JOHANNA DAVID, Adjunct Faculty Member at Hofstra Law School is with us to talk about three estate planning mistakes and how to avoid them.
Johanna is a Trusts and Estates lawyer, and a partner at Forchelli, Deegan, and Terrana. She's also the adjunct professor of law at Hofstra University. We're going to talk a little bit about mistakes that we see in estate planning and the simple things you can do to keep them away from your situation. Enjoy.
https://youtu.be/gD_d9J609Vg
Three Estate Planning Mistakes Chapters
00:00 The Importance of Estate Planning09:47 Common Mistakes in Estate Planning19:54 Understanding Trusts and Their Benefits24:00 Navigating Elder Care and Estate Planning
Outline of "Three Estate Planning Mistakes"
Frazer Rice (00:01)Welcome aboard, Joanna.
Johanna C. David (00:03) -Three Difficult Planning Stories and What Can We Learn?
Hi, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Frazer Rice (00:06)Well, happy to have you on because we are now, most people sort of put their estate planning off toward the end of the year, but I have a feeling given where the legislation is going, et cetera, that the crush is going to happen earlier than we think. In the meantime, you and I were talking beforehand about some mistakes that people make from an estate planning perspective and that they're very avoidable. I thought we'd take this opportunity to go into that a little bit.
In your practice, maybe let's start with a couple of, or sort of the big ones that you see, ⁓ give us some ideas of some mistakes that people make that really should be avoidable.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/57MMskGgp1P3fOVklGt090?si=ISap3Z_YSdqK_zg4-Dlevw
Johanna C. David (00:48) - Structure and Other Planning Tactics
Sure, absolutely. So the number one mistake that I think that people make is not having the proper estate planning documents. I see this happen time and time again. I don't know if it's because of the stigma. People are afraid to approach estate planning, right? Sometimes it makes your mortality very real. But the biggest estate planning mistake is not having the right documents.
Everyone, everyone, I cannot stress, everyone needs to have at least a will, a power of attorney, and a healthcare proxy. And there are people that say, well, you know, I don't really have much, I don't need to do that, or ⁓ everything's gonna go directly to my husband and my children anyway. You know, that's how it works. But that's not exactly the case, right? You and I both know.
So, especially if you have young children, young couples definitely want to have those things in place. You want to think about who is going to be the guardian for your child or your children if both of you pass away. And a lot of people don't think about that. And those only cause problems in the long run. I'll give you a quick example if we have time. But ⁓
Frazer Rice (02:02)⁓ please do.
Johanna C. David (02:03) - Long Term Planning Issues and Avoiding Problems
I remember, this was several years ago. I must have just started practicing and I had been a young attorney. So it was about 15 years ago and a woman came into the office and she and the decedent had been living together for about 30 years. They held themselves out to be married. Now, Frazer, you and I both know that New York does not recognize common law marriage.
Frazer Rice (02:30)This is true.
Johanna C. David (02:32) - Correcting a Big Will Mistake
She was not aware of that. And so they were married for 30 years. Everything was in his name or excuse me, they were not married. They were together for 30 years, held themselves out to be married, not legally married. He owned the co-op apartment. Everything was in his name. Now he had a daughter from a previous marriage, legal marriage that was a strange.
And you guessed it, our client did not get along with the daughter. So the father dies and guess who inherits the co-op that ...