Rock Solid Estate Planning: Victoria Duke on Wills, Trusts & Protecting Assets

WEBVTT 1 - > Jesse Stakes: Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of Making Sense of It All with Jesse Stakes. Today, I have Victoria Duke. She is with Rock Solid Law. Victoria, thank you so much for joining me.

2 - > Victoria Duke: Thank you for having me, Jesse, I'm excited to be here. 3 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, I'm really excited to have you. So, we met, actually, at a presentation that you and Rock Solid Law were doing on estate planning, and I… 4 - > Jesse Stakes: thought it would be fantastic to bring it to the audience. I thought it was great information, I thought you delivered it well, so I really appreciate you doing this, taking me up on my offer.

And before we jump into all of that, though, I really wanted to take a step back and talk about you, and who you are, and what made you 5 - > Jesse Stakes: do what you do. So, so, you know. 6 - > Jesse Stakes: if I can take a step back for myself here and just ask you, like, you know, what made you even be an attorney in the first place? 7 - > Victoria Duke: It's a good question.

So, I actually kind of stumbled into law a little bit. I, graduated, college very, very, very young, a couple months after I turned 20, and kind of didn't really know what I was. 8 - > Jesse Stakes: Congratulations to you on that! 9 - > Victoria Duke: kind of didn't really know what I wanted to do, and my uncle owned a law practice in the small town that I'm from, and I started working for him as a legal assistant, and really just fell in love with it, and quickly became his… 10 - > Victoria Duke: senior litigation paralegal, and because of our close family relationship and my love for law, you know, I got to be really involved with our clients of the firm, because there was a lot of… 11 - > Victoria Duke: trust there, of course, you know, with working and operating in a family business in a small town with people that knew my whole family, that have known me my whole life, and so I really got to be a part of this dynamic, and I loved it.

And I was actually just 12 - > Victoria Duke: you know, years had gone by sitting in my office, and my uncle came in my office one day and goes, so when are you gonna go to law school? And I was… 13 - > Jesse Stakes: Like, what? Never? I'm not gonna do that?

And he was like, oh yeah, no, you're supposed to be doing this. You need to go to law school and become an attorney. It's not a big deal. All you have to do is, you know, get your JD and pass the bar.

And I said, oh, that's it? But sure enough, I, you know, if he said I could do it, I've, you know, always admired him. He's one of my favorite people on the planet. 14 - > Victoria Duke: And so if he thought I could do it, I knew I could.

So, I went to law school, I graduated in the top 20% of my class, and been practicing pretty much estate planning and probate mainly since then. 15 - > Jesse Stakes: That's fantastic. So let's jump into that really quick. What is it that made you want to focus on estate planning and probate?

Because that's… I mean, some people would look at that and find that, you know. 16 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, I wasn't going to use that word, but we can use it. You called it. So, I mean, some people might find it boring, some people might find it, you know, like, that they're not dealing with the exciting part of, you know, some people think about being in a courtroom, or they think about those types of things, so what made… what is it that made you focus on estate planning and probate?

17 - > Victoria Duke: Well, I know, for me, the joy that I find with my job is I love to help people. 18 - > Victoria Duke: And surprisingly, I know I am an attorney, but I don't like to fight. I'm a lover, not a fighter, so I don't particularly like being in litigation and constantly in these, you know, adverse positions with people. The thing that estate planning gives me is I get to work with families and really kind of help give them peace of mind.

You know, we aren't worried about 19 - > Victoria Duke: fighting somebody else, or them having to, you know, pay lots of money to fight something new in court that they, you know, don't understand why that's happening to them, or why they're getting sued. You know, I'm really focused on just making them feel better about planning out their legacy. So it's a really nice thing that I get to do. 20 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah.

21 - > Victoria Duke: And I feel like I get to be a nice part of their life, and I get to help them out, and I'm not fighting with anybody, and so I really enjoy it, in that sense. I also do, you know, the flip side of estate planning, which is probate, where there can be fighting, but normally that's also just helping families through a really difficult time, you know, so that they can grieve and process that a little bit. 22 - > Victoria Duke: better. 23 - > Jesse Stakes: No, I think it's a… it's a great way to say it, and I always… I always tell people, like, in a sales setting even, like, it's like, you want to, like, it's like feeling you're on the same side of the table with somebody instead of sitting in opposition on the other side of the table from them.

