Pass the Power – Protecting Your Legacy Through Estate Planning – ep.172

Did you know the median wealth of a single Black woman in America is just $100, while the median wealth for white men exceeds $28,000? Or that the racial wealth gap between Black and white families hasn’t changed in over 30 years?

This is not about a lack of hard work. It’s about systemic barriers—generations of missed opportunities caused by inequities in access, education, and estate planning.

That’s why this episode is so important.

We’re sharing a powerful replay of Pass the Power, a live webinar hosted by the Tracy Area Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, where I serve on the Economic Development Committee. This conversation features attorney Charlene Usher, Managing Partner of Usher Law Group, APC, who breaks down why estate planning is not just for the wealthy.

Charlene shares:

• Why every family needs a living trust
  
• How estate planning protects your assets and your voice
  
• Practical steps to begin building intergenerational wealth—starting today
  

This is essential knowledge for our communities. Let’s talk about legacy, power, and how we pass it on.

Melyssa Barrett: Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. This podcast is for those who are interested in the conversation around equity, diversity, and inclusion. Each week I’ll be interviewing a guest who has something special to share or is actively part of building solutions in the space. Let’s get started. Welcome to the Jali Podcast. I’m your host, Melyssa Barrett. Did you know that the median wealth of a single black woman is just $100? While white men own a median of over 28,000 in wealth individually, or that the racial wealth gap between black and white families hasn’t budged in more than 30 years? We’re talking about generations of missed opportunities, not because we don’t work hard, but because access, education and estate planning have often been withheld from our communities. That’s why this episode is so important. We are sharing a special replay of a live webinar hosted by the Tracy Area alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated, where I serve on the Economic Development Committee.

This webinar featured a powerhouse attorney Charlene Usher, who is the managing partner of ULG Law, A PC, and Charlene breaks down why estate planning isn’t just for the wealthy, how living trusts can protect your legacy and what steps you can take right now to build intergenerational wealth. Special thanks to our co-hosts and partners, including the California Association of Black Lawyers or Cable, and Charlene Usher, a member of cable for pouring into us with her time, wisdom, and heart. This isn’t just about planning for the inevitable, it’s about taking intentional action to protect what you’ve built, uplift your family and close the wealth gap for good. So tag a friend, share this episode. Start the conversation in your family. Your legacy depends on it. So now let’s pass the power.

Tanya Vaughn: Good morning and welcome to Past the Power Webinar. It’s such a pleasure to welcome all of you here today on behalf of Tracy Area alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated. This event is proudly hosted by the Economic Development Committee. I am Tanya Vaughn, vice president and we’re excited to share this important conversation on how to build and transfer estate wealth within our communities. We want to thank the California Association of Black Lawyers, Charlene, usher of ULG Law and live well physical and mental health because we all know that financial health has an impact on our physical and mental health. Now it’s a pleasure to introduce the dynamic woman leading our chapter with Grace, vision and dedication. Our chapter president, Elizabeth Baker, Liz Baker has served as president of the Tracy Area alumni chapter since 2021. Under President Baker’s Leadership, our chapter has strengthened its impact in the community, advancing initiatives and social action, economic and educational development and political awareness. Her dedication is not only admirable, but truly inspiring and we are grateful for the leadership in her vision, which has truly moved our chapter forward. Without further ado, I welcome my chapter president Liz Baker.

Liz Baker: Good morning to all and thank you to my soro Tanya Vaughn for the introduction. As she stated, I’m Liz Baker. I am the outgoing president of Tracy Area alumni chapter, and I’ve had the absolute privilege of serving in this role for four years and I can’t think of a better way to end my term and our program year by hosting this all important discussion on living trust to gain a better understanding of the benefit of protecting our assets no matter how small they may be to better position our families for prosperity. I want to thank our economic development chair, Melyssa Baird and her committee for their hard work and putting this together for our community. Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Incorporated has a long history, 112 years to be exact of educating and advocating for those often overlooked and undervalued. Our commitment remains the same today as we stay abreast of issues and offer programs such as this to meet the needs of those we serve. You can learn more about who we are and what we do by visiting our website or drop by our booth as any one of the Juneteenth this year. Tracy’s on June 7th and Mountain House on the 21st. Without further ado, I’m excited to get started. So I’ll pass the baton back to our chapters President elect Tanya Vaughn to move us along. Thank you and welcome.

Tanya Vaughn: Thank you, president Baker. Now I’m excited to introduce another inspiring woman whose work and leadership to make a powerful impact. Tamara Mico. Tamara currently serves as corporate counsel at Penguin Solutions Inc. She has been licensed to practice law in California since 2014 and specializes in data privacy, information security contracts, intellectual property and labor and employment law. Most recently, Tamara was elected president of the California Association of Black Lawyers for the 2025 2026 term. A tremendous honor and testament to her dedication to justice and representation. She is also a proud member of the Tracy Area alumni chapter of Delta Sigma, the sorority Incorporated, where she serves as chair of the Economic Educational Development Committee and leads our youth program and efforts with passion and purpose. I welcome my Sora, Tamara Michael,

Tamara Michael: It is a pleasure to be here. This is double the fund for me. I’m very passionate about both of these organizations. On behalf of the California Association of Black Lawyers, I’m thrilled about what’s in store for you today. This year, cable launched a new initiative called Cable Connects, which is our intentional effort to directly support the community through education, volunteerism, and where possible financial assistance. This partnership with Tracy Area alumni chapter is our first under the education prong. If you follow us on Facebook and LinkedIn, then you can stay tuned about some of the programming that we’re planning for the future, including understanding your rights as an employee, navigating ed rights for your children, and advocating for yourself as a patient. Crucial topics that are important to our community, given the disproportionate impact on people of color this today, this is all about empowering all of us, not just legal professionals, and it’s how we collectively as my theme for the year states reclaim our shine.

