How to Protect Your Wealth in a Time of Crisis

Hi there and welcome to the Boom X Show, Laws of Money podcast.

This is episode nine. I have been conducting live broadcast on social media channels, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, to try to teach people how to protect their assets in times of crisis. The circumstances we are now facing has made it more urgent. While I normally have spent six to eight hours creating an episode for the podcast. I am now taking the feeds from those live broadcast and publishing them on the Boom X Show, Laws of Money as they are. The goal is to emphasize the substance of what I am saying even if the production has a feel about it as if it's a, like a live broadcast, just pretend it's radio. They'll be fine.

If I say something too quickly, you can always go to boomxshow.com, where I publish all the resources I mentioned in a show, and you can even see the light broadcast. Our time is limited. Let's get started.

Welcome BoomXers. Let's throw out the old playbook. It's time to tear down the traditional way of looking at your life and money and leverage the laws of money to our advantage. That's right. There are laws of money and those who learn and leverage the laws of money win, and sometimes win big. Stay tuned as asset protection attorney, Darol, Tuttle, educator, and leader of the Boom X Nation shows us how. Beginners, investors, entrepreneurs, fellow attorneys.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's arm this bomb. Now, here's the Boom X Show: the laws of money.

Okay. So there's not very often that an estate planning attorney can successfully pull off a live broadcast and characterize it as essentially like keeping up as they unfold. But the topic for today is simply this. How can we protect our assets during a crisis?

There's good news my friends. There's good news now. As we define crisis, really the point is I'm just going to say it. We are experiencing a pandemic and as luck would have it this is not the first time there's been a pandemic in human history. And I have been to have a love for history and history records for us that there have been several pandemics.

There was a pandemic in ancient Roman times about 540 AD called the Justinian plague, and I verified this like up to a hundred thousand people, a hundred million people passed, died during that event. Now it's hard to know for sure. But essentially a version of the bubonic plague broke out during the Roman times and just devastated a community Istanbul in particular.

And of course, when the Roman empire fell, that information was lost to history. Now the good news is it's, I hate saying the good news is I mean that in terms of a solution, we are here today. I've got to believe that you're as anxious as I am, and that is but the stock markets are declining.

We are, I'm not gonna use the word falling markets. I'm not an alarmist. I will say that they are declining. And if you are an experienced mature person in the world today, you will know that it, it like I'm stuttering a little bit, a person that is not known for stuttering. Because who knows before the quarantine mentality broke out, we were already in a time period.

When we looked at things as if what is the next 30 years going to be? Technology has been moving so quickly and the way we communicate so quickly right now, I wish you could see one day, I'll share it with you, but I'm streaming over here. I've got my computer link dump. I'm streaming live on Facebook.

Now I'm staring at my iPhone. I'm on Instagram up there, I'm recording this so that I can take the audio and make it into a podcast. And podcasting is audio only. And the concept behind a podcast as is let's spend some time and really get it highly produced. And so on my podcast, I have spent six to eight hours to produce and publish one 45 minute episode of my podcast. That is best practices. That is what is being told to you all and are to every podcast or rather, and we want those podcasts to be high content, high quality. Now, my background is in radio live radio. I don't know if you knew this, but radio is live and in radio, the button comes on and boom, you're on air.

You better have your game. You better know what you're talking about. And if you go to boomxshow.com, you can see the episodes I've done, but I was on radio for eight years. Every single week, the light goes on, boom. On air, you say it, you speak it. You better have game and lay it out there. You better have content that people want to hear.

Podcasting is not that way. And so because of people's anxieties, as it relates to the declining wealth, And losing their assets. I had a conversation with a client in retirement who lost, has already lost $230,000 in the market. And they are in a diversified portfolio. Everything else that people are hearing about that you were talking about and thinking about in terms of the effects of the pandemic pales in comparison to the financial and economic impact it will have on you on your retirement, whether or not you are going to be able to reach your goals.

And I just said, screw it, man. I'm going to do a 30 day challenge. And that challenge is I'm going to go live until I'm done talking and give people free advice and tips, not advice, but tips and a perspective of an asset protection attorney. Who's been in the trenches for 25 years. And I say that because I've always been skeptical and I've always been a bit concerned.

And as I've aged a little bit pissed off by information that's being sent to the public regarding the way finances and investments and an estate should be set up. I say that because as a, from my perspective, the way I feel about it, looking at the work that I do for my clients and have all this time is that we can put a little bit of effort into it.

And as a professional, we can seek high compensation, high profit, or we can put a lot of effort into it and concentrate on value added services to our client. And I'm here to tell you in my profession, that one of the biggest single problems that you have with your estate plan and probably don't even know it is the revocable living trust.

