First of all, let me start by stating this as loudly and clearly as I possibly can.  DO NOT PANIC!

If you are an IndyMac depositor, there is no need for you to line up at the bank as many others have done and demand the return of your money.  This is a pure waste of your time and only contributes to the unnecessary drama and fearmongering happening out there.

IndyMac Bank has been put under the control of the federal government and deposits are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (or FDIC).

You should read this from the FDIC to IndyMac depositors to determine what you will need to do to submit a claim for your funds.

As long as you had less than $100,000 in the bank, all of your deposits should be fully covered by the FDIC insurance.

In some cases, like if you have a properly drafted and funding living trust, you may qualify for even more insurance coverage.  This is exactly the type of situation where you want to contact your Personal Family Lawyer to make sure you’ve done everything right to maximize the protection of your assets.

In fact, Personal Family Lawyers throughout the country are providing trust reviews for a limited number of non-customers at no charge.  Contact your Personal Family Lawyer to determine whether you can get on the calendar for a free FDIC-coverage review of your estate plan.

There’s no need for you to start withdrawing deposits from other banking institutions either.  Your mattress is NOT the safest place for your money.

Here’s what you should do to make sure your money is as safe as possible.

1.  Use the FDIC online calculator to determine the amount of insurance coverage on your accounts.  If you need help with this (it is a bit complicated), contact your personal lawyer for guidance.

2.  Maximize your FDIC insurance coverage!  A properly drafted and funded trust can get you a whole lot more insurance coverage than an account owned in your name.

3.  If you have more than $100,000 in cash accounts, talk with your Personal Family Lawyer about how you can protect the excess in case your bank fails too.

More than anything, do not panic.  Be proactive and get the information you need to be smart.  And, don’t act from fear.

Many of you out there are in fear of facing foreclosure.  Interest rates are rising, your adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) are resetting.  And you are scared.

What should you do?

Well, before we talk about that, let’s talk about what you absolutely shouldn’t do.  And that’s just to bury your head in the sand, leave your keys on the counter and walk away!

It’s not only the chicken way out, it also leaves you in the worst possible situation because you have options and, if you don’t seek them out, you are making a bad situation worse.

So, here’s four steps to take if you are facing foreclosure or think you might be in the future:

1.  Ask for help!

There is no better way to get what you want than to ask.  Most of us are too afraid or ashamed to ask for help and so we give up and give in before exploring all of our options.

You have nothing to be ashamed of and you don’t need to be afraid.  When you ask for help, you will get the help you need.  But, you’ve got to ask first.

2.  Don’t get conned.

You do need to be aware of people who will try to prey on your circumstances.  This can be a time of confusion, worry and fear for you.  And you must not allow this fear to cause you to make bad decisions.

But how do you know what’s a bad decision?

Well, first off, never sign any legal documents without having them reviewed by a trusted lawyer.  While you may think having a personal lawyer is not accessible or affordable to you, it’s not true.  A personal lawyer can save you tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime by saving you from bad decisions.  Find a lawyer who won’t bill you hourly and you can turn to throughout your lifetime before making important financial and legal decisions here.

And never, never, never sign over the deed to your home without talking to a lawyer.  Doing so could cost you and your family dearly.

3.  Get help from trustworthy sources.

There are some trustworthy sources to turn to if you are facing foreclosure.  Start with these:

Gold Cross of America

USA Freedom Corps

Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America

Homeowner’s Hope

Acorn Housing

And, even when working with a trusted resource, don’t enter into any agreement without first talking to your own personal lawyer first.  This is a scary time for you, but with good advice and trusted guidance, you can come through the other side in a better position than before and ready for massive success in your life.

4.  Keep your chin up!

I know this seems like the worst thing that could possibly happen to you, but you can choose to see it a different way.

Look at this as an opportunity for growth and learning and see it as the first step on your journey towards the life of your dreams.

Many famous and very successful people have experienced bankruptcy and faced foreclosure.  And several of them have even been heard to say that it’s a rite of passage.

The real test is whether you can get back up, brush yourself off and create something even more amazing.  You can, but not if you bury your head in the sand, don’t take responsibility and act like a chicken!

Hold your head high, take responsibility, ask for help and make this the turning point of your life.

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If you are not currently experiencing financial freedom, now is the time to start.  No matter what your current circumstances are, you can enjoy freedom from worrying about money.  But, before you can, you’ve got to change your mind.

And, before you can do that, you have to want to.

So, ask yourself right now how your financial fears are holding you back in your life.  I know that for me, financial fears have impacted my life in a number of ways.

