State (of) Trust

     What a fading word that is in today's world...trust.  Even the guy at the copy shop laughed when I told him that I needed to make a copy of my "trust" for the estate attorney we were interviewing.  There was a time was a handshake was as good as a contract and when a promise was just that, a promise.  But somehow it would seem that we've veered away from that, viewing things with an almost-skeptical eye first, then a semi-trustful one down the road.  Think of when someone is nice to you, even on the phone.  It almost shocks you (and impresses you), as if being nice was something unusual.  Decency, integrity, honesty...these days, it almost seems foolish to believe the person who tells you, "trust me."  What happened?

     At my age, thinking of wills and trusts should have been completed long ago (sheepishly we only completed everything some ten years ago).  But now we were heading to another estate attorney because, well, things had changed.  The pandemic, the crazy drivers on the road, friends suddenly finding themselves with medical problems, our memories dropping off a bit...all the fears and symptoms of getting older had arrived and we wanted to shore things up a bit.  Besides, of the many estate planning books I'd picked up from the library, the main message had been this: when was the last time you reviewed your will or trust?  Gulp...in our case, it had indeed been a long time.

     But let me back up a bit.  Why even have a will or a trust?  Or a health directive?  It's a question many people ask since it boils down to planning for your death, which can seem a long ways away.  To the young, such thoughts are somewhere in a galaxy far, far away (they were for me, even well into my 50s).  But time moves by quickly and soon you find that you are married or working at a pretty good job; a house may now be in the picture, perhaps even a baby somehow burping on your shoulder.  Life is good, then the freak accident happens.  You slip down the stairs and you're somehow hospitalized; or the doc finds a growth that requires a biopsy.  Maybe your spouse discovers that there's a genetic trait in the family that doesn't bode well for the future.  Nah, you say, not you.  That sort of thing happens to others.  You can easily look forward to the future, to being a parent and before long, a grandparent.  And besides, you don't really have that many assets that you have to worry about; your savings account is adequate even if you still owe on your house; and your car is only a few years old...your kids and your spouse and your dogs will be fine.  Then the medical bills begin to arrive.  Luckily, your co-pay is only 20%...so that torn ACL will only cost you about $10,000 (20% of an average cost of $50,000).  That's out of pocket from your savings.  But let's say there's an off chance that you somehow get a bad case of Covid and you're now in the ICU and on a ventilator, along with the prospect of possibly not getting out soon enough to return to work.  So let's see, the average cost of a single day spent in the ICU on a ventilator is more than that $10,000 co-pay, said the National Institute of Health.  After a month, your portion of the bill (at 20%) would be $60,000...and now you're finding that your insurance company may not cover your Covid ICU bill because you had decided not to be vaccinated (many insurance companies have already made such rulings, said Forbes).  So your bill now soars to $300,000.   Wait, what??

     So what the heck does all of this have to do with planning for the future?  Let's take scenario #2: you already have a will so why on earth would you need another backup, a trust?  And here the answer is yet another financial one...that $10,000 figure.  That's the average amount involved in probate, at least in my state.   If your dad passed away and left a will that said that you inherited the house and $10,000, a will sends you to probate court where a judge (and an attorney you need to hire) will decide if the will and its instructions are valid (and that nobody is challenging it).  So that $10,000 (or more, if the will is contested and gets dragged down into the muck)...adios (but hey, you still got the house).  Not so with a trust which basically says you're still here...a trust (and your wishes) "live on," as the phrase goes.

     Whoa, you say.  Am I some sort of salesperson trying to drum up business?  Uh, I am nowhere near any sort of legal expert or anywhere near qualified to offer advice on what you decide or what you should or shouldn't do.  In fact my only recommendation would be for you to nab a few of the books I peeked at and to make your own decision...I read three right off the bat and can recommend them all.  The first was written by Jeffrey L. Condon, a practicing estate attorney (and one dealing with probate as well) for well over 20 years; his book, The Living Trust Advisor, was written with practical advice all speckled with his dry sense of humor and laced with examples of his actual dealings with clients; when it came to settling estates, he carefully explains how to avoid the common and not-so-common mistakes people make in thinking they had covered their bases (or put another way, the surprises that awaited the beneficiaries when they discovered what the will or trust had missed).  I found that many of my  "I knew that" thoughts were quickly dispelled (and that my wife and I should head back to an estate attorney).  Another book was from the now-rather-famous publishing house of legal books, NOLO Press and their Make Your Own Living Trust, a no-nonsense book that provides legal and downloadable forms to fill out and file (at about 1/10 the cost of visiting an estate attorney).  NOLO's book quickly lays out the pluses and minuses of having and double-checking all the documents you may (or may not) have in your possession: a will, a trust, a health care directive, and a springing power of attorney (for when you're unconscious after that accident and unaware that nobody has paid your utility bills, or fed your dog or cats for 8 days).  And finally (and don't laugh), the book Personal Finance After 50...for Dummies.  Despite the title, this rather quick summation proved a good guide for those either nearing retirement or already retired, covering all of the topics mentioned earlier but adding on such age 65+ topics as Medicare and mandatory withdrawals (so deemed by the IRS) of your retirement account/s.  

