Estate Planning with Rachel Blumenfeld | E040
What business owners need to know about planning for their estate.
In this episode of Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, and writer, interviews Rachel Blumenfeld, a financial advisor in the Estates and Trust group at Aird & Berlis, about estate planning for business owners!
Episode Highlights:
● 0:45 – Rachel Blumenfeld introduces Aird Berlis and her role at the company?
● 1:59 – What usually gets the estate–planning conversation started?
● 3:12 – Rachel discusses the documents that are involved with the estate–planning process.
● 6:44 – What kinds of assets have to be probated?
● 8:05 – What falls outside of the things that have to be probated?
● 10:25 – What is a Bare Trust and how can it help?
● 13:40 – Rachel lists the reasons that one would want the probate.
● 14:41 – How do things change when an American citizen is involved in a Canadian estate?
● 17:57 – What are the complications when an American that lives in the US is named as an executor?
● 20:46 – What is an estate freeze and how does it benefit business owners?
● 23:41 – Rachel breaks down the tax issues pertaining to estate freezes.
● 24:32 – Rachel gives general advice to business owners when they begin to plan their estate.
3 Key Points
1. Financial advisors suggest having 2 wills prepared to avoid both the costs from probated assets and the time that it takes to go through probation.
2. Joint accounts are a common major issue in estate litigations, all to save the probate rate of 1.5%. The problem is, most people don’t actually know the math.
3. There are a plethora of changes to the estate–planning process when an American citizen is involved, with different complications depending on their role, where they live, and if they are living or deceased.
Tweetable Quotes:
● “Estate planning is all about making sure what you have goes where you want it to with as little pain and taxation as possible.” – Jason Pereira
● “If a single asset on a will has to be probated, the entire will has to be probated.” – Jason Pereira
● “What you end up with is the parents end up owning the current value...a trust for the kids holds the future growth, and you’ve pushed out that tax bill on that future growth to the next generation.” – Rachel Blumenfeld
● “There’s no worse way to destroy the family dynamics after you’re gone than to leave the messy estate behind.” – Jason Pereira
Resources Mentioned:
● Facebook – Jason Pereira’s Facebook
● LinkedIn – Jason Pereira’s LinkedIn
● Woodgate.com – Sponsor
● FintechImpact.co – Website for Fintech Impact
● jasonpereira.ca – Jason Pereira’s Website
● Airdberlis.com – Website for Aird & Berlis
Full Transcript:
Producer: Welcome to the Financial Planning for Canadian Business Owners Podcast. You will hear about industry insights with award-winning financial planner and entrepreneur, Jason Pereira. Through the interviews with different experts, with their stories and advice, you will learn how you can navigate the challenges of being an entrepreneur, plan for success, and make the most of your business and life. Now, your host, Jason Pereira.
Jason Pereira: Hello, Rachel.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Hi, how are you?
Jason Pereira: Very well, thank you for taking the time today.
Rachel Blumenfeld: My pleasure. My pleasure.
Jason Pereira: So Rachel Blumenfeld, of Aird Berlis, tell us about what it is you do.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So I am in Estates and Trust Group at Aird & Berlis. Actually, our group is part of a bigger tax group, which has about 29, maybe even 30, at this point, lawyers in the tax group. Our smaller area, we do estate planning, a lot of working with trusts, so will planning, will drafting, powers of attorney, and as well, at the end of the day, estate administration. So get involved in all of those aspects.
Rachel Blumenfeld: In terms of on the tax side, I get involved where we're doing what we call estate freezes for families, for business owners. I usually do the trust that gets set up at the time of those kinds of transactions and work closely with the tax people on those.
Jason Pereira: So we're going to circle back to some of those topics, but basically I brought you on to kind of do a one on-one on what business owners need to know about estate planning. So simple synopsis, I always say estate planning is all about making sure that what you have goes where you want it to with as little pain and taxation as possible, hopefully. You're going to have some of that, but hopefully we can minimize it.
Jason Pereira: Let's talk about what's involved in that process. So basically, what's typically the impetus for the conversation getting started in your experience?
Rachel Blumenfeld: So I find people come to us, or come back to us, when there's been a change in their life circumstance. A lot of times people will come if a parent or other close family member has passed away and they're now thinking about doing their own planning.
