Business and Article Roundup: Week Ending March 1, 2024

Summarizing this week

Business Roundup

While I don’t have an outside article to cite this week, I do have some experiences and observations I found interesting.

To start, I realized in a client meeting this week that I often take for granted certain aspects of estate planning that I find easy or simple. This is not often the case for clients, and sometimes the concepts and potential outcomes I think are simple can be extremely impactful to individuals and families. When presented, they can seem like alchemy in some cases. While I am a sample size of one, I would venture to guess that many advice-driven professionals have similar experiences.

I bring this up to mention that it is easy to sell ourselves short, especially when it comes to the value of our advice. This is a lesson I wish I had realized early in my career, as I often felt guilty and felt like I was overcharging for my services - even when I was already charging less than competitors.

In the same vein, much as I mistakenly judged my knowledge as “simple,” clients may also judge their situations as simple. This is an easy conclusion for them to reach because they live that experience every day, much like I recall “simple” knowledge every day. However, we all have seen situations initially judged as simple that end up being anything but simple - especially in estate planning.

What about, however, those individuals and families at the top of the bell curve whose situations are indeed simple? As attorneys and advisors in this space, we have a cynical nature to project our clients’ past adverse client situations onto situations that have not yet reached that point. We hear about the stories planning going wrong, both from DIY projects and using “inexperienced” attorneys. Yet, there are situations every day that go right - even when they are less than idea based on the risk matrix we have adopted.

My point here is a broader disconnect in the marketing of estate planning, that is getting amplified by LinkedIn, TikTok, and other forms of social media. Perhaps focusing less on what can go wrong, and more on what can go right, can be the tide that raises all ships.

Free Article Summary

An Intro to Powers of Appointment

This article summarized the parties to powers of appointment (donor, holder, and donee(s)), while also distinguishing lifetime versus testamentary powers of appointment and limited versus general powers of appointment. We also discussed exclusionary powers of appointment against the backdrop of ways in which a power can be exercised (outright distributions, transfers to other trusts, changes in trust terms for existing trusts, or even creation of new powers of appointment held by one or more donees). Finally, we explored the traditional view of strict compliance against the trend towards equitable remedies such as substantial compliance and selective allocation.

This is an area I find simple, but can have outsized impact (good and bad) as I mentioned above. As wealth shifts to lifetime or generational trusts for the next generation(s), powers of appointment will be an important estate planning tool.

Paid Article Summaries