Natalie Elisha Gold - Estate Planning Essentials

It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Miti Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mitie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com. Hi everyone, it's Bill Black, the exit coach from the Exit Coach Radio show. You know, one of the biggest questions I get on the show is what exactly goes into a business exit plan and when should I start creating mine? Well, I always tell people that the best time to start was 5 years ago, but the next best time is now because you never know when you might need it. So we put together a free report that describes what an exit plan is and what you should know. You can get it free by texting exit plan with no spaces to 442-22. That's exit plan to 44222. Again, text exit plan to 44222. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Well, hello everyone. Thanks so much for joining me once again today. It's always a pleasure to have you with me and my, my esteemed guests. My next guest today is Natalie Alicia Gold from the Gold Legal Group LLP, and they're situated in Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. And today we're going to talk about estate planning for the modern woman. So Natalie, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining me today. Bill, thanks so much for having me. Great to be with you and your listeners. Well, thank you. It's always a pleasure, and we met via a group called Provisors, and you know you're, you're well regarded in the group. I'll tell our listeners right off it's a group of professionals. They get together and talk about cases they may have referred to each other and the outcome of those. So I was very impressed and I thought it would be great to have you on the show before we get into the topic matter. Could you please just share a little bit about yourself and your background and how you came to start Gold Legal Group? Sure, Bill. So my story typically starts at 15 years old or I was in a quite traumatic car accident where I was a pedestrian and two guys were racing their cars from light to light and one hit me. My, the entire left side of my body, I was hit at 60 miles an hour, was decimated, and I have multiple pieces of metal to this day. However, I disregarded my orthopedic surgeon's advice so you're gonna take 10, you know, the 10th grade out, and you're gonna not be walking for a while, and I said, let me show you. And in a month and a half, thank goodness, I was able to be out of the wheelchair dancing and choreographing on stage. So from that moment, though, I knew that I had to give back to the world in a huge way because this was my second chance. And it was a realization at 15, which most people don't have maybe ever in their life. Um, and from that, I, you know, went on to do college in 2 years, law school in 2.5, uh, didn't pay a penny for the law school experience. I teach a lot of people how to go to law school for free as well. And then I said, OK, I'm a young, a spry 23 year old. I worked for a family office of a very wealthy real estate family in New York. So what can happen between father, son, and the other children with money and business disputes of is it fair, is it equal, is it equitable? And then I went to a trust and states firm. I was there for a little bit. I learned the business and I said, you know what? My boss can do what I can do it too. So 24 years old, I, I uh hung my shingle, as they say. On Park Avenue in New York and started, you know, going to every event I could build up a huge uh network and a great business in New York, and then met the love of my life, my husband in Santa Monica, and now we have two gorgeous children, Ariella and Brielle, who are 2 under 2. Uh, so when I speak to my clients, so it's very much from the heart because I am a mom, I am a wife, and I want my clients who are predominantly female to know that they're gonna be taken care of truly when they work with me. Mhm. Mhm. Wow, what a story, uh, what an incredible, um, background and the drive and determination that you showed to, to come back from that tragic incident at age 15 and then to, uh, to, you know, say, nope, that's nice try, but I'm not down and uh. Incredible to start your own law firm at 24. Were you at that point focusing on mainly estate planning or or kind of overall wealth preservation and that type of a thing for your clients at that point because I know you got into wealth preservation and we're going to talk about that. But when you first started, what was, what were your thoughts about how you were going to represent your clients? So when I first started my business, it was mostly in the state planning and elder law firm. An elder law, people don't really understand what it is, but truly, it is protecting and wealth preservation of the assets of an older person who may not have gotten the best advice earlier on because they don't have a long-term care policy. They don't have these things that are going to allow them. To truly be able to give a leave a legacy and give something to their children because the cost of, you know, 24/7 care is astronomical. I mean, today we're talking 15 or 20,000 a month. What will it be in 30 years? And then that really piqued my interest of what else is possible. Do I have to wait for people to just be, you know, 70s, 80s, and then figuring out how to basically get them onto to Medicaid? I mean, there has to be a better way. How do we I take the planning by the ranges and truly help these people preserve their legacy during the time