Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Not so Stately Estate Planning

We had an appointment with an Estate Planning Attorney yesterday.

What is it about our society that can make anything as natural as  dying complicated?  It is already an emotional charged event. How did it become so entangled in legal complications that you have to preplan it.  And how are you supposed to plan for every eventuality that could happen tomorrow or in 10, 20 or 50 years anyway?  

Estate Planning is not a favorite topic with most people.  I know it is something I'd rather not spend my time thinking about.  I keep hoping the need for it is still far, far, far in the future. But every once in while you sort of - have to - think about it. Or at least you should if you don't want to embroil your heirs lives with legal complications of probate, estate taxes and other nifty government inventions. At least once in a while you have do something about it, if you're a responsible adult.

The last 2 years since my mother died it is something I have been avoiding.  Too many decisions.  I don't mind making little choices like do I want juice or milk or should I wear the green or blue.  But big decisions that are hard to reverse and you have to live with a long time, I balk at making.  You know those decisions like what major to declare in college, or what car to buy. I never did declare a major, my degree is a general Liberal Arts one, and it can take years for me to pick a car.  Mr N as threatened to go buy the next one without me, because I take so long to decide.  The point is,  I struggle with those kind of choices.  Maybe it is just the magnitude, or  how permanent they feel. Or that I can't be sure it will be right.  I'm big on being 'right' and don't like to make mistakes.

We had set up our Trust 13 years ago, before the youngest was born.  It seemed time, our wills were about 20 years old and everything had changed included our address 3 times and the ages of our children, our income and the quantity of our processions. And we were having another baby 15 years after that last one and my father had died the summer before.  He had a trust, it worked well. I had discovered the difficulty and expense of probate listening to a friend dealing with it after her divorced father died and the whole legal rigamaroll complicated her grieving process.   We decided we should have a trust.  We went to an attorney friend and had a trust set up.  Good, that's settled, done.

Well........sort of done.  You see you have to revisit these things when your circumstances change.  We had moved to another state almost 6 years ago.  Was the old trust valid here?  And after learning what dealing with a parents' trust is like from experience, did we still think ours was the 'right' plan.  Mr N. finally asked around and found the name of the guy to call.  I put that off for about 6 months, and one morning put it on the to do list and made an appointment.  Before the consultation I took my 'Trusty Notebook' over for the lawyer to review it.  That is to say the notebook with all the BC and DRN papers in it. For the last 13 years I have been going to that notebook for copies that banks and title companies require to put thetrust name on documents.  I showed all the kids, several times, where  the 'Trusty Notebook' is kept, so they could find our living wills in a medical emergency, and I was secure in the knowledge that we had a plan. We had prepared.
 
At Mr Jacobs office, we are greeted cordially, and escorted to a well appointed but not overly lavish  conference room.  We sat down and exchanged some general pleasantries before he hit us with the bombshell.  Some of the papers in the 'Trusty Notebook' aren't signed. WHAT??

He opens the 'Trusty Notebook' and points to blank lines where our signatures are supposed to be, page after page of them.  There are some pages that are signed, but there are others where our signatures are supposed to be that are BLANK.  A mystery. He says perhaps you have the Original trust someplace else?  Perhaps at the attorney's office?  Nope, that attorney quit practicing law and went to medical school shortly after he finished with us.  I'm pretty sure it wasn't us that drove him out of law, but you never know.  Anyway, no office to contact. And no, we don't have safe deposit box, and the fire safe was sold in a yard sale before the last move 6 years ago. 

I'm screaming in my head, IT CAN'T BE.  For 13 years that has been THE 'Trusty notebook'.  It is all in there.  Everything they gave me all those years ago, I'm sure of it.  It is all I have for trust papers. I've been passing out the 2 page summary document left and right (at least that is signed).  When we moved, the 'Trusty Notebook'  was packed in a box with tax records, marked on six sides in special colors: Tax/Trust. It was stuff I was not going to lose.  This has been part of my security, the plan, the keep death's destruction away, my comfort that I was as prepared as I could be, for the whole of life of our baby boy almost 13 years old, going on 30.

We talked about some of the things we would like our Trust to accomplish, and all the while my head is buzzing, not signed, not signed? not signed.  A lot of what we want to have happen can be done with beneficiaries assignments and proper titles.  That's good to know.  BUT what have I done with the signed the papers, I know we signed them at one time, we sat in Wayne's office and did about 50 signatures apiece with a witness and a notary.  The only other time we signed on more lines was buying a house.  What have I DONE. I'm shattered, our plan isn't a plan, we haven't been prepared all these years, I've feel shaken, unsteady.......

And then the rest of the bad news.  "If we don't have the signed originals,"  he suggests "we will need to write a new trust." Of course, that makes sense. Mr N is all calm and agreeable, we can't change the past, we'll fix it now.  (inside I feel the beginning of a panic attack)  "A simple trust would cost about $1500.  The more complicated, the higher they go, three to five thousand possibility." My stomach is churning at this point, doing stupid things like losing the signed Trust papers makes me ill. It is a terrible feeling to discover that you have been hanging out there all this time unprotected when you thought your were covered. I've even let Mr N go back to riding motorcycles KNOWING we had everything in place, heck I picked the Harley for him.  My brain re-engages in time to hear: 
"But," he adds with a kind expression on his face,  "Yours is fairly straight forward, so it should be under $2000, in fact I can do it for the $1500".  He is being good to us, I must look distressed.   (YIKES, no wonder people put off doing this stuff.) 