24 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, exactly. 25 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, no, I think that's fantastic. You know, when it comes to estate planning probate, I think that there are terms that people hear a lot, but they don't necessarily understand them, and so I'd love to break them down for the audience first, as far as what… 26 - > Jesse Stakes: what is probate? Like, people hear it, and they think, okay, I've got to go to court over something that they're inheriting, but they don't really understand what it is.

27 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah. So, probate is our court process here in the state of Florida, that it's our way of getting a deceased person's assets to their beneficiaries. And we go to probate… we don't always go to probate, not because someone passes away while we go to probate, but we go to probate because we have these probatable assets, as I like to call them, or assets that we have to probate. 28 - > Victoria Duke: But probate is, it is a court proceeding.

I mean, it is essentially, we're going in front of a judge, and we're throwing up all this information so that we can take care of somebody's estate and divvy their stuff out. 29 - > Jesse Stakes: So, alright, so people think, okay, if I have a will in place, or if I have something that's directing for my estate, or for what I have to be given to my children, or to be given to the people that I decide to give it to, some people think, if I have that in place, probate's not necessary, it doesn't exist then.

Is that true? 30 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, well, no, what I run into with a lot of people is they don't even know probate's a thing. They don't even know that we have this court proceeding. And a lot of people think.

31 - > Victoria Duke: you know, number one, either my stuff just goes to my kids, magically, easily, you know? Or they think, well, I have a will. So, I have a last will and testament, says my kids get everything, that's how it works. 32 - > Victoria Duke: And actually, no.

Again, we go to probate, we have to do this probate process, not because we have a will or we don't have a will, but because we have these probatable assets. 33 - > Jesse Stakes: So, when you say probatable assets, can you, you know, give us some examples of what those are? 34 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, so a probatable asset is anything that you own that is titled in your name alone. This could be your checking account, your investment portfolio, a retirement account, the home that you live in.

35 - > Victoria Duke: Your vehicle, your boat, you name it. Anything that's titled and attached to your name alone is going to have to go to probate. 36 - > Victoria Duke: If there's not, you know, some bank accounts we have, we do have the ability to put beneficiaries on them, so that will stay out of probate, and we can talk a little bit more about that in detail. But if you don't have beneficiary designations on these bank accounts and other assets that you can't put a beneficiary on, like your home or your vehicle, those things, because you're the only person on them that owns them, when you're no longer with us.

37 - > Victoria Duke: Nobody has the authority to sign off on those items. And that's why we have to have probate, because probate gives us a person, called a personal representative, that is now in charge of signing off on those things and transferring those assets over. 38 - > Jesse Stakes: So, I know that the next question, as I'm sure you get all the time, is, how do I avoid that? If I'm in a situation where I'm listening to this, and maybe I just shattered somebody's idea of what, you know, what it looks like that they're passing on to their loved ones.

39 - > Jesse Stakes: how do you avoid it? How do you eliminate that process? 40 - > Victoria Duke: Good question. So, in looking at people and the things that they have, I kind of like to break down the different type of assets that people have, and explain to them why this asset would go to probate.

And then we can kind of use these different, I call them estate planning tools. 41 - > Victoria Duke: to kind of change those assets to keep them out of probate. So when it comes to your bank accounts, retirement accounts, investment portfolios, anything with our cash money in it, so long as you have a payable on death, transfer on death, or beneficiary listed on those accounts. 42 - > Victoria Duke: and that beneficiary is alive when you pass away, and the bank has not lost any of that paperwork, then, those assets are going to flow to those beneficiaries, and we're not going to have to probate them.

Now, on the flip side. 43 - > Victoria Duke: something like a home is a lot more difficult. There's only two ways that we can avoid a home or other real property that you own in Florida going to probate. 44 - > Victoria Duke: And our first tool for that is called a Lady Bird Deed, that is also known as an enhanced life estate deed.

