Should I name my children as “joint” or “co” successor trustees? (Episode #294)

0:30 Well, good afternoon, michiganers. It is Tuesday, January twenty third, twenty fourteen, and of course this is Tuesday with Tom, Michigan's only weekly podcast where we do answer your questions about estate planning and a state settlement in Michigan. As always, I'm your host, Tom Doyle, the state planning attorney, lifelong Michigan resident, an ambassador for all things good in this great state of Michigan. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to today's program. Just a brief programming note though, before we get started today, a reminder if you haven't already taken a look, we have updated after seven years. Now we're Tuesday with Tom website, So head on over to Tuesday with Tom website.

1:19 Take a look. You can tell us what you think. You can send me an email tell them what you think. Or if you click on the little microphone that's in a circle kind of at the bottom right hand corner, you can leave me a voice message as well, perhaps about what you think about the program, or when you listen to an episode, if that raises questions, you want to ask a question, see if we might be able to answer your questions. Of course, we won't be providing legal advice in that answer, but or you just might have a comment about that episode, or maybe that raises another question that you'd like to hear an episode about. So just head on over to the New Tuesday with Tom website and take a look, and please tell us what you think. Well last week's episode.

2:04 Last week's episode was to be prepared for when Trump's tax cuts expire next year and taxes for most Americans will increase. Now's the time to be looking ahead to twenty twenty six, when perhaps all of our taxes are going to increase, mainly because a lot of the tax cuts that were enacted during the Trump administration are going to expire. So planning ahead. If you wait until twenty twenty six, it will be too late. So you need to look at now, talk to your tax advisor, see what options you might have to avoid or to minimize what effect it's going to have on you in twenty twenty six. Today's topic, it's a question that we are freakingly answered by clients, including one that I was just working on with this last week. Should I name my children as joint or co successor trustees? Well, please remember that what I'm about to discuss during the program. As always is only for educational purposes. It is not intended to be legal advice. You need to work with your attorney to determine what is appropriate for you and your estate plan.

3:49 Should I name my children as joint or co success or trustees? I did have an episode, I think it was a couple of years ago on the topic of having joint trustees. But time's gone by and we're going to focus a little bit more on when you're thinking about your children and how you're going to be naming them under your trust. So when it comes to naming the children under a trust, or maybe it's going to be personal representative in your will or agents under your power of attorney, we often are asked, should you name your children as joint or co Well, the norm if you're not going to do that is in the alternative. So if you think about it in the alternative, would say, for example, maybe I name my son Kevin as my first successor trustee, but if Kevin is unable or unwilling to serve, then I name my daughter Maureen as the alternate. That's a an alternative arrangement that many clients are going to have under their estate plans that might apply, as well as personal representatives in your will or agents under powers of attorney. But let's say you're thinking about maybe what I want to do is make Kevin and Moreen work together as trustees. In that case, we need to look at that and decide are they going to be joint and we'll talk about what that means or are they going to be co. But before

5:26 we get to answering that question, the first question that I would have, or that Amanda would have if you're thinking about doing that, is how well do the children that you are thinking naming joint or CO get along? Because if they don't get along, then you should never consider a joint or CO because you're simply asking for heartache and grief and difficulty in settling your trust because if they're joint or CO, they need to work together irrespective of which of those designations. So if your kids don't get along, we would suggest that you don't consider going with the joint or co success or trustees. But if they do, if they get along, or perhaps you're in a second marriage, you each have children from the previous marriage, you want to make sure that there's a process where a child from each family, if you will, is overlooking what's going on and they do get along. Because again, even if they don't get along, you're asking yourself for trouble. You might look at a joint or co So what is the difference? Okay, well, joint trustees When two or more of the children are serving as joint trustees, than any action that they take needs to be taken together. Whether that's two

6:56 children joint, three children joint, doesn't matter how many children are making joint. But if you're going to make them joint, then they have to do everything together. For example, let's say that there is real estate to be sold and the trustees tasked after your death was selling real estate. If you have joint trustees, then all of the joint trustees two, three, four, however many you have, are going to have to execute any documents that are going to be necessary to list the property for sale, to sell the property ultimately, so everybody is going to have to be involved in signing paperwork.

7:38 If they go to a bank and they're going to be dealing with a bank, the bank is going to require that all of the joint trustees are signing everything together. That's signing to take money out of account, signing to pay bills, et cetera. The alternative is what we call CO trustees. If you make the children CO trustees, that means essentially they're all equal and any one of them can take any action that needs to be taken by a trustee without involving the others. So, again, looking at that real estate situation, if you have CO trustees, then it only takes one of them to execute any documents to list the real estate. It only takes one of them to be dealing with the bank account. Essentially, the concept behind CO is saying to your children that you've named as CO. You guys, figure out who's going to do what. You all have equal authority. You figure out between you who's going to open bank accounts, who's going to sell real estate, et cetera. One of the considerations other than whether or not they get along, though, if you think about is distance can present a problem.

