but I don’t have a contingent beneficiary, then you spell Micah,  M, I,  no just kidding, right. So, but you gotta have a contingent beneficiary to make sure things are really clean. So we got ownership. Then we got beneficiary designations. If you don’t have something transfer by title, if you don’t have a transfer by beneficiary, then it goes to probate. Probate is a state process to dismiss your assets or he goes through court, etc. That’s where the will comes in. And that’s why Christian said, as a third document, you have to have, if we’ve missed anything in titling, we need this will to be able to step up and say, hey, where does all my stuff go?

Christian: Absolutely, absolutely. So that’s where the will is. Going to be super important. Now, is it possible where we pass away, but we don’t need to go through the probate process? Is that Is that a possibility? 

Micah: Yeah, that’s actually a really good question. Can you pass away and not have to go through probate? And the answer is yes. If you have titled everything correctly. If you have beneficiaries and everything correctly, then there’s nothing left to go to probate all of the assets transferred without going to probate. So I think that’s really really powerful. Right there.

Christian: Same thing when I mentioned earlier when it comes to the will, again, a big if if we had the title right if we had the beneficiaries right, the oil is going to be that backstop that we might have forgotten something or what have you that they can get kicked in. But I also will say there’s those are the again, kind of coming back to the three you gotta have documents. That’s healthcare directive, durable power of attorney in the will. There’s also a fourth option there. And depending on your situation, it could be more, you got to have versus optional, and that would be a revocable living trust or a revocable living trust. And this is where you kind of look at your situation to see is it going to make sense or not and definitely chat with your advisor and estate planning attorney to go through these options, but a lot of times it can make a lot of sense. And in that case, if we do things right, and we utilize a revocable living trust, we also could avoid that probate process, which is kind of nice. That’s one of the things that is really nice about trusts and those kinds of documents is that we can avoid that probate process. It’s not a public. That’s one of the negatives about the probate process. It’s a public, you know, process. It’s can be timely can be expensive. The trust can really speed things along, which I like.

MicAH: I love it. Well, Chris, and let’s go ahead and talk about where things man is so amazing. It’s just like every other podcast that he always says, we have so many things that are listed, like we’re not even gonna get to half of these things. But we have to wrap up our time. But let’s chat a little bit more about where things go wrong. Right? What are some things that you need to avoid and this one’s gonna sound a little crazy, so I’m gonna ask my our listeners be patient with me, because I’m not trying to put anyone down in this, but this is a mistake. I see tons and tons of time. In fact, I saw a an estate planning course for financial advisors, and I brought in a pretty well known estate planning attorney. And when I brought this up, he was like now here’s your 100% right Micah, and it’s do not listen to the estate planning attorney on taxes, especially income taxes. Now, it’s gonna sound crazy to think about right what do you mean, they’re an attorney? They’re an estate planning attorney that’s there. And I’m not saying they all get it wrong. Not at all. I’m sure there’s some fantastic ones that are out there that can figure this out. But a lot of the times when Christian and I are helping with this, especially with a client and a loved one has passed away a parent or something they client is hearing whether the attorney is saying this or not, could be a different story, but the client is hearing incorrect things and here’s how the story goes. Somebody passes away there’s X amount of inheritance. The question is is there any taxes and the estate planning attorney says there’s no estate taxes on this. You’re just fine. Fantastic. The client’s like there’s no taxes on this. I’m good to go. And we walk away you’re like sweet, everything’s fine. tax free. I love this. My two favorite words. However, that’s not exactly what he said. What they said was there’s no state taxes, but in our minds don’t register that. Right. And there’s a difference. There’s multiple types of taxes that we have to pay in the United States. One of them is estate tax. Another one is income tax. That’s what you and I pay every single year because there’s tax returns. We got to get filed every single year. So really important to say, hey, we have a state taxes are one thing, income taxes are another, and in fact, Christian, I was working with a client just recently on this; they got an inheritance, and one of the things whatever client gets an inheritance,, it’s like, all stop let’s find out where this money came from. And the client says Micah, no worries, my brother handles this, and it’s tax-free. And in fact, your brother sent her a letter says great news. There’s no taxes on this. And I’m like, Well, that’s nice, but I call the brother who’s the executor, nice guy go through everything. He outlines out everything that’s there, lists off all of the accounts that money came from, and one of them was an IRA. And I said, Well, who paid the taxes out of the IRA? Was there any taxes withheld? No. is the state paying the taxes? No. Okay, well, someone has to pay taxes on this IRA account and probably what’s going to happen, it’s going to get kicked down to that the beneficiaries, our clients that are going to have to pay the taxes. So it’s always something to know no one I talked to that representative. Again, nice guy. This is what he does for a living, right. He’s the oldest son, so he’s just picking up the mantle and taking care of things. And his karma was Micah,  you don’t understand. I talked to the attorney, and there’s no taxes. That was his comment to me, Christian, right? In my mind. I’m like, I know exactly how this conversation went down. But just because you die doesn’t mean you get off the hook paying taxes.