Now I, myself, when I was a younger attorney. So a revocable living trust, let's just talk about it was a backup. Our revocable living trust is simply a trust is a legal construct. It's a legal document.

And that legal document, that concept of a trust goes back to the middle ages. During the bubonic plague during the black death, they called it. I want to repeat that eventually I'm going to get to the good news, but the single best method to protect your assets during a crisis, came into existence because of a pandemic. I'll explain that later cause I find it fascinating and I studied European history as a hobby. I have a degree in history, but I also studied it as a flippin' hobby.

And I, I don't know why, but I became interested in the black death, the plague, the bubonic plague. And then when I became a lawyer, I've started studying legal history. What is the trust? When did it start? Why does it exist? What are we doing? And then of course my mind is blown because man, I do not.

My practice area is not sexy. Like intellectual property and patents and trademarks, mine. We don't go to court that often we don't really get into conflicts and we're trying to help people reach their financial goals and we're trying to match what the law says about it to what the client's goals are, and that's not necessarily an easy thing to do, because if you think about it, first of all, humans have all these different goals and perspectives. If you are in your mid twenties, your goals and your thought processes, and the decisions that you make are completely different than a person in their mid eighties.

People have different values. Too often as people age, their attitude is I just want to die and pass my assets to my kids and good luck. That's simple as estate transfer, other people take this attitude and my morals and values are, this is the correct attitude. Look, it took me a long time to create this wealth, to earn it and to get that rate of return to grow it's just has taken so much.

Now that I have a substantial nest egg, I want to protect it. I want to make sure that I have enough for myself and for my surviving spouse or other family members who are dependent upon me. And when I pass away and when my spouse passes away, I want to make sure that my kids can reach their goals too.

And that they have the money that they need to make that happen. Now that may sound like it's not, they're very hard, very easy to do. I assure you. It's very hard to do and you have to put some effort into it, but those two goals are different. Estate transfer is die and leave the assets behind.

That's not okay. Legal zoom can do that for you. You don't need a money attorney to help you with that. That's shocking I know. Asset protection is pretty tough. Now the very first trust in human history had that problem. And here's the way it played out. You could pass the estate owners of the middle ages could pass their estate to a qualified male heir if, and only if he was a qualified male heir, that was still alive.

If there was no qualified male heir, guess what? The estate went back to the government and which is fine, but statistically, there were enough people successfully passing their assets to the next generation. It wasn't a big deal during the black plague, in which in Europe, 50 to 60% of communities were wiped out.

If you got the plague that is based upon bacteria. The coronavirus of course is a virus. So that's one difference. Another difference is the beyond a plague if you contract. You were dead in a week. It was that fast and 50, 50 to 60% of populations were wiped out. Whereas with coronavirus, we're looking at a little above what? 3%. No, I'm not a bug expert. Don't pretend to be. However, the bubonic plague was far worse in terms of the economic impact it had on those communities than what we're experiencing. And when there was no qualified male heir, the government took the asset. Like it was death and a 100% loss of your assets. That's pretty brutal.

And so if you think about it, like what, okay. I'll ask. What would you do? You're an estate owner, you had this amazing asset and around you, it's almost like you can look at it on the horizon and see an explosion and smoke come up as your neighbors, their estates are lost. That's pretty amazing.

And all of a sudden, you notice you got a tickle in your throat too, and your son had to go take a nap because he has a fever. You're in a full you, you realize, okay, if I pass and he passes, we're going to this family and all the people dependent upon it and dependent upon me lose everything. And I'm like, man humans.

The bad news is there are people who are losing money as we speak because of this virus. Don't pretend otherwise all of us are at risk of estate erosion. And some of us are at risk of state depletion, estate depletion which is troubling. It is. However, think about that, plague, that pandemic the way that played out.

We're talking high degree of probability that you get it, a high degree of probability that you die from it. And almost a guaranteed certainty that all the wealth is gone right. Now, if you think about this expression necessity is the mother of invention. Ain't that the truth?

Because these people had a problem. We've got to, we have to solve this problem, or we lose everything, like no pressure. And so what do you do when you have a problem? I know you're not gonna believe this answer, but I'm going to ask it again. What do you do? What do you do, Jose? I'm talking to you when you got a problem like that.

According to the expression, necessity is the mother of invention. What you do is you hire a lawyer because a lawyer is going to solve the problem to make a long story short. Here's what the lawyers did. They transferred title of the estate to a trust. And so the government could not take the asset back if legal title ever transferred from the estate owner to a kid, the son.