45 - > Victoria Duke: And what that deed does is it attaches to your home, it's a very specific piece of property that it attaches to, and it says, my home is mine for life. I can do whatever I want, I can sell it, lease it, paint it purple, catch it on fire so long as my HOA is happy, whatever. 46 - > Victoria Duke: But upon my death, it immediately transfers over to the person, or maybe a couple people that I've listed on there. Now, that tool is not perfect for every person in every situation.

47 - > Victoria Duke: You know, I can't put minor children on a Lady Bird deed. I can't, you know, sometimes if we get into a situation where you have 48 - > Victoria Duke: 20 beneficiaries that you… or 20 people you want to put in your will, putting 20 people on a… on a deed is not the best idea. So the flip side to that, the other way to actually avoid your home going into probate is to have a revocable living trust. 49 - > Victoria Duke: And your home goes into your trust, it becomes a trust asset.

50 - > Victoria Duke: And trust assets are non-probatable. So, anything that is in your trust will never have to go to probate. 51 - > Victoria Duke: So we can actually, not only your home, but in a trust, you can rope in all of your bank accounts, your investment portfolio, your life insurance policy, your vacation home in North Carolina. You can rope all of that in there.

We don't have to worry about banks losing any beneficiary designation, and then you can do a lot of cool… 52 - > Victoria Duke: Cool planning with your trust that goes a little bit above and beyond some more simplistic estate planning tools, which is great for people who have lots of beneficiaries. 53 - > Victoria Duke: People who have, you know, lots of parameters that they want to put on things before their beneficiaries get stuff, and then also, of course, for people that have minor children.

54 - > Jesse Stakes: I think one of the things, when you start bringing up the word trust. 55 - > Jesse Stakes: Some people think, oh, that's for rich people. That's for, you know, those are for ultra-wealthy people, that's not for me. 56 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah.

That's not the case, is it? Oh, absolutely not. So we're seeing a big trend with trusts over the last, I would say, one to two decades. 57 - > Victoria Duke: And back in the day, it was just kind of this nuanced thing that not a lot of attorneys were doing, so it was kind of something that was considered for the wealthy because, you know, a lot of small-town lawyers or normal people, they weren't doing this.

We were just… we're doing wills, we're going to probate, that is what it is. 58 - > Victoria Duke: We've become so much more sophisticated with trusts in the last two decades. You know, bank accounts are well aware of them now. Bank accounts and bank institutions know what to do with them.

Title companies are familiar with trusts now. They know how to sell property that's in the name of the trust. 59 - > Victoria Duke: They're not so taboo anymore. And so they're definitely not for the wealthy.

I always say, you know, you need a trust if your situation 60 - > Victoria Duke: calls for it. Not everybody wants or needs a trust, and that's totally okay, but some people can really, really benefit from one. 61 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt, and I don't think that you really… unless you actually have a conversation about it, unless you actually have, you know. 62 - > Jesse Stakes: a conversation with someone like yourself, to where they… you truly understand what it is, and you can gain information from those people to see what their situation is.

You don't really know if it would benefit you or not. 63 - > Victoria Duke: No, no, and I have clients all the time, you know, that come in and talk to me, and they're sometimes usually one way or the other. And they'll say, okay, I'm coming in here because I want to trust, and we talk through things, and I'm like, alright, well, let's see what we're looking at, you know? 64 - > Victoria Duke: And sometimes, you know, they don't necessarily need a trust, and it may be a bit more complex than what they really need for their estate plan.

On the other side, I have people that'll come in and they say, I don't want to hear anything about a trust, I don't want anything to do with that. And I go, that's okay. I will. At the end of the day, it's your estate plan.

We can do, you know, whatever we need to do. There's a lot of things that are important about state 65 - > Victoria Duke: estate planning that aren't just, you know, a trust or a will, so… 66 - > Victoria Duke: It just… it depends on the person, and that's what I'm here, and the thing that I enjoy most about my job is I'm here to inform, give information, explain things, but at the end of the day, it's my job to get what you want done. 67 - > Jesse Stakes: 100%. Well, and I was telling you before we started recording, I had a good friend of mine that I was telling that… telling that I was doing this conversation with you today, and he was like, can you ask, he's like, how do the ultra, ultra, ultra-wealthy people avoid, you know, essentially pass their wealth down, generation to generation?