Christian: Yeah, yeah, super, super bad there. But it’s just a lingo thing, a language thing when you hear a state estate taxes, no state taxes. We’re not thinking about those income taxes there. So that’s a really good example there. Well, I would say another place where things can go wrong is kind of two parts to this; one would be for not really using a real estate planning attorney. And we’re just kind of going with a generic attorney that maybe doesn’t specialize, or this is their niche is estate planning. And what I mean by that is I’m not saying that that attorney is going to do a bad job. But what I’m going to say is if it’s not something that they practice on the day-to-day, and we use them for estate planning to put these documents together, that things could possibly get missed. And I have an example. We have a client get; all of our clients’ names are Bob and Sue kind of makes it nice. So working with Bob and Sue kind of same thing. They just went with a kind of a generic attorney and wasn’t an estate planning attorney, is what I mean and when they got their wills and we were reviewing them, we noticed and so Bob and Sue, they come with what I would consider from a blended family. From previous marriages, they got remarried, they have kids from previous marriages. So what we were going through is we saw in the will that if Sue were to pass away, and Bob inherits Sue’s accounts, that makes sense. But then when Bob passed away, everything would go to his kids and Sue has kids of her own. So in that situation, that’s not good because it would her kids wouldn’t receive any money and vice versa. Bob passed away.

Micah: Chris, what I heard is one spouse is disinheriting all of their kids that’s exactly the other spouse in their disinheriting their children by accident, not by intent by accident.

Christian: Yep, that’s exactly what happened. And so, super important, honestly. I’ve seen this happen with estate planning attorneys before as well. It’s really important with blended families if you have that situation that we really look at. When we say this is what we want that’s actually what we want, and that we want to have our kids receive our money. We got to make sure that there’s a the right estate plan in place to make sure that our kids actually get that money. Just superb. Something really to be looking at because we’ve seen that go wrong quite a few times.

Micah: Absolutely. Talks about a lot of things with our listeners, right? Some stories that we’ve had are just things that we work through daily with clients to make sure that they’re taken care of, but let’s talk about some action items that our listeners can implement this week. Number one, review your documents, things you think you’ve written down, go read them, and see if they actually say what you remember.

Christian: Yeah, love it. Other action item balls, we don’t have these documents, and there’s nothing to review. We got to get those documents right, fill the heck you got to get the advance healthcare directive, durable power of attorney, the will. Super important. That’s got to be on the list.

Micah: I love it. The other thing that I’m going to put on here is to fill out your beneficiary forms, not only fill them out, get them signed off that divide your HR by your representatives, etc. That says that they are in place, and get those confirmations back in your own personal record. If you do those things, you’re going to be so much further ahead and making sure you’re taking care of loved ones after something has happened to you. 

Christian: Yeah, I love it. Perfect. 

Micah: Christian, thanks so much for jumping on the podcast with me. Always a pleasure and to all of our listeners. Until next time, happy planning!

Christian: Happy planning.

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