In today’s episode of The Legal Way, we break down the fundamental elements of crafting a comprehensive estate plan with Friedman Schuman estate planning attorney, Alex Gusikoff. From understanding the importance of crafting your estate plan to understanding the different type of documents that can be involved in an estate plan and more, join us as we provide a beginner-friendly roadmap for building an effective estate plan that secures your legacy and protects your loved ones’ future. Whether you’re new to estate planning or looking to refresh your knowledge, this episode equips you with the essential knowledge to make informed decisions about your estate.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
Alyson: Hey everybody, welcome to The Legal Way podcast by Friedman Schuman. We are so excited that you guys are jumping on to listen and learn with us. Today we have a guest speaker, one of our attorneys, Alex Gusikoff, and we’re going to be talking all about estate planning. I’m super, super excited for this topic and for him to just explain a lot of the basics. So, I will let him take it away from here. Alex, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Could you just give like a little introduction about yourself and tell all the listeners who you are, what you do and all that fun stuff.
Alex: Sure. So, my name’s Alex Gusikoff. I’m an associate attorney here at Friedman Schuman in the estate and trust planning department. I’m a graduate of Villanova Law School, class of 22. I recently passed the Pennsylvania Bar in October.
Alyson: Congratulations.
Alex: I guess a little bit of background. So, I had initially clerked with the firm while I was in law school, enjoyed the practice area, stayed on as a clerk. And once I passed the bar, became a full-blown attorney. So, I’ve been doing estate planning for about a year and a half, two years now. And as a full-time attorney, upwards of eight and nine months. It’s been very interesting, a lot of different stories. But everyone in the firm is great so it’s been a very, very interesting and growth-oriented experience.
Alyson: Awesome. Well, Alex and I we were talking about some stories before we hit record, so I’m really excited about the episode where we dive into some of those. But thank you so much for introducing yourself. I have a question for you that we haven’t really prepared, but what exactly interested you in a state law and estate planning and estate administration?
Alex: Sure. So, my background in undergraduate, I was a double major in economics and history. So, the way I always couch it is economics was my practical profession and history was my passion project. So, the econ background, I always had a very kind of analytical mindset, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be an economist, I wasn’t a mathematician in that way, but I knew that I wanted to pursue law. Now, how I would integrate those two, I think, was a mystery when I first started my first year trying to see what pieces of the law really resonated with me. And I spent my first summer actually at a district attorney’s office doing some criminal work. That was rewarding, but I could definitely tell that that was not the area that I was going to practice. And so, I wanted to move into something a little more transactional, see the business end because I knew that…My involvement in small business and different types of transactional work is something that interested me and I wanted to see what opportunities were there. And when the opportunity came here, they had an internship open my second summer. I jumped on the opportunity. They were happy to have me. And the experience has been great, really. I kind of enjoyed the process of building plans and helping people through some of the more complex issues of estate planning and estate administration that otherwise they wouldn’t really have a handle on. You know, as an aside, my other side project, I was a baseball player. I played baseball in college. I played through and continued to coach. And the analogy I like is a lot of the planning process is akin to coaching in some way. You have to help them understand what the rules are, how to navigate, and how to best get the outcome that they want. Every player wants to maximize their potential. Every client wants to maximize their estate plan in the best way that they can. And they might not know the ways to do that. That’s where we come in.
Alyson: That is so cool.
Alex: It’s become very rewarding in that way.
Alyson: That’s amazing. It really sounds like it is. I mean, you get to work with a lot of different types of people and you’re really helping them through some really difficult periods of their life. So, I’m sure that it is very rewarding.
Alex: For sure. On the administration side, it can definitely seem a little down. But usually, I think the silver lining to that is usually you’re right. It is a very difficult time in people’s lives. The loss of a loved one is never easy. But what can help is when you have a trusted and experienced advisor to help you through those processes to make sure that you don’t have to worry about them. Because principally, what you don’t want to do when you’re grieving the loss of a loved one is worry about where their money’s going and how it’s being managed.
Alyson: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. I’m really excited now to just kind of dive into all the basics like we said. So first off, my question for you is…what exactly is an estate plan? What is it? What does it look like? Are there different types of estate plans? Like dive all in. Give us all the deets.