And I think that 68 - > Jesse Stakes: you know, I don't think… there's probably not one size that fits all, or one answer that fits all. 69 - > Jesse Stakes: But… but one of the things that I hear you saying that, and you… please correct me if I'm wrong here, but the reality of it is, is that people who put effort into this part of 70 - > Jesse Stakes: Their financial situation, is planning for that transfer of wealth, planning for how their estate will be divvied up. 71 - > Jesse Stakes: Is really key to making sure that the maximum amount of that estate is going to pass to the next generation, or pass to the people that you want to have it, rather than the government having it.

72 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, absolutely. Well, there's kind of two-fold to that. 73 - > Victoria Duke: one, I kind of say Florida is a great place to come to die if you want. 74 - > Victoria Duke: Florida actually does not have estate taxes for the state themselves.

We go off the federal tax limit right now, which is… which is very, very high, right now. So a lot of people can… 75 - > Victoria Duke: transition a good chunk of their wealth, but what a lot of people don't understand is, if we don't plan, and we kind of end up in these situations where we have a full-blown probate proceeding, and maybe we have people fighting over things because it's not clear where stuff was going to go, or we're having to track down heirs and do air searches, that costs thousands and thousands of dollars 76 - > Victoria Duke: to try to track down people that we don't know where they are.

Or, you know, just attorney's fees and personal representative fees for probate statutorily is pretty much 3% of your entire estate for both. So that's a 6% total. You know, so we… 77 - > Victoria Duke: In not planning, we end up kind of forced in these situations where we can start chunking off big parts of the estate that we could have really never had to do if we just planned. 78 - > Jesse Stakes: No, no doubt.

It's that old saying, not… or failing to plan is planning to fail? 79 - > Victoria Duke: Yes, yes. 80 - > Jesse Stakes: It's crazy. Let's take a step back really quick, though, and also, I'd like for you to define what is estate planning for the audience.

We've talked about pieces of this, but really, what is it all-encompassing of? Because you have said that these are parts of it, but maybe people don't know what is all-encompassing of what estate planning is for you and your practice. 81 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah. So, I say there's two, but sometimes three, big parts of estate planning.

Part number one is planning for death, right? There's a lot that goes into that planning. 82 - > Jesse Stakes: Sexy, super fun, planning for your death, yes. 83 - > Victoria Duke: All the… I always say, sometimes people ask me, oh, what… what laws, what law do you practice?

And I go, all the deaf ones. 84 - > Victoria Duke: But part of… a big part of estate planning, of course, is planning for death. Not only where our stuff is gonna go, but perhaps when you get to that last, final point of life, you know, do you want to be artificially prolonged on machines and tubes, or do you want to die naturally? You know, things like that.

So, planning for death. 85 - > Victoria Duke: Then we have a big part that a lot of people don't think or realize, which is planning for incapacity. 86 - > Victoria Duke: Which is, if I get Alzheimer's, dementia, if I'm in a car accident, have a coma, or on the fun side of things, maybe you're just gallivanting around in Europe for too long, and you can't simply be bothered to handle stuff back here in the States. Planning for incapacity is a big part.

And then the third part, which only, you know. 87 - > Victoria Duke: is true for some people, is planning for your minor children. 88 - > Jesse Stakes: Okay. 89 - > Victoria Duke: Making sure who's gonna be in charge, not only of their little person if you're not here, but also their stuff that they're gonna inherit from you, you know?

Who… 90 - > Victoria Duke: Passing over the torch to people to not only raise your children, but be in charge of their financials is a really big decision. 91 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt, and probably one you should have conversations with people before surprising them with, this is my last will and testament. 92 - > Victoria Duke: That's true. 93 - > Jesse Stakes: So, speaking of that, that's something that you do as well, correct?