    Bah humbug, you say.  It won't happen to me, at least not yet.  Besides, as my wife likes to note when I start to dive into the minutia, "I'll be dead so who cares?"  Life goes on, and so does history.  But jump ship for just a bit and picture this short list of artifacts: Megalodon teeth, woolly rhinoceros skulls, Mesolithic cutting tools, Anglo-Saxon fishing baskets, a Roman vessel still holding its original contents (wood, leather, worked bone).  Medieval shoes (complete with the owner’s footprints), swords and spears, Tudor merchant rings and ornate dress hooks, memorabilia celebrating the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza in 1662, a lead seal belonging to the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa (c.1660-75). The skeleton of a 12-year-old girl who died in the 18th century, a ball and chain...innumerable coins, beads, buttons, trade tokens, love tokens, toys and, most common of all, clay pipes.  All of those items emerged from the mud of the Thames River as the tides came and went over the centuries.  As author Tom Crewe wrote in his short piece in the London Review of Books: Objects from the past, if they survive, lose and accrue meaning over time.  Their original human associations and contexts, their given purposes and original attractions, dissolve and are replaced by others, which might be replaced again, and again, and again.  Eventually, some of these objects become ‘historical’.  This process can be relatively benign...but isn’t always, as when a statue, simply by virtue of being old, is valued despite what it represents or the circumstances in which it was erected; or when an object in a museum is abstracted from the violence or exploitation that brought it there.  Other objects don’t go through this process: they are still trapped in time...or travelling through it; they have lost their old meanings, and are waiting for new ones.

     And in a way that is sort of us, isn't it?  Our passing down of "things" accumulated over our lives will eventually prove to be little more than objects in the mud.  Perhaps some inheritance passed down will better the lives of those coming after us, or perhaps not.  But in the end, we living do this sort of estate planning to make it easier for the next group so that we can willingly (or grudgingly) reach out and say, "here you go, here's all the stuff and money I worked hard to get and now it's yours."  In the short run, this can seem important and meaningful to someone, or to both you and that someone.  But step back a bit --as in way back-- and one reads in the recent National Geographic that a single solar flare from our sun can release the power of several billion hydrogen bombs (emphasis mine).  So looking at it that way, who cares who gets your stuff, although I should note that if you perish without a will or a trust, it will likely be the state in which you reside that takes it.

    Maybe a good example to follow might be that of Annie Wilkins, widowed and facing declining health, Wilkins set out to see California.  It was November 1954 and Wilkins had just $34 in her pocket, four layers of clothes (which she wore), a small dog and a sturdy workhorse she had purchased for the journey.  As author Elizabeth Letts put it in her book about Wilkins, The Ride of Her Life: From a modern perspective, her journey seems almost bewildering -- imagine trying to navigate without the benefit of GPS, to travel with no cellphone, no credit or debit card, not even a bank account to draw from.  In fact, when she first set off, Annie didn't even have the kinds of tools that were available in 1954: road maps, a flashlight and batteries, a waterproof raincoat...With each step she took away from Minot (her home town of Minot, Maine), Annie was moving farther away from the people she knew.  Closer to home, she'd felt like a traveler, but as she got farther away, she became something else, a wanderer, a stranger -- in fact, perhaps she could most accurately be described as a pilgrim.  The Christian theologian Richard R. Niebular wrote, "Pilgrims are persons in motion --passing through territories not their own-- seeking something we might call completion, or perhaps the word 'clarity' will do as well, a goal to which only the spirit's compass points the way."  Annie was becoming a pilgrim.  From here on in, she would be dependent on the kindness of strangers.

     Kindness.  There's another word, kindness...and fairness.  Life may be grand and all, but sometimes life isn't fair.  Leland Stanford was just 15 when he succumbed to typhoid fever.  But his death led his father to create Stanford University in his son's honor, saying "...the children of California will be my children."  In an article in The Economist, it was noted that the re-opened exhibition of Stanford senior and his son's collections are displayed in an ornate fashion, but that: ...The objects are mute...But it spurs the visitor to ask more questions -- as if Stanford's history, like all history, were an ornate cabinet with compartments begging to be opened, revealing a more nuanced truth.  

Annie Wilkins; photo: Penguin Random House

    What we leave or don't leave may not need to be money or objects.  Maybe the stories and memories we leave are more important, more so than the regrets.  For my wife and I, it was felt that if we could help a few charities and a few people to get a bit of breathing room, even if only for a moment, then our dying wishes would be fulfilled, as would our lives.  For Annie Wilkins, she left her farm (her health didn't allow her to make enough to pay the taxes), her home, her life really, and begin her slow poodle across the nation, from Maine to California trusting only her instincts and her courage...and a few strangers along the way.  She would simply have to see where all of that would lead her, and to trust that everything would work out.   In today's constantly changing world, it may be a good time for us to do the same, to begin trusting...even ourselves.