So today you’re in for a really big treat with a dynamic and brilliant estate planning guru. Attorney Charlene Usher. Attorney Charlene Usher is a graduate of Cal Poly Pomona and uc Law sf, which is formerly the University of California Hastings College of Law. She’s been practicing law since 1998 and established Usher Law Group now ULG Law A PC in 2001. She’s admitted to practice before the California and United States Supreme Courts as well as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She’s passionate about helping families understand the importance of the state planning to provide for and protect themselves and their families from court costs and conflict that happen often in probate. Additionally, she loves to help people leave a legacy in support of their favorite causes or charities so that they can live on beyond their natural life. Attorney Usher also specializes in probate and trust administration.

She was the founding president of Richard t Fields’s Bar Association, representing the interests of attorneys, judges and law students in the Inland Empire. She is a life member of the National Bar Association, the California Association of Black Lawyers, women Lawyers of Los Angeles, black Women Lawyers of Los Angeles, and John n Langston Bar Association. And just before we turn it over to her, we want to get you guys thinking, understanding why you’re here today. So we’re going to kick it off with a quick little poll and once the poll is complete, we’re going to pass the baton to Attorney Usher to help us understand how to pass the power.

Charlene Usher: Fantastic. Thank you for that introduction and while you also working on the poll, I want to thank you all for taking time out of your Saturday morning. I know we’re all busy. It’s graduation season and fo and party and all the things, so it’s kind of tough to get up and show up for a webinar like this, but it’s super important. So I’m glad you all are here. I want to also congratulate Tamara Michael on being elected as the president of Cable. I’m a proud life member and I have served on the board and I know that she is an excellent leader. I have known her since she was a law student and I’m just so proud of all that she’s doing and all these different ways and the way she’s interfacing and interconnecting all of her rules. So I’m excited to be here. Also, I would like to say that the statewide of California does not allow me or any attorney to give legal advice unless we are any attorney-client relationship. So today I’ll be giving general information and I’ll be happy to fill general questions at the end, but you can bring me your specific situation, say, well, what about my uncle and blah blah blah and this and that. We will definitely be happy to answer your questions in a consultation and then decide if we’re going to be working together. But I can’t address specifics today. So I’m super excited to get started and you guys can just let me know. We’ll never be ready to do that.

Melyssa Barrett: All right, we’re at about 86% have answered. So there’s about four people left, so I will end the poll.

Charlene Usher: All right, so I’m looking at the poll results. The first question is, do you have a will? And 80% of the people said no. 20% said yes. That’s good. That’s typical. So if you are in a camp and a family of most people in America who don’t have a plan in place or don’t maybe not have the right plan, the question about do you have a trust, 17% said yes, 71% said no. Also pretty typical and some people need to have theirs updated. That’s a very important point, and I will say that at new law we provide a free review, a trust review every three years. So if you’re our client every three years, we know that things change and your family makeup, your assets, your relationships, and there may be some things that need to be updated so that your plan remains relevant and effective.

Okay, number three says, do you have a power of return? 77% of people said no, and 23% said yes. This one is really important. You are going to touch on it even if you don’t have a lot of assets, you need to have designated someone to be in charge of things if something happens to me. So we’ll be talking about that healthcare directive. Pretty close to the same. 64% said no, and 36% said yes. Do you know if your parents have any estate planning documents? 41% of the people said yes, they do know 14% said no, and 14% said, I don’t know. And then some people have their parents have already passed. So that’s also pretty typical. I will say a lot of times I’m talking to people and they’re saying, I don’t know if my parents have a plan and they need to do something, and then I try to talk to ’em about it.

They become defensive and they feel like I’m trying to kick them into the grave it turn into this thing. So we’ll talk about ways to broach that subject and kind of help them along because they don’t know what they don’t know. Alright, number six. Have you ever been through a probate in California? Most of he said no. 82% it say 9% said yes. And then some people live in a different state. That’s an important point because every state has its own laws regarding state planning, probate, and then test state laws. So you can’t assume that if you went through something in Mississippi, the same thing will happen in California. In fact, it probably will not be the same. Do you own real property worth over $750,000 in California? 50% said yes. 50% said no, that’s going to be important. Do you have children under the age of 18?