Rachel Blumenfeld: This time, with the pandemic, has been extremely busy. I know across the board in Toronto and other colleagues, we're all pretty busy. I think people are starting to get concerned, whether it's about doing wills, doing estate planning, maybe there's been a change in the value of some of their assets and they want to take advantage of that.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Also, people are worried about things around care. We've heard a lot about what has been happening in the care homes and get people coming in and saying I definitely don't want this, or I want that, and you want to make sure that that's drafted properly. So we're spending more time on powers of attorney than we used to.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, there's nothing like a global crisis or world event that reminds you of your mortality to make you do the estate planner. The number of people after 9-11 who basically started getting their wills updated, it was substantial.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Exactly. Yeah.
Jason Pereira: So let's talk about the documents involved in putting one of these together. So an estate plan is really not just about, I don't want to make people think that it's about documents. That is the product. The planning around that is so much more important. But let's talk about the check boxes of the process and some planning concepts.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Sure. Yeah. It's a process. So even though you may end up with a couple of documents at the end of the day, or a lot of documents at the end of the day, they're documents that have to get revisited and revised and reviewed every couple of years. So typically, you'll have, especially if the impetus is concern about a will or whatever, we'll prepare wills, we'll prepare powers of attorney for clients.
Rachel Blumenfeld: In Ontario, we worry about not just the federal income tax that occurs on death, but also the probate fees or probate taxes, the state administration tax that can arise. It's a small percentage compared to capital gains tax or compared to a tax on your RRIF for your RSP, but it's a tax that can actually be managed fairly easily.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So usually rather than just ending up with one will, you'll end up with two wills. One that deals with the assets that would require probate for an executor to be able to deal with them. For example, investment accounts that are owned directly, real estate that's owned directly. But anything that's in a corporate private company, that generally can be dealt with without probate, so an executor can have the directors transfer those assets without having to probate the will. So what we do is we carve those assets out and we deal with them in a separate will that ends up not getting probated. So you're saving one and a half percent of the value of an estate in those assets.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Just some background there. I mean, my understanding is that there's a list of assets that have to be probated according to law, and if a single asset on a will has to be probated, the entire will has to be probated. So that's why we have
Rachel Blumenfeld: All the assets. Yeah.
Jason Pereira: Exactly. So we can group them into probatable versus non-probatable. It's nothing on the first 50,000 in Ontario, now, and 1.5 thereafter. 1.5 is not a big number, but if we start getting into like businesses of multiple millions of dollars, I'll use a big round number of 10 million, now that we're starting to talk about $150,000, which the cost of a secondary will is take a couple of zeros off of that.
Jason Pereira: You know, people in businesses all have said to me, they're like, "Why do we need two wills?" I said, "Well, this is one of the highest ROIs as a financial advisor." [crosstalk 00:05:41].
Rachel Blumenfeld: I like that. I haven't thought of it that way, but yeah.
Jason Pereira: There you go.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah. It's actually more than just the cost of probating. I mean, there's the fee that you're paying to the government, there's the costs that you're paying to the lawyers or whoever's preparing the documents, and there's also the time factor. Because I know there are changes coming down from the provincial government to try to speed up the probate process, but it's always a couple of months. So if you've got assets that you need to access, you want to have them in that corporate vehicle because you can do that. So it could be even a property that's held in a corporation as a bare trust that
Jason Pereira: So we're going to come back to bare trusts.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah, well, I know. That something we've talked about before.
Jason Pereira: Let's do some more fundamental stuff here, okay?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah. So it is also a timing thing, not just the cost of the fees.
Jason Pereira: Absolutely. And the work, right? I mean, if you don't have to go through probate, you don't have to go through all of that, so that makes perfect sense. So let's talk about what has to be probated and what doesn't have to be probated.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Okay. So it really depends on the transfer agent. So what I mean by that is the bank, the financial institution, or the land registry office, what do they require in order to deal with the executor? So what the probated will does is it gives that transfer agent comfort that they're dealing with the right person or people or entity, that even if down the road another will comes to light that has a different executor, if they've been dealing with the executor that's named in the, it's called the certificate of appointment, they're covered. So it gives the banks and the other financial institutions comfort with that.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So it's not necessarily that there's a legal requirement. A lot of times it's a risk requirement with the institution. With real estate, I mean, it's more of a legal requirement that you can't transfer most real estate in Ontario without a probated will. There's a couple of exceptions, right?
