Vacation Preparation - Hull on Estate and Succession Planning #177
Listen to: Vacation Preparation - Hull on Estate and Succession Planning #177
This week on Hull on Estate and Succession Planning, Ian Hull and Jordan Atin discuss the importance of having your Will in order before going on vacation.
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Vacation Preparation - Hull on Estate and Succession Planning #177
Welcome to
Ian Hull: Hi and welcome to Hull on Estates and Succession Planning. You’re listening to our episode being published on August 18, 2009.
Hello, this is Ian Hull with Jordan Atin, our special guest today. Suzana Popovic-Montag is not able to join us so we thought we would take the opportunity to bring in a rock star and someone who we do a lot of work with in our firm and specializes in estates and trusts, certified by the Law Society but more importantly he’s more on the solicitor’s side, your practice tends to be more focused on the non-contentious side.
Jordan Atin: That’s right. I’ll leave the fighting to you.
Ian Hull: Good. So we’ll fight a bit today.
Jordan Atin: Alright. Let’s go.
Ian Hull: Because then it won’t be a fair fight.
Alright. So what we thought we’d like to talk about today is an interesting scenario that you raised with me and one that I hadn’t understood was as prevalent as it seems to be. And that is the circumstances when all of us, hopefully from time to time take the odd vacation, and we are rushing around trying to make sure that’s all organized. The plane tickets and the hotel booked and so on. Excited about getting away, trying to get all our work done and we sometimes think about what would happen if something happens to us while we’re away and think about our Will and the status of our Will. So Jordan, what are some of the things…first of all, I think that is a scenario that is sort of one of the things you check off before you leave. Is everything there? Have I got my credit cards and does someone know where my Will is? Is that one of the scenarios?
Jordan Atin: Yeah. I have this recurring nightmare where I die intestate as a Wills lawyer and everyone makes fun of me in my profession because, of course, I neglected to let anybody know where my original Will was or do an original Will or whatever. So I get that panic attack. So I have about 12 Wills that I’ve done over the course because I always forget where the original is and I have to quickly print up a new one. But, you know, people always ask me, you guys don’t have a busy time, do you? And I say, busy time is December and in August when people are trying to go away and they’ve got to get their Will done before they go away. That’s the busy time for me and we’re all confronted with the idea whether there just isn’t enough time to do it or nobody knows where the original is. And that’s, you know, one of those things that pops into people’s minds.
Ian Hull: So given that is a problem and something that if all of us don’t think about before we go away, we probably should. What are some of your suggestions to either solve that problem or solve the problem in terms of if you can’t find the Will, what do you do quickly?
Jordan Atin: Well for clients who are going away, you know, and where we just literally they come in the day before and they say I’m leaving tomorrow. If we don’t have time to do up a formal Will, then I dictate to them the wording for a holograph Will, at least get them to appoint an executor, give their property away in the easiest way we can think of and give them a power to sell…give the executor a power to sell and sign it and put it all in their handwriting and hopefully that get’s them over the bump. I’ve never had a case where we’ve had to use that holograph Will but that’s sort of what we do. So the one’s I hit is, you know, this is my last Will. I appoint X to be my executor and I give all my property to my spouse and if my spouse is not alive, to my kids, among my issue in equal shares per stirpes. And basically that’s the best you can do under the circumstances and give them a power to sell. So that’s what I would do with a client if they didn’t have a Will at all.
Ian Hull: Alright. So now you told me off air about an interesting technique that you have when you’re at the airport in your last minute panic.
Jordan Atin: This is a true story. So I’m at the airport. I can’t remember where I’m going but I’m flying with my wife and I know I’ve done a Will and I know it’s on my hard drive. But I don’t know, is it at home? Is it at the office? Where is the original? So I go back and I start to think, what am I going to do from here from the airport. So what I do is I send myself an e-mail and I say that if I were to die, this is an e-mail to myself. If I die, the Will that I have signed is the last Will on my hard drive, in my folder. And I have signed that. And if the original cannot be found, I did not destroy it with the intention of revoking it. So that evidence, I think, would be enough, that e-mail if anything happened to me, would be enough to prove a copy of the Will…
Ian Hull: Right.