27% said yes. 50% said no. So their children that have already passed that point of majority age of majority, and then okay, 23% of the people said they have children that they’re over 18. But some people don’t have any kids and some people have children who are older, some have one younger. So one thing that happens when I talk to people about estate planning, I think people assume when they have some type of way of thinking about a space that makes them think that a states are only people who are rich. So they’ll say things like, I’m not Oprah Winfrey. I’m not Bill Gates or Tyler Perry. I don’t have much. So the question is, do you have an estate? So an estate really is all of your possessions that are titled in your name, and that includes things like if you have a property you’re buying.

Most people do not have a paid off property. That would be fantastic. And most people have a mortgage, but they’re still considered an owner person on title. So that’s part of their estate. Most people have some type of bank account. So even if we don’t own property, if they’re renting, we probably have bank accounts. Most people have at least one car, maybe not, but most people do. And then sometimes people have life insurance policies where they either have not named a beneficiary, which is unlikely, or they have beneficiary that have already passed away. So when you’re thinking about do you have an estate, it’s everything that you owe. So when we’re talking about estate planning is an opportunity for you to decide what happens to whatever you own while you’re incapacitated, and that simply means if you’re injured or ill or unable to manage your own affairs or after you have passed away.

So estate planning is about what happens and who gets to decide what happens to what you have. So what happens if you don’t do anything? You leave things as they are and you pass away. So in California, they have a threshold value of your state that determines whether or not it has to go through. So currently that dollar amount is right around 200,000 and that just changed again in April. So what the situation is going to be when you pass away, everyone’s going to look at what all you have. If you have items such as life insurance and they have the name beneficiary, that will not be counted as part of your estate. If you have bank accounts and you can have a co-owner on that account, that’s not going to be part of your estate. If you have beneficiaries on those accounts, that will not be part of your estate.

But what is part of your estate is everything that is in your name only and it does not have a name beneficiary. So if those things are looked at and the gross value of those items add up to 200,000 or more, you have now punched a ticket for your family, the golden ticket, I should say the rusty ticket to send them to probate court, and now they have to go and deal with all the drama that happens there. So typically anyone who owns any type of real property, and that could include vacant land, but pretty much anything in California is worth more than 200,000. It’s easy for someone who lives in California. They have an estate worth over that amount. So usually people in California should have an estate plan if they want to avoid the details or drama that I’m going to be talking about.

That happened in COVID. So that’s where we are Now, what’s the default plan? I call it the default plan because the state of California says, Hey, if you didn’t document what you wanted to have happen, when you have a plan for your family, they will be going along with what the law says. The law says who your heirs are, meaning who he sees from your estate. The law says who can be in charge of your estate to have that happen? And the law says that your state’s going through probate if the value of everything you have exceed 200,000. Now, sometimes people will say, well, I don’t want a home, but I have a mortgage and I only have $50,000 in equity. So my net estate is a smaller amount. We are not looking at that. They’re going to look at what is the value of your home on the day he passed away, not what you paid for it, not net of what you owe, but whatever the value is on the day he passed away.

That’s what’s going to determine whether or not it’s a part of your estate and it goes into probate. So what happens in probate is typically, and we handle probate in all California counties. So every week I’m in probate court, my team members is in Coate court from Sacramento to San Diego, dealing with somebody’s situation where they did not properly plan, and those probates from start to finish typically take at least two years. I will say, I don’t know if you have any relative in Orange County, but we can count on three years in Orange County and sometimes longer, and that’s the starting point. Sometimes it can go along depending on if there’s anybody testing anything or other issues that show up. But just a basic scenario where we’re filing a petition to open the probate. Nobody’s fighting about anything. Assets are straightforward. We are not going to be able to finish.

We will get an order from the probate court for about two years. So that means that all the assets that are in the bank account, if we sell a property money from that, it’s all sitting in account that can’t really be touched except to paid for in expenses. We cannot distribute anything to any of the heirs until we have that ordered. So if people are relying on that, they’re just going to have to wait, which is not a good thing. So in an alternative, if someone had a trust based estate plan and their trustee is now able to be trust administration, those typically can take less than a year depending on the type of tax filings that we have to do. But usually most things can happen within a six to eight month timeframe. If taxes are up to date, tax returns are up to date, we could be discriminating you within a year.

So that’s the difference on the time and probate versus estate plan. The other thing that happens in probate is everything becomes public director in all California counties. Once we file a petition, what kind of things you might want to know? Well, who are your heirs? Who are people related to you? Who is in your will if you have one? Who is the executor? What your assets worth? Who are your accreditors? All this information because public director, when soon as you follow up a petition for probate and our probate clients will start getting calls from realtors and all kinds of people that are seeking this information. But sometimes people have a good intention when they’re reaching out to you, they want to help and sometimes people are just nosy. So you see this example we have on situation here, especially because people have gone through the pandemic and learned how to use their computers and some people are retired and otherwise and they just have lots of time on their hands and they spend time just searching the web for information.

Now, most people I know, myself included, have not shared with their neighbors who they owe, who their mortgage is with, what kind of credit cards they have, how much their balances are and their bank accounts, none of your business, but guess what? It becomes available to be any one business once it goes into probate. So that’s another reason why we want to avoid that. Then we have a typical cost of probate. We’re going to go over this in more detail on a later slide, but typically just the costs that go into probate are between three to 5,000, and that’s where things like the petition, filing petitions, publication and newspaper, possibly having to have a bond for the person being appointed over the estate and also just different fees that go along paying a public referee to provide evaluation that does not touch the fees. A three to 5,000 sounds like a small number or smallish depending on where you are, but that is just a starting point for things that just are going to happen in every single prob.

