#RichLifeLawyer Podcast 006: Qualities of a Good Executor

Basic estate planning requires a couple of things, and one of those things is naming an executor.

Instead of letting you run around in the dark, or, maybe even worse, googleing around to find out who you should choose to be the executor of your estate, I thought I’d just give it to you straight right here.

Here are the bare bones:

Someone that is organized;
Someone that works well under pressure;
Someone like Switzerland;
Someone you trust.

If you want to get the full scoop, listen to the episode by clicking play above or read the transcript below.

Enjoy!

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.

Choosing a Good Executor Transcript

Hello everybody this is Christopher Small from CMS Law Firm and this is episode six of The Rich Life Lawyer Show. Today, actually it’s Rich Life Lawyer Podcast, not to be confused with The Rich Life Lawyer Show. My show that I have on Youtube. You should go check out. You can just Google, Rich Life Lawyer Show on Youtube and it’ll pop right up. But today we’re going to talk about the elements or the qualities of a good personal representative. Preferably if the person that you appoint in your will to sort of oversee your estate once you die.

And that person is really responsible for doing two primary things. Primary thing number one is collecting all the information and all of the amounts of any debts that you owe. Because there’s three things, two paying off all those debts and making sure that those are all taken care of and then three, distributing your estate according to the terms of the will. People actually often don’t get him hung up on choosing a personal representative very often. What we often get hung up on is choosing a guardian for your kids which is understandable. But there are some qualities that you want to have and consider when you are choosing a personal representative.

Let’s just go down the list. And then sort of split on here so I may cover some twice or jump around a bit. Number one, you really want to have someone that’s organized and that is okay and comfortable with handling, organizing a bunch of different information coming from a bunch of different places. And once you, when you pass, you are going to have to put something out there into the world that lets your potential creditors know that you have passed. And that you are looking for information about any debts that are owed.

So there’s going to be, information coming from potentially different companies and different creditors. This person has to be organized enough to pull that together. Not drop the ball, not get freaked out and just basically pull that stuff and organize it all the right way. The same thing that we need to be able to do is be relatively good with money. There is the potential from time to time for that personal representative to negotiate some of that debt. To try to lower it a little bit from what the actual number is and not everybody tries to do this but if you have a savvy person representative or you got some in your family that likes to sort of negotiate and wheel and deal. They may be a good person to put in this position because they can lower the debts that are owed which means the assets that are better distributed to your heirs and the people that you have noted in your will that means they get more.

The third thing is the person is responsible for distributing your property and for that what you really want to consider is someone that is able to communicate well with others particularly if they think there will be some conflict between some of your heirs or some conflict about the things that people want. You want to make sure that this person doesn’t hold grudges, right, is fair because they’re going to be responsible for distributing your things and there’s no sort of worse way to leave a legacy to leave for your immediate family in particular for right after you pass when things are highly emotional than for people to feel like they weren’t treated fairly.

And a good person representative can help deal with those emotions, deal with those issues that come up and really smooth things over so that everyone can focus on celebrating your life. Instead of worrying about where they’re going to get going. So those are points that you wanna look for in a person representative or an executor. All those different names for the same position. If you call me and put it into your will and we’ll talk about it obviously if you’re doing it on your own. Then don’t do it on your own but if you used another attorney these are things you want to think about. So that’s it for today hope you enjoyed this. If you have questions you can always email me chris@cmslawfirm.com in the subject line put like podcast question or something like that, email that to me. And I’ll answer your question in the show. Take care and I will catch you the next time.