Jason Pereira: It makes sense. A will is just a pile of documents with some signatures at the end of it, right? Without some sort of government appointment authorization to say, yeah, we recognize this as valid, those institutions bear the risk, right? So this is like risk mitigation to them.
Jason Pereira: So those are cases that have a transfer agent. So what would typically fall outside of something that needs to be probated?
Rachel Blumenfeld: So if under a will, a person is leaving all of their personal effects, their jewelry, their artwork, to their kids, the kids aren't going to need probate in order to get those transferred to them. So those kinds of assets. The other, the big one, and the main one, and the one that really drives a lot of this process are shares of private companies. So it's especially where it's a family business, it's closely held, not a lot of shareholders, you'll have the directors, and the directors may end up being the executors. They're comfortable that they're dealing with the right people, they're comfortable that the will is what it is, and they will then transfer the shares to the estate without having to probate the will.
Rachel Blumenfeld: You can get into issues with that. We've had that where we've done planning and there were two wills and the corporate assets were dealt with in what we call the secondary will, and then the husband dies in the middle of a sale to a third party. That gets a little bit tricky.
Rachel Blumenfeld: I always tell people, this is how it works, you could end up with it not working properly. But it generally goes very smoothly.
Jason Pereira: That's generally kind of a rule, right? We set these things off and hopefully they work, and if anyone tries to challenge them, they will hold up. But at the end of the day, life happens, right? Things can go sideways and laws change and people get unhappy about their lot. There's lots of issues there.
Rachel Blumenfeld: The other thing that I always remind people is this works today in Ontario. There are other provinces that have high probate fees, say, based on value, and it doesn't work because the way they deal with things is different.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Not just that. I mean, every now and then the rules change on us, whether that be through legislation or through some unfortunate court rulings, which almost threw out every will in the country. [inaudible 00:10:03].
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yes. Yes, we didn't have that a few years ago.
Jason Pereira: Oh, man. Sometimes the court rulings don't go right. Anyway, so you touched upon something called the bare trust. I'm going to lead you with a leading question here. So this specifically has to do with when people own property. So let's call it recreational property, a cottage or investment property. What is a bare trust and how can it help?
Rachel Blumenfeld: So a bare trust is like a nominee. It's essentially a company that goes on title just to hold as the legal title holder of that piece of property. The beneficial owner, the underlying real, in quotes, is still the person that owned it initially.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So if I decide I'm going to do this with my house, actually my husband is the legal and beneficial owner right now. We transfer it into 12345 Ontario, Inc. That's what goes on title, but he remains the beneficial owner. The way we demonstrate that is there's a declaration of trust, or sometimes it's a nominee agreement that sort of stands behind the title that indicates if this person is still the beneficial owner.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So when we set this up, there's no land transfer tax. If it's a principal residence, it continues to be a principal residence. Then what happens is it's registered on title in the name of that company. When the person dies, again, as long as they have two wills, what the executor is dealing with is the underlying beneficial ownership and that can get transferred without having to have a probated will.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. So again, just like we had before with the secondary will for the business, same basic principle here. It's interesting that the entire concept of beneficial versus title versus legal ownership will really play with people's heads, right? People sometimes don't get that.
Jason Pereira: This is one of the issues that is core to disputes over joint accounts, right? Oftentimes, we'll see people move accounts jointly to avoid probate, and frankly, sometimes that begs the question of, wait a sec, what was the intention here, right? Did they mean to give you this entire thing or just trying to avoid probate? No, you do have to share it with your siblings. Right?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yes. I mean, there were a number of cases, I don't know, a decade or so ago, now, that went to the Supreme Court, dealing with that. We had a ruling, but it's still happens. It goes on. There's every month, cases dealing with joint accounts that get messed up, or joint assets.
Jason Pereira: Oh, I know. It's funny. Someone posted this kind of warning story on LinkedIn, and my exact comment was, "This is why all joint accounts should come with legal disclaimers warning you of this risk." Right? Like the number of times joint accounts have been a major issue in estate litigation, there's probably entire libraries full of these things.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Exactly. Yeah.
