#RichLifeLawyer Podcast 004: How to Give Your Money Away to People You Don’t Like

No, that’s not a misprint in the title of this show.

Today we are going to talk about how to give you money to people you don’t like. Don’t think it’s possible? Listen to the show for a dramatic example of the way that things can go really bad if you aren’t paying attention (and how to easily fix it).

This show is one of those public service announcement shows. There is no call for you to go out and hire an estate planning lawyer. There is no rush to hire anyone for that matter.

To make sure you don’t give your money to people you don’t like it simply takes making a few phone calls.

To get the full scoop listen to the podcast or scroll down to get the full transcript.

Cheers,

Christopher Small

P.S. Do you have kids? Have you completed guardianship paperwork? Have you done it correctly? Click here to find out what happens if you don’t do anything: Are you okay with a judge choosing the guardians of your children?

P.P.S. Do you own a business? Do you have a plan so the business, and your family, can survive if something happens to you? If not, click here to learn how simple it is to protect your business and your family from tragedy: 5 Ways to Protect Your Business from Catastrophic Failure.

P.P.P.S. Do you have no kids and think you don’t need an estate plan? Single and think a will is only for married couples. You couldn’t be more wrong. Click here to learn more: 5 reasons estate planning is a must have even if you don’t have kids.

Christopher Small is a Kirkland estate planning attorney who helps people get rich and live forever. He is also the owner of CMS Law Firm LLC.

How to Give Your Money to People You Don’t Like Transcript

Hey everybody welcome to episode three, four of the Rich Life Lawyer podcast, I’m your host., It’s 3:04, I’m your host, Christopher Small, I’m excited to be here with you today. The owner of CMS law firm and estate planning attorney extraordinaire. And I wanted to talk to you today about something that is important to all of us. Pretty much, I think it’s probable affect almost every single person in the United States. At least. And this is the, I want to talk about how to give money to people that you don’t like. All right and I’m going to go with the story and this story is going to be, not a good story. I’m going to warn you in advance, it’s really heart breaking. It’s a true story, story of a family, husband and wife. You know a couple of kids and they were living the good life they’re having a good time they were happy.

Everything was going well until one day, the wife was tragically killed in a car accident. Something that came out of the blue as you might expect with a car accident and the husband was left at home with his two small children and to make matters worse or to make matters better, I guess at the beginning the wife did have a life insurance policy which I hope all of you have even if it’s for a nominal amount. You can get, and by nominal, I mean you can get a hundred thousand dollars worth of coverage for relatively cheap. You know, assuming that you are relatively healthy. Since you have a life insurance. Something that will have definitely helped out the family. In their time of grief which was significant. I mean, can you imagine something happening like this.

And the problem is or was with the scenario was that the beneficiary of the life insurance policy was the wife’s father. Now, maybe you’re thinking yourself. No big deal. We will just, the dad, just cut the check to the son. Or he can disclaim his interest in the life insurance policy. And then it will go to her estate and it will go to the husband and to the kid. But that didn’t happen. Here is why, the father of the wife did not like the husband. For whatever reason and so when that money went to him, he simply kept it. But she had every right to do under the law there was nothing that the husband could do about it to get that money from the wife’s father and they were then left not just with dealing with the loss of a wife and a mother.

But they were left financially strapped as well because the things that they put in place to take care of them financially, to help them financially weren’t there and this scenario played itself out over and over and over again. Because what happens is when people originally sign up for a life insurance policy or when they sign up for a 41k or an IRA for example with their employers or with their financial adviser, they are asked to name a beneficiary and depending on what point in their lives they are, they may select a parent. They may select someone else and then as time goes by they just simply forget that those beneficiary designations are where they originally work.

And then things like this happen. It can also happen, it happens frequently in the scenario of a divorce, it happens frequently in just anybody else’s scenarios. People, relationships change, things change and people no longer want to have certain people getting money for whatever reason. So this podcast is all about how to give people money your money that you don’t like. In the way to do that is to keep your beneficiary designation the same as they have always been. Say another way to never check them, to never update them. To never make sure that they are who you want them to be.

Now, if you want to give your money to people that you do love. Or that you do want them and do you love them or not I guess it doesn’t really matter. Then you need to make sure that your beneficiary designations are up to date. One of the things that we do with all of our clients is on a yearly basis, we go over that information and we check and verify and we just say hey look, who are your beneficiary designations. Make sure you update them if you want them changed because that is the easiest way to avoid these problems, that’s the easiest way to really avoid these tragedies.

So, that is the topic of the podcast today. If you haven’t checked your benificiary designations in the last year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 year. Then please go check. Make sure there are why you want to be, it doesn’t take that long. It’s a super easy process and you will be happy that you did. And your family will be happy that you did. In case anything ever happens to you. So, that’s it for today, short podcast but packed with a lot of power. Packed with a lot of helpful information. Please go check your beneficiary designations and with that I will catch you later. Bye.