And so the lawyers just cleverly took legal title, just the D just the legal title. And they transferred it to their law firm, which is never a bad idea, cause we've got generate fees. So the lawyers created, transferred title to the estate, to the entire firm, all the lawyers in the firm with joint tenant, with right of survivorship.

Now, if you think about it, we still have joint tenant with right of survivorship today, we do. If you open your checking account at bank of America, what will happen is they will almost certainly open the account if you're married with the both husband and wife's name on it. When the first spouse dies, the second joint tenant owns the asset completely by operation of law, no probate, no tax, no nothing.

And that's what these lawyers did. They created this pool of attorneys that had joint tenants with right of survivorship. When one lawyer died, another younger lawyer was hired by the firm and that continued forever. And the result was the asset was completely protected 100%. If you think about that, they, something that is amazing.

These attorneys, in the middle ages, created a legal construct, that 100% chance of estate loss and 100% of the loss of the estate was guaranteed. By the time these lawyers got done with it, there was a 0% chance of estate loss. I got it. I got to admit, I don't know if lawyers can, they screwed us really, because we're never going to meet that.

That is an astounding victory for transactional lawyers in the estate planning space. It's just is. And however, if you think about it, it also eliminated estate tax. It wasn't just escheatment taking the asset. It was even the estate tax that would normally occur. That first trust was estate tax saving trust and an asset protection trust.

And the concept that these lawyers had is the concept of a trust. Now what happened historically? Remember Henry VIII I know, I bet you, you do, you've heard I've, you've heard Henry VIII because Henry VIII killed all his wives.

He did, I think how many were there? Six, seven or eight wives. He had them executed. He got tired of one. And you took the, just killed her and took another one. And if you think about it, I got my friend, Jose listening to me in Puerto Rico and we joke about stuff and that's such a bad idea if you're the king, if you're immoral and if you're just an egocentric narcissist.

Now what happened to Henry was he was spending so much money. Marrying and killing all his wives that he had a financial problem. And he passed the statute that abolished that first version of the trust. And within one generation, the trust was back in the form that it is today and has not changed the basic requirements of a trust, or is that you have an asset and you want to keep it and protect it.

And you transfer it into a trust, which requires one person that is responsible for the legal title has legal title of the asset and is responsible to managing it and protecting it and growing it by a higher standard than just a person. The highest standard is the fiduciary duty. That's the standard that a trustee is held to in this country.

Manages that asset for the benefit of yet another person, a beneficiary. Now, if you meet certain requirements, the asset is called asset protected. If you don't meet certain requirements, it's not. For example, the living trust, which is so common. I myself have drafted hundreds of living trusts in my career and a living trust is a trust that avoids probate.

Now we're, I'm not the purpose of this live is not to get into a lot of details about trust law in this episode it is to let you know that there was a plague in human history that was far worse than what we're facing today. That plague wiped out communities that plague wiped out wealth. The law had a response, the law in medieval Europe.

And this is important because America is based upon British common law. We have inherited many of the concepts in America today that are integral, vital to the law. I'm here to tell you it came from the middle ages in great Britain. For example, when in the middle ages, during the plague, the process of taking back in estate, the king, the crown taking that back was called escheatment.

That's an archaic French word. I'll be gushed. Darn. If my state, Washington state does not have a statute about estate planning called, believe it or not escheatment. Okay, let me get this straight escheatment came from France to Europe or to England rather during, by William, the conqueror during the Norman invasion.

And then it went from England to America, by what the Mayflower, which basically is true. And then from the Mayflower Lewis and Clark brought up by covered wagon and canoe to Washington state that my friends is dedication. Humans have an amazing capacity to hang on to a really bad idea and make sure it lasts forever because escheatment means if you die without a qualified heir and don't have last will and Testament, it's possible that the government ends up with that asset. The department of revenue of your state is the person who have legal title of it.

And. So what happened in the middle ages has a direct bearing on what happens to us. If we want a legal solution, the law has requirements. These requirements must be met period. If you do not meet these requirements, guess what it is brutal the lot I'm going to, okay. I'm going to go out on a limb here and see if there's any lawyers listening that disagrees, it's binary.

If you do not meet the requirements of the law, that's it. I can recall my very first lesson in that. I was so upset. I'm still upset. That was 17 years ago, and I'm still upset about it, but I filed a lawsuit against the state of Washington. And in our state, you have to file a pre-claim notice.

So you got to let the government know, Hey, trouble's coming. I'm about to sue you. Which is unfair because you're going to figure it out when you get served the complaint. But am I say, got to do a pre-claim notice and I made the mistake of signing the pre-claim notice on behalf of my client. And the statute said that the client had to sign it. Well wow, that's technically not correct, but lawyers are agents under agency law of their client.

