#617 The Trust is the Missing Link to your Trifecta

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Transcript

The Missing Link In Your Structure

SPEAKER_02 0:01

Welcome everyone to the Main Street Business Podcast. This is Matt Sornson joined by the great and powerful Mark J. Kohler. And we're delighted to be with you today because we have a special message, an important message, probably an intervention for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Many of you need to hear this. And great and powerful, what have you been watching? Wizard of Oz. Appreciate that though.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Powerful. Okay, the topic today. What is that missing link in your business structure, legal structure, trifecta, as we love to call it, and uh which illustrates so much the coordinated structure you all business owners and frankly investors need to have. What is that missing link, Matt? Do you want you to give it away right now?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

The missing link is your trust. It's the boring part, but it's the part that brings it all together.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

So you've already planted bad mindset right there.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Y'all think this is more. I thought this was gonna be fun. I'm trying to give you, I'm trying to meet you where you are right now, okay, and I'm gonna get you where you need to be. Okay. I know you haven't done it because you're like, that sounds boring.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

I'm not gonna die today. Yeah. I believe in some of you. I know that you've been waiting for this podcast. You know what? Damn it. I've been wanting to do my estate plan. I love this topic. Pray tell, gentlemen, tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

No, however, you, whatever person you may be, okay, we're gonna get you there because the fact of the matter is, we're gonna spend all this time working hard, building wealth, saving, paying off our debt, building a business, an entire retirement portfolio. We're gonna do all that work. And then you might pass away. Well, you're going to pass away one day. We get potentially that one all the time. Might you think might yeah, we've got a special, you know, that's another special offer for you later. Uh, but okay, we're all gonna pass away one day.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

And your family's gonna be in anguish. They're gonna be mourning your loss. The last thing you want to do is leave a disaster behind and zero plan. And we never know when that day is gonna come. So we want to talk about how you get that plan in place, how it works, and how it all coordinates with your business entities, your retirement accounts, your real estate portfolio, all of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Yeah, and uh a couple quick disclaimers, and we're gonna give the reasons why this is your missing link. We're gonna riff here with you, give you some important reasons you may have not considered, but a couple disclaimers right out of the bat. And what I want you to know is this is a revocable living trust. We're not talking about some weird Delaware trust, offshore trust, constitutional trust, Rockefeller trust, some stupid trust that's gonna cost you five, 10, 15, or 20 grand, which some people will try and sell you. This is your bread and butter basic estate plan where the trust is coordinated with your will. I had a client call me this week and go, oh, we moved to, where did they go? They moved to Connecticut. They had set up their trust in Texas, and they're like, do we have to redo it all? No. It's portable, it's gonna go wherever you want to go. And they're like, oh, wow. Now we might update a power of attorney or a living will, pull the plug type document. But the point is, your estate plan, once it's done, it can be affordable and it's gonna be portable, and you can update it very easily in the future, and it becomes the foundation of your entire structure.

Legacy Planning Without The Drama

SPEAKER_02 3:18

Yeah. And so when you're thinking about this, I want you to think about your legacy. I want you to be like, this is a time to actually be very thoughtful about all the work you're doing, all the hard work you've already put in, where you're at in your life, and think, all right, all right, what do I want this to look like? What am I building this for? Like if you're doing a good job at it, you're not gonna be able to spend it all. So, and remember, you've got a life insurance policy proceeds, you've got equity in your home, you've got your retirement accounts, you've got your business, you've got your real estate portfolio, your stock portfolio, all these things you've accumulated during life. And how do I want that legacy to carry on? Well, I'm gonna tell you there is a plan in place already for you. And the government decided what that plan is and who gets it and under what conditions. Oh, I'd love that. A government plan for me. Yes, it's gonna be great for you. And it's never what you want, but that is the plan. If you've done nothing, your plan is basically whatever the government and my state says should happen to my assets, that's what I want.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