Jason Pereira: Yeah.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah, and what are you saving? You're saving one and a half percent. So that one and a half percent is easy to save, but it also could create huge issues.
Jason Pereira: This is the thing, the number of times I see people going through all these obstacles and jumping through these hoops over the concept of like why do you need to save the probate? You point out, like, wait a second. You're trying to save the probate on like a hundred thousand dollars. You do realize that 50,000 is free, first of all. So now you're talking about 1.5%. They're like, "Oh, is that all?" It's like, they were going to go through all this stuff, all these hoops, that was going to create complexity in the estate plan to avoid that, and it's just there are sometimes, I'll say this much and people may not always agree with me, it's a good thing to be probated sometimes. Right?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are actually a couple of reasons you want probate. First is if there are other issues around, if you're the executor, you may want that piece of paper saying, yes, I'm the executor. There are certain limitation periods that only start to run once the probate has been issued, the main one being dependent support claims against the state.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So yeah, there are reasons you might want probate. I know we go to a lot of trouble to try to get out of it, but yeah, it does give you [crosstalk 00:14:07] .
Jason Pereira: Yeah. So that's just to throw your hands up in the air and say, "You know what? 1.5% is worth it if it means that there's going to be a document that is not going to be disputed, more or less, because we know it's the accurate document, it's stamped, and my kids understand the wishes and therefore that's the end of it." So it's a little bit of assurance as opposed to some of the other tactics we see out there, unfortunately.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. So I'm going to throw a monkey wrench at all this and say what needs to happen? Let's just say that this person, one of these people, is a American citizen. How does that change things?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Oh, yeah. So hopefully, when you do the planning, you become aware. Actually, every lawyer that does estate planning now, on their forms or whatever, their intake forms will have a question, are you a US citizen? Are you a citizen of any other country, and then, specifically, are you a US citizen? Are you a green card holder? The reason for that is depending on who are we talking about, are we talking about the executor, or are we talking about trustees, or the deceased person?
Jason Pereira: Well, actually, let's talk about all of it. Let's talk about the deceased person. How does this impact the deceased person? Then we can get on to executors and beneficiaries.
Rachel Blumenfeld: And beneficiaries. So if the deceased was a US citizen, that means they should have been filing US tax returns their whole lives since they were adults. A lot of times you'll find, especially somebody who's a US citizen because their parents were, they may not have been filing. So then the executor really has an obligation to deal with that and do they go through a process of bringing that up to date or whatever? It depends who you ask, but that's, I think, the first thing you have to think about.
Rachel Blumenfeld: The other thing, and assuming then that they are filing in the US and all up to date, the other issue becomes are they subject to the US estate tax? Which, for a number of years, we haven't worried that much about because of the huge, very high exemption that is available, about 11.5 percent. When's the election?
Jason Pereira: Million. 11.5 million.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Sorry. 11.5 million.
Jason Pereira: When was the election?
Rachel Blumenfeld: In a week.
Jason Pereira: As of this recording, in eight days. Okay?
Rachel Blumenfeld: So that may change, and that may change drastically in the next couple of years. So I know that when we talk to clients who are US citizens, and when we talk to US lawyers who are doing this kind of planning, people are making the assumption that that exemption level is going to go way down. Go back down to whether it's 5 million, or when I first started, it was like 100 thousand. So you do have to be concerned about that.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Now, the fact that the person is a resident of Canada is actually makes it a lot easier than if you were a resident of almost any other country and a US citizen. That's because of the Canada-US treaty. There's certain aspects of our treaty that help reduce that liability, so you can use foreign tax credits for the US tax against the Canadian tax, or vice versa.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Essentially, the way the exemption works is it's prorated. So if your worldwide estate is around the level of what the exemption is, likely you wouldn't have estate tax. You still have to file a return, but there'll be these back and forth foreign tax credits.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Actually, I guess the last thing I was saying really more effects not the US citizens, but testator, the deceased person who owned real estate or assets in the US, they have that exemption.
Jason Pereira: Exactly.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So you do have to look at all of those issues.
Jason Pereira: Then where is the complication with if they're an executor if you name an American citizen as an executor, specifically? Let's just say, actually make it the worst case scenario, they're in the US.