So I am standing in the shoes and representing that person who is suing. The ruling was no, the statute doesn't say that it's binary one or zero. You either met the requirements or you did not. And if you did not, you do not pass go. You do not collect $200 and that's it. And I lost that on summary judgment because of a mistake I made.

This is the first time I've ever publicly stated that I had a great relationship with my client. She's okay with it. And however it, I learned a lesson that day and in the laws of money, if you think about it, chief justice, Warren Burger of the United States Supreme Court died without an estate plan.

You had a handwritten will. He did not appoint a personal representative. He did not account for estate tax. He did not account for much of anything. Died without what I would call on a state plan, lost 40% of his estate. Now in my mind's eye, I'm like, okay, so the probate was opened somewhere and it must've been, oh, I happen to know where Warren Burger lived.

He grew up in St. Paul. And but the probate was in a county court in Minnesota superior court somewhere. And can you imagine being the judge, the probate judge? Hey, I recognize this name, Warren Burger. He's the number one attorney in the most litigious country in the war. And he just died. Oh my gosh.

It's in my it's in my court. Doesn't matter. He did not meet the requirements. And so it was an an like for example, perhaps he should have bought how to issue a bond. The statute might've said, got to issue a bond. He lost 40% of his wealth and there was nothing anybody could do about it. His name Warren Burger did not do anything to prevent that from happening.

And so you've got to meet these legal requirements. If you do not, your assets are not protected. Now there's a trend in the law that is concerning. If you are drafting and selling a living trust, please stop doing that because that is a probate avoidance trust. It is not an asset protection trust. Now in Medicaid, when you get older and you fall and break a hip and get dementia and kids, Alzheimer's you may need assistance.

Now, living trusts are starting to be viewed as an, as a trust that can do two things. Number one, it can blow up and make you ineligible to leave your half of the estate or what you own to your surviving trust in a true asset protection trust in the will. Sorry. And if you take a personal residence and transferred into a living trust the law states in some jurisdictions, that asset is no longer protected.

It is a countable asset by Medicaid and has to be spent down just because you did not understand the difference between a grantor trust and a non grantor trust. Now I'm getting worked up because I've been upset about this for three years. The point is there is a difference between a trust instrument like they had during the black plague.

That did one thing, it made the asset unavailable to creditors. I want to repeat that. The basic principle of asset protection is that it is the asset is transferred or retitled so that it is no longer eligible and cannot be reached by a creditor. Assets in a living trust, oh, absolutely. Can be reached by a creditor at different kinds of trust is necessary to protect an asset.

And things have been going so well in this country and people have been making so much money at the time of great prosperity. And as a former army officer, I'm Mike, this is great because I worry about my son fighting in a war time. But it really, the world is as a whole has lived through it like a peaceful era.

And people are doing great inside just feel like we've gotten a little bit lazy and the concept of asset protection has not been as, as important. Now is that man, I'm telling you $230,000 loss in your stock portfolio because you just trusted what was going on is one thing. But two months from now when the economy realizes, oh my gosh the entire food services industry was out of work for, give me a number a week, two, three a month.

In my state, so weird man, cause it happened so fast. The Supreme court of our state issued an order to the courts. You're not in business anymore. You're not in business until April 24th now. We're going to let you do a little bit of business if you do it through the internet, like on a zoom and you got to understand, lawyers are like the worst.

Okay. So the lawyers in the middle ages actually came up with this thing, an asset protection trust in response to a plague, a pandemic and illness. That trust is still basically in existence. That's amazing, but man, we haven't been on top of anything since then as an industry lawyers look back in time for answers, like what happened back 200 years ago, we're gonna apply to the day, therefore, very few attorneys.

No, I knew lawyers who lament the invention of the printer that like literally they typed wills out and zoom meetings aren't as common among lawyers as they are other industries. And if you're in my industry, the pain is like, how do I do a zoom meeting, your honor. And so we have to admit that pandemics such as we're facing it is going to have an economic impact and it's not just that it's also health.

It's my position, that the law and the services that attorneys offer is not limited to legal documents. In fact I'm about to, in fact, I'll do it. I'll, I'm about to launch and I will make a commitment to, in some form. I'm just going to start giving my estate planning documents out for free because the value proposition is not the documents.

It's the concept and the ideas and the ability to meet the laws requirements that are contained on the pieces of paper. And when we focus on delivering a last will and Testament, that's what we focus on. What we forget is the system of implementing the last will and Testament and the asset protection trust.

