Welcome to episode number 40 of the BoomX show laws of money podcast. I'm your host, Darol Tuttle. Today we will be speaking with an attorney, Ann-Marie Murzin, and she is with a law firm outside of Washington, DC. She is a fellow member of Wealth Counsel, an organization I'm a member of. Anne Marie, I've talked to only, just one time.
What's interesting about her is that she graduated from law school on the east coast at the same year I graduated from law school on the west coast. She chose the big firm route. I chose the sole practitioner route, but yet we've come together through common interests and common practice areas that is asset protection, business planning, personal planning.
And we have no particular agenda for today's podcast. What I want to do is talk a little bit about the Supreme court's decision in which Roe versus Wade was overturned, not from a social or political viewpoint, but from an attorney's viewpoint. That case is cause called, excuse me, Dobbs versus Mississippi department of health and others.
And I want to ask her a very specific question about the legal principle of stare decisis, and then it'll be open conversation about practice and in particular business planning as a way to reduce estate taxation to transfer wealth and reduce tension, stress and anxiety when a business owner dies.
Many families own small businesses. Most businesses are small businesses and a limited liability company and the S corporation are all means of protecting assets in a way that is in some cases, more powerful than what we can do with trust. That those will be the topics for today's podcast. And I am just gonna wait until I hear that wonderful little thinging from Zoom meeting that she has arrived and we'll take it from there.
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 BoomX Nation shows us how. Beginners, investors, entrepreneurs, fellow attorneys, are you ready? Are you ready?
Let's arm this bomb. Now, here's the BoomX show, the laws of money.
I'm good. Yeah. How are you? Good, interesting artwork there. Oh yeah. So I painted the entire studio in chalk. Oh. And so I do all my noodling on the wall behind me. And that's a painting of queen Elizabeth I'm working on. Oh, Elizabeth I. And what's the inspiration for that? No idea. Come on. I dunno.
Actually I do know, I love history and I was watching the movies on Elizabeth starring Cate Blanchett, who I have a little crush on you know? Who doesn't, right? Well, who doesn't right. I didn't like her in the Indiana Jones movie where she played the Russian villain. Hmm, but, and I also didn't like her in the Thor Ragnar whatever movie she's a villain there too.
Yeah. And Elizabeth though, she's kind of a villain, but I just really enjoy the movie, but also the historical significance of the first truly impactful queen. Like a true matriarch and mm-hmm, she thumbed her nose at convention and I like that. Well, that gives me a little bit of insight into you.
Yeah yes. She's so prominent there, cause I'm working on I'm painting it and I don't know how to paint. So , you know, like I work a little bit in between client meetings and whatnot. Mm-hmm but isn't that kinda like though the law, there's some issues that come up in different, we have to figure out a solution.
We have to keep plugging ahead and do it a little bit of time and look at it again and tweak it. And it's kind of similar. So I don't think it's that far off. We have to be creative the way we write things or the way we perceive things. It can't just be our preconceived notions. Right. Well, yeah.
And it's a war of attrition. Because I was thinking about it last time I spoke to you we had a lot of similarities. Like we, we both graduated from law school at the same time and we both went the same practice area. You went down the big firm route. Yeah, I do regret that a little bit, but yeah.
Yeah. I actually think less of you because of that. Except for, I did learn a lot about business development and I did have the opportunity to practice in London for four or five months. Oh, okay. So now you just redeemed yourself. So that was pretty eye-opening and interesting. Did you go to Old Bailey?
No, you didn't go to Old Bailey? I don't remember. It was since a long time, but I don't think so. Maybe. I dunno. Okay. So that's what they, you know, how the Brits, they name stuff weird and they just keep the name. Yeah. So it's the oldest running criminal court, I think in the world. Oh, no, I would've remembered that.
No, they call it Old Bailey because that's what they called it in 1500. Yeah. And it. I should have . Yeah. So back then, in fact that, okay Elizabeth was one of the daughters of Henry VIII and talk about not having a survivor plan for your wife, Henry VIII. I mean like a poster child.