When I was in financial fear, I didn’t feel worthy of everything the world had to offer.  I found myself waiting in long lines, sitting in middle seats in the back of the airplane, hiring the wrong people, or - even worse - doing everything myself, associating with the wrong people, even marrying the wrong guy.  How are your fears holding you back?

You see, my fear of not having enough resulted in me feeling as if I was not enough.

As a result of this fear, I often felt grumpy, impatient, and frustrated.  I imposed these feelings on everyone around me, from my kids to my team members to my spouse.  I was resentful and angry.  All because I was afraid of running out of money.

Financial fear is one of the most insidious fears there are because from the outside it can seem justified.  The whole world seems to be screaming RECESSION, GAS PRICES, GROCERIES, TAXES.  Conserve your money, hoard it, save it for a rainy day.  Cut your expenses.  Financial fear is not only supported, it seems to be encouraged.

You watch the nightly news, and all they can talk about is the doom and gloom.  And, like I did, you are buying into it.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share how I broke free of the lack and limitation mentality that was holding me back.  Today, I feel at peace, confident, secure, and free of worry about not having or being enough.  I’m not saying it was easy.  To the contrary; it required a huge reprogramming of the junk that’s been drilled into my head since I was born.  But, if I could do it, you can too.

Let today be the day you stop buying into the propaganda and recognize that he sky is not falling.  You are not going to run out of money.  You are resourceful and live in a time of abundance and plenty.

For the balance of July (hereby declared freedom month!), my Family Wealth articles will center on your financial freedom.  First, we’ll talk about financial freedom if you are facing foreclosure, then financial freedom if you are drowning in debt, and last how to start your financial freedom now and retire the right way, sooner than you think possible.

If you have particular financial fears you want addressed during this series, be sure to post on my blog so I can personally help you.

For now, I recommend you stop watching the news and reading the newspaper.  And, if you just can’t do that, look for the good in what you read.  It’s out there.

A friend of mine from out of state asked me to review estate planning documents she is getting ready to sign before going out of town for the first time with her husband and without her kids.

These documents were prepared by a traditional estate planning lawyer who sent her the draft documents for review before she signs them.

Right away, I had the feeling this was not going to be pretty. Why?

Well, to begin with the lawyer was her husband’s lawyer from before she was married to her husband and the lawyer didn’t spend very much time with her explaining the planning options or the way things were being set up.

Then, he sent her draft documents to review. Frankly, that’s just nutty. Unless I am working with a lawyer who specifically requests drafts be sent to him or her before signing, I never send drafts. How can this lawyer possibly expect my friend to review over 150 pages of documents and understand whether they do what they are supposed to do? Impossible.

The lawyer should have sat down with my friend and her husband and reviewed the documents with them before they sign them - not sent them to his client to review on her own.

My friend said she was told the documents will make things easy for her at the time of her husband’s death. And, she was ready to sign them because she had no reason to believe anything else. It just so happens she mentioned to me she’d had documents drafted and she was reviewing them and I offered to take a quick look.

Uh-oh. These documents have a lot of problems.

Here’s just a couple of things I saw:

1. When her husband dies, his half of the assets go into a trust that she does not have full control over at all, though she was told she would. In fact, she has to go to a Special Trustee for distributions from the Trust.

2. There is a mandatory division of the assets after her husband dies, which will require her to set up multiple trusts, even if tax law doesn’t warrant it based on the size of their assets at the time of his death making the administration after his death more complicated and expensive.

3. The plan does not adequately provide for her child from a prior marriage. If she were to die, he could potentially be taken out of their home and into the arms of strangers until the authorities could figure out where her family is and what to do.

4. After her death, the trust leaves all of the assets outright to their beneficiaries when they turn 25, 30 and 35 without making sure those assets would stay in protected trusts that the beneficiaries could access, control and use but couldn’t be lost to divorce or lawsuits.

Of course, my friend couldn’t know any of this just by reading the documents. She’s not a lawyer. And, I’m going to give her husband the benefit of the doubt and assume he didn’t realize what these documents said either and didn’t know his options for doing things differently. Maybe he thought he was making things as easy as possible for her. But, he wasn’t.

Estate planning isn’t about signing form documents you don’t understand. It’s about having a relationship with a trusted Personal Family Lawyer you will be able to turn to for guidance when something happens.

My advice to my friend is the same as my advice to you … make sure the lawyer who prepares your estate planning documents is someone you absolutely, totally 100% trust is going to be there to guide you and hold your hand when something happens to someone in your family. Don’t sign documents prepared by someone you barely know who may not be looking out for your best interest. This is about so much more than the documents.