Rachel Blumenfeld: In the US? So the first issue is if you need to probate that will in Ontario, the executor is required to post a bond if they're living somewhere other than Canada or Commonwealth country. So that's a bit of a hassle. Usually the courts will waive the bond, but it's another sort of step in the probate process.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So that's sort of your first hurdle. It's not terrible. You can get past it. There's the convenience. There's somebody in the US, the estate's here.
Rachel Blumenfeld: I actually just had something where... Well, there's two situations with US citizen-resident executors. In one case, she was the only child, she lives in the US, and she has to do it. So for her, during this period, she's had to come to Canada around when her dad passed away. She was in quarantine for two weeks and only then she was able to start to deal with things. Now in order to ensure that the estate remains a Canadian estate, she has to come back for the closing and that kind of stuff.
Rachel Blumenfeld: The other situation can be with banking, where there's certain types of assets that the deceased person owned, we can get into an issue whether the banks will deal with you if you have a US address. So there's those kinds of complications.
Rachel Blumenfeld: On the US side, my understanding is you may have reporting in the US because you're now got control over a non-US account, so you have FR reportings in the US.
Jason Pereira: Yeah, they may deem it to be a trust that's taxable in the US as opposed to Canada because you're in control of it. Even so much as, believe it or not, if that person becomes deceased before the estate is distributed, it could actually be technically included on their estate return as well. So it is a hornet's nest of issues besides the convenience.
Rachel Blumenfeld: But on the other hand, I've had situations where there really is nobody else. The kids all live in the US. The kids are inheriting everything. So you have to really weigh the situation each time.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. In those cases, I think, where basically the kids are going to inherit everything and they're all in the States, I mean, fair play. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. There's no real negative there. Whereas the issue is when you have some trustee or executor who's in the US and the beneficiaries are in Canada, there can be negative implications in those instances.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah. There can be tax issues and cross border investment issues, that kind of thing. Yeah.
Jason Pereira: And aggravation. [inaudible 00:20:31] aggravation.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah, and not being able to get across the border.
Jason Pereira: During COVID, yeah. It's a big issue. It's nuts.
Jason Pereira: So one of the things you touched upon briefly, and we touched upon it previously on the show before but I want to go back over it, is the concept of an estate freeze. So let's go over what that is and how it benefits business owners.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So essentially what a freeze does is you determine what the value of a business is at a particular time. I'm sort of just giving you the standard example that we often see. The founder says, "That's enough for me. That hundred million dollar business that keeps on growing, that's enough. I'll keep my hundred thousand dollars and the future growth can go to my kids.
Jason Pereira: Hundred million, but yes. It must be nice. But continue.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Hundred million. Hundred million.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Rachel Blumenfeld: My numbers are off a bit today. So a hundred million, and my kids can get the future growth, but what I'm doing with that is I'm fixing my tax liability on death. So I'm saying whatever the tax is going to be on that growth up until now, that'll get paid on my death, but that's it. I'm sort of stopping that from running.
Jason Pereira: We're freezing.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Freezing it. Exactly. So what you end up with is the parents, for example, end up owning the current value, the kids, or more likely the trust for the kids, holds the future growth, and you've pushed out that tax bill on that future growth to the next generation.
Rachel Blumenfeld: So we've actually been doing quite a lot of that kind of work, now, because to some extent the values may be a bit lower because of COVID, and so this may be a good time to get a valuation to do the freeze to sort of, again, fix that tax on death at
Jason Pereira: I had a couple of conversations where people were just not getting the counter-intuitiveness of this. They're like, "I should be doing this when I'm doing well." I'm like, "No, you should be doing this when you're not doing well. Because if the goal is to minimize or fix the tax liability on your death and you're giving shares to your children, the reality is is that if you recover post-COVID and you're doing really well, that's just money that's taxed in their name, not yours, and it's all legit.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah. I mean, I think you raise an interesting point, right? What that counter-intuitive is is that, well, you still want to make sure there's going to be enough there for you and your kids aren't entitled to way more than you are, perhaps.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. There's a threshold of wealth, right? There's a threshold of wealth. You're not going to do this when you, oh, look, the capital gains exemption, for instance, right? It's sitting at 868,000, roughly, or something right now. So, I mean, the temptation is always to say, okay, well, I can freeze it around here. Well, maybe that makes sense, but it depends, right? If we're talking about passing it on to the next generation versus maybe to a spouse, passing on to the spouse, not a big deal. But the next generation, it's like, well, that's growth you're never going to have. Is the 868,000 tax-free enough money to plan out your retirement, for instance, right? The answer is not going to be no, in most cases, right?
