Erin Callahan- Estate Planning

Ms. Callahan practices in the areas of wills, estate planning, and probate.

Erin is a native Texan. In 2007 Ms. Callahan was awarded her Bachelors in Science Degree in International Studies from Washington University in St. Louis. In 2011, she received her law degree from SMU Dedman School of Law. At SMU she received numerous accolades, served as the Student Bar President and the Women in Law President. Since graduation, she has primarily worked for insurance companies involving complex matters related to Nonprofits, Sports and Entertainment, and Oil and Gas. Not only is Erin an excellent attorney, but she is also a businesswoman who understands the complexities of running a company. She has held several Board of Director positions including Atlantic Housing Foundation, Dallas Women Lawyers Association, and currently, she serves as the Ms. JD Board Chair.

Organizations & MembershipsErin is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Young Lawyers Association, Houston Association of Women Attorneys, National Association of Women Lawyers, and Ms. JD.

In addition, Erin contributed to the ABA Best Practices for Combating Sex-Based Harassment in the Legal Profession. You can purchase a copy at the American Bar Association’s E-Store.

Honors & Achievements

1. Ms. JD, Chair
2. Houston Young Lawyers Association 2017-2018 Leadership Academy, Graduate
3. SMU Dedman School of Law Student Bar Association, President
4. DAYL Foundation Scholarship for Dedication to Community Service and Outreach, Recipient

Languages
English, Spanish (conversational), French (conversational).

Your hosts: Colton Cockerell & Trisha Stetzel
Click for more about your hosts:
Colton Cockerell
Trisha Stetzel

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Transcript

Colton Cockerell: 0:04

Hello and welcome to a another exciting episode of Bridge the Gap where we're balancing life through health, wealth, business and relationships. Hello everyone and welcome to another week with that means another exciting episode of Bridge the Gap is here and we have an amazing guest but before we get to him, My name is Colt get to him get to her. Before we do My name is Colton Cockerell. And I have my lovely co host with me who is putting her hands on her head because she's embarrassed already by me. And that is the illustrious Tricia Stetzel. Trisha. Hello,

Trisha Stetzel: 0:39

Colton. You know, it is another amazing week. I'm pretty sure that's what you started with. It is it is an amazing week. Hey, everybody, I'm so excited to be here. Just as a reminder this month on the show, we're focused on family and relationships. So we're going to talk be talking about the importance of family protection through estate planning. And who better to talk with us about estate planning than Erin Callahan with the Law Office of Erin C Callahan. Erin, welcome to the show.

Erin Callahan: 1:12

Well, thank you. I'm so excited to be on the show. Again. I'm looking forward to it.

Colton Cockerell: 1:16

Yes. And I'm excited for you to experience the new format. But before you experience it, I gotta give a shout out to our sponsor, which is Sharer McKinley Group LLC. All right, Erin, let's go ahead and jump on in because we're gonna focus something on something, we're going to focus on something that is very important to many families, and it kind of gets overlooked. I think that when I say that, I mean, at the dinner table, people don't really talk about this. And that is if something were to happen to you, I you still have young kids who are still under the age of majority. So what happens first, before you give me the solution, what happens if you go out to a lovely dinner with your your spouse, and the worst thing that won't happen? And you both pass away in a car accident or something happens? What happens to your kid now with the system that we have in place in America?

Erin Callahan: 2:03

Yeah, great question. I mean, you know, the S part of it is there's a very real chance that CPS could be involved. So the first thing they're going to do is they're going to try to find family and friends close by hopefully left that with the trust to babysitter. And it's, you know, easy peasy and no big deal. But if they cannot locate somebody, they do call CPS. And so there's a couple things that I know we're going to talk about in a little bit that we recommend to try to kind of avoid that situation from ever happening.

Colton Cockerell: 2:35

And so what so what does that look kind of just give me a bit more details there like so who is responsible for for naming. So again, you're you you passed away, you didn't do in your planning, who was responsible for now saying, Hey, your kids will now be in the hands of X?