That's in it for the correct time period. Now estate planning attorneys are said to be transactional. Man, we're screwed right there. We just blew it. We just absolutely failed our mission because as soon as we view it as a one-time transaction, that's what the client hears. They take the documents, they go on home with the documents that paid that they paid a lot of money to get.

And they have no idea, really what to do with the documents once it happens. And even if they did know, they forget when they die, like dementia happens a little bit every single day. By the time you realize you have dementia, you forgot. And so the plan falls down. It doesn't succeed. I bet you I have drafted, I don't, I've been a lawyer for 25 years and I had hair when I started didn't have these bags under my eyes.

I bet maybe over a thousand, maybe estate plans and hindsight, I realize I bet you less than 50% will successfully implement what we was, what we hoped would occur on the pieces of paper. And if I could go back to the very first day I practiced law, I would do it completely different.

I would say look here, Fill out this online form. Let's just be crazy. Let's just imagine that back then. Don't lie. I know what you're thinking. That would not nice what you thought. Okay. Just twenty-five years ago. Let's just imagine that we weren't on the covered wagon to try and get to the, that there was an internet, like having online forum, merge the documents based upon what the client said.

Here you go. Now that you have, we've met the legal requirements, how are we going to bring younger family members to the plan? Like, how, tell me, have you even told your oldest son that he's been designated the personal representative or the executor? Does he even know? And if he does know, does he have any inkling?

Does he know that asset protection trust are taxed at a higher tax bracket and that he has to file a 1041 don't panic, I got you covered, but what's going wrong is we did not educate that young man and bring the younger family member to the plan. And the thing is I've learned no one cares that much about money.

That's not what they care about. That's not what excites them. I have done. I'm slowing down now, but in my career, I was doing four meetings a day. So I've talked to him. I talked to you all. I know what you own. I know what your income is. You get excited. When you talk about your kids. When we talk about your account statements, your eyes glaze over, you feel anxious, you feel a little sick to your stomach.

Sometimes you just, it doesn't mean anything to you. Some people, yeah, some people, most people know and what's missing is like the money is what finances, the financial vision of the family. I need to know the time. But like the time horizon and putting that part together is where all the work occurs. In my view.

That's the value added. Now does an estate planning attorney, asset protection attorney have any value added or value proposition as to the health of your children? The law would say no. No, that we're not trying to draft a legal document that helps your son with drug addiction or with a disability.

I disagree because the rules of our industry lawyers says we can give advice about non-legal matters and candidly probably should because it impacts the money. Now, if you want to, like, when you hire me, one of the questions I'll ask you is does every single person in your family have a basic nutrition met.

Does every single person in your family have shelved their shelter needs met is every person like how has their wellbeing, anybody struggling with mental health? Does everybody feel fulfilled in their job? Does everybody feel anybody like insecure as related to other people? Because their passion is anime.

I have a daughter who's in the anime listening and or art, or are jobs that are lower compensated. And so a great plan looks at okay, man. I, Darol, that was a great question because I thought I was in here just to figure out how to pass money to my kids when I died. But really, if you think about it helping a child who is not happy with where they are in their job. If you wanted to extend it that way requires money.

The two are linked. And if your goal is a state transfer, I'm like, dude, I don't know what you're talking about because my goal is to die and then leave it behind. Good luck. You don't need a lawyer for that. Legal zoom will do that for you.

Trust me. I'm going to repeat that if your goal is to die and then just leave it all to your kids. Good luck. Roll the dice. Then it doesn't matter. Just go to legal zoom. I've seen those, I've purchased those documents to see for myself. And I thought to myself if you like for a simple estate transfer, they're perfect.

And they're cheap. Don't hire a lawyer for that ever. Lawyers have to ha they have to bring more to the table now to think about it in terms of how do we help that child that if that's within your values. The law has a lot to say about how we do that. And if your goal is be Intrepid, come on, we're going to get back.

We're going to get through this stupid virus. We're going to get past this pandemic and we're going to do it not only correctly and with pride, but we're going to do it so that we're better off because I don't know about you, but it's got me to thinking. It helps me think about what's important. For example, I have been so afraid to okay.

So I started this podcast and this live is motivated by me. I need an incentive or reason to do a podcast because I'm so busy with my practice and the podcast episode is six to eight hours. And so I've been lazy. I don't like that. And now with the and it has to be perfect, like I'm such a perfectionist, I won't do a live because I might misspeak.

I might stutter. I might this, I might that, and I don't know why I wasn't that way when I was younger, I'm going to go to court sometimes. But sometimes I didn't, like I forgot. Maybe I forgot the file. The old Darol would be like, judge, I need a continuance because I forgot my file. But and so I'm making, I'm going to do this for 30 days in a row, and I'm going to record everything that I say.