Yeah. Oh yeah. It's ironic that his daughter. I think she reigned for 40 years, something insane. Like he's probably like turning in his grave was like, damn what did I. I'm gonna get back to old Bailey, but you wanna hear something cool about Henry VIII and estate planning?
Yes. Let me hear this connection only I probably me and one other nerdy person's gonna appreciate this, but I'm all ears. Okay. William, the conquerors invented probate. He was actually a brilliant guy. He came across the English channel and took over France and gave all the estates to his French buddies.
Like, you know, people that helped him, but he's the first person that unbundled property rights. And so the, it was the right of reversion or escheatment. You probably, your statute probably has that word escheatmen. I think it probably does. Yes. Yeah. So that's an archaic French word. He brought it.
Talk about the law, holding onto a bad idea, like escheatment. They used the same word, right? So as an estate could pass from the estate owner to only a qualified male heir to begin with. So fast forward, the problem that he had was okay. If someone dies with no heir, how do I know they died?
This dude? I don't have Google. So he created the first parcel system and he mapped out every square inch of England. And then he goes, okay, now I know where the estates are. How do I know if somebody died? He goes, I don't know, but I know if somebody that does the local parish, right? And so that's why he invented ecclesiastical courts.
But it's a brilliant idea. Like the guy goes, oh, we'll just create and they had get this emory, they had a jury trial every time an estate owner died. And 300 years later, the plague broke out. And so now all the male heirs and the estate owners are dying. Mm-hmm . And so now they're doing probates and all that lands, reverting back escheating to the crown.
And so the very first trust was invented. Oh, yeah. And it's basically in a probate avoidance trust. Right. And so you never had that triggering event. And so escheatment was avoided as was estate tax. It got so bad that Henry VIII, Elizabeth's dad passed a law called abolishment of the use. That's what they called it use, U S E use.
It's just a trust, a use. Okay. And. So that's like a, we don't really have a lot going on in the estate planning law as compared to criminal law. That's true. Can I throw out my own fun fact here? I'm gonna try. Yeah, let's hear it. Yeah. I didn't even know we were gonna go this route by the way, but you know, since we are there was this woman, I don't know if you've heard of her or not.
There she's considered the first woman attorney in the United States, but she was originally from England. I don't, I think England, I'm not sure, but she was originally from there and she wanted to move to the United States and she was Catholic. Maybe she was from Ireland. I can't remember. But anyway, she was Catholic and she convinced Lord Baltimore fast forward, you know, the governor of a Maryland in Baltimore to give her a land right. And because she was actually a unmarried woman. Unmarried women could own property. But married woman couldn't own property. So she actually came to Maryland and she had her own property ended up being a female business owner back in the day, and most people were married and she used to go to court and every time, someone didn't pay her blah, blah, blah.
She actually litigated her own cases because she wanted to get credit for her business and ended up being super successful. And then she was named in one of the politicians estates as his executor. Because he trusted her so much he ended up getting a position, like a secretary position with her and really was a trusted advisor.
But that sort of went south a little bit because there are all these conflicts with the state. She ended up moving to Virginia and fast forward, she had a whole parcel, right near Mount Vernon, where George Washington was. Right. And she named her estate with her sister who was also unmarried.
She named her estate where she died, peace. Oh, wow. Isn't that interesting? It is. It's inspiring and it's a gap in my historical database. I've never. Margaret Brent. Yeah. I'm sure there's a couple books written about her, but really kind of an unknown woman. I think the American bar association has some type of award to similar woman, you know, every year or something like that.
But why do you know so much about her? Well, because yesterday I happened to be out, you know, out and about doing what I do, talking to people, et cetera, et cetera. And I happened to drive by this park and I wanted to take some calls and do some emails. So I sat in this park and I was looking around and there's this whole plaque all about Margaret Brent
Oh, cool. So I thought in real life, yeah, yesterday mm-hmm I'm the same way I stop at every historical marker like I'm notorious for making a three hour road trip and eight hour road trip. Yeah. It was interesting to me. I wouldn't have ever known and gone down that rabbit trail and it was interesting.