"Why don't you go home and look for the originals."  I visualize the storeroom, the 2 filing cabinets, the upstairs closet with 35 boxes of family history papers and photos. No way to find them in all that assuming we still have them. I'm sure, the only place they would be is in the tax/trust file box. In the 'Trusty Notebook' that is where they are supposed to be. "If you have them, all we have to do is write an amendment for these changes you want, and that I will do for 150 dollars."

It is going to cost me 100 times more because somewhere in the last 13 years I lost the original papers.  I can see how it happened.  We were moving, we had people helping, I was over tried and over stressed and the office was one of the last places packed and whatever the orginials were in it was NOT my 'Trusty Notebook' so it wasn't important and I must have thrown it out.  ACK.  Certainly sets in.  I threw them out. I hate it when I do stupid things, I hate it because it almost always costs us money and me embarrassment, and my good husband doesn't get mad at me, but is understanding and THAT makes me feel worse, because surely I should be punished, not treated nicely for doing something stupid.  Did I say I hate it when I do stupid things?

I don't know how I can stand it.  Two errands before I can go home.  I want to go crawl under the covers on my bed and indulge in a good cry.  My stomach has turned to acid and head is pounding.  I remind myself to breathe.  I try to look normal, not like the crazed woman that loses important papers and believes for over a decade that important things are safely completed and are not.

I pull into the driveway.  Throw the car into park and walk in the door.  I go straight to the 'vault and   open the Tax/Trust box that is the usually home the 'Trusty Notebook'.  I need to see reality.  I have to accept that the originals are gone. Here it is.





There is sits.  A white envelope.  It is even labeled  ORIGINAL Estate Planning Documents and the words are highlighted in yellow.  Right there, in the right box, all this time.  Forgotten.  Unused.  Unnoticed. Untouched.

I'm feeling pretty foolish now.  The only thing worse that doing something stupid, is thinking you did something stupid when you didn't.  Well, at least I didn't do the stupid thing I thought I had. I hadn't thrown them away.  I only forgot them.  I still have the headache, and we still have to make all those big decisions about what kid gets stuck with what responsibility and tell them all what work they will do for a paltry sum of inheritance. Maybe this Estate Planning stuff isn't all bad, I get to boss the kiddos around one last time, even from the grave I get to be parental.  I can live with that.



Wednesday, July 18, 2012

SUNBONNET SUE PIONEER DAY CARDS

 


I really wanted to do a little something different for the sisters I visit teach.  In the LDS church we check on each other, preferably at least once a month, and I have several sisters that I won't get to visit in July due to travel schedules. I wanted to mail them something and let them know I'm thinking about them, keeping them in my prayers and wanted it be lighthearted in a loving way.

Well, it is too late for a 4th of July something, so why not Pioneer Day ?  In Utah, July 24th , Pioneer day is a State Holiday.  Like Patriot's day in Maine and Massachusetts, or a founders day,  it is the celebration of the day the Mormon Pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.  As such it is a holiday in the LDS culture worldwide.  People celebrate at picnics while wearing bonnets and aprons, and guys wear bandana neckerchiefs.  They play pioneer era games, share pioneer stories and remember those that opened the way west.

Back to the cards.  I wanted something simple.  And since I'm a master at cut and paste, and didn't feel like dragging out stamping supplies, paper seemed a good choice.  I looked for hand cart or conestoga wagon clip art, but they didn't have the right fun factor.  Then I ran across a sun bonnet picture, that reminded me of Sun Bonnet Susan quilt blocks.  That was something I could do. I could almost feel the light bulb glow over my head as the ideas flowed.

Finding a sunbonnet sue pattern was only a quick web search away.  I settled on a Sue from a quilt page.  There were several cuties on the sunbonnet sue page from FreeApplique.com.  I reset the printer at 85% (file, page set-up) to get a size that would fit nicely on 1/4 page card.  Then I cut up the outline drawing to give me patterns for the skirt, apron, arm and bonnet.





From my stash I grabbed 3 coordinating 12x12 scrapbook papers.


I stacked the 3 papers and traced 2 skirts and 2 aprons on them and cut them out, so I was cutting through 3 layers at a time.  The arms and bonnets I cut individually, because they have more curves.  This gave me six of each piece, two from each paper.


 

I mixed and matched the pieces to build my Sues.  Matching aprons and bonnets, or dress and arms, worked well.  But there are other options.
 
  

Once the Sues were built, I selected cardstock to put them on.  There happened to be several colors already cut to in my colored paper box.  I selected some of the lighter colors that would be easy to write on.   I glued the the apron piece to the skirt first, and tidied edges as needed.  Then I glued the shirt/apron to the card, followed by the arm, and topped all with the bonnet. 

 The boots and hands I drew in with brown marker.  I added 'Happy Pioneer Day' in my not-so-pretty writing with brown fine tip marker.  I added a few broken lines to look like stitches on the bonnet and a little loop at her elbow. Then so 'Sue' wouldn't be floating, I drew a little loop flower and some horizontal squiggles to anchor her on a ground.  Some flattened 'V's to be bird-like somethings in the upper corner completed the front of my cards.  I'm not an artist by any means, but a few well placed lines are simple finishing touches.


 
Done.  A personalized message inside and they'll be ready to mail.