#RichLifeLawyer Show 005: Estate Planning with a New Kid

I have some big news. Huge.

Last Monday, on May 2, 2016, I had my third kid. His name is Dillon. He’s awesome already.

And, as is usual, my life makes excellent content when it comes to estate planning. Now that we have another kid, we probably need to update our estate plan.

Or do we?

Do find out what estate planning needs you have when you have a new kid, click the play button above or scroll down and read the transcript of the show.

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.

Estate Planning with a New Kid Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome to episode 5 of the Rich Life Lawyer Podcast. I’m your host Christopher Small, I’m the owner of CMS law firm an estate planning law firm in the greater Seattle area. I am excited to have you here today and this topic is near and dear to my heart because on Monday, last Monday. I guess this is released on a Monday. I welcomed into the world my third and final child. Dylan Steven Small came into the world. Seven pounds fourteen ounces of him and he’s healthy and happy and we’re excited to have him but that opens the door for some new estate planning needs for us.

And I thought it would be a great opportunity to talk to them for all of you too. Now, let’s just dive right in. If you do not have a will and you do not have a revocable living trust. You probably want to consider having both. If you do have kids. The will, will outline and provide the guardianship information so you have the opportunity to pick your kids. The will allows you to do that. The revocable living trust, allows you to manage your finances. After that for your kids otherwise if you don’t have something like that, they will get all the money typically at eighteen or twenty one. Depending on where the money goes. But you know on that birthday they basically will get a huge check cut to them. With the trust you have the opportunity to make sure the money stays safe when they are kids, it plays something you share duties on the trustee.

And it also allows you to disperse the money in any way that you really want or most people will do something like they will do a distribution that maybe twenty two when they graduate from college you get x dollars, at twenty five you get x dollars, and at thirty you get the balance. Something like that so that those are the two things you can do now when you have another kid. It’s important to make sure you at least examine those documents. If you have them made and consider revising them to update and include the new kid. Most wills will have a clause that includes any children born after the will was made. They have a specifically include a cause if you don’t want any future children included. But it’s always cleaner and it’s always smoother if you include all the kids by name. Include specifically what you want them to get.

If you do have a trust, you will need to name them and include them as a beneficiary of the trustee just to be safe. I mean not to be safe you will want to do that so that is definitely a day that you need to make. But in any event I would encourage you to at least take your documents to an estate planning attorney and have them take a look and suggest any changes that you need to make because you never know. And look the most important thing for me is my kids I’m sure it is for you and it’s worth taking the time to have somebody check our stuff out to make sure that everything is on the open up.

So to recap. Number one, if you do not have a will. If you do not have a trust and you have kids. You want to get one or both. Probably. If you do have a will, if you do have a trust. And you have another kid, you want to consider taking a look at those documents to have them updated to make sure that they include the new kid and name the new kid as a beneficiary of the trust in particular. And it’s also just a good time to have those things reviewed. You’d write these are not static documents. Times change, things change and you would make sure that you’ve got everything up to date. So that’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed this episode, if you have any estate planning needs, I hope you consider giving me a call. We’d love to help you and be well and get rich and live forever. See ya!