Yeah. Okay. I'm gonna ambush you here. Uh oh you ready? Yep. I'm ready. Try to divorce yourself from any personal beliefs. Pretend that you're and you've gone to you're from Mars. But you've read all American law books. That's it? Oh my goodness. Yeah. So you gotta take the emotion out, something just pop up on your screen that made you think of this or what?
No, no, I've been noodling on it for a while and I've been too reluctant to talk about it, but there's something that's really bothering me, so. Okay. Ready? I'm ready. Hit me. You're deflecting by the way. Okay, here we go. Here it is. Okay.
The critical question is whether the constitution properly understood converse a right to obtain an abortion. Hm, Casey's controlling opinion skipped over that question and reaffirmed Roe solely on the basis of stare decisis, a proper application of stare decisis however, requires an assessment of the strength of the grounds on which Roe was based. Mm-hmm. Now that's as far as I got. I got that far. And that's the opening paragraph of you mean out of the 85 pages?
That's all you got. I got that far because this is how far I got, I thought, okay. This is exactly when I respect stare decisis and when I look at I'll just be candid and don't beat me up about this, but oh wait, you should probably go back and explain stare decisis.
Well, before we go back, yeah, let you, why don't you explain it because you'll do a better job. Oh, you're so nice. Basically, the concept is when we have a rule of law established, whether, you know, through case law, generally, we need to honor it. And, but we do have to look at the context and we do have to look at history.
So some people disagree with that. They think that you should just look exactly at what the case said before and affirm it based if the facts meet the law, but you actually do have to look at history in context. For instance, if we, we have Brown versus Board of Education, you know, that made school segregation unconstitutional.
So that was a good use of stare decisis, even though it did change the law. It doesn't mean that the law can never be changed. It means you have to honor the rule of the law. And generally based upon the constitution and generally interpretation of statutes.
Can I push back a little bit? Of course. I had to Google this. So it's not like this. Oh my God. You Googled while I'm just talking. That's not, no, no, no, no. Like months ago. Okay. Because I've been thinking about it for probably over two years. Mm-hmm and the explanation I like the best is something more simple.
Well, it's not meant to be like only for constitutional questions. It's just, mm-hmm, the basic premise of American jurisprudence. And it's applying a ruling from the past to like fact patterns presently before the court, because what the court does. Right. And I. Right, but it's not like you can't just put the lens on there.
You actually do have to look at what is happening now and what happened then, you know, the context. I just still think that that's important. So, yes. And I think overall people, even Justice Ginsburg said this, the original decision, my, my beef, I guess, with the original decision was it did sound a little bit more like legislative, the decision itself versus a legal decision, you know, a rule of law, just the way they wrote the decision. I think that they could have handled that back then Roe versus Wade, a little bit better. The decision could have been written a little cleaner than it was.
So in that respect, that's my only I don't know if you look at the two decisions. I don't think either one was perfect. Like if I wrote it, I would done them both the same differently, but I do think that if Roe versus Wade was not not as solid as it could. What was the account on Roe? I don't even know.
I know you wanna look it up. Sounds like you're you're you could be like concurring, but writing separately. Yeah, that would be, yeah. What that means is justice is, there you go. They can't agree on anything. And so, there's like the main opinion. And then all the guys who agree with the ruling, disagree with everything the main guys said.
Basically, I would have my own opinion. Yeah, exactly. Well, to me, stare decisis stands for the proposition. Okay. You didn't like it, but you don't get to change it. I mean, I'm sorry. But one thing that's bothered me about abortion issue is like, we need this to be settled. Like I don't really care personally.
I don't really have a dog in the fight. I'm 58 years old and my daughter's gay, so it's probably not gonna affect me directly. And I just wanna put that out there because what's bizarre about it from a social perspective, there are people who have no dog in that fight and man, they just get so worked up about it.