Erin Callahan: 2:50

Yeah, well, if you haven't worked with an estate planning attorney, and you haven't completed a declaration of guardianship form, your voice is not going to be represented. So there's not gonna really be that control over who that person is going to be. So the judge is going to look to family and friends, and whoever puts up, you know, kind of comes forward and wants to play that role. You know, if you say always, I'm always wanted my sister to do it, that's great. But the judge doesn't have to follow that the judge is going to, you know, decide what's in the best interest of the child, and they might not have all the information available. Also, another concern is, if you if you're kind of like on a second marriage, and that kiddo had a biological parent that maybe just isn't in the picture, or, you know, maybe they just aren't, you know, going to be it has to be pretty severe. But you know, maybe they're not capable of being a parent, you need to have that kind of backup plan in place.

Colton Cockerell: 3:47

So important.

Trisha Stetzel: 3:48

So Erin, is it different in each state? So I know you talk a lot about the state of Texas and the way we see things here, most of our listeners are in Texas, but not all of them. So is it different state to state? Yes, so absolutely. So unfortunately, our legal system is very unique, and every single state is different. So like, just for example, in California, they typically call it conservatorship. If you think of kind of like the Britney Spears situation, it's similar. She had to have a guardian over her because she didn't have capacity, but that was called a conservator and a conservatorship in California. And here in Texas, we typically call it guardianship. And so yeah, so it does change wildly. And same if you have a will if you have your will done and Arizona and maybe you know, I'm not saying that in Arizona, this is the requirement but let's just say they only had one person sign that will then you could have issues with presenting that here in Texas where we require two or sometimes in Texas, if you take your will elsewhere, they might require three and so yeah, it varies wildly from state to state. So if y ou move we are I always recommend seeing an estate planning attorney. I think there's so many before we get oh, sorry, Colton, before we get too far down the road, because you guys speak the same length, same language, and I don't speak that language. What is considered a minor in the state of Texas?

Erin Callahan: 5:15

Yeah, well, I think that's a really good question. So I mean, legally, of course, it's somebody that's going to be under 18. But the reality is, we probably don't want 18 or 20 year olds making significant decisions. When it comes to assets. You know, we really like to make sure they're a little bit older, a little bit more mature, you know, 25-30, I personally am a fan of kind of doing like a half and half doing kind of like, let's just say you have $100,000 to leave that, you know, 50,000 at 25 and 50,000. At 30. You know, that way, they have a little bit of time? How responsible are they going to be with that money? Okay, they did good will, you know, give them kind of like the second half? So that's a great question.

Colton Cockerell: 5:55

The crazy thing is you never I mean, you got to make that decision today. Right? You, don't you you can't predict the future. So I want to, I'm gonna tie off the guardianship. And there were so many things. First, the free Brittany epidemic that we had, whenever that happens, believable. Second, I mean, I'm all about states having power. But man, you would think there'd be some kind of system where everything that important that everything is working together, but tying it all back around. So in order to protect your kids from something happening, and you're out of the picture, and you know what's best for them, and you're the one that's going to decide where they're going to go, you need to obviously talk to an Erin, Erin Callahan person, an attorney, but also to

Erin Callahan: 6:35

a estate planning attorney, somebody who focuses have on this, like most of the time, not somebody that does like business law and bankruptcy, and, you know, Family Law and Estate Planning, you want somebody that's, you know, only doing, you know, estate planning and probate.

Colton Cockerell: 6:52

That is a really good point. I'm glad you made that. But just want to make sure our listeners understand in order to be protected, you're saying that they need a declaration of guardianship to protect their kids in case something were the worst would have happened to them and their spouse, correct?