Alex: Sure. So, the estate plan, I guess it’s easiest to think about it from a 10,000 foot perspective. So, your estate is really just you, right? It’s everything that you’ve got, whether it’s different types of assets, how they’re held, and it also involves who’s going to be dealing with you and your things when you are not able to do so and when you’re not here anymore. So that involves both planning from an asset perspective, but also from a familial relationship perspective, whether that means guardianship or other types of custodial relationships, powers of attorney, healthcare powers of attorney and agent relationships in the event that you become incapacitated and need a decision maker. It involves living wills and advanced healthcare directives, the kinds of medical treatments that you’ll want when and if you need them or are in a position where you can’t make those decisions on your own. So, the estate planning is a very broad spectrum to think about, but really it involves most of your assets and how you want them to be disposed of when you’re no longer here. So that can be, there’s really a few different types of documents that we use to principally do that. Most people are familiar with the idea of a will. Yes. You know, many when people think of an estate plan, they think of a will.
Alyson: Yeah, that’s the only one that I really knew about before I started working at the law firm. I was like, oh, it’s just wills. And then I learned, okay, there’s a lot of other things that you can do when you’re planning your estate.
Alex: Yep. Yep. So, the will is the big one. The will, I mean, that I…won’t deny the will is definitely very important. And if you don’t have a will, please get a will. Everybody needs a will. And I say that because whether or not you like it, if you have a will that will dictate what you want to have happen. If you don’t have a will, the state where you live will tell you what happens to your things, right? The intestacy laws of the state govern if you die without a will, that’s called intestacy. So, it’s really, really critical that if you want to control the disposition of your own assets, that you have a will that dictates how that’s done.
Alyson: Gotcha. Gotcha.
Alex: So, there’s a few other types of planning vehicles that we can use, and most commonly, that’s the trust. So, people may be familiar with the idea of a trust, but really are familiar with what that looks like or how it’s administered. In short, and I’m sure it could be an entire other podcast episode on its own, types of trusts.
Alyson: Add that to the list.
Alex: Absolutely. But really, there’s the kind of living trust and there’s the testamentary trust. So a living trust or a revocable trust is one that you would create during life, and that can serve a whole host of purposes. It can hold assets currently, whether or not you want to use it as a management tool, if you hold various pieces of real estate or different business interests, that can be a useful tool. At the same time, testimony trusts can serve a similar purpose in that they can dispose of your assets in a way that maintains their integrity, for lack of a better term, for some extended period of time. You’re not simply giving them outright to someone, say, hey, I would like to give you $100,000, but rather I’m going to take that money and pool it into a trust account to be managed by another person. So that’s really the difference. But usually the two are intertwined. I mean, they’re fundamentally connected in that the will will contain provisions that relate to your trust if you have one. And the will will often contain fallback provisions for various kinds of trusts, if planned correctly, to make sure that if anything happens, you’ve got all your bases covered.
Alyson: Gotcha. That’s really good information to know. So, you shared a little bit about, you know, the benefits of creating a state plan, it’s really so that your assets go to exactly who you want them to go to, but are there any additional benefits to making sure that you have planned your estate before you’re passing?
Alex: For sure. I would say the first is the burden and the ease on your family. I’ve seen enough instances already and heard enough horror stories when there is either not a good family relationship or not a lot of communication amongst the family as to what assets are where, and they’re not organized in a very neat way. And ,so, it’s very difficult when that person passes for their family to pick up the pieces and find everything that they have and how to dispose of everything that they have. There’s a whole host of issues. Just think of the kinds of things that you have attached to your name right now. We’ve got 50,000 subscriptions to every streaming service under the sun. You’ve got bills coming in from all kinds of different places. You’ve got to cancel this credit card. You’ve got to deal with this house or this bill. There’s a whole host of issues that are much easier to deal with when it’s known to your family. You’ve got it in a central place. So that’s usually one of the biggest benefits, even if you’re not really concerned as much as where your things are going or the plan itself is fairly easy. Another piece that’s really critical, especially for young families, is with respect to guardianship. Young families with young children, you know, you don’t like to think about it, but a lot of young people don’t have wills or their estate plans in place. And if you have young children and something happens to you and your spouse, you want to make sure that your children are protected, your children are cared for, and that the persons that you trust are the ones that are put in the place to care for them, uh… so guardianship is critical and the when the will can often be the vehicle to do that.