If you don’t take this advice, you could be the one left holding the bag when your spouse dies.

If you’d like a review of your estate planning documents and a consultation with me to discuss what they say and what will happen when your spouse dies, I have a few limited consultation times available nationwide. The review and consultation are $950. Contact support@familywealthmatters.com if you’d like to get on my calendar.

Family Wealth Planning is the Web 2.0 version of estate planning.

Whereas “estate planning” is about preparing and passing on your financial assets at the end of your life, Family Wealth Planning is about making the right financial and legal decisions for your whole family wealth throughout your lifetime and leaving the world a better place after you are gone.

It’s about capturing the assets that are most often lost when someone dies … the intellectual, spiritual and human assets that make up a great majority of our family’s wealth and passing them on as well.

When my dad died, he left behind a bit of money, but the rest of his wealth was lost, uncaptured.

I have no letters from him or recordings talking about his hopes and dreams for my future.  My children will never hear his voice or know what was important to him.

I suspect it is the same for your family.

And while there are gobs of websites and businesses springing up to help people capture these assets and pass them on, in my experience we are just too busy and it rarely gets done.

I’ve found the best way to make sure this happens is to make it part of your legal planning.  When you are working with a lawyer on your family’s “estate” planning, if your lawyer is only preparing a plan to pass on your financial assets, he or she is only doing 1/4 of the job.

What you want is a lawyer who will help you capture the wealth that is most often lost and most difficult to plan for … your intellectual, spiritual and human assets or who you are and what’s important to you.

Through a simple Family Wealth Legacy Interview process at the end of your planning together, your Personal Family Lawyer will help you capture the most valuable family wealth you have and pass that on for successive generations by building a legacy library that will be far more valuable than any dollars you could ever leave behind.

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Once again, another celebrity has died with an out-of-date Will. Heath Ledger’s Will has been made public (as all Wills are public documents after death) and it turns out that the Will, made three years prior to his daughter’s birth, leaves everything to his parents and sister.

We saw the same thing recently when Anna Nicole Smith died and her Will left everything to her deceased son, made no mention of her baby daughter Danielynn or her long-time life/love partner Howard K. Stern, who stuck by her through all of her ups and downs for years prior to her death.Heath’s parents have publicly assured that Matilda will be well taken care of and she’s likely to be deemed a pretermitted heir or omitted heir anyway, which would mean she’ll end up inheriting Heath’s estate and a Los Angeles Court has established Dannielynn as Anna Nicole’s sole heir, so in the end the kids will be taken care of but those results only tell part of the story.

First off, neither Michelle Williams, Matilda’s mother, nor Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole’s long-time partner, were provided for and the law doesn’t make any provision for unmarried partners.   Would Heath and Anna really have wanted Michelle and Howard to get nothing?

Second, while Matilda and Dannielynn will ultimately inherit from their parents due to the pretermitted heir laws noted above, Heath and Anna lost out on the chance to decide the terms under which their babies would receive the money they left behind and to name who would take care of that money until the received it.

These incidents are indicative of a greater national problem that exists - the current model for providing legal services in the United States is desperately broken!

Even wealthy celebrities are victim of the current mindset that estate planning is about form documents that can be prepared once and never looked at again. As these cases highlight, that’s incorrect.

The truth of the matter is that estate planning really has very little to do with form documents. Think about this: standard estate planning form documents can be purchased on the internet for a couple hundred bucks, completed with the help of a do it yourself kit for only $13.50 or you could spend $2,750 to have the forms prepared for you by an Arizona lawyer who calls himself the Estate Planning Doctor.

Here’s the amazing thing . . . whether you spend $13.50 or $2,750.00, at the end of the day all you end up with is documents that in many cases won’t work when your family needs them.

What you want when it comes to estate planning is not a set of form documents. What you want is a relationship with a personal lawyer who is going to guide you to make the best decision throughout your lifetime, be there for your family when you can’t be, and make sure your estate plan stays up to date so when you have a new baby, they know about it, the baby gets added to your plan and your plan works when your family needs it.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

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When I graduated from law school, first year starting salaries at the big law firms were 135k/year.

I thought I was rolling in the dough. I had started working at 14 when minimum wage was $3.35. I worked my way through college waitressing and through law school working for Westlaw. Even with all that, I graduated with nearly 100k in student loans.

I thought 135k was big money! And it would have been if I had been a single woman. But, I wasn’t.

I was the breadwinner in my family, supporting my husband and our two kids. We bought a house, paid taxes and suddenly that big  paycheck was stretched mighty thin. I was constantly pinching pennies, feeling the squeeze.

