05/08/2024
Do you have your affairs in order?
I ask that because I have spent the last three weeks going thru living hell with the 82 year old mom who lost her 52 year old only son. I have spent nearly every waking and sometimes sleeping hours on the phone, texting, spending the night, fighting thru files, computers, hunting for records of this man’s life because no one expected him to die before her. A single 100% owner of a real estate brokerage with three girls, 18, 19 and 8 he was responsible for the care of them, his 87 year old Dad with dementia and in some degree his mom. He was the cornerstone of so many peoples lives plus over 50 agents. Beloved in the community. I am sure he thought he had everything in good order when he sat down with his attorney two years ago after his divorce to update his estate. Two years later that turns out not to be the case.
First everything has frozen. The business has no broker necessary to conduct business, income dries up. Agents move on . Money that flowed from the business to support all of these people in the living trust dries up yet automatic payments are trying to come out. Unfortunately he may have somehow made his girls trustees of the trust once they hit majority so grandma is not in control. We need lawyers as this is so poorly drafted. The girls are young naive and had only dreamed of going to college this fall.
We want to hire lawyers but there is no liquidity anywhere to even do that. There is a $275,000 policy made payable to the trust but nothing is filed yet as we need lawyers to do that!
I thought mom and I could save the day with the nearly 2.5 million retirement plans as mom is a trustee but to our horror we found his Wells Fargo premier brokers sold him two annuities using nearly every single cent of liquidity last June ignorantly putting them in the name of his business as the owner and payable to the defunct business. Though titled retirement plans Wells Fargo claims they were set up as company accounts per the clients directions because they can’t set up qualified plans taking no responsibility on their part to know better.
Now we really need lawyers because this is a prohibited transaction subject to a possible 100% penalty to the IRS left like this and Wells Fargo refuses to fix as they don’t admit these accounts are qualified plans . Despite the fact they are called qualified plans, used the qualified EIN we provided, and they even set the accounts up online as tax exempt. It was only when mom and I found the original paperwork that we can see them labeling them as c corporation accounts to get around their internal software that does not let them open qualified plan accounts.
Mom and I have been working long hours researching records and I am concerned for her health. I nearly called the paramedics when her blood pressure shot to 195 over 120 the other day.
All because despite his best efforts two years ago this was poor planning .
Therefore I plead every one to do a MOCK Death. Go through steps in detail with what will happen if you drop dead tomorrow, next year and so on.
I don’t want to hear another person say “they can deal with it when I am dead” unless you truly hate your heirs and family.
-Sandra R. Turner