But that’s not going to touch the fees, which we’ll talk about later. Okay, so now I’m going to talk about fees that happen in probate. California has this weird system of calculating the fees and it’s strictly based on the value of everything in your estate. The bigger the estate, the more seed fees that the law firm that’s helping with that is going to receive. So for generations, you can probably imagine a lot of people who were doing prob and attorneys were typically old white men and they made a lot of money off a lot of communities. The people who didn’t know that they should do some planning to avoid COVID. So the more that the value of the estate is, again, the more the fees are. So if you’re working in a small estate versus a large estate, the office is going to do the same steps in every single case, but they’re going to make more money just because the value is higher.

So you could think about things like this. Maybe grandma bought a house in the park area of Los Angeles. I’m not sure what the equivalent area of the Bay Area probably Berkeley or Oakland would be. So they bought this house in 1950 or 60 something and it was like 20 or $30,000 and they didn’t die until the nineties or the two thousands or even recently. And so what’s the value of that property that they bought for $20,000 or 30,000 or 50,000? It’s probably 500 to a million if it’s in Oakland or San Francisco or somewhere like that. Even a hole in the wall, tear down property, which we deal with all the time, it’s going to sell for upwards of $500,000. So remember I said earlier, the fees are based on the current value of the estate assets, not what grandma for it. But now that she’s passed away, if she didn’t do proper planning, and we have to go through COVID, now we’re going to go through this calculation of fees.

So in the example I have before you, this estate value is $500,000. So this is pretty low. This is a house. So maybe it have a house, a car, a couple of bank accounts, not a lot. Most of us have more than this, especially the higher value homes. So if this value in the estate was $500,000, what they do is they say the first hundred thousand, we’re going to assess 4% or $4,000 in fees. The second hundred thousand, we’re going to assess 3% or $3,000. Then up to the next 800,000, we assess 2%. Anything over a million gets assessed at 1%. On this example, we out the 500, we accounted for the first 200,000. Now we have 300,000 left. That’s going to be affected 2%, that’s $6,000. That total is 13,000. So that’s my starting point. Well, who’s entitled to the $13,000? Whoever the court appoints to be the administrator or executor of the estate, this is what they are allow as compensation for doing their job.

Now, typically, unless someone is actually a probate paralegal and does it for a living, they don’t know how probate works. So they have to work with their law firm board attorney. They should work with one because it’s very complicated. So the law firm board attorney is also entitled to what they call statutory fees at 13,000, and that’s why you see 26,000. So before anything happens in probate as far as distribution, the order of things are, the cost of probate is taken care of, first administrative fees, then they’re going to be whatever the person left behind and that’s going to be handled from whatever’s ending their state. And then whatever’s left over is going to be shared amongst the heirs, which the law determines who those heirs are as opposed to you deciding when you be your own planner. So in a simple state like this one, $500,000, typical $26,000 in fees and three to $5,000 in costs, the attorney or law firm can also be entitled to what’s called extraordinary fees.

That happens if there’s a sale of a real property that they have to be logged in or if there are any disputes they have to respond to. Now they can charge their hourly rate for how many hours that they are using for that, and the judge will also give them that. So there are many states that I have worked on where at the end of the day, the legal fees and costs or more than any other heirs received, it’s almost as if the lawyer or law firm became an heir of the estate, another heir, but they got the lion’s share because this is the way this works in California. So this is a reason why we would look to avoid COVID and why we’re talking about estate planning. How can we get our own this? We don’t want this situation. We don’t want our business to be public. We don’t want to have to wait a long time for our family to receive whatever’s coming to them. We want to make our own decisions about what’s going to happen, but we can include people and causes that we care about and we also want to avoid unnecessary treatments.

Melyssa Barrett: Let’s pause for a moment. We’ll be right back.

Charlene Usher: If you don’t document your wishes, there’s always an opportunity for conflict. So I’ll give you an example. When I first started, I had a really close friend of mine who her mother passed away at the age of 44. I’m sure that she thought that she had plenty of time to think about estate planning that most people think about it in their seventies to be honest with you. And so she passed away unexpectedly and she left behind a house. She had a timeshare, she had some bank accounts, some retirement and a couple of cars. Now, she also left behind my friend and my friend’s brother, her two children. She was not married, she was divorced, but she had a lived-in boyfriend. And so he made claims against the estate instead that she had promised him some things if she ever passed away. Her siblings, her two sisters and a brother also said, oh, she promised me I was going to get well.

Instead of this being an open and shut probate matter, it became a contested probate matter, which means we had to go and respond to their allegations. At the end of the day, her two children were her actual only legal heirs, but what they received was so much less because they had to spend legal fees on descending against these people and their verbal statements. So when you document your wishes, there’s no question about what you want to have done because if you properly documented, it’s all laid out and anyone who comes against that can be shut down early with minimal legal fees. So that’s another point of planning is we want to make sure there’s no question about what you wanted to have happen. Okay? So when we’re thinking about our estate planning and estate planning, simply is me documenting who I want to be in charge of things and who I want to receive from my assets, whatever I’m leaving behind.