Jordan Atin: …if the original couldn’t be found. And so I can’t say that I’ve personally tested that because thankfully I didn’t have to. But that was what happened to me when I panicked and thought of (a) the embarrassment after my death if anything happened; and (b) what would happen to my family? And so that’s what I decided I was going to do. I sent an e-mail to myself saying by the way if you can’t find it, I didn’t destroy it. And that gets you over the presumption of a lost Will.
Ian Hull: Alright. So you’ve opened this up to a neat planning tool at that moment in time but also the whole question of what do we do about lost Wills. And I think what I’d like to do in our next podcast is talk a little bit about what it means to have a lost Will and how it is affected. But one of the things I…so let’s park that issue.
Jordan Atin: Okay, sure.
Ian Hull: Because that’s a bit, that’s worth a whole podcast quite frankly. We’re going to pick your brain on that one. Alright. So is it customary for a lot of your clients though to leave the Will with you? Or do most of your clients take the Will? In terms of this whole question of how do we have custody of the Will or where is your Will? To avoid your panic in the airport.
Jordan Atin: Right. As you can tell, I don’t hold that many original Wills. I’m not even sure I hold my own but I made a conscious decision to not hold my clients’ Wills and not…for one thing because of really the main thing is the idea of storing those Wills forever and having the obligation if anything happens to them, of you know, liability. So my practice is to give the originals back to the client. I keep a copy, of course, but that way I’m not responsible for keeping track of it. Now that means probably I lose some of the administrations, right, because if I had the original Will, they’d have to come back to me etc. But I’m willing to offset that with a lack of liability and responsibility for storing all these Wills.
Ian Hull: Well and I guess it also makes some sense from the client’s standpoint too because they want to have the custody of the document. It’s their document. It’s important to them and so although most of us want to remember, I guess, put it in our own safety deposit box or put it somewhere safe, it’s also…not only you’re offloading the responsibility to them but they’re taking on that responsibility because that’s what matters to them.
Jordan Atin: And the other thing is, if they want to change the Will. I mean, I often see people come to me and they want to change their Will. They went to another lawyer. And they feel really awkward about getting that Will from the other lawyer. Should I tell them? I’m embarrassed that I’m not going back to them. They’re a family friend and so that get’s rid of that, you know. That sort of….
Ian Hull: The politics.
Jordan Atin: …the politics of that, exactly.
Ian Hull: Well that’s a good idea too. So do you have any thoughts in terms of how we should avoid the panic of where’s my Will. We’ve got the idea of your e-mail to yourself, which was a neat one and we’re going to explore a little bit on that one. We’ve talked about obviously the option some lawyers like to keep the Wills for the clients. So that takes the pressure off the client but it puts the pressure on the lawyer in terms of custody and exposure to maintaining that document forever, so to speak. Are there any other thoughts that you have in respect of avoiding this where is my Will panic?
Jordan Atin: Yeah, well, what I’m planning on doing is opening up a little booth at the airport for Wills. The emergency Wills booth and you just come in and we’ll sign it up and boom, we’ve done it.
Ian Hull: Perfect.
Jordan Atin: Isn’t that good?
Ian Hull: That’s very good.
Jordan Atin: Alright.
Ian Hull: Alright. Well thank you Jordan.
Jordan Atin: My pleasure.
Ian Hull: It’s a pleasure to have you here today.
Jordan Atin: I’ll cut you in for 50 points on…
Ian Hull: You know what, I just think, we’ve put the idea on the internet and now it’s over. Thanks so much for joining us.
Jordan Atin: Thanks Ian.
Ian Hull: And we’ll carry on with your busy practice.
Jordan Atin: Thanks.
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