In probate court. So we'll go there now. Okay, so let's do that. Number one reason Matt was saying, if I may, truncate that into, and we're gonna probably unpack it a little bit. Why would you want to do this trust? Why is it important? Why could it be that missing link for you? Is what's your legacy that you want to leave? Are you gonna leave a mess? Um, where do you want all this wealth? And well, you've been building. Where do you want it to go? I'm gonna offer a second point. Screw your family. I know some of you are thinking, I don't care what it looks like, I'm gonna be dead. Why in the world would I care about this? I'm gonna give you some other choices. I think having a trust gives you a structure to stay more organized. I think it could give you some privacy. I think you want to choose a trust name like Blue Sky Trust or Green Sky This. There can be some privacy strategies that take a little more work if you don't want your name at all on title to real estate. But the trust is a piece of that. And the trust, it can give you privacy. And when you start to get organized with a trust, it's like you're doing this personal audit. You're like, okay, what entities do? Because I'll tell you right now, you do a trust for about two or three grand, maybe four grand, whatever max. You're gonna set this trust up and you're gonna go, what do I fund it with? Oh my gosh, it's gonna force you to get freaking organized. So if you don't care about what it looks like when you're dead, there's still some damn good reasons to deal with this now. And I think it will really help you scale and elevate and build a better structure.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah, and remember what Mark mentioned probate and that this trust helps you avoid probate, which means when you die, your family's gonna have to go to a court in a public process that other people can snoop and look at and see what assets you had and who got what. They can make claims against your estate. Because if you didn't say anything, people can show up out of the woodwork and say, Well, Joe promised me this, he said I'd get that, and you didn't have any plan. How the heck's a court gonna know? They're gonna be judging, is this person's testimony credible? Maybe that kid you wanted to disinherit shows up and they're like, I should get it all. All right. So, like, this stuff happens. So avoid the public process of it by having the trust done, and also the infighting and the problems that arise, even if and I've seen this too, well um intended family members who love each other, who are fighting over assets because they genuinely had a belief of what mom or dad wanted to happen to their estate. But mom or dad never took the time to write it down.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Well, I I like that point. I'm gonna go with number one, leave a mess or leave a legacy. Number two, get more organized during life. And I'm gonna say number three, which we could talk about a little bit more, and we've got some podcasts on privacy, um, possible, more privacy. Yeah, but I'd like Matt's here too, is protecting family relationships, if I may say it that. Like, and I'm gonna use a farmer as a great example. We we've got a ranch out in Utah, and I grew up in the country and lived probably in more rural areas in my life than urban. And I'll tell you, farmers screw this up all the time. Um, farmers generally hate the government, they hate paying taxes, and they hate lawyers. I thought it's kind of the three golden rules for farmers or ranchers. It's what they all align on. It's not what they love, it's what they hate. Yeah, you want to know what they talk about at the diner in the morning over biscuits and gravy? That's what it is. Those three things they're hate. Uh, and then they love basketball. Hooser basketball. No, anyway. Um I was watching Hoosers the other day. I love that. Oh my gosh. Um, so ranchers or farmers, what they'll do is they'll put kids on title to real estate rather than building a trust. So now all of a sudden a kid gets in a lawsuit, kids have a problem, they're untitled to your assets. Number two, guess who's gonna take care of you when you die? It's not your sons. I hate to tell you. Your boys are gonna be working the farm, maybe, or that's not their MO. Your daughters are gonna be taking care of you if you're blessed with both boys and girl children. Your daughters are gonna be the ones to take care of you. But what do the these ranchers do? They put their sons on title to all the crap, and then their daughters get left total in the bag, and it's a mess. And even well-intentioned family members are trying to piece this together after grandpa and grandma are gone, and they're like, What? You don't you can't figure this out? Yeah, you could have done a little better planning. And so, just as a quick example of how bad it can get.

