Matt:
Welcome back everybody. It is time now for Money Matters Monday. Obviously, no one lives forever, right? Let’s be honest. How much estate planning have you really done? Brian Quinn, Partner with Quinn Estate and Elder Law, LLC, and part of the circle of advisors joins us this morning. Brian, good morning to you. How are you?
Brian Quinn:
I’m doing well, Matt. Good morning to you.
Matt:
Good morning. As you know because this is what you’re doing every day, it’s not a topic that people really are yearning to talk about.
Brian Quinn:
Right.
Matt:
But it is one of these critical planning things that if we do now, we’re going to save everyone, including a lot of our closest, most important loved ones a lot of pain. And I think there’s a misconception out there that this is just filling out paperwork. It’s a stack of documents. It’s really much more than that, isn’t it?
Brian Quinn:
Oh, and we as attorneys certainly love to give you a lot of paperwork. There’s no doubt about that.
Matt:
Yeah, I’ve noticed that.
Brian Quinn:
But one thing that I just wanted to kind of always like to impart to my clients and would like to impart to your audience is that estate planning is a whole lot more than just pieces of paper. It’s more than just ink on paper. It is in reality, it’s a set of solutions. If someone comes to me and says, “I have a certain beneficiary,” maybe it’s a disabled loved one, maybe it’s a senior loved one needing long-term care, or like myself, I have two minor children at home, and part of my estate plan is to make sure that if something happens to me, there’s a set of instructions on what to do with the funds that we’re leaving for them, and to make sure that they receive it at a time where they can actually handle that.
Brian Quinn:
And part of doing that not only involves coming to an attorney to put those documents in place for you, but a big part of everyone’s solution is also involving a financial advisor to help make sure that … let’s say you’ve put a trust in place, and that’s one thing that I’ve utilized in my own estate plan given my minor children there. But, what if I don’t actually direct anything to go into that trust. What does it have power over?
Matt:
It’s not going to do you much good, is it?
Brian Quinn:
No, not at all. And if I don’t involve some good tax advisors to look at what the impact of leaving some of those assets would be. Estate planning is really, like I said, it’s more than just a set of documents. It’s involving a lot of different advisors to really give you a good estate planning solution.
Matt:
That’s why we love the concept of the circle of advisors-
Brian Quinn:
As do we.
Matt:
… because it [crosstalk 00:02:16] all those people under one roof.
Brian Quinn:
Yeah.
Matt:
I feel like in recent years, there’s been a lot of estate planning pop-ups. I don’t know if that’s the right word, but there’s a lot of fairly new businesses that have either appeared or are now venturing into this area. How much does if behoove us to go with someone that’s really been doing this for a long time?
Brian Quinn:
I think it makes a lot of sense to because you’ve built … what you try to do as an estate planning attorney, if you’re going to take sort of a holistic approach, which is what my firm has tried to do, you’re going to build a team of advisors to help out your clients. An estate planning attorney, it’s an important point. It’s maybe the cornerstone of putting estate planning documents in place, but it’s not the end all, be all. You still need to involve a lot of other advisors-
Matt:
Right. Right.
Brian Quinn:
… especially if you have, for instance, one thing my firm does is we have a lot of senior clients that come to us, and part of what they’re trying to do is not only figure out how to pass on their estate to the next generation and save some money during the long-term care process, but where are they going to go? Where are they going to be most comfortable? One thing my firm has done is we’ve put together a company called Elder Care Advisors, which is a senior assistance program for all of our clients there. Continuing to try to take that holistic approach, working with Elder Care Advisors, working with financial advisors, the circle of advisors, tax advisors, and the like really is what gives you a good estate planning solution.
Matt:
You wouldn’t have started something like that if the need wasn’t out there.
Brian Quinn:
Correct.
Matt:
Thank you for that, Brian. We appreciate it very much.