Alyson: Absolutely. I’m sure that’s you know a big, big thing that you encounter a lot. Do you think that, umm…let me free rephrase this, so I mean there are a lot of the younger people that don’t have a will and they probably think it’s because they don’t necessarily need one but what would you say to someone who says, “I’m too young to need a will.” Do you think that there is ever a time where it’s too early to start planning your estate?
Alex: No. And the answer, well, I’ll say this: if you have anything and you want it to go to anyone, you need a will. If you have anyone that you care about in your life that you need to either protect or you have some piece that you need to provide for, you have any other responsibilities or you have small children or aging parents that you want to have someone there in your stead when you’re no longer around, an estate plan is essential. Now obviously the complexity will vary, right? If you’re 30 years old and you don’t have a significant amount of assets, maybe you don’t own any real estate, then your estate plan is relatively straightforward. If you don’t have that many children or you don’t have any children, maybe you don’t have that many siblings, okay, then the estate plan becomes significantly more straightforward. At the very least, the administration of your estate in the untimely event that you die early will have to be done by somebody. And having a will to be able to do that, again, lessens the burden on your family significantly, really, really streamlines the process of administering your estate if you have anything at all. Whether that’s accessing your checking account, a savings account, and paying off your bills, if your family has a will that names an executor that can obtain the authority to administer your estate in a timely fashion, that makes it so much easier on your family.
Alyson: That is really, really good to know. I mean, if you are listening, it is never too soon to create your will. So, find your trusted attorney and get that will made ASAP. So, moving on to the next question, we talked about this a little bit, but what are some of the different types of estate planning documents or some that you think are the most important when you’re helping somebody plan their estate?
Alex: So generally, our standard estate planning package will encompass the will, a durable asset power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney, and a living will, which in our case we use combined forms for the healthcare power of attorney and living will. So those are the three I would call essential components of the estate plan. The will, as we’ve mentioned, is essential. It provides the dispositive provisions for how your assets will be distributed. It’ll describe who your fiduciaries will be that will administer your estate when you pass. And those are really the most critical pieces. The power of attorney documents are concerned with what happens while you’re still alive. And that is something that people don’t often think about, but will only need to obtain. They’ll only get the documents once they’re told by some place or some institution, hey, you need a power of attorney. They’ll walk in and say, hey, where’s your power of attorney documents? You need to go get those together. So usually that’s the first time somebody thinks of it. But those documents are critical because in the event that you can no longer manage your own financial assets or make your own healthcare decisions, you wanna make sure that the person that you trust and appoint to be your agent will be able to act on your behalf and have the power to do that. As far as the asset power of attorney goes, that document governs all of the different financial transactions, the different asset holdings that you could have, depending obviously on how it’s drafted and what it says, the standard form will usually allow the broadest powers for your agent that you choose to act essentially in your stead, to act when you can’t, that’s signing checks, moving money, even to, I don’t know, I’ll use a caveat as a lawyer would, but even changing your estate plan to conform with your intention in the event that you can’t. So that would be executing documents on your behalf if you can no longer sign them. So, there’s a very broad swath of powers that a power of attorney can give. The healthcare power of attorney is similar in that it designates an agent to act for you. However, that power is limited to healthcare decision making and in the case of a living well or advanced healthcare directive with respect to life saving procedures when you are fully incapacitated provisions are mostly operative to when you are in a life-sustaining situation, which if you look at the list of procedures that you’re allowing or not allowing, ordinarily it’s not to keep you alive for you to recover fully. It is a life-sustaining procedure to maintain brain activity for some period of time. They’re not pulling the plug, I guess would be the colloquial way to say it. And if you don’t want to allow your family to be forced in a position to make that decision for you, you want to have a document in place ahead of time that says, if I’m in this state, this is what I want to have happen to me. Because it’s very difficult to put your family in a position to make that decision. And it really eases the burden, again, on them if you have those documents in place. So, I would say those are the critical three. And then as I mentioned, the trust documents, that’s really gonna depend on what you wanna achieve and what your asset disposition looks like. So, there are a number of different kinds of trusts, the types of trust language and what they can do and what their purposes are vary wildly. A quick Google search will give you a whole host of different trusts, I’m sure. You can find all kinds of articles, I’m sure. But usually, the standard trust, I would say, in a marital relationship, let’s use a husband-wife situation with children, if they’re using a trust, usually, it was to plan for the federal estate tax. So, a little bit of a history lesson.
Alyson: Yeah, tie that in here.