SPEAKER_02 8:58

Yeah. So we want to protect family relationships. We want to protect family relationships. And and and I think one of the most common clients that actually comes to us to set up an estate plan, and we do we do over a hundred new estate plans every month.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

And one of the most common things I would hear when someone would come and do an estate plan with me, and neither Mark or I do them anymore, but we got a whole team of lawyers helping clients across the country that do estate plans every day. And I remember one of the most common things I would hear is my parents just passed away and didn't have an estate plan. And I've been dealing with this mess for a year, two years. It's been a pain. My family's fighting over it. I'm over it. I'm not gonna let this happen to my kids. And now I'm here to get my estate plan done. So don't learn the hard way. Maybe this is a message for your parents. Maybe this is a message for you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

You know, I I I've I can't count how many times um we've had family members as a Father's Day gift, Mother's Day gift, Christmas gift, say, Mom and Dad, I'm gonna pay for your estate plan. Well, we've been meaning, well, you know what? No, I'm paying for it. Because I'm gonna be the one cleaning up this crap when you're gone. I it's my gift to you. Okay. And then they get on a Zoom call. We hook clients all over the country. And and this is something I'm gonna just say now, you can't you can maybe go hack out of Wyoming LLC if you think that's what you need to do, or some promoter influencer sells you a special crypto LLC, whatever the hell they package it as. But when it comes to your estate plan, you got to talk to a lawyer. You gotta have someone that knows what the hell they're doing. They've done it before, they're gonna draft it for you. It's the unauthorized practice of law for someone to not be a lawyer and try to build your estate plan. And we're on the hook. We carry malpractice insurance. We're not going anywhere. And so we can help clients all over the country. We can get on a call with you, your parents, and do it right.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

Your family members after you've passed away, a lot of people hacking this out online by themselves and they put it in a drawer. And they're like, oh, no one knows about this. No one knows what this means. No one knew how to sign this and get this done properly. No one knew to actually put the assets into the trust. And that piece of paper that looked really great that you print it off and you sign and you put in a safe or a drawer somewhere actually is pretty useless. So we want to make sure it's in place, properly done, properly signed, effective in your state, and then you've got to get your assets into it, which we'll talk about in a second.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Okay, now I want to point this out to you, a little factoid. Robin Williams died with a will. Uh tragic death. If you haven't don't know the story there, I won't tell you the spoiler alert, you could go look it up. Prince, Purple Rain, love him, grew up in the 80s, little red corvette. Little red corvette, died without even a will. So I want to, for those that don't know what that means, if you die with a will, it's called probate or intestate. In state, sorry, test state. I died with a will.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

No, intestate.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Intestate means no will, right? Yes. Okay, let's start over. Intestate is no will.

SPEAKER_02 11:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Test date is will. If you die, test state. Okay. So when he died with a will, that's called testate. He had a will. The court could look at that. It was all public. Everybody got to peek into what Robin Williams' life. It was not terribly ugly because he had a will that kind of said what he wanted, but a court had to approve it. Anybody that wanted to bitch and moan could come to court and talk about it. His probate took over a year in California, surprise, surprise. And that's kind of typical around the country. You got to get to court, you got to get a lawyer, you got to go to blah, blah, blah. That's if you die with just a will. Prince died with no will, which is called intestate. And his probate took six and a half years following his death due to all sorts of complications, disputes, the estate value, people making claims. It cost millions of dollars in legal fees. I was trying to find out how much if I can get$87 million in legal fees. Now, he had a lot more than$87 million, but we don't want to get into this situation where there's waste again. So for you, number five reason, maybe you want to pay for this, so you're you're not paying for it later.