that it matters, during the time of their truth, not to say every second of your life matters, but while you still can do something about it, triggers in place to live an amazing life and to and to leave something special to your children, and I know that many of our business owner clients. I mean, why are we working in our businesses? If it's not to leave something better behind. We're getting our lives, our souls, our blood, our sweat, our tears. And if we're truly not taking this planning initiative, I say it's all for naught. That's, uh, you know, there are, there are authors that agree with you. Um, the authors of, um, of thee myth would say if, you know, if you're not getting in your business to create a better life for yourself and someday sell your business, just get a job somewhere because you're taking on a lot of responsibility and extra effort, um, you know, if you're not focusing on creating some, some wealth for yourself down the road. You might be better off to just get a job somewhere else, but you know, but a lot of people would obviously disagree with that and say, well, no, it's because of my independence, it's because of my ability to do things on my own, but what they don't realize is when you're the boss, you put a target on your back a lot of the time and you take on a lot of other risks and if you don't deal with those risks, they can, you've seen it, I've seen it, they can really come back to haunt you. Um, at a time when, when you, uh, yeah, when you at least, you know, you're not expecting it or. Honor that you are comparing me to Michael Gerber and the EI. I will take that every day, and I will also say that I believe he says that if you're just working yourself without a plan, you're basically working for a lunatic, right? And then on the second school of song, which I think we did a great job bringing up where they say, no, you know, it doesn't really matter. We we're a rugged individual like my kids will figure it out, but I want to be independent. Great. Why would you then want to invite? Your potential ex-wife, every creditor under the sun to be part of the wealth that you're building. If you still value your independence and if you still value your privacy, what's happening in the four walls of your business, you cannot afford not to do planning to protect that. Business, because otherwise you're not, you're the least bit of independent. You're no longer independent. Now every single employee who hits you up, every person who visits your premises and falls and hurts themselves, every negligent accident, every potential marriage, everything now becomes your business partner. Why? Yeah, it's a really, really good point. Um, now, um, I've had, I've had other guests on the show that have said, you know, when you, if you were to buy a mutual fund, let's say you put $100,000 into a mutual fund. You would expect to pay a management fee for the management of that fund, and you would expect them to look at it, look at the portfolio, make adjustments as necessary, protect it in down markets, etc. etc. However, a lot of our clients have a business worth many times that, and they don't, they don't budget these management or protection costs and So the idea is that if you were to budget 1% of the value of your business, you could do a lot to protect that wealth. What are some of the things that you just cringe when a business owner comes in and and they don't have and you go, here we go again, why would you, why would you think you could get away with not having this? So many people do not have a few things. They don't even have a basic estate plan. Forget the bells and whistles after the protection planning, all that great stuff, OK? Basically, no one has that unless they've got great help and they all need it. People don't have even the basics, even an I love you will and a plain vanilla revocable living trust. I mean, come on, Bill, you know, let's say a million dollars in assets, which is if you have a little house in California, you have a million dollars in assets, OK? The lawyer, if you die with a will or without one, but not in trust and not something that goes outside of probate, I get to charge by statute $23,000 on your million, and that's, I don't care if you have a mortgage of $800,000 it's on the growth, OK? So people think like they're, they're not gonna go to a lawyer. They're not, what are they thinking? I mean, a, a little tiny fee to a lawyer can save you that amount of money just on the first million. Now if you're a business owner. You're clearly gonna be, you know, worth potentially more. And for a bigger business owners, I mean, I have billionaire business owners who don't have business the state plan, and I'm begging them, let's get something together and they're always too busy. And believe you me, Bill, I've had times where, you know, we're gonna get to it, we're gonna get to it, we're gonna get to it. Daddy, business owner, goes on a trip abroad and comes back essentially as a vegetable. With no will in place, no trust, no nothing. I have another client that's worth, they were worth as a family, 3 brothers, about a billion dollars between them, and they are immigrants, OK? They made this from ground up. Well, lo and behold, I beg them, let's do planning, let's do planning, let's do planning. Well, they're too busy, too busy, too busy. And guess what? The brother ship, you know, broke apart. Now they're all worth a tremendous amount less because of the, the liabilities and the tax bite of having to sell this property. Why? I mean, you