Jason Pereira: So, yeah, it's all relative. So it makes sense when it makes sense.
Rachel Blumenfeld: You have to be careful when you do them. There are tax issues that have to be dealt with. You have to look at who your beneficiaries are. Is there a US citizen in the mix? Did one of the kids marry an American and now there's half a dozen American grandchildren. In those situations, you really have to ensure that there's US advice.
Jason Pereira: Oh, that is putting it lightly. Yeah, it's amazing how much US tax code screws everybody else in the world.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah.
Jason Pereira: So, I mean, we've covered some decent ground. We've talked about how the need for dual wills, at least in some jurisdictions like Ontario. We've talked about how probate works. We've talked about estate freezes and the implications of US citizens and bare trusts. That's a fair amount of ground to cover. Is there any kind of general advice that you feel you want to give to business owners when looking at this kind of planning?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Sure. Yeah. I think there's a couple of things when you're starting to do the planning that you want to keep in mind. One big one is who the executors should be. Who are the people, or institutions, or entities, that are able to step into your shoes, especially if you're dealing with a family business, can step in and really ensure that it continues smoothly, or is able to sell the business.
Rachel Blumenfeld: You really need to look at family dynamics. Whether you're dealing with a second family, a blended family, second marriages, third marriages, whatever it is, those issues have to really be addressed and you have to be straight with your advisors. If you know that one of your kids has an addiction problem, you've got to tell me. I don't know that. You come into my office, I don't know everything. I try, and I think any estate lawyer is going to try, to probe and get information, but sometimes there's some hesitancy. But you really have to be prepared to really open up and deal with and talk about those kinds of issues, because we then see when it doesn't work out when things have been missed and I have to go down the hall and get my estate litigation partners involved because it's not going to go smoothly.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. It's interesting, we actually have a full disclosure policy that we actually put into our letters of engagement with clients. We tell them before we bring them on like, look, we're going to ask a lot of personal stuff and we need to know. Trust me, I do not enjoy hearing about the negative things in people's lives, but I can't help you fix them without it.
Jason Pereira: I actually just had this conversation today with someone who reached out to me. I had sent him to another advisor because they weren't quite a fit for what I did. They needed a specialized need. They came back saying, "Well, they're asking me for all this personal info." I said, "Well, yes, because I would do the exact same thing."
Rachel Blumenfeld: I would have done that, yeah.
Jason Pereira: You know, here's five examples of how without knowing everything, it can go wrong. So, yeah, it's funny, because we're often told to protect our personal information and no disclose stuff. But when it comes to your advisors, you've really got to open up, otherwise they can't help you. If you think estate planning is expensive, try doing it two or three times because you didn't disclose it properly.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Right. Right. Yeah. Or I mean, I know you'll be dead, but try dealing with the litigation afterward.
Jason Pereira: Yeah. There is no worst way to destroy the family dynamics after you're gone than to leave a messy estate behind, because I've literally had people say to me, "Clearly my parents did not give a damn about us because they couldn't be bothered to prevent us from blowing up afterwards by simply putting a document together."
Jason Pereira: It's terrible. But you know what, though? I will say the counterpoint to that is everyone, once they're done, they feel a lot better about it being done, don't they?
Rachel Blumenfeld: Yeah, that's true.
Jason Pereira: Excellent.
Rachel Blumenfeld: That is true.
Jason Pereira: Well, Rachel, thank you very much for this. I very much appreciate it. We covered a fair amount of ground, and complex ground, pretty quickly. Where can people find you if they want to reach out?
Rachel Blumenfeld: So I am at Aird & Berlis, on the internet. Rachel Blumenfeld.
Jason Pereira: We'll be sure to include a link in the show notes.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Okay, great.
Jason Pereira: Perfect. Thank you so much for your time.
Rachel Blumenfeld: Thank you.
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