I wanted to leave the big law firm and start my own firm, but thought I couldn’t afford it. I started to resent my job, my husband, and our house.

I felt stuck.

Until the day my mindset shifted from “I can’t afford it” to “How can I afford it?” Suddenly, a whole new world of possibilities opened up.

I found the resources to launch my law firm in the most unexpected places. And although I felt scared as I pushed myself beyond my comfort zone, not only financially, but emotionally and spiritually as well, I learned that I would never run out.

Today, that lesson continues to serve me.

As I prepare to send two kids to private school, I no longer say “I can’t afford it” even though if you asked a traditional financial advisor she’d say no way can I afford it.

Instead, I ask “how can I?” and know that because it’s important to me, I will find the resources I need.

Here are some ways I’m doing it:

I’m downsizing my housing costs significantly; I’ve traded in my fancy leased car for a less expensive used car; and I found a roommate on CoAbode, a website for single mom’s looking to share housing.

The best part about these money-savers is they’ve actually enhanced my life.

The house I’m moving into is my dream house! It’s on a walkstreet in Hermosa and while it needs a lot of work right now, it could be my forever house.

My car is great to drive and Jodi isn’t just a roommate, she’s a blessing.  She does all the grocery shopping and cooking and brings a sunny energy into my life, not to mention the cutest baby you can imagine. She’s the housewife I’ve always dreamed of having and is the ideal addition to my harem. 

None of this happened by accident. If I had kept up the “I can’t afford it” mantra in my mind, I’d never have let in all of the goodness that is flowing into my life.

So next time you think you can’t afford it, think again.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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Unless you were born into an Über-rich family (and sometimes even then), your parents’ probably never discussed estate planning when you were growing up and didn’t have any kind of relationship with a personal lawyer (at least not one you remember discussed with fondness!)

It’s not a surprise.  70% of people die without even a Will.  So, why would you need to take action now, when you are so young?

Because you are financially smarter than your parents and you care more about the people you’d leave behind than the 70% who die leaving their loved ones in the lurch.

You may be young (or young at heart), but you likely have more far more wealth than your folks already; you certainly have bigger dreams, and there’s a good chance you have kids.

It’s not your age that matters when it comes to planning.  Your vision and your family circumstances determine whether you need to plan and when to start.

Regardless of how much money you have in the bank, if you have kids at home, you want to be the one who decides who would take care of your kids in the short-term and who would raise them for the long-term, if you were in an accident.  You definitely don’t want to leave that up to a court to decide.

Choosing who will take care of your kids and legally documenting your decisions is estate planning … if you have kids, you need it.

If you do have money in the bank (here in California more than $100,000) or own any real property, you will want that money to get to your family as easily as possible if anything happens to you.  The State has a plan for your money, but it’s one that will make life difficult for your loved ones.  Under the State’s plan, your family will have to deal with the Court, not have complete control of your assets for 12-16 months and they’ll pay a load of unnecessary expenses that you could have avoided if you had planned ahead.

You definitely don’t want to leave the people you love with a mess because you didn’t take care of things.

Giving your loved ones easy access to your money if you are in an accident is estate planning … if you have money in the bank or own even one piece of real estate, you need it.

And, if you have a big vision for your future, you want to set up your business in such a way that it can never be taken from you if you get divorced or sued and so that when you die, your family won’t lose half of it to the government.   Yes, there are ways to totally protect what you are building and they are a lot easier to put in place when your company isn’t worth much, like when you are just starting out in your 30s.

Showing the Universe you mean business about your business and setting it up so that it grows protected for your family is estate planning … if you have a big vision for your future, you need it.

Last, if you want to pass on much more than just your financial wealth and leave the world a better place, you need to set forth the intention to do that and then take action steps throughout your lifetime to capture the intangible assets that are most often lost when someone dies, like your intellectual, spiritual and human assets.  It’s about who you are and what’s important to you.

Creating a structure and plan for passing on your values, insights, stories and experience is estate planning …. If you want to leave the world a better place, you need it.

So, what do the old rich guys know that you
should know too?

The most important thing to know is that estate planning is really NOT a do it yourself process.

Sure, you can prepare your own will, trust or health care directive, but real deal, make a difference for your loved ones estate planning (what I call Family Wealth Planning) is about far more than documents; it’s about making the very best decisions for yourself and the people you love most so you can leave the world a better place.  And that kind of estate planning cannot be done without the guidance of a trusted personal lawyer to be there for you throughout your lifetime and for your loved ones after you are gone.

