The 2020 Secure Act and the Three Money Models To Help You Work Around It

The 2020 Secure Act and the Three Money Models To Help You Work Around It

Darol Tuttle

Darol Tuttle

Darol is a Washington state admitted attorney, practicing in estate planning and elder law since 1996. He is founder of the BoomX Academy and Founder of LegalEdge Innovators.

This episode is a legal update with a higher view of planning to include three necessary philosophies of wealth planning to help you make the appropriate decisions. The episode describes the 2020 Secure Act but in the context of estate planning law, dating back to British medieval common law, three other important legal changes in the preceding five years and the new reality of planning with retirement accounts. This episode introduces you to idea of "workarounds". Yes, that's right! We can mitigate the negative impacts of the SECURE Act. On December 20, 2019, President Trump signed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act (SECURE Act). The SECURE Act, which is effective January 1, 2020. The SECURE Act has several positive changes: It increases the required beginning date (RBD) for required minimum distributions (RMDs) from your individual retirement accounts from 70 ½ to 72 years of age, and it eliminates the age restriction for contributions to qualified retirement accounts. However, one provision of SECURE nullifies all of the benefits of the act and is a threat to your family’s generational wealth. That is a bold statement, I realize. I stand by it. The SECURE Act does provide a few exceptions to this new mandatory ten-year withdrawal rule: spouses, beneficiaries who are not more than ten years younger than the account owner, the account owner’s children who have not reached the “age of majority,” disabled individuals, and chronically ill individuals. However, proper analysis of your estate planning goals and planning for your intended beneficiaries’ circumstances are imperative to ensure your goals are accomplished and your beneficiaries are properly planned for. Most people do not care enough to spend time let alone money on taking specific actions to adjust their plan, if they have one, to account for the changes brought to us courtesy of SECURE. Perhaps, there is nothing wrong with this attitude. If you view SECURE from the perspective of the government, it makes sense. Too much money is being protected for the benefit of families and not taxed. The government and even the economy is better off to get that money back into circulation. However, I doubt that people decide to pay unnecessary taxes, fees and stand idly by as wealth is lost because they are on the government's side. During most of my career, I thought this attitude, that action should not be taken to avoid a financial loss, was just a mental hiccup, a cognitive bias that prevents some people from making correct decisions about wealth. However, as I have grown in my profession, I now see that it is more related to one, of three, philosophies about wealth. Unfortunately, the attitude that is passive about protecting wealth is the traditional and, therefore, prevalent model. The reasons it is traditional is all about human longevity. Throughout all of human history, humans have lived short lives. In the Middle Ages, when probate and trust law invented, men lived, on average, to be just twenty-five years. That average age was not doubled until the early 1900s, over a thousand years later. However, in the last century, the average life expectancy of an American male has almost doubled again. Biologically, there are more opportunities and different challenges than the current perspective of the Law even realizes. The law is reactive, not proactive. As such, the traditional model has only sought to pass wealth from an asset owner to the next generation because the asset owner would live a short life as would the next generation. Life has been so difficult in terms of survival, the Law has simply left it at that. As such, There are three models in planning, the traditional model is estate planning and views life and, therefore, wealth, as short. The other two models do not. I will refer to these models often and you should always think in their terms because the model you choose will require actions specific to that planning model. If you view the purpose of your money as a simple, outright transfer to the next generation, then estate planning is your swim lane. SECURE Act is not a threat because the estate planning model is not focused on the protection of wealth beyond just your lifetime. However, if you view wealth as the means by which you plan to empower your family for more than your life plus ten years, then one of the two other models are applicable to you. THE THREE MODELS OF PLANNING Estate Planning The objective of estate planning is estate transfer. The word “estate” is a legal term that refers only to the assets once owned by a now deceased person. The Law is reactive, not proactive. Therefore, traditional estate planning limits its objective to the transfer of assets of a person to either a spouse or the next generation in a limited way. Asset Protection The objective of asset protection is different. Asset protection, as I define it, includes all of estate planning but has the focus is on the protection of assets while the assert owner, his or her spouse are still alive. The trigger event for estate planning is the death of the asset owner. The trigger event of asset protection is now! Generational Family Wealth Planning The objective of family wealth is to strengthen a family around a set of core values and a vision for the future. The assets of a successful family finances the family using all of the tools of estate planning and asset protection but the time horizon is seven generations. There is an entire course dedicated to the devices you used to this model.

Table of Contents

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 leveraged 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.

There are three different ways to look at, to view, to conceptualize money. The first I believe a model of planning that goes back to the middle ages. The oldest, the most traditional I believe is now based on a false premise.

People disagree with me. You are free to disagree with me. Because of its antiquity, this particular model is the one that all lawyers know, and it is simply called at estate planning. The second view of money is called asset protection and the third and final view of money, I would call generational family wealth planning.

Estate planning and I just had this mental image. I just cannot help thinking about William the conqueror. We're not going to go year by year, but in 1066, a gentlemen, that was really a Viking. His great, great grandfather was a Viking named Rollo who had invaded and conquered actually Paris, if you've ever watched the great, just absolutely amazing history channel TV show on called the Vikings, Rollo is a character in that show.