Alex: Federal estate tax is a federal tax. The gift tax or the generation skipping tax essentially taxes estates over a certain threshold taking into account all of your assets on the federal level. Now there’s a large exemption currently for when you will qualify for that federal estate tax. So, It used to be that that exemption number was much lower. So today, for any individual, the estate tax exemption is something like, and don’t quote me, $12.7 million for an individual. That means between reportable lifetime gifts that you make and the assets that you hold at death, if your gross estate exceeds $12.7 million, then you’ll be taxed on the amount that exceeds that. The rate’s not very pretty. It’s 40%. So, you really want to avoid this federal estate tax. So now back in the early 2000s and again in the 90s, there were a number of changes that raised the exemption limit from around 600,000 in the late 90s. Again, during the Obama administration to a million, two million, upwards of five million and more recently has expanded significantly to that number I mentioned. And so, the fact that that exemption has gotten so large means that having to plan for the estate tax has become a little less of an issue for most people, but it used to be a very significant issue. If you had a piece of real estate, a brokerage account or maybe some investment accounts and retirement accounts, it’s likely that you had a federally taxable estate. And that’s a problem if you have a surviving spouse and you have children that you want to pass your inheritance on to. You wanted to make sure that you had a plan in place to ensure that you minimized the tax exposure that you had. So, there were often trusts that were established to ensure that spouses had access to some of the assets during the course of their life by income stream, but limited their access in specific ways to ensure that they qualified for an exemption from the estate tax. That’s become less of an issue as that exemption is increased. But again, there are a whole number of different ways the trust can be useful in the estate plan. And often, they’re not necessarily even tied to some exorbitant amount of money. Some trusts can exist merely to ensure that the assets are protected from someone who might otherwise not be responsible for them. Whether that’s someone…who is incapacitated by disability or mental infirmity, or someone who’s simply a spendthrift, and you don’t trust to keep that money in place. You know, you can do that. If you don’t trust that the person that you’re giving this money will use it in a prudent way, you can set restrictions as to how they do that to ensure that their needs are met. Usually that’s…in the case of younger people, we’ll establish trust and say, you can’t touch the principal until you’re a certain age. But you can use it for health and education and maintenance to support yourself while you’re in school or to pay tuition or to pay medical bills, but you can’t go buy a Lamborghini.
Alyson: Yeah. That makes total sense. So that kind of ties into my next question. I’m assuming too, if somebody wants to create or start creating their estate plan and they’re like, I have no idea where to start, what I need, they should be going to a trusted attorney who can tell them, okay, maybe you need this well and maybe you want to set up this type of trust. So how exactly would you recommend for somebody to go about starting an estate plan with an attorney? Would there be certain steps to follow or how exactly should they go about that?
Alex: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it’s often one that prevents people from doing it. There’s a whole number of reasons why you might put off putting an estate plan.
Alyson: There are a lot of unknowns. This is not something that you learn in school.
Alex: It’s not intuitive. And you also don’t like thinking about being dead. It’s probably not something most people like to think about.
Alyson: It’s not the most fun thing to think about.
Alex: It’s not fun. So, you come talk to us to talk about it. No, but that’s really the first place to start. It would be first in the family unit. You need to consider what your goals and objectives are with your assets and your disposition, what you think that you might need. And that doesn’t need to be a complete list. It won’t be because that’s the purpose of coming to an advisor like an attorney. But it should be something that you’ve thought about and have some ideas as to how you want to navigate the process. Then once you’re ready and that’s a conversation you’re ready to have, that’s when you can call an attorney. We can establish a rapport. I can get to know what your asset portfolio looks like, what your family situation looks like, and we can craft a plan that aligns with your goals that may not exactly look like what you thought it was going to at the outset, but lines up with what you are hoping to achieve. At the same time, if you’re someone who has, has an estate plan currently, you know, and you wanna update that, that is, I would say a majority of our clients, you know, is an estate plan that life event happens and they need to update their documents. Generally, what we tell our clients is, if we’re lucky, we get five to seven years out of our estate planning documents. That would be a great, if we can get a good five to seven years out of these documents, we consider that a success because there are a number of life events that are going to happen all the time that are going to make those documents seem silly if you look at them again. And that’s usually where the pitfalls come in. People create a plan. They say, this looks great. I have a will. Throw it in the safe deposit box. Put it in the shoe box. And then they don’t look at it. And then they get married. They have kids. Family members pass away. New kids are born. Families change, the whole situation changes. Your asset portfolio changes drastically, but your documents look like they did 15 years ago. I feel like that could cause some problems. It’s not good. It’s not good. So, I would say that’s the kicker is you’re thinking about it and you come to an attorney and say, this is what I’m trying to do, or you have existing documents and the time has come by some life event or some other change that says, okay, it’s time to revisit these documents.