Erin Callahan: 7:05

Yes. So it's a separate form, that we're able to do that in Texas, you are also able to make that designation in your will. It's about 50/50. It's just one of those kind of like preference things. But yes, you need one or the other, you need to make it in your will or you need to have a separate form. Okay. Nice. Yeah. And we recommend, like a couple other things, too. You know, I always recommend to my families that they kind of have like a kiddo dossier. And we actually recommend this to pet owners as well, is kind of having like a one sheet of like, all about your kids, like, what medication? Are they on? Who's their doctor? You know, where are where are the local family members, if you're going out on a date, you know, this is the kind of stuff you need to, you know, share with a babysitter, you know, what do they need, like, every night, you know, maybe, you know, your kids are so young, and they have that like, you know, stuffed animal and they're not going to go to sleep without it, you know, it needs to be on there. Anything that's going to be critical. If something happens, it needs to be kind of on that sheet if that are allergic to anything, you know, anything that is, is life saving, or you know, going to make that difference in their day to day it needs to be on there.

Trisha Stetzel: 8:16

And that's my dog wants to sleep in my bed.

Erin Callahan: 8:19

Yeah. I mean, maybe I probably wouldn't put that on there. Just because, you know, I know that's true, Trisha.

Colton Cockerell: 8:28

I think that again, you're you're making all these great, you're making up questions and having amazing answers to them. I love it. That's another great question that you brought up to answer yourself. And that's fantastic. This is this. Luke and Rose actually talked about pets. I mean, I don't know what's going on. You brought it up Trisha,

Trisha Stetzel: 8:45

Family, family and relationships. They're part of our family. It's real.

Colton Cockerell: 8:52

For those that don't know, me and Erin work together, she's she's great. And I pick on her. So I'm not being mean, I promise. So Erin, you actually had a great little segue earlier, and we kind of cut it off. You talked about will so you can use guardianship or declaration guardianship. And that also is in the wills. How important is it now that you're protecting your kids? How important is it to make sure that your estate is now going where you want it to go?

Erin Callahan: 9:17

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like even more important, important after like, COVID. It's, it's something that we're seeing, like a huge uptick in families, you know, wanting to go ahead and have that plan. And I think the hard part is, it's like that thing on the to do list that can get moved to the next day, and the next day, because there's no timeline, right? There's no due day until it's too late. And so what we try to do is just help families come up with a plan that's kind of specific to their family and their interests and their goals. So that if something were to happen, then they have that, you know, it kind of takes the weight off their shoulder to know that they're not going to have to worry about those things, but it does take time. As you know, it is something that is an investment in your future. And you know, you have to give us all that information. We can't do it without your participation. And so we understand everybody, you know, often can get in a busy season of life. But, but yeah, it is really important to have those basic documents, you need to have a will for sure. You know, some people tell me Okay, well, like when do you not need a will, right. And so I definitely have counseled people before that, you know, don't have any assets, don't have a car, don't have a house don't really have a bank account, you know, if they're 18 years old, then they probably don't need a will at that point in time. But they do need other documents, you do need to make sure that your you know, medical power of attorney, your healthcare directive, your HIPAA authorization, all those key medical documents are in place, whether you're 18 or 89, it doesn't matter.

Trisha Stetzel: 10:56

On those those documents, you know, as you started talking about that Erin, and I've heard you say in the past, that if you don't have those documents in place, and even if you have a young adult living with you, alright, someone who's in their 1920 21 years old, you don't have access to their medical records unless you have documents in place.

