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Succeeding in the Estate Planning Game
"You don’t need to be intimidated by the generation-skipping transfer tax, retirement benefit disclaimers, or grantor-retained annuity trusts. You don’t have to take on that huge learning curve."
– Sally Mulhern
Nationally renowned estate planning attorney Sally Mulhern knows her trusts and tax law. She likely could fill volumes discussing charitable lead and remainder trusts, QTIPs and ILIDs, – as well as EGGTRRA – The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.
But in Estate Planning to Die For, written for financial professionals, Mulhern explains that investment advisors don’t have to be acronym geeks to successfully navigate the waters of estate planning. She also argues the most important trust is that which exists between clients and members of their estate planning teams.
Rule #1 in Mulhern’s book is to assemble the right estate planning team – which she defines to include the financial advisor, estate attorney, CPA and insurance agent. “When the strengths of all team members are combined, the whole is always greater than the sum of the parts.”
One of the great benefits of the team approach, Mulhern explains, is that clients feel they are receiving unbiased, comprehensive advice. In many ways, the team approach ensures professional checks and balances. The insurance agent, for instance, may be called upon to provide a product that fulfils certain estate planning aims recommended by the attorney. Because the attorney is a fiduciary – paid directly by the client – the client is more likely to trust that they are not being sold a policy simply for the insurance agent to meet a commission quota that month.
Moreover, clients benefit when team members communicate. Financial advisors, because of their close relationship with clients and frequent communication are possibly in the best position to alert other members of the estate planning team to important changes that affect the clients’ goals. Mulhern shares the example of “Joe” a financial advisor who astutely contacted Mulhern when a mutual client was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Because they acted before the client’s death, Joe and Mulhern enabled the family make use of a gifting clause in the client’s durable power of attorney and save the heirs nearly $20,000 in estate taxes.
Mulhern is frequently sought out as a speaker for financial services training sessions because of her ability to explain complex legal subjects with humor and humanity. Her paperback book is a reflection of that same approachable style. At 130 pages, it’s a quick jaunt through the main issues financial advisors should understand when addressing the estate planning needs of their affluent clients.
Mulhern explains, for instance, the top three priorities of estate planning are to:
- Avoid the cost and delay of probate
- Minimize taxes
- Avoid the Menendez problem
The “Menendez problem”, a Mulhern coined expression, is the inability of some families to communicate important aspects of their estate plans – creating a vacuum of anxiety and potential hostility among family members.
All of these goals of estate planning can be achieved when team members work together to find solutions.
Sally received her law degree in 1982 from Cornell Law School. She is a founding partner in the law firm of Mulhern & Scott, PLLC, with an office in Portsmouth, N.H. Sally concentrates in sophisticated estate planning techniques, is a fellow of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, and has been selected by her peers as one of Woodward & White’s The Best Lawyers in America.
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