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Stay In Your Own Lane: When non-lawyers give flawed legal advice January 30, 2020 By: Melinda Gustafson Gervasi With a deep, long sigh my frustration and annoyance was revealed to the client sitting across my conference table.  It's hard to hide it anymore.  After 15 years of counseling clients on the ins and outs of estate planning and probate, I wonder what my work day would be like if I did not have to spend so much time unwinding flawed legal advice dispensed by non-lawyers.  It's the financial planners, bankers, and in some cases tax experts that fuel my trademark sigh.  Don't get me wrong, I value the advice these experts provide on mortgages, index funds, and tax deductions. I just cannot tolerate it when they veer out of their lane, going full speed ahead with brazen authority, dispensing directives on what my clients can, and cannot due, within legal documents.  I stay in my lane, eyes on wills, powers of attorneys, trusts, domiciliary letters and...

It's 2020!  A new year.  A new decade!  A new !?!?!?  Along with signing up for gym memberships, getting an estate plan seems to be one of the top new years resolutions.  Each January we open a fresh new calendar and plan for growth and adventures.  We resolve to be more organized, to be healthier, to be on top of things.  If you are one of the many Americans making the resolution to get your estate in order, here are a few things to consider. Estate Planning boils down to control.  Who will do what, what will go where?  If you do not make the decision and put into a legal format someone else will, often dictated by state statute.  If you need a source of motivation to roll up your sleeves and take action, focus on "control"; Hire a professional.  We live in a DIY society, and that is a wonderful thing -- if you have the time, patience and skill set to complete the project appropriately.  My husband and I recently updat...

What I've Been Reading: A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical advice for living life and facing death by BJ Miller, MD and Shoshana Berger published in 2019. A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical advice for living life and facing death is an excellent resource that covers a broad swath of material.  Divided into 5 sections, the authors provide the reader with thoughts, suggestions, sample questions and other tips from the financial aspects of end-of-life care to asking for help to pre-planning a funeral/burial.  The breadth of material covered is wide, perhaps the widest I've seen in any one book.  With that breadth comes a lack of depth.  That is not necessarily a negative -- the breadth shows the reader the wide range of issues to address and dips into each.  A reader would then seek out more thorough information on any one topic of interest.  For example, estate planning is covered in less than 5 pages, yet it is a topic I can speak about for...

Glancing out my kitchen window early this morning, coffee in hand as I kick-started my day, I noticed "the boys" were in our driveway.  Over the summer months a flock of 5 to 7 wild male turkeys became "the boys" in our household as they made daily visits and precarious crossings of the fast moving artery on which we live.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my husband was set to leave for work, it was a great day for his 8-mile commute along Madison's bike paths.  Without thinking I warned "be careful when you take your bike out, when "the boys" get confused they run in circles and the last thing we need this morning is a couple of turkeys dashing into our garage!"  As we move into our 14th year of marriage my husband has grown accustomed to my dire predictions, yet today he raised his eyebrows just enough to convey "really Melinda, what are the chances?"  My standard response "Well, you married a lawyer.  I was trained ...

Beneficiary Forms Gone Horribly Wrong. By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi Within the legal community there is a decent amount of discussion about whether or not our professional lives will be usurped by on-line and digital platforms.  Days like today reassure me that my professional life has a few good years, decades even, before a software engineer codes me out of business. Take life insurance and children for instance.  New client call comes in.  Brief biographical information is provided related to: marital status, children, and financial instruments.  In short, caller is single with a minor child and his best friend from college is named as beneficiary of the life insurance because friend is a responsible adult who will do the right thing.  An actual attorney will likely hear this and say, "wait, tell me that again please" as her eyebrows rise higher on her forehead.  In contrast, your standard online will-writer will prompt "check here if you have na...

Busting Myths & Misconceptions: Reflections on The Grand Budapest Hotel, a Wes Cravin Film. By Melinda Gustafson Gervasi From Hollywood to Netflix to TV dramas, legal thrillers remain a popular film genre.  Recently I enjoyed watching The Grand Budapest Hotel , a Wes Craven film.  Set in a fictional remote mountain village somewhere near the borders of Germany, Switzerland, and France, it is a quirky film revolving around the owner succession of a grand hotel. There is the requisite scene for a legal drama: " the reading of the will".  From the deceased's children to her cousins thrice-removed, all assemble in a dark cavernous room, dressed in black, with an attorney at the center of attention.  Here the legal misconceptions leap off the screen: Except in limited circumstances, the attorney who drafts a will is not the Executor (or what Wisconsin law calls the Personal Representative) of the will; The will in the movie is a massive heap of papers, of wh...

As Summer 2019 begins its slide towards September our family strives to complete our annual License Plate Game.   It's a great way to reinforce the fact the United States is made up of 50 different states (for our elementary aged kids), all with different plates.....and sets of laws about estate planning & probate. Unlike federal law, such as immigration, which is the same from Maine to California, estate planning and probate laws are written at the State level.  Leaving us with 50 different sets of laws about who is in charge and where things go upon your death, as well as next of kin's ability (or lack of) to make medical and financial decisions if you are alive, but too ill to act. Keep this in mind when you are reading materials for a national audience.  For example, mass produced materials about estate planning claim the fee for a court to oversee the transfer of probate assets (those assets that do not have a designation or label on them about where ...