So you start off with thinking about what I call life planning. Life planning is what happens if I am not dead, I haven’t passed away, but I’m for some reason unable to manage my own affairs. I had an accident, I had a stroke, I had COVID. Different things going on Where I’m for is extended period time, not able to handle things. Well, if you don’t have any documents in place that designates who you have named to be in charge, then someone has to go into probate court and seek conservatorship. And that’s a legal situation where I will tell you I have sat here in those hearings and I handled a couple of them. And I will say that the courts for some reason seem to have a disposition about and the thought pattern about African-American and brown and black people and that their decision is, oh, we don’t think that they’re sophisticated enough to handle things or we believe they have bad intentions and they’re going to take advantage of their relative.

And that’s seems to come out. And the way I see that is every time the court has the opportunity to appoint the person who’s applied for conservatorship depending on their skin color, that’s what happens. They have an option to appoint the person who is presenting themselves and has got attorney and follow on the paperwork, or the judge can authorize a neutral third party called a fiduciary who’s a total stranger to family member to be in charge of things. And what typically happens is that person, this is their job, this is their business, and they’re in the courtroom every day, every week, and they’re kind of buddy buddy with the judge. So I’m here there before we get on the court, the courts calendar starts. They’re chatting about fishing trips and dolphin trips and all kind of things, and I’m like, hmm, they seem to really know each other, and I’m sure judge showing though does not want to pay for a friend to go.

So they’re going to make sure they have a way to pay so they can go on these trips together. Just this is my assumption, but I’m telling you what I see. So it’s a person is white. I’m just going to put it out there. It doesn’t matter if they look like a hillbilly or a professional, they’re going to give them and let them be appointed and they’re going to let them run a month for a while before they remove them when they’re doing things they shouldn’t be doing. But when it’s other people, they assume from the beginning that they’re not able to do it or they won’t do the right things. So we don’t want to be in a situation where our relatives are having to pay a lot of money, like upwards of $10,000 to hire an attorney with very few who do conservatorship to try to get someone appointed so they can help you while you’re recovering and to handle things that you were normally handling.

So how do we avoid that? Good question. I’m glad you asked what they’re going to do. What are we going to do to avoid that in our estate plan is we’re going to have two documents that are life planning documents. Those are power of attorney and our advanced healthcare director. So the power of attorney gives my agent the person who I’ve named their right to handle primarily financial and legal affairs, anything where I would’ve had to sign for myself, but now I can’t. So if it’s insurance claims or paperwork, if it’s my banking, if it’s making sure my utilities are handled, my power of attorney agent can use that document that I have drafted to do that for me. If the conditions that are in that power of attorney are met again if I don’t have any documentation if something happens. So we’re going to have to go on the probate court and get conservatorship of the estate in order to do that.

Now the other side of that for life planning is what happens if I’m having a healthcare challenge? Who’s going to be the person that’s going to make decisions for me if I cannot make that for myself? So let’s say you had a stroke and you’re in the hospital or you’re in surgery or something’s going on and they cannot ask you what you would like to have done with, there’s multiple different paths they can take. The Advanced Healthcare Director primary role is three things. The first one is to have, name my agents, who is going to be the person to make medical treatment decisions for me if I cannot make those decisions myself. This is not end of life, which I’m going to be discussing next. This is medical treatment decisions. The next thing is what happens if I’m actually at the end of my life?

Do I want to have my life be allowed to expire naturally or do you, I want to have artificial needs means to keep me physically alive even if I may be brain dead. But when we’re doing our state planning and we’re going through our discussion about what your options and your choices are, this is a chance for you to document if you’re actually at the end of life. Let me be clear about that. I do not mean emergency resuscitation. I think most of us have watched those shows where we have ER or different shows where their emergency room and they’re trying to revive someone, they break out the pedals and they stay cleared and they try to save that person. This is not that. This is typically the person’s in the hospital and they’ve been there for a while and their orders are beginning to shut down.

So the medical team is saying the person likely has a week to a few weeks to live, and so whatever they’ve documented a to be, I want to be allowed to aspir naturally. That means don’t hook me up to anything. B would be I want you to do everything you can to keep me physically alive, but that to mean that you’re unable to speak but you are feeling pain or you are better. Use all the resources that you have left to pay for that and you are going to pass away anyway. But the decision is totally yours when you’re doing your planning. So with ULG law, we don’t have any judgment on anyone’s decision. It’s totally your body, your choices. We here to make sure you understand what those things mean and you document them. So the next thing that the disaster director does is addresses.

After you’re gone, what happens to your organs? Are there any restrictions on the use of your organs? What? Well, sometimes the organs can be used for transplant to someone else who needs an organ. They can be used for research, education or science or they can not be available at all. So I talked to my clients and 50% of them I would say are in the camp to say, I want to go into the ground with whatever I came with and nobody can have my organs. If that’s what she’s saying, that’s what we’re going to document. Other 50% will say, Hey, I can’t use the organs. I want them to be available, but I might have restrictions like what? Well, maybe I want them to be available for transplant, but not for any of those other things like research, education or science. Or maybe I want them available for any use, but I want my family to have first option to use those organs if they need them.