And I'm just going to put it out on the podcast because this pandemic like attorneys with high work ethic, we've got game that other professionals don't, but those guys will go on and say stuff far easier and far more readily than we will. My industry like that. Top level of the estate planning attorneys no more. We're going to have a serious conversation. So the, so you can know what's under the hood, what's really going on and think about some things in the context of what I fear will be a pretty serious economic fallout.

And it's going to it. It's not how to protect your assets in three easy steps. There's no such thing. There's no good wealth plan in the context of a down-market, let alone a possible worldwide economic crisis. It's not three easy steps. It's not five easy steps. There's no plan, plan B workshop.

There is being a student of some methodology. For example, I bet you, if you're listening to my voice right now, I can almost guarantee you that you've never even thought it possible to plan your wealth for people who are not alive. Am I right? Like I would be stunned if one person has a viable, flexible plan that goes beyond that one generation, your kids.

How do I know this? I've done over a thousand cases. I have seen thousands of account statements and income statements and every single conversation I've had is basically die, leave it to the kids. Wow. That's really great. I used to be an infantry officer and the infantry is the only organization I can find on the planet.

That is obsessed with failure. People will say I read it all the time. We live in a very optimistic, inspirational based world, and that is a great environment for the stinking extroverts. They've been beaten up on us for years. I'm kidding. I've come out, we can laugh. And so you'll see on Instagram, social media, Facebook, wherever, something like failure is the best lesson for success.

How many times have you seen that today? I'm man. I'm an introvert. I have a lot of time on my hands. And so I studied the people who had cited for the quote, like why is this quote being attributed to Oprah Winfrey. And as it turns out, in all cases, there's not a published example of the failure to which they are referring.

And in some cases that person didn't even say it. And so the sentiment is more or less for humility purposes, we learned something from failure. We're not going to publish what the failure was. We're certainly not going to disclose what the lesson was. And, but we will talk endlessly about all the great things that we've done.

No, nothing wrong with that. I'm not making a value judgment about it. I believe that's an accurate statement except for the army. The army does study failure and the army does disseminate the failure. It does go so far as to publish to all the members of that organization. What the lesson was with the idea don't do it again. For example, do you know the mistakes that customer made?

The army knows the mistakes he made. One mistake is he didn't send out a recon, go send somebody out and peek over the hill before you attack what turned out to be the entire Sioux nation. And to this day, the army, okay.

Lesson number 56 General Custer. Know what you're going to do before you do it. Now, I point this out because this is a great teaching point as to how you're going to get past the stupid economic fallout from the stinking virus. And it's got, you got to think in terms of timeframe. For example, I want you to concede that if you are 19 years old and just graduated from high school, if the average life expectancy is 25 years old, You will make completely different decisions than you would if life expectancy for you is 85.

Yes. I say that because one of the themes of this live is that the asset protection trust has, could be very helpful for you during this pandemic was created during the middle ages, by the black plague. There's a direct link between the bubonic plague and the invention of which is great. As a historian of the middle ages and a lawyer, that's amazing.

However, average life expectancy without the plague in the middle ages, it was 25 years old for a male. So I just graduated from high school. Should I go to college? No, you're 19. By the time you graduate from college, you're dead. Right. And you're not going to make that choice now in today's environment.

Average life expectancy for males is 84 for a woman it's 87. The bad news is who's listening to me here. I can see some people that I know who are over 65 years old. If you're over 65, here's the bad news. You have a one in five chance of reaching age 90, a one in 10 chance of reaching age 95.

Wow. I have a 10% chance. Those are bad odds. Like I'm 56. I'm going to, I'm going to live until 95. What am I going to do? Like 40 more years? And the choices I will make will be completely different if I know when I'm going to die. And if I don't, if I have a high degree of probability, it'll be 10 years.

Now can see this, my friends, if your wealth plan is based upon the premise that you're going to take care of your surviving spouse, if you die first, that is different than if you are not even caring about your surviving spouse. Are you planning for yourself only don't watch this live. It doesn't matter if you're planning because look, the most important thing is family.

That's it. I hate to break the bad news to you and let me explain family. It's you get to decide the incident Romans included one of the reasons guys, it's fascinating. I'm going crazy here because one of the reasons Italy is so hit hard by this virus. In fact, it might be the only reason is because in Italian culture, all the family members communicate and older family members much more likely to come in physical contact with younger family members.

And so that's not the case in America. I'm an elder law attorney in a sense, and a tax attorney and a tired attorney and a podcast attorney. But we put place our family members in assisted living facilities, and we just don't socialize like the Italians do, man, that goes back to ancient Rome.