And of course it's, Hollywood, so they have to glam it up, but there was actually a Viking named Rollo and he conquered Paris and he was such a pain after he had. The approach back then, meet the Vikings, if you can. And if you can't cut a deal with them. And so the deal was, they gave Rollo the Viking land of his own.

You can be like a little king of a kingdom out there on the ocean. It's a nice view out there. You'll love it. It was a long way from Paris and it was called Normandy. We call it Normandy. Now Normandy actually means land of the north men, land of the Vikings. And so they sent out Rollo out there and century generations later, he his grandson.

Great, great, great grandson was a guy named William. Now, William executed, essentially. What is a reverse invasion of Normandy? It's just ironic up later. Allied forces from England to Normandy, 1066, it was exact opposite. So this reverse invasion of Normandy occurred and William was able to bring all of England together under his rule.

And that, that had been accomplished before. But this was the last time England was brought under one kingdom and it essentially it stayed that way ever since. And so that's a very impactful moment in history. With his buddies, the invasion force. He also brought with him like the French view of law. So some archaic French legal concepts.

Once he had conquered all of England. Of course, the first thing he does is say, look, I have a low GL title to all of England. And what that means is I have a divine right. To all the land. And I do admit that I have a problem here. I, myself personally can not go around him. I don't even know where the land is.

This is not, there was no Mr. Google, back in those days, you couldn't look up a personal number. And actually one of the first things that he did was to send out. And create the very first English parcel system. And there is a as called book of the dome and it's in Latin, but it's a description of all of the land in England, which is a remarkable feat.

That's pretty impressive. You have to admit it. So he came up with a grid parcel system for all of England. He gave estates to his closest allies, his invasion force buddies that they had taken from the then English inhabitants. And yeah, we've got a new parcel system and I'm going to give, let's say black horse Manor to Lord Fred now, which is all great and fine.

Except that a low GL title, that whole concept is I will parcel out to Fred this particular piece of real estate. And he will have some ownership rights. Now notice I said it's this is the first time in history in which the law looked at real estate as having a bundle. That's what law professors call it a bundle of rights, and we could split out the different types of property interests.

And the concept was you have full use and even title of the land. However, If you do not have a qualified male heir to pass the estate to at the end of your life, then it reverts back to me, the king under a concept called escheatment. Now escheatment is another French archaic word. I am now recording this from Tacoma, Washington have made a trip to back to the United States from

Puerto Rico while I was on Christmas vacation or shortly thereafter you, as I indicated in my last episode of swarm earthquakes, quakes devastated the area and Puerto Rico in which I was intending to relocate. So I'm waiting to see what happens down there in Puerto Rico.

And if there's anything to come back to But in Washington state, there is a revised code of Washington statute. It is literally entitled escheatment, which I think is just so cool. Here I am, I just have a degree in history and love it. And, but really when do you get a chance to talk about history?

I've got a podcast and oh, by the way, escheatment is a concept originating from William the conqueror that still exists in the law today. That is so cool. And it simply means in the law today, if lawyers say, I have said, if you don't have an estate plan, that's okay. The government has one for you.

That happens to be 100% accurate. It is rare that escheatment occurs, but it does occur. State governments have in their possession today as we speak about $65 billion in unclaimed property. Now, unclaimed property is a slightly different issue. Unclaimed property occurs. I believe anecdotally from Alzheimer's, Dementia.

I have observed in my own practice clients as they age, literally forget they own property. And so when they pass away, they forgot kids have to come in, that there is no information sharing before the death. So how do you know and kids do the best they can. It goes through mom and dad's file cabinet and try to find the account statements that they can, but as we move more and more towards an online environment, that problem will get worse.

Now, escheatment is dying without a last will and Testament. Without a trust without heirs. Like you don't have no children. Now, the law says if someone dies without an estate plan, then we will follow what the government of that particular jurisdiction decides where the assets will go. States do it differently.

Some states are community property states, some states are not. And so think about it. If you're in a community property state, and you die without a Last Will and Testament. There is a mandatory distribution to the community spouse, half of his or her community property share of course is as hers, but there's also a mandatory distribution to the surviving spouse of the community property in even separate property.

FYI, if you have kids from a prior marriage, without a written plan. It is technically correct that the government's plan might differ from what you intended. But what if there's no, no surviving spouse and no children. Where does the estate go? If I'm going to go into the intricacies of what they call the intestate statute, that's not the point.

The point is if they exhaust all the statutory heirs, your estate goes to the government and it's just added to government coffers and yay. They make a lot of money and it is so cool that originated from a dude that is coming across the English channel, bringing that word with him escheatment. Now here's the point?

English law eventually became American law. Escheatment came across the ocean to America on the Mayflower. British common law has made its way to Washington state, to Alaska, to Hawaii. It's at staggering that the human mind can conceive of a legal concept and hang onto it so tightly for that amount of time.

But estate planning is based upon the premise. Or focuses on a estate transfer. That's his purpose estate transfer. And back in William the conquerors days, the average life expectancy of a male was 25 years old. Let me think about that. That's astounding. Like what kind of decisions would you make out of high school?

Let's say you're 19 years old, it's a SIG, an Aiden 20 to 20 years old just to be use even numbers. So I'm 20 years old. I have another five years to live. Why go to college by the time I graduate, I'll be dead. I think you just make a completely different set of decisions. The law is reactive, not proactive.