And it's tearing this country apart because as if we're not going to get peace because the Supreme Court is basically from my view is saying, the question is whether the constitution, this is the exact words, properly understood which is basically saying our court got it wrong because they didn't properly understand our view today of the constitution.
And that's gonna create social chaos. Really? Yeah. You think, I mean there's just no way they could have ever envisioned where we are now. And so all that hearken back to history, you know, pages and pages of that. I just don't find that helpful. See that's to me, it's kind of rough because I wish, should have done is kind of bleeped out the word abortion, Casey and Roe.
Oh, right. Yeah, because then you, would've not known what I was talking about and you would've said, oh yeah, that it is weird because what the court said was a proper hearing. We go again. Okay. So properly, that sounds like a moral judgment to me. Mm-hmm and then in the next paragraph, they use the same word, a proper application of stare decisis, comma, however, comma, this is the part I like Casey. I'm not deflecting. Skipped over that question and reaffirm solely on the basis of stare decisis seems to be saying the court is like, oh, you were just following stare decisis. Like this court seems to be saying that court's wrong because they followed stare decisis.
And I'm like, oh my God, these guys literally do not know what stare decisis is like that they don't seem to accept it as a principle of jurisprudence, because then they say a proper application, which means, look, they got it wrong, screw star, decisis. We're now gonna reopen the question.
And that is gonna wreak havoc with the legal, have to say it's gonna depend. I can't fully agree with what you're saying that it's gonna wreak havoc because there are some decisions where people did get it wrong, and things changed, like what they're gonna do. Yeah.
But the star decisive in general, I don't think it's gonna wreak havoc on. From the district courts, federal district courts all the way up, I don't think they're gonna do this all the time. The principal still holds, but yes, I think the decision itself puts everything, more in an uproar than it was before.
Yeah. And it's really sad, because you're right. To the extent that the courts are able to let us know what the boundaries are of the law. We can feel comfortable to know what to expect, right? The law provides civility. We don't have civility now because of this decision and honestly, I think it put more salt in the wound, the way they actually wrote this decision, just like that court that they said was wrong.
Put salt on the wound back then, it just it just really was not appropriate. And you can't say that the framers of the constitution, knew everything was gonna happen today. They had no idea. Here we are at cryptocurrency, they certainly didn't imagine that. I did want to talk about business planning.
I gave it too little air time and I do business planning, but it's always in the context of trying to reduce the gross estate if there's a family business, mm-hmm with a flip or something like that. I also help young business people start an LLC and my big message is don't forget, you said business people and not businessmen.
That was nice. Oh, that's just where I see, a lot of the entrepreneurs I know are female, so yeah. But my big thing is okay. Make sure you make your S-corp election. I think the IRS has actually changed that rule a little bit. That check the box like have you filled out that form lately?
No, I haven't, but I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah. They have to be very careful. Yeah. Mm-hmm so the rule, like you explained the rule cause self, like young entrepreneurs, they do their logo first and then they pick their tagline in their colors, their palette long before they even think about incorporating.
Yeah. I mean it I think it, again, I think that depends if they have a history of a family business, like sometimes there's entrepreneurial spirit in the family, so there's a little bit more like knowhow or what, or whatever on what to do. And there are people who are concerned about, taxes and how the income's gonna come in and things like that first, but yes, logo and all that is a lot more fun.
And I guess from my perspective I think people also have to, it merges estate planning with business planning. You also have to think if you're gonna have a successful business and you have people depending on you for income, what's gonna happen when you know, you can't do whatever it is that you're doing to provide income to those who are depending on you.
So I think that's something. And so what I've been doing is more of a business power of attorney and making sure that these people consider having like a right hand person who could take over in case of emergency, not just keeping all these passwords and all this information and all this authority in your head. Give up a little bit of control so that your business, your baby can be successful, through interruption.
What is a business power of attorney? Wow. I'm so glad you asked. I didn't even email you this you're this is great. No, business, but just similar to a personal power attorney, I don't know about you, but I craft mine based on what the people need in their daily life. I don't just use a form document.
