Navigator

Image by M. Gustafson Gervasi, 2015 Back in July, as irises still bloomed in my garden, I sipped a coffee and glanced at our local free weekly paper The Isthmus .  A story on page 6 caught my attention -- America's longest-serving state legislator, Fred Risser , and his wife Nancy Risser, were profiled for creating an urban oasis in downtown Madison.  Over the years the couple worked to turn an apartment complex parking lot into a lush and welcoming garden.  Towards the end of the article a nugget of estate planning insight jumped off the page -- the bequest of perennials. Nancy is quoted as saying "A garden is a living thing" after she recounted transplanting iris bulbs from her late-grandmother's home in Texas to the garden here in Madison -- the transplant spurred by Nancy's father's death.  While the focus of this article was about creating and fostering natural beauty in an urban setting, the estate planner in me saw the often overlooked bequest -...

Counselor, another name for lawyers.  We counsel clients, we teach them, especially in the land of estate planning and probate.  Yet, clients teach me, the lawyer, as well.  Case in point, recently a client emailed.  Trilled to have finally found the draft documents that had gone missing in her personal papers at home.   "I found them" the client wrote, "filed under D, for Death!" .  My lesson -- clients filing systems vary from home to home, client to client. Her system got me thinking --what other filing option may lurk in the filing cabinets of clients. Where might there loved ones eventually find the paperwork we worked so hard to craft?  One huge assumption here - that the paperwork is in a recognizable filing system.  My own parents, gone now, had a preference of keeping important papers in the freezer "in case of a fire!" A for attorney B for Bequest C for Client Copy D for Death E for Estate Plan or End of Life F for Final pape...

Ask my husband and he likely to blame it on my profession, but he'd be wrong. The spark that ignited my recent flurry of estate planning paper work was not flamed by my role as an estate planning attorney.  But rather by our upcoming annual vacation. Just like so many of my clients, " update estate planning papers" makes it to the short list of vacation preparation. No, I am not kidding.  It is the #2 most popular reason clients call for an appointment. Day after day, week after week, month after month I sit at my little brown table with clients, reminding them to fill out their Wisconsin Authorization for Final Disposition .  Tucked into the left side pocket of their folder, the last form in the stack, it is the form I refer to as the "ever so cheery -- who is in charge when I die" form. In Wisconsin, the power of attorney for health care ends with the declarant's death.  Last breath and the power ends.  Which raises the question of who will be in c...

The story was secondhand, told to me by my husband. Overseeing the nightly bath vs. shower ritual of our children, ages 6 and 4, he was the parent on-duty.  It had been a long day of Spring Break play, inevitable growth spurts, and the competitive behavior of siblings.  Quickly the kids launched into an argument over who was going to use their shower/bath first: Daughter: I said it first, I get a bath....NOW!!!! Son: Not fair!  You take fooooooorrrrrrrevvvvvvver in the bath.  I want a quick shower! Daughter: [with a smirk spreading across her face], I know, let's do a coin toss!  For the reader, she has an uncanny ability to win these games of chance, something that has not gone unnoticed by our son. Son; Okay [said with a bit of distrust]. Up went the coin, supplied by dad.  It landed heads up, just as our daughter had predicted. Son: Fine, take your God Damn bath! He stomped off to our master bath for a shower on his own. At this point in ...

Over the past year I have grown accustomed to flipping through the mail at home and seeing at least one mailing addressed to my mother, at our home address rather than the 1121 Valley Stream Drive of my childhood.  She, my mother, left this earthly world February 16th of 2014, but her junk mail lives on.  Most of the time I mark the enveloped "deceased", leaving it for the carrier to cart off the next day, hoping the life insurance company or peddler of products to keep seniors in their homes will update their mailing lifts.  Sharon no longer needs their services. And then one day a mailing caught my attention, it was from a huge on-line bank.  Tearing it open the warning I issue to clients here in my legal office struck home - identity theft of the dead.   Sharon -- Welcome to [insert Bank Name here]!  Here are the account numbers for your new 29 savings accounts!   A whirlwind of emotions ensued.  Sadness for a mother who was gone from my li...

Somehow I held back the tears, the ones brimming in my eyes, sobs wanting to escape my throat. Somehow I held back, somehow I keep calling -- can you help me find a home for The Boys?  It was January 2014, what locals here in Wisconsin will remember as Polar Vortex season, and my mother was dying.  What would happen to The Boys, her kitty cats?  With three cats of our own, two of which were seniors, plus two young children and a dual self-employed couple -- our home was not a viable option. Sitting in my car, with illumination from the lamp post in the parking lot of the building I was scheduled to speak at in less than 30 minutes. Channeling my estate planning attorney self, quieting the daughter inside, I kept calling.   Our local shelter, a local feral cat rescue, our family vet.  The answer over and over, sorry we cannot help. It was my family vet that told me, ever so gently, that if The Boys went to our county animal rescue they would likely ...

So, you’re telling me I am better off just managing this Goat Rodeo?   A rhetorical question posed by a client some months ago in follow-up to our one hour discussion about the ins and outs of the 1986 trust the client's parents had created.   Yes, that is one way to put it. This may go down as my most humorous and enjoyable client meeting of 2014. Goat Rodeo -- what a perfect way to summarize the state of affairs. If you are an adult child, chances are one day you may manage the "Goat Rodeo" of your parents’ estate.  There may be a trust, a will, nothing at all.  Documents may have been written 25 years earlier, designed and mandated to follow outdated tax codes.  No will?  No worries, a distribution plan is embedded in the state statutes where your parents lived/died.  You will quickly learns the ins and outs of this plan.  If you have sibling, prepare yourself for a flash back to the fights you had as tweens (was that even a word when you...