It's a frequently asked question: if you have established a trust, should your life insurance be changed to reflect that fact? The answer depends on your individual circumstances, but it's definitely a subject that you should address with your estate planner.
My latest newsletter contains a discussion of integrating your life insurance with your trust, with tips on how to approach the question under a variety of circumstances. You can gain valuable information on this important topic and other estate planning, tax, and real estate topics, by reading my monthly newsletter. It's posted every month in the publications section of my firm's web site. If you would like to receive my monthly newsletter by email, click the "subscribe to newsletter" button below on the right side of this page. If you'd rather receive my newsletter via snail mail, call or email me at the number or address on my home page. It's free.
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I have written in the past about a relatively new Arizona law that allows a vehicle owner to designate a beneficiary on the vehicle’s title. Here’s the law:
“At the request of the owner and on payment of a fee prescribed by the department by rule, the certificate of title may contain, by attachment, a transfer on death provision where the owner may designate a beneficiary of the vehicle.” The statute says “the owner,” singular, not the owners, plural. The Arizona Motor Vehicle Division’s beneficiary designation form has this statement on it: “The Beneficiary Designation is only applicable if vehicle is owned by one person.” That seems pretty clear to me. If the vehicle has more than one owner on the title, you can’t designate a beneficiary. There are, however, alternatives that might fit your situation. Sometimes I’m asked by someone I’m helping with estate planning: what is my “legal name?”
I was reminded of that by this whimsical item on Lowering the Bar. The item doesn’t really have much to do with the question I am asked, and the phenomenon it discusses is apparently happening in the United Kingdom, not the United States, but I found it amusing. In future writings I’ll address the substance of how to handle differences and changes in your name for purposes of estate planning. Sorry, these are the rules. I didn’t make them. They’re just the rules. There are exceptions, but in general:
1) You aren’t entitled to anything from an estate or trust unless you are named in a governing document or, if there is no governing document, you are legally an heir of the deceased person. 2) For a paper to qualify as a governing document for a will or trust, the paper has to meet specific legal requirements. The reason for these rules should be fairly obvious. Without them, every estate or trust administration would be a free-for-all. At deconcinimcdonald.com you can read my October newsletter about how to handle distributing the contents of the family homestead. You can also read my past newsletters, going back farther than I care to think about, in the publications archive. Sometimes I get a little far afield, but most of the newsletters contain information you might find helpful about estates, trusts, real estate, or tax topics.
I have written about it before, but it obviously can't be repeated too often because it keeps coming up: it just is not a good idea to make one of your children a co-owner of your bank account, for at least three reasons: (1) a co-owner can remove the contents of the account without your approval; (2) a co-owner's creditors can collect the co-owner's debts from your account; and (3) after you have passed away, the co-owner doesn't have to share the account with your other children, even if the co-owner promised to do so.
I have seen that third scenario more times than I can count. Needless to say, it destroys family harmony. Isn't the cost of a will worth avoiding that outcome? According to a quote from an opinion by Judge Posner in a recent case, a taxi medallion owner made this argument: a permit (granted by the government) to operate a taxi is a property right that can’t be taken away by the government without compensation.
Judge Posner called that argument absurd, and I agree. Just because the government (artificially and perhaps even arbitrarily) limits the number of permits doesn’t turn the permit into a property right. The judge also pointed out that a property right can be intangible, such as a patent, but that doesn’t mean that a government permit is a property right. The easiest way I can think of to explain why a taxi operator’s permit is different from a patent is this: with a patent, the monopoly that’s being protected is my right to use my own idea; with the taxi operator permit, the monopoly (or oligopoly) is a restriction created by the government. You can read about the case at the Institute for Justice’s web site. If you own a patent or some other type of intangible property right, like a copyrighted work, and want to talk about how to incorporate it you’re your estate plan, we can help. There is a story getting national attention about a 14 year old girl who has a fatal degenerative disease. It’s getting national attention because the girl has asked that treatments be withdrawn. Unfortunately, two discussions of the situation that I saw recently only confuse the issues the situation raises.
There are two clear issues raised by this situation. First, does a person have a right to refuse treatment, even if the treatment is necessary to keep the person alive? The answer is clearly, yes. A living will, recognized in Arizona and, I believe, all other jurisdictions in the United States, allows a person to direct that treatment be withheld or withdrawn. A health care power of attorney allows a person to delegate the decision to withhold or withdraw life-saving treatment to someone else if the person is no longer able to make or communicate the decision. Second, can a fourteen year old child refuse treatment? I’m not sure, but I don’t think so. Fourteen year olds generally are considered legally incompetent to make decisions, with certain exceptions not relevant to this discussion. The child’s parents or legal guardian are the people who have the legal authority to make that decision for the child. There is one big issue that this situation doesn’t appear to implicate: assisted suicide. Unfortunately, both of the discussions I mentioned earlier bring up that issue, without distinguishing it from the issue of refusing treatment. It seems obvious to me that assisting a person in causing the person’s death is different from withholding treatment at the request of the person receiving the treatment. Why bring up the difficult issue of assisted suicide when it doesn’t have anything to do with the situation? I recommend that every adult should at least consider signing a living will. If you have not signed a living will and would like to consider it, let me know. I’ll send you the Arizona form, at no cost to you. REVISED UNIFORM FIDUCIARY ACCESS TO DIGITAL ASSETS ACT IS A GOOD IDEA, BUT HAS INHERENT LIMITATIONS9/16/2016 At last report, 19 states including Arizona have enacted the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA for you acronym mavens). One problem that immediately occurs to me is that unless California adopts RUFADAA or something like it, its adoption in other states may not do much good.
Why? Because California is where Google and Facebook are, of course, not to mention Yahoo. At least Microsoft’s home state of Washington has adopted it. I’ll get more into the details of the legislation in future posts. The fact that RUFADAA has been adopted in Arizona but not in California is another reason to use (Arizona based) GoDaddy for email and web hosting. Here’s an item about the different types of vehicle titles. If you ever have occasion to be involved in a used car transaction with a private party, it’s useful information.
If you want to know the different methods for transferring a vehicle title in Arizona, particularly as a gift or when the owner dies, read my newsletter on the subject. |
AuthorThe contents of this blog, this web site, and any writings by me that are linked here, are all my personal commentary. None of it is intended to be legal advice for your situation. Archives
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