Their concept of family was immediate family, extended family, all the allies and professionals that we want to call family. And even slaves like servants were considered family and they were brought into this unit. And so when I say the most important thing is family that's the most important thing is family, as you define it.

And I'm here to tell. That, when you're thinking about your values during a pandemic, because there's no better time to think about that. Ask that question when you are. When you are making just a lot of money easily, or if you have that expectation, it's easier to not take like heavy questions seriously.

Let me say this for me. I'm not telling you how you think or feel. I guess I'm describing myself, you get busy, you get distracted, but I'm reminded, it's look, you're a death attorney, man. You're an expert in death. You're an expert and money. The real experts in, and I count my I'm going to, I say, I said, I count myself in this number.

The experts are money. Are the guys you don't hear from. Why? Because we're too busy working like, and even I, it, it's been impactful and in my personal life, wow. Like we need to shelter in place that means the family. And so as you define it now, the time horizon is different.

I would make a completely different recommendation for you. If your goal was one lifetime, I'm going to say, look, here's a great opportunity for us to dig our stinking heels in lift a little hard and kick this virus's ass. I just said ass. And now I've got to do a disclosure on iTunes and YouTube that this is an explicit episode.

Okay. I'm going to have to edit that part out for the podcast. The point being. This virus is not going to kick our ass. I said it again, assets not going to take our assets from us, and we're going to be better off because now I'm going to challenge you to think about that third generation or beyond family wealth.

Family wealth is not financial wealth. Family wealth is having a financial vision for the family that is more than three generations. If you start thinking that way, just think about it tonight. And when you're saying, wow, I listened to this crazy dude on there, man, this guy was nuts and he was talking about something as crazy as thinking about wealth beyond my lifetime.

I don't understand when you get older and it gets a little closer and you realize, man, I love my wife. Then you're gonna say okay, better re-engineer is to include clued her let's take care of her. And then when you look at your kids, I love my kids, but I'm not sure she knows the difference between a mutual fund and a bond.

That's a problem. I, in my career, I underestimated God and in fact, I got this one completely wrong and the reason I got it wrong is because first of all, I didn't know any better and hadn't experienced it yet, but I gave my clients too much. How do I say this without insulting them? Because I see some of them are on watching.

Okay. If you're my client, like this clients are just wrong. They don't see the account statements, thousands of them. And what I'm, what I miss. What I missed was estates are depleted when they're left to children outright. Even when the child is responsible, a mature and responsible or good with money and experiences, what I meant.

I don't have to worry about that. They're all because my son is worked in the finance department of Boeing. Okay. Then let's just give the gift outright to them and trust until they're 25, that was wrong. Family management is a major threat to your assets. I always make the joke. The number one threat to your estate.

The thing that is going to deplete it to zero is you, Alzheimer's, Dementia. I had a client that wants paid $30,000 per month for long-term care. She was an accountant $30,000 per month. That was a high net worth case, but $30,000 a month, how are we going to make that work? We did because they came to me in time.

The second biggest threat is your kids because I don't care who they are. When there's a large gift, that's made, it changes people. And without assets think about it. So you leave your 30 $300,000 estate to your kids. You pass away last year, let's say, and now there's a pandemic. The stock market markets are falling.

You made a mistake because now that asset can be reached by creditors, your kid didn't do anything wrong. There's just a free for all in the market, lost their job because they were in the restaurant industry. It pisses me off because lawyers should have known better. That should, we should have been having a different kind of conversation with our clients this whole time saying, look, I'm going to push back on this a little bit and I'm not going to be so lazy.

And I'm going to stop pushing these revocable living trust that changes the asset to have a living trust can change an asset from unavailable to available to a creditor. Not only as a revocable living trust, not an asset protection trust. By the way I feel sorry for people in California, man, they're screwed.

Here's, there's screwed for a lot of reasons, but I love California that's where Disneyland is. In California, apparently as probate attorneys can take part of the estate is their fee, which, wow, that's pretty cool. I wish we had that law here. And so a way to avoid probate is revocable living trust.

And so everyone goes out and gets a revocable living trust. The problem is now the trend is, and my state is one of them for Medicaid purposes. What was once a protected asset? Once it hit that trust is unprotected and available and spend downs occur. Now you can say just transferred out.

Yeah. Except people don't do that. They don't know. And the lawyer who looked at the job as transactional. What about 20 years later when it happens come on, use your brain. And so when we lead these assets to our kids, they'll just hold time. We've just been lazy, not really taking appreciation for how often the asset is completely depleted.