For example, if I’m in a client today with my own daughter and I pass away, but she lives but she needs an organ, I don’t want her to have to go on a list and get in line. I want her to have first dibs if she can use my organ. If we are match, they’re going to do what they have to do to test all that, and if they find that she can’t need it, that she doesn’t need it, then according to my plan, the organs are available for anybody. But that’s my plan. So everybody’s plan is individual. That’s why there’s no such thing as a one size fits all estate plan because everybody has make decisions and different choices that they’re going to make. So the other thing that happens when I’m talking to clients about the advanced directive, I also want to make sure that they’re clear about what their decisions mean.

So if you say, I want to go under the ground with everything I can with I do not want my organs to be used, I will remind them that that means that if you are in the car accident with your own family member from this spouse under their children and you have said that, that means they’re not available to them either. So you can make a customized estate plan or a document that says, Hey, they’re only available to family members or they’re only available to family members first and then others or they’re not available to anyone. So whatever your choices are, that’s what’s documented and that’s the benefit of having an experienced estate planning attorney who’s walked through particularly probate to see what happens when you don’t document, you don’t cross the T’s and dot the i’s all these little ways that we can end up in a situation that causes more pain from your family.

So when we’re talking about estate planning, this client is talking about things to consider and we’re talking about people who have children. What happens to your children if you’re incapacitated? Well, it depends on the situation. So if you’re married, more than likely your spouse is going to be able to take care of the children, but they may or may not have access to anything that you have any separate accounts unless you document that. So these days a lot of couples have joint things and then they also have their own separate things. So anything that’s in your name again is going to determine whether or not someone else has access and ability to help you with that. That’s why that power attorney and the staff directors come into play. Well, what happens if you share custody? Let’s say you’re divorced or you were never married and your children have a father or a mother.

If you’re the man and something happens to you, then of course they’re going to have their legal rights under family law to pursue custody and taking care of the children, but they may not have access to any of your funds. This is all about what happens there. But in our estate planning we always address, especially for parents, nomination of guardians. That means people who are going to take care of your children, be authorized to for them to go and be with if you are unavailable. So we always look at two types of guardians, short-term guardians and long-term guardians. They could be the same people if everybody lives in the same place. So think about September 11th happened and some people who planned to pick up their kids after school did not make it to daycare or after school or wherever because they didn’t survive. So some of those children had to go into child protective services and be placed with some stranger in their home.

I don’t want to buy New York. I only speak to them myself. My daughter does not spend the night with people, not even people that I know and not even all family members. So I’m definitely not comfortable with her being even for one night and some stranger’s house that I don’t know because I don’t know what happened there. So to avoid that, we want to document in our nomination guardians who is authorized to pick my child up, to sign for them to provide medical care, all those things. So why we have short-term guardians and long-term guardians is because sometimes the long-term guardian could be someone who lives in another state. Like in my case, my long-term guardian is in a different state, and so she might not even get there in the same day. So I need local people. They don’t have to be a relative.

It could be a trusted friend to be my short-term guardian because a long-term guardian is not local, but they can be the same people. So those are just considerations and things we talk about with people who have children, but then what happens to your things? That’s that power of attorney comes in, you’re incapacitated, you’re down, you can’t handle things. Well, your agent could handle things for you if you have nominated them. And I will say that when you document these things, the people who you have listed are nominated, they’re not required. They have an option to say yes or no to that job, but usually you talk to them. That’s the recommendation that we have. And they have already said, yes, I’ll be there for you and your family. If something happens and they’re typically going to contact the attorney and their office is going to give them direction on what to do, they don’t have to figure it out on their own.

That’s another reason to have their estate plan handled and drafted by an attorney or a law firm and not yourself. So some people have questions about, well, what kind of documents do I need? So far we talk about those life planning documents for anyone, our attorney and advance director, if you have those assets that would go through probate. You also need some type of a document for what happens after you pass away. And for someone that has an assets that are above that 200,000 level, a trust is the best way to go. If you have assets that are below or will might work because you’re not going to have to go through COVID. Having a will allows me to document this is who I want to be in charge and this is who I want to receive from my estate. If I want to include people who aren’t family members, like friends or maybe I want to include my sorority, we talked about that in the beginning where if you want to leave a legacy beyond your lifetime, if you want to have something left to your college or university that you went to, this is all things that can happen when you’re documenting your estate plan.

But under the state of California law, if you don’t do anything, your default plan will only include your legal heirs, which are people who related to you. The part that talks about agents is the same question that come up for us. People always ask me, do they have to choose a relative? And the answer to that is no. So when your power of attorney or your math director or your will and your trust, you can choose whoever you want to choose. They don’t have to be in the state of California, but they should be in the United States because if you have a foreign person named as your agent, especially in your trust in your will, that can cause different tax situations for your assets because that’s considered a foreign trust. Not going to go into too much detail on that because most people who we are working with, they’re destining someone who lives here it.