Think about the old rich guys …. the guys whose family wealth has grown at each generation –Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Ford to name a few – all had personal lawyers advising them and their family after they were gone and long before they amassed their wealth.  Because of these relationships, they left long lasting legacies that improve the world.  Contrast that with rich guys like Joe Robbie, Powel Crosley, Jr., and Cornelius Vanderbilt who were once the wealthiest men in America and whose fortunes have been almost entirely dissipated to estate taxes, lawsuits, divorces and general affluenza.

So, learn from the old rich guys who did it right.  Show the Universe you are serious about your business by getting control of your financial future.  Leave your family with a legacy of true family wealth.  If you want to leave the world a better place, even on a small scale, now is the time for you to begin planning your estate.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

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I’m hosting a free teleconference for MOMS ONLY and if you are a mom, you need to be there.

It’s next Tuesday, February 19 at 1p PT/4p ET.

We are close to sold out on our line block, so please get registered now if you plan to attend so I can tell if I need to reserve more lines.

http://www.MomsFreeCall.com

Even if you can’t make it, go ahead and register anyway so you’ll get the recording of the call for download.

And, if you’ve got any friends who need this info, please pass this along and tell them to get registered too.

Here are all the deets:

http://www.MomsFreeCall.com

I’m hosting a free call for moms because 74% of you don’t have your financial house in order and haven’t even legally named guardians for your kids.

And, I’m committed to doing something about the growing number of elderly women entering poverty in their 70s and 80s - it’s a whopping 20%!

The time for you to take action is now!

This Mom’s Only Call will show you how to get your financial house in order, take control of your future, and secure your children’s well-being.

Some of the topics we will cover:

1.  How to make sure your children’s future is not left in the hands of a broken down court system and a Judge who doesn’t know you or your kids.

2.  How to legally keep your family wealth in your pocket and out of the government’s.

3.  The secrets that guarantee you won’t become one of the 20% of elderly women living in poverty … the time to secure your future is NOW!

4.  How to pass on your family’s WHOLE WEALTH not just your money…Make sure your children are raised with your values, stories, insights and experiences.

5.  Exactly how to take control of your finances if something should happen to your spouse.

6.  Why paying estate taxes is completely voluntary…you might think you aren’t subject to estate taxes, but you’re probably wrong,…discover why.

7.  How you can protect your kids’ inheritance from a divorce or a lawsuit.

I look forward to hearing you on the call! Register now.

http://www.MomsFreeCall.com

With lots of love,

Alexis

PS - please get registered now so I know if I have to expand my line block as soon as possible.  The call is Tuesday, Feb 19th at 1p.

These are the 11 things you should ask before engaging an estate planning lawyer to help you plan for the well-being of your money, your family and your life.

1. Do you prepare a comprehensive plan for my kids’ care if something happens to me, like the Kids Protection Plan™ that names short and long-term guardians and gives specific instructions to all of the guardians and my caregivers? What about an ID card for my wallet listing the short-term guardians with their contact information?
2. Are all of your fees flat fees? What about for ongoing work after the initial completion of my estate plan documents? What happens when I call with legal questions 2 years after my planning documents were completed? What if the questions are about something other than my estate plan?
3. Do you have a whole team in place or is it just you? What happens if something happens to you or you retire?
4. What happens if I need to get a quick question answered and you are not available?
5. Do you make sure my assets are titled in the right way? How?
6. What happens when things change in my life? Do you notify me about changes in the law? How often do you communicate with me?
7. Does my planning fee include a regular review of my plan? What if I want to make changes to my plan?
8. Do you have any sort of an estate planning maintenance program or membership program for ongoing service and, if so, what does that include?
9. Do you have a process for helping me capture and pass on my intangible wealth, such as my intellectual, spiritual and human assets or who I am and what’s important to me?
10. Can you structure my estate plan so that whatever I leave to my kids will be protected from a lawsuit against them or if they are divorced in the future? How often do you build that kind of planning into client’s plans?
11. Do you guarantee your service?

Knowing the questions to these answers before you engage an estate planning lawyer will ensure you put in place an estate plan for your family that will really work when your family needs it and won’t end up just a pile of worthless paper after you are gone.

© 2008 Alexis Martin Neely

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include everything in quotes with it: “Written by Alexis Martin Neely, mom, writer, speaker and Personal Family Lawyer. Alexis makes it super easy for your family to talk about and  plan for sticky subjects like money, death and taxes. Get Alexis’ humorous, enlightening, and often quite revealing “Family Wealth Secrets” at: www.FamilyWealthMatters.com.”

Posted in Family Happiness, Family Health, Family Wealth, estate planning | Comments(1)
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