know, if we're gonna take an endeavor upon our lives, why would we not put ourselves in the best position to succeed from the beginning? And the truth is, no matter what a lawyer charge you, OK, it's a pittance compared to what you're saving because no lawyer who is ethical and who's more is gonna charge you like if you have a, a billion dollar business and you're gonna be saving hundreds of millions in tax, who cares what the legal fee is? Right, I mean, it's just, but, but some people, you know, they want, they don't think like that and it's unfortunate because then I have their wife. And their daughter's coming to me and saying, begging me, please, please make them do it, please, cause they know that they're gonna be dealt that shitty hand of having to figure it all out and they don't have, you know, necessarily the business experience working the business to know what to do. So I think though the biggest thing is people have to get it done. I mean, I know it's annoying. I know it can be hard, but with the right professionals, it doesn't have to be. It just, it's an explanation. Here's what we're going to do. Let the professionals handle it and let them explain to you and guide you to what you're gonna do. Now, if you want independence, if you want to protect your family, there is no better way. And I would also say, Bill, you've got to involve the family because if you're saying, you know, Little Jimmy, he's really been working very hard and, and he deserves the business. But then you have another child, Bobby, who's out there partying in the pre-COVID days, but I don't want to be unfair to him and we're gonna split the business fifty-fifty. Believe you me, Jimmy who's been working day in and day out, not gonna be too thrilled about that. And is there enough money to buy out, Bobby? And if there's not, I mean, now Bobby is the the business partner and, and on everything Jimmy's doing 100% of the work he has to give a 50% cut to his brother. That doesn't bode well for family harmony. No, that means unhappy Thanksgivings. So yeah, I had a situation real quick that a friend of mine was actually working out and died of a heart attack at age 57. And without, without, without, you know what her before, before that happened, I had met with him and his wife, and she said exactly that we don't even have the basics. Before we had a chance to get those basics in place, he passed away suddenly. And Natalie, it took, it took months of time of planning. It took thousands of dollars of lawyer fees, and it took hours of wasted time for the poor widow just to clear the probate on the property, to clear the name on go through probate and clear his name off of it so she could sell the business. He would never have expected it to take so much effort and time and money. To clean up something that would have taken a couple 1000 bucks with an attorney, a few 1000 bucks with an attorney. This happens all the time, Bill, you know, and people think when they say to their wives and to their kids, don't worry, you'll you'll be taken care of. Those are the scariest words in the English language to me. Run and speak to an attorney to make sure because let me tell you something. I know plenty of financial advisors who are taking these month in, month out, but the beneficiaries are not listed on those accounts. So then when the time comes time to pay out mommy and, and kids, it's not happening and they're having to go through King. And so let's say in the traditional pro pre-COVID world it was 6 months to a year, OK, to do to do without, without anything today there is no like what courts are open to be taking this. So what do people think? You know, they, and it's a reality check, like, just get it done. And, and realistically, if you value your independence and you value your privacy as I do, why would you want the court? To be involved intricately with your intimate affairs. Just make sure it's private and that's what trust does. It's very simple. A trust is a legal document that allows for your stuff to go to the people who you want to go to without anyone else's business, without anyone else's intervention. It doesn't have to be a scary thing, doesn't have to be just for billionaires. It is accessible to all people. I highly, highly, highly suggest that they get it. Very good. Now let's turn the page to those that already have a trust, but they haven't dusted it off for a little while. Um things laws change, ah, situations change, beneficiaries change, marriages change. When and how often should someone have that document or set of documents reviewed? Minimum 3 years, just take it out, see where it's at, and, and even the taking it out and seeing where it's at though. So many people don't even know. The kids don't know where the original documents are. And that document is as good as never been done for you, if you don't know, you have to, you know, truly make an effort to involve the family and your person who you appointed as executive and not part of the family to know where are those documents physically, right? That's very important. And then anytime there's a life change, there's a new member to the family, there was a death heaven forbid, there is a new marriage, there is a divorce, there's a new piece of property, there's a new account. All of these things need to be taken into consideration. And look, if any of the listeners are lucky enough to be having a tremendous liquidity then, the time to be speaking about how to structure that is not after you cash the check. You want to get on