But if we’re consulting with you, we’re going to ask all the questions so that we can make sure you’re making the right decisions. Means that you may not have thought about. Many people are out there, legal zoom, Susie Orman. Many people are going out and they’re talking in these doit yourself kits, doit yourself documents, online things. So what I will say is one of the four ways that our office ends up in probate is do it yourself estate planning. So the first one is the person has no document, they didn’t do anything. So of course we’re going to probate. The second one is they tried to do it themselves. They didn’t know what they were doing. When they go through the questions that come along, they didn’t know that when they answer yes to question four and yes to question 24, that those two things were conflicting and they didn’t think about all the things that the estate planning attorney who’s done this for a while, not just any attorney but an estate planning attorney and particularly one who also does probate because I’m telling you, I see so many things in probate court that inform my estate planning and I go back and say, Hey, I want to make sure my next client has this, this and this because that’s not in the estate planning 1 0 1, but I found out in court why this will be important.

So you want to make sure that you have an expert in the right field that’s guiding you, not yourself unless you are an estate planning attorney and not there’s some forms online because what happens is typically they cause more problems than they saw and the person’s family ends up in probate and they’re wondering why are they in probate when the person dropped the documents. The other way we get into probate is if a person makes a will, but their assets are exceeding that $200,000 we talked about. So the only benefit of that will is that if the will was properly then meets all the requirements. Now if it’s accepted by the judge, the plan of the will will be followed. However, we still have to be in that public domain. We still have to pay all the fees that go along with probate because the will has to go through probate and we still have those timeframes.

So if your asset level exceeds the $200,000, of course our recommendation to you would be to do a trust-based plan because a trust will avoid probate. And I’ll explain a little bit about that later. But we always leave the option to the client. But when you consult with us is to learn about what your options are, how the things will play out on whitner, which you currently have, give you a recommendation and then let you decide what works for you. So we do have some clients that we consult with. They have those asset levels and they decide, I still don’t want to do the trust plan, I just want to will and those other documents and we will be happy to draft them for them, but we know their family’s going through probate when they pass away. So the questions are, can I just go online and find documents?

We talked about that. I think I’m pretty savvy so I can do it on my own. I will say even attorneys mess it up because they don’t know. And this is something that this resonates with me because I always tell people I specialize in what I specialize in and it takes a lot of hours of study and keeping up to make sure that I am an expert in this deal. And I as an attorney who went to law school almost 30 years ago, if I got a divorce, I would not be trying to do it on my own. I would go to my family law colleagues and have somebody known if I got arrested, I know I have the right to remain silent and a right to an attorney and guess what I’m going to do? I’m going to get one because I don’t know how to do arraignments and how bail works.

I don’t want to spend any more time in jail that I have to. So I’m going to get an expert in that field. I’m not going to get a general attorney. So if state planning and probate are definitely those type of fields that don’t lend themselves well to do it yourself and definitely not working with the right expert. So unfortunately, people who do it themselves, they typically do not know how bad they have created their situations for their salary. They don’t know that things have messed up, but their family finds out and they’re the ones suffering and waiting and going through thousands of dollars. So I’ll give you an example of a case that I’m working on right now where this started off in 2020. I was not involved with that time. This case was a husband and wife that lived in a home and for some reason the husband was the only person on title to the property.

So when the husband died, that property had to go through probate in order for it to get to his spouse who were probably involved in the beginning. And this happened a long time ago when people back in the fifties when people didn’t include their wives. So they went through probate in 2020 and that probate took about a year and a half and it cost $10,000. And I only know I just had to look up the order recently and then now the title to that property is in the wife’s name. She decides to get a trust. I don’t know who she worked with, but it doesn’t seem like it was an attorney from what I reviewed. And this trust was put in place and then she decided to transfer the title to the same property to herself and one of her daughters. So instead of her trust just saying, when I pass away, now this is going to go to whoever, she actually put the daughter on title.

So now she passes away the wife and now because it’s a joint tenancy, the property automatically goes to the daughter. But she also had another daughter and a previously son who had a child. Well now in 2023, the second daughter, the daughter who was left on title passes away. She didn’t put anything into its trust. And now because that property is obviously in Los Angeles work more than $200,000, we have to go through probate. So this is the second probate on the same property. And guess what? That $10,000 that was paid for that first one, that’s not the fees this time. This time we’re exceeding $20,000 in fees because the value of the properties in the area of l and a went up considerably this little window of time. And so people don’t think about, oh, what’s going to happen and what’s the cost going to be?

Again, the fees are coming out first, then whatever the person owed, and then whatever’s left over, it’s going to be shared by whoever the legal errors are. So this is the scenario that could have been completely avoided if proper estate planning has happened from the beginning. And then when the people who have beneficiaries, we see what they’re receiving, their property or assets that are above that $200,000, they should also have an estate plan. It just been goes on and on. But the staff part to me is just seeing a family where one asset is going through probate multiple times that each time the fees are higher and higher. And usually people do not have the money in their bank account to pay these fees. So they have to sell the property that could have stayed in the family because it was paid off. They have to sell the property in order to be able to cover those fees first and then take care of everything else the person left behind.