9:00 If you have a considerable distance between where your children live and you're thinking about joint making them work together. That's an example perhaps of where CO might be a better alternative, so that you're not requiring them to figure out how they're going to handle the distance between them. Are they gonna have to be emailing documents back and forth? Are they going to be faxing documents? How is all that stuff going to be taken care of? So even where your children get along, the distance that's involved with them might in fact impact the decision about what you decide about whether you're not going to make them joint or co. Now that same consideration doesn't just apply to the trustee of your trust.

9:48 You also have a will. You have personal representatives under your will. If you're going to aim multiple children as your personal representatives, do you want them to again be in some order, i e. This child first, and if that child can't do it, then this child. Do you want to make them joint where they both have to do everything together in order to settle that estate, or do you want to make them co so that either or any of them can do whatever it's necessary regarding the tasks in settling that estate. Same thing under powers of attorney, you're becoming capacitated. You have powers of attorney. You're naming children to manage and pay your bills for you, file your income tax returns, et cetera. Same consideration alternative this one first that one next or joint they have to operate together or co where any of them can do it. And the same consideration does apply if you're going to name more than one child under your health care power of attorney, this child can make medical decisions for me if they can't and this child is next.

11:01 Again, do you want children to act jointly or not to? Do you want them to act as co Generally speaking, we don't recommend having joint agents under a health care power of attorney. The problem is that if medical treatment is needed for you, the doctor is then going to have to be in communication with all of the joint agents before rendering any treatment. And if all of the joint agents don't agree upon what the course of the treatment is, now you have a situation where you need medical decisions to be made for you, perhaps quickly, and because a doctor either is enable to get hold of the joint agents or the joint agents all don't agree, that will impact the health care decisions that are made for you. So generally speaking, we don't necessarily have an issue if the children get along and distances isn't a problem.

12:07 If you want to look at joint under a trust or joint under your will, or joint under your health care power attorney, even joint under funeral arrangements, if that's what you're going to do, but we certainly would caution you to reconsider making them joint under your health care power of attorney. Now, whatever you decide, whether they're going to be alternates, whether they're going to be joint, or whether they're going to be co, you need to make sure that your documents are clear when you have multiple multiple what we call fiduciaries, that's the legal term that talk to that as a trustee or a personal representative or agents under your powers of attorney. If you're going to have multiple fiduciaries, you need to make sure that your documents are clear as to whether they're joint and have to work together or our co with the ability of any of one of them to work with the other. Because what we find generally with banks and other financial organizations, if you simply name multiple fiduciaries, you say my son Kevin and my daughter Maureen, they are going to treat that as joint, meaning they both have to work together unless the documents clearly indicate that they have authority to act independently and in our situation. What Amanda and I do is, if you're going to have them as co our documents are going to have language in them indicating and confirming that any one of them

13:43 can act independently of the other. Of course, Amand and I would be honored to have the opportunity to help you protect your loved ones by either putting together your state plan, perhaps a mending of plan that you already have, or assisting you and settling in a state. And certainly if we're going to be putting together that estate plan for you or amending, we can have that conversation. If you're going to consider making children or even people who aren't children as joint or co fiduciaries, but if we can be of assistance to you, please go to our website, which is Doyle LAWPC dot com. There you're going to find information on how to schedule an appointment with us. It might be a virtual consultation zoom or telephone, depending upon wherever you happen to live in the state of Michigan, or it might be an in person consultation at our New Eastland and Saying office. So go to the website. You're going to find information on how to schedule a consultation, how to send information ie documents and data to us that we are going to need as part of that consultation. A reminder too, if you're simply looking for an individual document,

15:18 maybe all you need is a certificate of trust because you're looking at selling real estate that's owned by a trust. Head on over to our legal store, which again is at DOYLELOWPC dot com and there you are going to find the legal store where you have the ability to order documents online without the need to schedule a consultation. Now you're going to submit information to us. We are going to review that information and once we review it will determine do we need to talk to you or do we have everything that required. But essentially you can order individual documents online. Again, all of that is available at Doyle Law PC dot com. Well, that's going to be it for today.

16:17 As always. Ooh, if you have a comment about the program, a topic that you'd like to have me discuss, or questions that you'd like to have answered again, you can send me an email tom at Tuesday dot com or again at the new website. Whether you're on your smartphone or your tablet or a regular computer. Simply click on the microphone and you can leave an audio message for me again, a comment, a topic you'd like to have me discuss, et cetera, and please follow us on Facebook. That would be Tuesday with Tom and the Office's Doyle Law PC, and we would encourage you to invite your family and friends to follow us as well. Remember too, the program is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcast, iHeartRadio Speaker. Recently we added Amazon Music to our podcast distribution channels. Perhaps probably wherever it is that you listen to your podcast, you will find Tuesday with Tom and you can always ask even your smart speaker to play Tuesday with Tom. Well, thanks again for spending seven of your time with us today and as always, I hope that you have an awesome day and an awesome week in Michigan. Stay safe. Tuesday with Tom has been brought to you by the estate planning attorneys at Doyle Law PC. To learn how we can

17:52 help you with your estate plan or with settling a loved one's estate, please call us today at five one seven three two seven three six six. That's five one seven three two three seven three six six