Peter Myers' Blog

All Set Up - or All Screwed Up?

I attended my wife's company picnic on Sunday and, as often happens when people learn what I do, the conversation drifted to an estate issue.  Bob (not his real name) had "it all set up."  He was agent (under a power of attorney) over his 90+ year-old Aunt's modest middle-class estate: a home (owned outright), and two $100K CDs.  Easy enough.  Aunt needed some in-home care and one of the CDs (at Washington Mutual)was about the expire.  His issue (hint: not the issue):  whether to roll the CD from WAMU to Wells Fargo or another bank because of the problems he had been hearing about WAMU.  So how does one respond?

Cars and Shrinks: Matters of the Heart

When car-service technicians service your car, are they servicing the car itself or its owner?  I ask this because I took my car in yesterday and, during a 15-minute wait at the counter, I noticed a stack of 'customer evaluations' of the auto technicians that the HR manager must have temporarily placed on the counter.  OK, I'm a bit sleuth-like, so I glanced out of the corner of my eye to read, among things, the criteria by which auto mechanics are evaluated. 

The form was far more interesting than any of the comments that customers had supplied.  You want to know what it asked? 

Grieving Kids

Lately I have been reflecting on grief.  Specifically, I have been reflecting on memories of the grief of loss.  The reason I think this is important and relevant is because the ways that we are treated during our childhood, specifically the ways we are shown to experience grief and loss, have effects on our psychological well-being over our entire lifetime.

So, for my probate and trust administration clients, or for anyone else out there who has recently experienced the sudden loss of a loved one, I am going to share my personal experience of losing my mother when I was a child.  Perhaps there is something in what I say or how I express my feelings that will help some parent or aunt or uncle out there who is in a position to comfort a child who has experienced the sudden loss of a parent or other close family member.

Lions and Tigers

Life insurance professionals working with lawyers.  There is interest in this subject.  I should have written about it earlier.  Here's some more Q&A from the life insurance agent world:

Question:  I am a life insurance marketing manager with an agent who has a business-owner client in the Napa, Ca. area who is seeking an estate planning attorney to draft an ILIT for a life insurance policy. This, of course, could expand to other estate and business planning issues. Having saved the Worth magazine edition listing the top 100 attorneys in America, I found your name and vistied your website and blog. was wondering if you could give him an idea of the cost of drafting a simple ILIT. He says he always has clients who ask but never knows what to tell them.

Q & A: How Do I Know if the Trustee Absconded With Assets?

I recently received this question from a reader of my blog:

I believe that my trustee absconded with trust assets.  I am aware of accounts that were titled in the name of the trust that never appeared in the trustee’s accounting.  It is possible that these accounts were re-titled or closed prior to the grantor’s death, but I suspect that the trustee simply took them for herself.

The only way to prove how these accounts were titled is to demand documentation, but I expect that the trustee will refuse to provide documentation, claiming that these accounts were non-trust assets.  Is there any procedure, short of a probate court petition, whereby beneficiary can demand production of documentation of estate assets that were (supposedly) not trust assets on the date of death?

Should I Disinherit My Estranged Child?

A good friend of mine Josh Coleman is, among other things, a world-famous therapist in the genre known as 'control mastery theory,' which is a branch of psychotherapy that relies upon nurturing and developing the client's own subconscious plan for mental health.  Just as the body has built-in processes for healing, so does the mind.  As you might imagine, such a philosophy dovetails well with the client-centric estate planning we espouse in our firm and on this blog.  So I am always interested in what Josh has to say about issues of estate planning.

In Dr. Coleman's October newsletter, he posted an answer to the question a client posed whether or not to leave an estranged child out of a will.  I cannot do justice to his answer without quoting it in full, so - with Josh's permission - you will see the entire Q&A reprinted below.

Measuring Out My Life With Coffee Spoons

The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock could well have been written by an old man contemplating his estate plan.  In Prufrock, T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) weaves together the following lines:

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

The narrator of the poem is reflecting on his long life, and all throughout the City of his narration there is yellow fog, yellow smoke, that is mysterious and unknown, and which nevertheless settles about the house in a sort of restless peace. 

Hey, Daddy, What's a "Trust Mill?"

This question popped up on one of my listserves and Jim Wood, a registered Legal Document Assistant ("LDA") in San Ramon, wrote an excellent response.  With Jim's permission, I have re-posted it here.

Way to go, Jim!

A Guest Post from Bob Alderman

This post was written by my colleague Bob Alderman about an experience he had attending one of Donald Trump's company's "success" events. 

We've all seen these advertised in the papers, sometimes full-page ads with famous people speaking, tickets for $49 (but free if you call right now!), etc.  I've never had the inclination or time to attend one, but in the back of my mind I wondered how they could possibly make enough money to pay for the expensive advertising and the famous people who appeared to have endorsed the sponsor.

Now I get it.  Here's Bob:

California Forum and “The Gathering” Coming Soon

Every year, the unofficial group of allied professionals loosely known as “the California Forum” gathers in San Diego in early February to discuss the latest and greatest techniques in wealth creation, management, and estate, business and tax planning.  This year, The Gathering (as it is now known) will be held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina, on Harbor Island Drive.