Alyson: Gotcha, that is so interesting and definitely very essential information for everybody to know. So obviously that would be a challenge for somebody if they haven’t been updating their will, but are there any challenges that you see people face as they are creating their estate plan? And are there any ways that they can kind of combat those challenges?
Alex: That’s a good question. You know, the challenges vary because every estate plan’s different. We see some consistent issues and usually they’ll have to do with titling of either real estate or various business interests. You know, a lot of the times I see small businesses, they’ll often, frequently will have clients who have small businesses themselves, their family operated, they’ve got family in the business and they want to plan for the continuity of the business to make sure that the shares pass correctly or to make sure that the real estate is titled the right way. And often, they could run into issues if they haven’t been maintaining their business documents properly or there’s been some issue in their reporting or the allocation or they’ve failed to maintain some portion of their books and records. That can often be a challenge, often other challenges if you choose to make some kind of gift during life either because you’re advised to for some particular reason, whether it be tax planning or anything like that, or simply you decide that I’m going to make a gift now or I’m going to do something and you don’t tell your attorney or you transfer money without saying something.
Alyson: Yeah.
Alex: Those are the kinds of pitfalls that I see frequently where you have some documents in place, you think you understand how everything works, and then you think about making a big decision, I’m gonna put a bunch of money into this account, I’m gonna buy this piece of real estate, I’m gonna liquidate this account, and you don’t talk to your professional advisors, whether that be your accountant principally, or your attorney with respect to your documents, and you make a decision that you can’t undo and that’s a problem. So usually though that’s, you know, most things we can fix. You know, the beauty of things like a will is that, you know, as much, they’re effective when you sign them, but they don’t do anything until you die. Right? The will doesn’t have any meaning until you pass away. So, it can be signed and notarized and executed properly and you can rip it up tomorrow and write a new one. And the new one will govern and it’s as if the old one did not exist. So, you can revoke your will at any time before you’re dead. Make sure that the one that you’ve got is the one that you want. So, a lot of the estate planning issues, if you say, I want my will to be changed to give a gift to this person and not that person, those are usually not difficult issues to deal with. Or this person, I had a falling out with my brother. I don’t want him to administer my estate anymore. Okay, we can do that. It’s much more difficult when usually you do something without advising your professionals and then come back and say, whoops, I did this, how do we fix it? Those are the issues that are much more difficult to resolve. Often we can try to find a workout and usually there’s something that we can do, but not always.
Alyson: Well, that’s really good to know because I think just based off of the little experience that I have dealing with estate plans and whatnot, I feel like that probably holds a lot of people back from just taking that first step to creating a well, because they think, okay, like this is permanent, but it’s nice to know that you can update it. You could change it. You can edit it as your life changes because that’s what happens.
Alex: That’s the beauty. It is planning. It is really, it is planning. And like I said, you know, if we usually expect five to seven years, obviously, you know, as people get older, um, you know, I think you see a lot more activity or changes as people get older and it starts to crystallize and it becomes very real. And that is usually when provisions that you didn’t think mattered or a little gift over here really, really start to matter to people. So, there we’ll see a lot more frequent updates. But…You know, even the updates are important, especially when young people are either adding to their family or their family situation is changing. That’s something that I think is often overlooked, especially with respect to guardianship and special needs planning. That’s one thing that I know. I’ve run into a few times recently and have talked to colleagues about with respect to special needs. I don’t want to say rising tide, but the increased awareness of various special needs issues and the kinds of assistance that the person’s suffering from those issues will need, the resources that they’ll require. And that in and of itself is an entire planning module. And there’s ways to do that that are really, really effective to make sure that they’re taken care of. But at the same time, there’s the other side of the coin. You don’t make any of those planning strategies, then you’re left to the wind. Yeah. So, you know, it’s really, really important at all stages of life that you’re consistently familiar with your estate plan, that it conforms to your intention and does what you want it to do, and that you haven’t left everything out to the wind. Now, as I say that, I’m suddenly aware of a gaping hole that I think I’ve missed, and that’s with, part of the estate plan itself is the beneficiary designation.