So that’s part of why we do not recommend people doing a do it yourself option. Most people think that estate planning is going to be expensive, and that’s why they’re looking at trying to do it themself or not doing it at all. So at UOG law, we have different options of how people can do their estate planning. So if you come to us, of course we’re going to give you the recommendation that provides the most protection from your family and keeps the most amount of money in your family’s pool or their pot, and also keeps everything private. So usually if you have those assets above the 200,000, it’s going to be a trust plan. In that plan, you’re also going to have a will that covers any personal property that you acquire. After you put your trust in place, you’re going to have those events on planning directive, the health directive, the power attorney, and everything that’s going to happen that needs to make this an effective estate plan.

So lemme put a little asterisk right there. So having a trust is not the end of your estate planning. It’s almost like not quite the beginning but the midpoint. So once you put that trust in place and get that documented and it says, here’s who’s in charge, here’s who gets what and how and when after that gets established through notarization, then funding of the trust has to happen. Funding simply means adding, attaching their assets to your trust. So that’s one of the ways we end up in probate also, which is somebody actually drafted a trust, it was good, but they didn’t attach their assets. So what do you mean by that attorney usher? Well, like their real property, the only way to attach their real property to your trust is to record a deed in the county where that property sits. So whatever county that is in, and you can have ones in different states or wherever, but they have to be attached by a reporting of a deed in this county where their property is.

That says, now instead of me owning my property, now I own my property as trustee of my trust. What that does is it gives a successor trustee, the person you choose to step in your shoes and you cannot handle thingss or after you’re gone, they can now transfer a title through a deed without having to go into public for it. So that’s why the short space plan is the better option. So now if I’ve done that funding, I’ve attached my property, my bank accounts, all the things to my trust, now I have an effective estate plan. So until the funding happens, we’re not quite complete. So we have a flat fee all inclusive option that says, Hey, we’re going to draft the trust, we’re going to draft all the documents we need. It’s going to be customized to the thing that you wanted. You’re going to understand it, we’re going to explain it to you, and then we’re going to give you direction on the funding first with the letter saying, do these things with your individual assets, not just generally, but your specific assets.

And if you feel you need help with that, then you can also hire us and help you with doing that funding part. So if you decide, Hey, I want to do that and I want to pay for it and be done and have that done, it’s usually going to be completed within a 30 day timeframe. We can do that with you. But some people will say, Hey, I think I want to take it piece by piece and I want those life claim documents, like at least having a will at minimum. And also having an advanced directive and a power of attorney. We have options for that. And then some people say, no, I want everything, but I can’t pay for it all at once by their payment plan options. And yes, we do. So we will spread it out over time. Of course, we cannot receive your documents until the plan is fully paid for, but we can at least get started on it and you can get started on your payment plan and it can be however long it needs to be.

That also works for us. So the whole goal is we don’t want to educate you about this is what you to have happen, and then you walk away and don’t do anything. And then if something happens, it’s too late. So I will say in 2024, I have four such scenarios where someone consult with us and then said, I’m going to think about it, and then they may call us back and then their family called us because they passed away. Most of those people were not even old. They weren’t even older than 40. It was really odd. But they called us because they found information on that person’s computer or in their stuff, and they thought that meant that they had gotten some document was drafted by us. When they reached out to us, we said no, we had a consultation and they never came back.

So we didn’t leave their plan. But now we’re going through probate with that family because they put it off thinking they had time. You and I both know that none of us have a crystal ball. We don’t know when our time’s coming. We don’t know when the access’s going to happen, but for a fact that you cannot buy insurance after you have the accident and make a claim for that accident. So the goal of this topic and educating you all is not just for you, but also for you to share with those people in your life who are residents of California who we can help if they’re not a resident of California. They can find an attorney in their state, typically in their county that can help them. But everyone needs some type of plan so that they can decide who’s going to be in charge of things if they become ill or injured, and then who’s going to be in charge of their things when they pass away and how that’s going to work out.

Melyssa Barrett: Thank you everyone, and thank you Benita for all those questions. Everybody who asked is awesome. I will turn it back to Benita for our closing.

Speaker 6: On behalf of the Tracy area alumni chapter of Delta Sigma Data Sorority Inc. And our partners Cable and LiveWell, we thank you for joining today’s impactful session. Special thanks to Charlene Usher from ULG for generous release sharing her knowledge, and if you have any additional questions or need to get ahold of her for assistance in your estate planning, please contact her at the office number that she provided. Can you put up that information again so they have the correct number to contact her please?

Speaker 7: Oh, sure. The number is 8 7 7 7 4 3 7 and the website is ULG law A pc.com.

Speaker 6: Okay. Again, we thank everyone for their attendance and hopefully you’ve heard something today that will help you consider getting your own living trust and sharing it with friends and family members of the importance of this, so we maybe could cut down a little on the go fundees. With that being said, thank you everyone and enjoy the rest of your day and the rest of your weekend as well. Bye. Thank

Melyssa Barrett: You. Thanks for joining me on the Jali Podcast. Please subscribe so you won’t miss an episode. See you next week.