Probate Stories And Real Costs

SPEAKER_02 13:16

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Like this is where like you want to talk about an investment that's going to pay off. The thousands you're going to spend now is going to save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and mental anguish and pain for your family. Okay, so let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Can I say this too on that note? When you go to do the estate plan for your family, this is the hidden benefit, too. They're gonna say, you're gonna say, okay, let's get this done. And then on day two, okay, we got to get it funded. Where's all those stock certificates, Dad? Where's all that crap on that entity or this or that, the deeds? Because when they're gone, it's a lot harder to find. Oh my gosh. And so now you've got the impetus, and they've kind of bought in. They went through the process, they kind of get excited at that point. I've done this so many times. They're kind of into it now. So when you go, hey, we got to get this thing funded, oh my gosh, all the there's a retirement account sitting over. Your mom pulls out a drawer. I've had my mom do this, opens her drawer, and there's just mail from Merrill Lynch or Fidelity or whatever just piled up in there that hasn't been opened in a year. And so this is a chance to again get your your hands in this mix and get it organized.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah. All right. So it's an opportunity to get organized. And and also get an understanding of like what do we have? And for your parents too, this is like a an awesome time. Okay. I do want to get to the mechanics of getting this done. Okay. All right. So now what? How do we do this? Okay. Here's what you need to do. You're going to take inventory. We have something called an estate planning questionnaire. It's going to ask you questions. What's your estate look like? What do you have? Do you have certain assets you want to give to a specific person? The boat you own with your brother. Is your brother just going to get that when you die? Maybe one of your kids is going to get the musical instruments or the guns or whatever, certain personal effects. And then you're probably going to say, everything else is going to go to these kids. I got three kids. I got two stepdaughters. Mine's a little more complicated. I probably shouldn't have given that example. Let's just say you got three kids, all right? Yes, hers, and ours. You've got it yours, mine, and ours. A little complicated. But so, um, but you're going to specify who's going to get what. And it can be each of them are going to share in one-thirds after we've given these certain assets up. So now there's a little more levels to this, but that's the first level is is what do you have and who's getting it? We're going to talk about conditions, but what do you have and who's getting it?

How To Start And Fund It

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Yeah. And an important caution here is do not get into analysis paralysis. Yes. Because many of you are going to go, I don't know. And it gets emotional and it gets hard. This is where our team, we have 12 lawyers helping clients every day at this. I'm not trying to make this sound like an information, but I'm seriously trying to take away the pain of this process. Our lawyers, you have that initial call with you. Let's just do what we know is easy. Let's get the low-hanging fruit. Yeah. What what do you got? Let's do that. Because you can amend it. Yes. You can amend it in a year. And I'll tell you, as you go through the process, everything gets clearer. It's kind of like when you start a journey. You may not know what's over the next hill, the next horizon, what's in the next valley. That's fine. You'll figure it out when you get there. So just start the process. Uh, you're gonna have two to three calls with the attorney or paralegals to say, gather data, get you a draft, boom. And then and you're gonna, it's gonna come together. And then you can always edit it later. So I'm gonna say step one, start gathering info. Number two, make the call. Get that first appointment made, have the conversation, start to talk about it. Yeah. And I trust, trust me, it'll get easier.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. And this is no matter what lawyer you're working with. Okay. Is this gonna be the process? But we do an inventory, we do an intake, you start making some decisions of who's gonna get what. Okay. The next decision you got to make is who am I gonna put in charge?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

Ooh, we got to go through people. We're going here. I like this. Okay, we got three main people. Which one you want to choose?

SPEAKER_02 17:01

Okay. Well, it's generally gonna be you during your lifetime here. So I'm in charge and putting it in the first time. We're talking trustee. So trustee. Okay. All right. In charge of the stuff. Okay. And then maybe your spouse if you've got one when you pass away. And then you might pick a third party. Maybe it's a sibling, one of your best friends, a business partner. This could be one of your kids that's get that could be an heir. Madness served for some. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Yes. So um I like three. It's either one or three. And then you got to have some backups. Because you don't want to put two people in charge.