Tired of keeping my mouth shut about this completely depleted, because we just listened to the clients and said, okay best your son. He has an Edward Jones account. So therefore he should be the person responsible for the tax reporting on the trust. It doesn't work that way, man.

It's just not the way. That's why vast amounts of money. I've seen my clients estates being depleted because of those two things. Medical costs, medical care costs is as a killer. Number two is family mismanagement. And if I could give a tip, you can draft a plan. You can actually think about stop-loss.

Do you know what stop-loss is when I say use that term? So in the financial services market or industry, I know this because I overachieve sometimes I should mellow out, but I used to be a financial advisor. I own my own registered investment advisory firm. So I've got some game. And in that industry, you can actually build in orders that sell in a crashing market.

Now, financial services industry discourages that. Why? Because they can't get the commission. They want to keep you in the market. That's the cynical view. I can say that because I'm not in that industry anymore. My duty is to you like lawyers, we get to say what we want, if it helps our client.

I do agree with modern portfolio theory. However, that's just one example of building a stop-loss. When I sell my clients who lost 230K. I didn't have that conversation with them. Like I should have, and it wasn't there and it's still declining. And I made the mistake of saying look, your financial advisor will take care of that financial advisors.

Is there any listening? I don't know, but financial advisors, there's not even like a, an educational requirement. It's astounding to me that you can be a financial advisor. Okay. By the way, to be a lawyer, there's a, there's an educational requirement and it's a big one. It's a three-year program. And after the three-year program, the only thing you get to do is take a test.

That's it? That's all you're licensed to do. And one mistake I made in which I have now corrected is that build a financial plan, not a roadmap don't even come to me and ask the financial advisor to participate. And we built into it, all of these emergency provisions and we amend it and include it incorporated by reference into the estate plan.

So it's legally required. Now I'm not sure what you said to her, but that sounded really cause you said it with passion you're touching. I said it was passionate and here's what I mean, like it's not discretionary, it's required. This is my money. I'm the person that made this money, not you.

And so if I'm going to leave it to my kid or leave it to my surviving spouse, I'm going to build in the plan exactly the way it's going to occur and when I'm gone or incapacitated or when I'm educating my younger family member, who will be the family leader one day and bringing the plan to him now, not later when I'm doing all of that.

I'm going to put it into the trust instrument and the powers of attorney to make it absolutely required and hold even my son to a fiduciary standard, to make sure that it occurs correctly the way it should. That way we reduce the probability of loss in a crisis to zero. Okay. Not zero because I can't control the market, but I'm telling you I'm getting worked up because that's the mistake that was, has been being made for a long time.

And we have a pandemic. We need to get into the mentality. As I began this episode of the lawyers who've invented the asset protection trust during the plague. I want to repeat that during the plague, you think that this is bad. You should like the plague. That was a bad pandemic. Lawyers created the asset protection trust and the concept that we still use today, which is amazing.

It's still available. Like the thing that saved wealth in the middle ages is still available to you today. Why? Because lawyers look back in time and we can not like when we have a good idea, we cling to it. It's funny.

And boomxshow.com. That's boomxshow.com. I started this live because I was sick and tired of keep keeping my mouth shut.

And we're in a crisis period. And anybody that says otherwise is an extrovert, an optimistic. Sometimes it takes us introverts. The introverts are not, we're not like unhappy people. It's just that we do on things, man. We, I watched this live the other day. It's common now, in fact, I got the idea for doing this.

Every day at four o'clock I missed today. Cause it was the first day and I had to set some stuff up. But every day at four o'clock for 30 days, I'm going to do this. You can go to boomxshow.com. If you register, I'm going to figure out a way to respond to your questions and do all that stuff. Right. So that you can be in the loop because candidly, I've got Facebook over here, got Instagram over there.

I got something over there. I have lights. I don't even know what the heck I'm doing. But we got to get the word out. And I was watching one of these lives the other day. And the guest was this really optimistic, happy cheerful guy. And he's like every day you wake up and you have a choice between negative and positive and negative never helps and positive sometimes helps.

So I choose to be upbeat and positive. Allow me to retort, man, you made that too simple. It's not, I wake up every day and it's either evil and good. I wake up and I have a lot going on. I wake up every day and I I'm I suffered from depression or I suffer from this. And so I don't know. Okay. So introverts me included.

We do a lot. And so what I'm going to do is every day for 30 days, I am going to publish or go live. And so you can jump on and you can learn more about topics related to asset protection. In the context of a stinking virus, you can go to boomxshow.com and cause that's the podcast. That's where you can go in and see the past episodes.

And you can listen to this episode in greater detail, but in this. I'm just going to put it on raw. I'm not going to heavily produce it and I will have links to resources so you can, do your thing.