a forward moving basis and play offense so that you can maximize your life's work to go to your family or to your charity or to your whatever you want to go to so that. You know, you're not gonna be just giving it out to any creditor or anyone that comes knocking. You didn't work this hard to allow that to happen. Now what about financially? A lot of times these assets are not liquid. So for instance you mentioned where you had the two brothers and one was working very hard in the business, the other was not working in the business, and all of a sudden the parents pass away and they, you know, by, you know, maybe by bad planning they decide to leave the business to both brothers equally. What would, what role would Other liquidity devices like life insurance play in planning and what should people, what are some tips for people who have um illiquid assets? All right, life insurance is an absolute must, especially in those scenarios. There's no way around it. You gotta get it young and healthy so that it doesn't cost you a fortune and that it will be able to be a lump sum amount of cash because 50/50 is easy when there's 5 million bucks in the bank account and that's it. You get 2.5 to 1, 2.5 to the other, and go on your merry ways. It's very, very rare that someone is sitting on cash like that without other investments that are not liquid. You got to get the life insurance to free up the family, say that, OK, maybe at the end of your life, yeah, you know, you don't have a need for life insurance or whatever. The life insurance today that I'm seeing the majority of people why they need it, it's not so much the death benefit. It's the long term care rider that's attached to that life insurance policy that will pay for your care, which, by the way, the majority of us are going to need. So even if there may not be a death benefit. Need there certainly will be a long term care need. I mean, if we're lucky, right, if we don't get hit by a bus and that's the end of our lives. But the majority of people are going to be aging gracefully and that aging takes a lot of money. So you need that protection, and I think, you know, to your point, Bill, about it's not liquid and the two brothers. OK, so from the one perspective of the business, if they're going to run into the ground because they're going to have such resentment, etc. So let's say just on a basic piece of property, your primary residence, and you're going to leave 50/50 to your two kids, OK? In California there's an amazing law that allows for the kids to inherit the property tax basis. So if you bought it for next to nothing, and today it's worth 3 to $4 million which is not such a crazy example, right? It happens all the time. Right. Your basis of the $3000 a year you're paying for tax is gonna now raise to $35,000. That's a year after year. That's a big difference. But if you leave a 50/50 to the kids if they're not being their name on the deed, and one is buying out the other, you're now gonna have a 50% adjustment in that property tax for the one that's keeping it. Well, that changes the dynamic a lot now, doesn't it? So wouldn't it be easier if you just had this conversation, I mean, it's year after year. That's huge. So instead, you say, you know what, this life insurance is gonna go to you, Natalie. You're gonna get this life insurance because you don't want the house, and you're gonna get a free and clear. God bless you, go have a nice life. And you feel, you want to raise your kids in this house, you feel like this is a family house, you want to keep it forever. You're gonna get the house. And now you preserved your property tax bases. We still love each other because we both feel like we were treated fairly, you know, equitably, it's not exactly equally. And we've had buying into this plan so that the business, the life that we have lived will not be for enough because our kids on the 2nd generation will not kill each other over money. Natalie, you put it so well, so beautifully. Natalie's website is goldlegalgroup.com, and she's offering for those listening a free will for frontline healthcare workers if you use the code HealthyWE on the website, and I think that's fantastic. So it's freewill for frontline healthcare workers code Healthy WE on the website, goldlegalgroup.com. Natalie, it's been a tremendous pleasure to have you on the show for the first time, and I hope you'll come back soon. And because we have a lot more to talk about, unfortunately we're out of time for today. So thank you so much. I would love it, Bill. Thank you so much for having me. Be well. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. It's true that some things change as we get older, but if you're a woman over 40 and you're dealing with insomnia, brain fog, moodiness, and weight gain, you don't have to accept it as just another part of aging. And with Miti Health, you can get help and stop pushing through it alone. The experts at Mitty understand that all these symptoms can be connected to the hormonal changes that happen around menopause, and Mittie can help you feel more like yourself again. Many healthcare providers aren't trained to treat or even recognize menopause symptoms. MIDI clinicians are menopause experts. They're dedicated to providing safe, effective, FDA approved solutions for dozens of hormonal symptoms, not just hot flashes. Most Importantly, they're covered by insurance. 91% of MIDI patients get relief from symptoms within just two months. You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's join MIDI.com.