SPEAKER_02 17:35

Problem. Deadline. I like just putting one in charge for myself, but that's what most clients will do. But you could put a committee in there, so to speak. Yeah. But that that's recipe for disaster, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

Okay. So that's number one. Start thinking about who your trustee is going to be. Think of them as the money person. Now I'm going to, for those of you that have kids under age 18, you've got to think of the guardian role. Now, the biological dad or mom, if you're divorced, is going to have first call on that. You can't put incentives to say, let the kids stay with the another situation. But the rule is generally, you know, if you pass away, your the biological mom or dad is going to be the guardian. Um, but what happens if both of you pass away? Well, you're a single mom, single dad, and there's no sign of whoever or wherever, and they don't want the kids. You need to be thinking about the backup guardians. And can I just say, do not choose your mom? Your mom is already in her 40s, 50s, 60s, or older. She does not want to be a mom again. She's a grandma. Let her be a grandma. Choose people that are like you. This is your godparent. That's another term for it. Who's gonna raise your kids most like you? And it does not have to be family. Let family visit.

SPEAKER_02 18:45

Yeah, I think one of the most common is one of your siblings, especially if you're close to them and you like the way that they parent, your kids would know them. There's a close family connection, there might be cousins, they're gonna be more than a chance. I do. That's who has been listed for me. Oh, okay. Yeah. I thought I was listed. Not as guardian. Hell no.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

You know, I'm sitting right here.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

Trustee. Okay, okay. Trustee. I'm okay with the trustee, man. Trustee.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Okay, I can handle the money, not the kids. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. No, not a good thing. You don't want that? No, I know, I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

I was, you know, I was just saving. No, I was just trying to be valued. I'm protecting you. I wanted you to be you just want to be special. You just want to be offered it. You just don't want to accept it. That's right. Yeah, sorry, man. I can't do that for you. But thank you. I appreciate that. All right. Okay. So Guardian. I love it. Third. This is fun. This is the party planner. This is what I call the party planner. Oh, what did you ever? The executor. Executor. Oh, it's called executor. Did I misspell that? I'm just trying to give you a hint here, right? Executor. This is the party planner. They could be terrible with money. They could be terrible with your kids, but they're going to go through your underwear drawer. They're going to throw a thick-ass funeral. They're going to be the person that's like, you know, brings everybody together, funeral potatoes, love those. And they're going to be helping dish out all the little things. They're going to be going through the house. They're going to be helping the trustee. They are a trustee helper. They've got to be listed. They're going to be in your will as an executor. And again, they're local. I'd like, I'd like guardians that are local. They can rush to the funeral home. They can do this. They can do. And some, it's a job you can help someone feel important. Yeah. Even though they they really don't have a lot of authority. What do you call it? They're kind of a lame duck trustee.

Choosing Trustee Guardian Executor

SPEAKER_02 20:30

Yeah, they kind of are. They don't have much power, but they've got a role. Yeah, they got a role. They got a they got something to do. Because what in your will, because you're still going to have a will. And a lot of people are like, well, Matt, if I have a trust, why do I need a will? Well, your will is still there. You designate your guardian in the will, but also kind of it's like default that says, hey, if I didn't put assets in my trust, I want everything basically to go to my trust. So if my executor has to get involved here, they're in charge. But they can also execute on your funeral arrangements. And that's one thing that you can actually put in your state plan is if you have ideas on this, I want to be cremated, I want a military funeral, I want a certain church service. You can easily state that quickly. You don't have to get complicated. You don't have to pick the hymns that are being sung or like who's invited and who's not. I mean, you can, but just like at least say whether you want to be buried or cremated. Do you have a plot or not? Do you want military or church type service? You can, you know that right now. Think of what you want. But I'll say one thing just funny. That's why I brought up executors. I do remember. I do remember I met with this client who was dealing with issues. Her parents had passed away. And she came and she said, I'm the executor. I was just like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