So if they have Amazon packages or FedEx packages or things like that, I don't just say you can pick up US and I expand it to like their actual life, and I don't say, you can manage my mineral and oil rights if they don't have mineral and oil rights, so they don't plan to get it in the future.
So I make it very, same thing for a business. So if you have business operations and they have payroll, or they have a lease agreement or they have contracts with customers, or they have a signatory at a particular bank, or they have an employee benefit plan. We just go through all the different, the deep dive into all the dis business operations and make sure that those decision making is allowed first of all.
And second of all, sometimes they're a committee for a particular decision. So if there's three people, there's a tiebreaker as to what the decision could be. I like, sometimes clients. It can be stubborn. One of the, my favorite questions line of questions for business people is so I look at the spouse and I go, so you gonna run the business?
Excellent question. M-hmm Yeah. And they're like, no. I go, well, the way that we got it set up, now you're gonna inherit the share and by the way, are the minority shareholders, okay with you running the business and they're like, wait, what? Mm-hmm well, also the response I get a lot of time is you know, but I have key man insurance, so we should be okay.
Which, you know, fast forward, I think we should make that key person insurance, but whatever. Yeah. We have key man insurance and so everything's, the finances are gonna work out, but your point is exactly right. Like who, and if you do want your spouse to run the business, whether it's husband or wife or whatever, maybe you wanna, take your spouse to work day.
So they have an idea what's going on. Right. Yeah, exactly right. And the widows I encounter, the last thing they wanna do is go down and run the construction company. Right? Mm-hmm so and buy, sell agreements like how many LLC operating agreements have you ever seen was like a legit workable buy, sell agreement.
Mm-hmm right? And not to be too much of a plug, but we do have our corporate department here and do the buy, sell agreements and all of that. And for my business contingency planning, I actually encourage before people even think about exiting their company or think about selling their company to come up with their ideal buy, sell agreement, come up with a draft and what your goals are, because if you don't know what your goals are, same thing with estate planning, you can't actually go out there and reach for it.
If you don't have a draft, you shouldn't be on the defense waiting for someone to present a buy, sell agreement with you, to you for whatever it is. I think it helps increase clarity all the way around if you have that draft. That's an advantage you have over me. I'm looking at your website right here.
So you're in how many offices do you have? Just one office. But you've got quite a few lawyers, business law, employment, law, family, government contract, litigation, and estate planning. Like, I'm basically a one chick pony compared to you guys, yeah. But if you ever get to a situation where you have an issue that you wanna do a deep dive on, you wanna serve your client and this issue, that's one advantage that we have because as in the way, you and I practice is that we're open to collaborating and we realize that the client is served when they have the best advice. So if we have to co-counsel on a particular issue, then, you're open to that or you have to learn more about it, then you're gonna learn more about it.
I guess I do love the firm and especially the attorneys here is that they're everybody is an expert in their field and I feel so comfortable just relying on them in their practice area. So that's a cool, and also they're not just they're not boring. There's actually so interesting.
We can like debate issues back and forth, and everybody has an open mind. So I'm really happy about. If they're half as engaging and half as experienced as you are, it's a great law firm. Oh, well, thank you. I wanna, so maybe you'll be able to meet some of these other yeah, I should come by sometime.
I'm a lot closer than I used to be when I was in Seattle. Can I conclude with one fun, one more fun fact. Mm-hmm how did Virginia what's the origins of Virginia's name? Hmm. I hate to even say this. I don't even. Was it, she was called the Virgin queen. And so Virginia is a, I didn't know that now that it's coming.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not queen Elizabeth, right. No, I don't know if I knew that. Well, there you go. That'll be fun back. Okay. Thank you so much. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Bye.
Thanks for listening to another episode of the BoomX show laws of money podcast, where asset protection attorney, Darol Tuttle breaks down the complicated rules of estate, retirement and even long-term care planning. You can listen to past episodes of the BoomX show by going to boomxshow.com or subscribing right from your smartphone's podcast player.
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