Alyson: Okay.
Alex: So, the benefit-
Alyson: Yeah, let’s go into that. Let’s dive into that a little bit.
Alex: And this is a big one because it’s confusing in that it doesn’t necessarily involve the estate planning documents. It’s not in the will, it’s not in the trust, it’s not a power of attorney, but instead it’s a designation on an account or a contract that you have. So frequently the easiest one that you might see is a life insurance policy. Right? I take a life insurance policy. I’m the insured. When I die, I have a named beneficiary. So let’s say it’s you and my, I pass away, you’re my named beneficiary. The will doesn’t dictate what happens with my life insurance policy. The life insurance contract does that. That’s a non-probate asset. The same is true for other kinds of payable on death or terminate on death accounts, whether that be a brokerage account or money market or other kinds of savings accounts. Often those will have POD or TOD designations that will allow those accounts to simply be given to a beneficiary without the need to go through the will. The will won’t dictate what happens to those assets. Now that’s critically important because at the same time that you update your estate planning documents, you need to make sure that your beneficiary designations are in line with those documents. The one big pitfall I have seen more often than I’d like is when someone says, usually in the administration, because if they’re planning, we’ll tell them, right? But they come in and they say, I’ve got all of these documents. The will splits up my estate three ways to my family. And that’s how I wanted everything to go. And then it turns out that the bulk of their assets, maybe all of their assets, are held in a joint account with some other, with a joint owner. And it turns out that at that debt, at your death, the joint owner becomes the sole owner of the account because that’s how joint ownership works, right? Or the payable on death designation is a person that, maybe it’s your spouse. And as you get older, your spouse has predeceased you and is no longer with you. You fail to change your beneficiary designation and you haven’t named a contingent beneficiary. That’s a problem.
Alyson: Yes, it is.
Alex: That’s a major problem. So that’s a very important piece and shouldn’t be overlooked. With the entire estate planning module, the beneficiary designation is a critical piece because usually people are going to have either joint accounts, life insurance contracts, various kinds of payable and death designations that they might have and will need to maintain consistency with across their entire estate plan.
Alyson: Really, really great info. I’m glad that you brought that up because it’s definitely an important piece. So before we wrap up this episode, I have one last question for you. And that is, what are some of the things that people should really keep in mind when creating an estate plan? Like, what would you tell your client? Like, these are things that you should absolutely keep in mind as you’re thinking, or yeah, thinking of, you know, who would you want your beneficiary to be, your guardianship and all of that stuff.
Alex: Well, I guess the first thing, and you know, maybe it’s a little cynical, when you’re gone, you’re gone. So remember that your estate plan is for those that remain.
Alyson: That may be cynical, but that is a very good thing for people to consider.
Alex: It’s all about the family. It’s about who is going to be dealing with your estate and who’s going to be receiving the benefit of what you had. That is everything. If you…If you’re alone or on an island, you don’t need a will, right? There’s no one to take. So that’s the most critical piece. I think really that’s the part that I like the most about the practice is it is very family-centric and I say family, but that’s of all various forms. It takes a million different shapes. However that looks, whatever your family unit looks like, taking care of your people and making sure that they are taken care of when they’re in a position that they need assistance, that is paramount. It’s more important than anything else in the planning process. Now with that involves making sure that their burdens are taken care of, they’re not having to chase all over the place for your assets, to make sure that any business interests that you have are, they’re seamless so that if you’ve got a family business and you want it to maintain that you are sure that your documents do that and the right people are in the positions that they need to in terms of ownership and equity to make sure that the business is run successfully, selection of fiduciaries to make sure that if you’re creating a trust or some kind of guardianship or custodial account that the person’s managing those accounts are responsible people and not someone that you wouldn’t trust the money with. So, each of those are critical aspects. I really don’t think that you can overstate. Estate planning is principally about your family and what happens when you’re no longer here. You don’t go to the grave with it.
Alyson: No. That was wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing so much and just going through all the basics of estate planning.
Alex: Absolutely.
Alyson: I know that our listeners are going to get so much value from this episode. And I’m excited for people to tune in.
Alex: Oh my gosh, it was so much fun. Thank you for having me.
Alyson: Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of The Legal Way by Friedman Schuman. We will be back very soon, so make sure to tune in. Thanks guys.
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