That's nice.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

Okay, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add another twister too, because this is where it gets, for lack of a better word, I'm sorry, fun. Because you have all the planning opportunities in the world. This is your you're you're the your God. You're then you get to write the law here, and then a trustee. After you're gone, has to carry it out. And so it can be cool. So I'm going to throw out the Britney Spears provision. You know, I was on the Free Brittany bandwagon. I felt she needed. So for those that don't know, her dad and her husband were appointed her custodian, which is a conservator. Conservator, sorry. Yeah, which is kind of like a it's a financial guardian. Um that California has very aggressive laws in this area. Watch the the movie uh the Netflix on um uh the Beach Boy story. That's it's crazy. But this conservatorship is very hard to get out of. And so Brittany was stuck in this where they were managing her money. Come to find out, it probably was not the worst thing. I it's so sad seeing some of her posts on social media, and I love Britney's music and all that. Okay, I'm gonna get in trouble if I talk too much. But here's the point you may have children that are over age 18 that could act like they're under age 18 financially. And so this is a chance to say, okay, you know, they can get money in stages, and I want a trustee for this particular child. This child has special needs. I want a special carve out for this special needs child. And so you can put in all these sorts of like bells and whistles that are particular to you, and it's very common. And our lawyers know how to do it. This is not something you hack out on a forum at Staples or Office Max. You it's not gonna happen. You can't have a you know, grok do this for you. So when you start to have these additional planning needs, because you have children that have a little extra financial need financial supervision, yeah, you can do it.

SPEAKER_02 23:31

Yeah, and they might have creditor issues, they might just be great people and have great, you know, relationship with you, and it's not a mental capacity thing like it was for Britney. Or terrible spout. Yeah, or they have a spouse that's got a spending problem and judgments against them or whatever. Well, you're gonna have a creditor protection clause in there, a spendthrift clause that says, hey, if this family member, if the if a creditor is just gonna seize their inheritance, hold it, hold it in the trust until they can resolve those. Maybe they got a drug or alcohol addiction. Hey, trustee, don't distribute them any money. If you know that they've got a drug or alcohol addiction, they've got to go to rehab and get that resolved before they can get any distributions from the trust. So, in many ways, you're protecting your family from the wealth. And sometimes some of you can have kids that the wealth can can hurt them. Yeah. It's not gonna help them, it's gonna cause more problems. And so the trustee is the one carrying out these wishes. And a lot of these things are gonna be in our trust documents to help you. And we have these suggestions of just the common things we know people want. And maybe your kids are amazing, they're never gonna have creditors, they're never gonna have a drug or alcohol addiction issue, and that's great. But it's there just in case.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah, I I put that down as number six protect beneficiaries from themselves.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

And also, what happens if you pass away in their 20? Yeah, which should can they handle a windfall of all this money? What would you have done when you're 20 or 19 or 18? Good lord. Oh, can we go there? That'd be so fun.

SPEAKER_00 24:56

Yeah, I can I can I can I can tell some stories. Yeah. I tried to live that life. Yeah. All right. Now, in we can keep going and on. This is the beauty of this topic, is it really is empowering. It will help you get organized. It can provide all these other benefits and more. Um, the last thing I want to just say is what does it look like? When you're done, you're gonna get a sexy, cool binder. It looks like a corporate book. It's gonna have your trust, will, power of attorneys for finances, power of attorney for healthcare, pull the plug of my vegetable, oh, special funeral instructions, special instructions for this or that. And it's a cool binder that you can put additional special documents in. Maybe it's a marriage certificate, a deed, uh of insurance policy. And then you put it in a fireproof safe. Spend the 80 bucks down at Target or Walmart and get a little fireproof safe and put this in there. Let your trustee know about it, let them know they can't. Give them a copy, maybe. Yeah, I like that. And and and there's more. I mean, we we're we talk about this all the time. We got great articles and other podcasts on this, but I just want to encourage all of you take action. I think 50% of Americans don't even have a will. That means we're at this trust structure. We're maybe 20, 30 percent of Americans that need one don't even have one. And you don't have to be rich. Yeah, a little bit of real estate, some kids, life insurance, a 401k. You need it. Yeah.