Erin Callahan: 11:20

Exactly. So it is. And so we saw a big issue with COVID, we had a lot of families were hostile, where families aren't able to go into the hospital, they're not able to verify identity. And by law, once you turn 18, your parents no longer like you're an adult, you know, it's like true hashtag adulting 101, for sure. And so we always recommend that if you still have kids living at home, or not, but you're still active in their life, like very active, then you need they need to have healthcare documents in place, so that you can at least help them if something does happen if something unfortunate happens. So yeah, so we recommend those four, those three healthcare documents that I you know, listed previously, and then a financial power of attorney as well. And then, so Colton, you're talking about the the guardianship form, just like you do that for minor children, you also do that for yourself. And it's to prevent against the Britney Spears situation. You know, Britney didn't have that document. I don't know exactly what it's called in California, because I'm not licensed there. But she didn't have that. So she didn't get to pick who her guardian or conservator in her situation was. We do that for everybody so that they get to actually pick who that person is for themselves. So not just for your kids, but who do you want it to be for you? And so yeah, and then, you know, another thing is, you just don't know, like, if you had a kiddo that was missing or hurt, like with a power of attorney, you have access to information faster, that you're not going to have to, you know, the police aren't gonna have to issue a subpoena, you're not gonna have to go through all of the legal aspects when you know, somebody is hurt, or, you know, missing or, you know, just kind of like your any type of like, legal issue, you have more power because you've been appointed agent.

Colton Cockerell: 13:10

Yeah, love it. And we have about a minute left. And I want to hit on this because you also kind of touched on a little bit, how much more important because a lot of our other people listening are business owners. And they actually, you know, they they're a blended family, right? They, they have kids from probably multiple spouses. So what does that look like and how much more important is to make sure that your house is in order? You get your wills, power of attorneys

Erin Callahan: 13:33

Yeah, it's even more important. And I think all that together? that's probably one of the big misnomers out there. You know, we have a lot of blended families. I'm from you know, my husband, I have two stepdaughters. So I've been through it myself, it's completely different. We have to use more complex planning tools. Because we want to protect not just the kids, but the spouse. So it's not as complicated if you ultimately don't particularly care what happens to your assets, if you want to give everything to your spouse. And if they get remarried and the money goes to the new spouse. If you're fine with that, then you don't necessarily have you know, any extra concern. But most of the time, people want to make sure it goes to the spouse and then to their kids when the spouse passes away, or a second spouse.

Trisha Stetzel: 14:17

So, Colton, I know you said we only have a minute, but I know we have 30 seconds left because I have my timer on. One more question. Erin, how important is it as business owners to make sure that we have all of these documents squared away because we have a business?

Erin Callahan: 14:33

Yeah, it's even more important because you don't want to put your spouse through a complex probate. You want to make sure that you've got everything lined up for them and you're using password managers and you're organized and you know you have a will and you address the who's going to get the business and and Tricia, if there's multiple owners, you they really need to go like run to an attorney's office. mean that's okay. Just just just find an attorney as fast as possible.

Colton Cockerell: 15:04

In the future we're gonna talk to a business attorney about that specific thing. So I mean, that's that's spot on. Look at show you're like for what's it called foreshadowing that for whatever. But anyway, we are close to that mark. Erin, thank you so much for being here today. It's always a breath of fresh air whenever I get to talk to you and see you so thank you for being here. Trisha. Same goes. thing.

Trisha Stetzel: 15:27

Yeah. Aaron, thank you so much for being here, my friends. I can't wait to spend some time with you in person. I know. I know. All right. No, he's not invited.

Erin Callahan: 15:43

I met separately, Trisha. Oh, okay. That's fine.

Trisha Stetzel: 15:52

All right. Thank you again, Erin, and tune in next week for another exciting episode of Bridge the Gap while we we will be focused on family and relationships for the month of May. Next week we'll be talking with Kade Pierce Colton.

Colton Cockerell: 16:06

He is a youth pastor. So it's gonna be very interesting.

Unknown: 16:10

Thanks again for tuning into this week's podcast. Don't forget to subscribe and share this podcast with the most important people in your life. Colton Cockerell with Sharer McKinley Group, LLC is located at 820 South Friendswood Drive Suite 207 Friendswood, Texas 77546 phone number to 281-992-5698. Securities and investment advisory services offered through NEXT Financial Group, Inc. member FINRA/SIPC Sharer McKinley Group is not an affiliate of NEXT Financial Group, Inc.