Protecting Heirs And Medical Wishes

SPEAKER_02 26:18

Yeah. Last thing I'll say is there's another important document that's very important during your lifetime. And I know this because I watched the show The Pit. Did you watch that? The Pit? The Pit. It won all these awards. No, I think The Pit. It's an ER show. Maybe you watched ER back in the day when we were. Oh, I know the pit. Okay, keep going. I heard of this. I swear every other episode, there's like this person's got a DNR or not. Okay, and do not resuscitate. And that's if you are in a vegetative state. Do you want life-sustaining support or not? And there's so many episodes in there where you see the family members in the ER. The parent has a DNR. They're like, they've been in a senior living facility, which requires you to have one on file, whether you want life sustaining support or not. Isn't this the pit?

SPEAKER_00 27:02

It started in based out of Chicago, where they had like the trauma unit where it's Pittsburgh. Yeah, it's Pittsburgh. But the pit signifies that that highest level of trauma unit that's a trauma, yeah. It's that's like not good.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

It's chaos. And but it's it's a very interesting great show if you haven't watched it. But but the point here is is this stuff happens when you go to a hospital, when you when you go to into surgery, I've had to do this for myself and even my wife. Do you have a living will or an advanced directive that says if there's complications in this surgery, are we resuscitating you or not? And and we've had to deal with clients over the years that have been in that situation where there is no DNR, there's no do not resuscitate, there has been no decision. And now that's left on you as a kid to make that decision to pull the plug or not. So it's very difficult. So that's one of the things that's that gets done in addition to some of these financial power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney. So when your parents are older or you're older and you're thinking about your kids helping you, if you have a mental issue or a disability where you can't make decisions for you, they can step in. They can help with the takeover of the bank account and your financial affairs and make sure everything's in place. Because a lot of times they're gonna have a stage of that before they pass away. So a lot of these documents will help you during your lifetime too, and these later years. And then, of course, they take over and they control and they make sure that all the stuff you've been doing to build a legacy, to keep your family close, could continue on with Harmony.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Well, you can appoint me to be your DNR person. I'll I'll decide to pull the plug or not. Yeah. Well, you don't have to, I because I'll make the decision. Well, you know, if you're like you're not sure, I could help you. What's the point of the DNR? Like, you're like, I could be like the pull the plug. It could be like, you know, when you're a kid, you're like, you get the vacuum cord from about 30 feet away, you wrap it around.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

That's not what the DNR is. The person that gets to pull the cord out.

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SPEAKER_00 28:54

I elect Mark to actually pull the cord. I I I couldn't do that. That's what you get your ex-spouse for people. You get you appoint them to pull the plug, they'll rush right over. I mean, they'll like beeline it over, you know. Now we're joking here. That's not what it actually is. See, we can have yeah, yeah, um, fun with that. All right. Well, wow, fun topic today. You're all dead. Hope that worked out for you.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

All right. Hey, you got an estate plan? Yeah. So you're you're covered. So you're dead, but you had an estate plan. Yeah. So make sure. You're up in heaven loving it.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

Um now, uh in our description, first line, it's right there. Click on it, make an appointment, get it going. You're gonna love it. You you can uh I've I have infrastructure, I had the same plan for almost 20, 30 years as a lawyer and uh updated a couple times. This will last you a super long time. Wonderful investment. If you have a business, I'm gonna integrate a business continuation plan. I'm writing this off as a tax write-off. I mean, this needs to be done for your business. Uh, there's a good a good chunk of it should be written off as a uh as a business expense uh as you integrate your business into this. So thanks everybody for listening. A lot of fun. We're gonna see you next week. Uh, next week for another episode of the Main Street Business Podcast. Please give us five star, two thumbs up, 10 out of 10, whatever. Share it with your friends, subscribe, all those goodies. We appreciate you, and uh, we'll see you soon.