You help people develop their… their wills and their… as far as what they… how they're gonna direct those assets in the… at the end there, correct? 94 - > Victoria Duke: So, absolutely. And what I do with clients is I just start off by having a conversation. I don't say.

95 - > Victoria Duke: do you want a will? Do you want a trust, all this stuff. I just say, you know, I start off with, tell me about your goals. 96 - > Victoria Duke: And tell me about what you're worried about, because that's really when you learn, you know, what somebody wants, what they don't want.

You know, I have people that come in and go, I just got done with my dad's probate, and it was absolutely awful. My goal is to completely avoid that. 97 - > Victoria Duke: Or I have people that say, you know, I have a bunch of minor children, and it's, you know, I just want to make sure that's 98 - > Victoria Duke: airtight, and everyone knows what's gonna happen, you know, that's my biggest thing. And we really work off of that, because at the end of the day, I work for my clients, and my job is to give them a peace of mind, and to get this done for them.

99 - > Victoria Duke: So, I want to know, basically, what brought them in front of me. 100 - > Victoria Duke: what they're worried about, what they want to see happen. I have, you know, I've done a lot of crazy, cool, fun estate plans, for people, and that's just by getting to know them, and that's another part of the job that I really love, is I get to work with people and tailor their estate plan, which is their legacy, and that means a lot. 101 - > Jesse Stakes: You opened the door there, so you don't have to name names, you don't have to, you know, you don't have to hurt the innocent here, but you gotta tell us some stories.

102 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, I've done, let's see, I've done a really cool pet trust, that was, for a family that was very, very, very involved in their community and charity outreach. 103 - > Victoria Duke: And I ended up building a trust with them, for quite… I think it was a total of, like, 36 animals, but it was, like, horses, dogs, cats, you name it, and that was so cool, because there was not a lot of… I knew there was not going to be fighting with that one. 104 - > Victoria Duke: Very cool to set that one up.

I've also had some really awesome clients that I've worked with. 105 - > Victoria Duke: I had a couple one time, they were part… a really big part of their estate plan was their music. They had been in a band together for most of their life, so they had original music, original recordings, they had all these friends that had done different bands, so a lot of their estate plan was what was going to happen with their different guitars that they had, and they… I got to see pictures of when they did certain performances with 106 - > Victoria Duke: that guitar and, you know, listen to their original music that they had, and so it's cool.

A lot of times, it's people's whole life, you know, and kind of everything that transpires from that, so it's really… it's a really 107 - > Victoria Duke: can be a really fun thing, and I try to make it fun and nice and not so, so gloomy, but, you know, more so just being happy about looking back on life and… 108 - > Victoria Duke: It can be… it can be a fun, cool thing. 109 - > Jesse Stakes: I don't disagree with you. I mean, the more you talk about it, the more you really kind of open the door to it, instead of just thinking about… I think people get afraid of death.

They get afraid of thinking about the end, and they don't think about all of the… 110 - > Jesse Stakes: the looking back, the memories, the thoughts, and also the gifts that they're giving their own people on the way out the door, and so I think that when you bring it back to all the things that are the positives about it, you really do kind of… you take that gloominess away, or you take the negatives out of it. 111 - > Victoria Duke: I can say a big part of why people don't get their estate planning done is it is… it's gloomy.

I mean, death is a hard thing for people to talk about. It is. I mean… 112 - > Jesse Stakes: acknowledge. 113 - > Victoria Duke: It's hard, it's hard.

It's a… sometimes it's a concept we really cannot wrap our brains around. You know, these kind of, like, looming thoughts that a lot of people have about it, and so a lot of times planning when you're not so close to it can be really, really helpful. 114 - > Victoria Duke: You know, because you're kind of thinking, like, oh, one day when this happens, you know, in the future, I've noticed that that can be really helpful for people. 115 - > Victoria Duke: And then just kind of, you sit down, you plan it, you think about it, you're done, and then you never have to think about it ever again, and that sometimes works for people as well.

116 - > Jesse Stakes: Is that how it works, though? Like, is it… is it one of those things? Is it… is it kind of… 117 - > Jesse Stakes: Touch it once, put it away, and it's there? Or is it something that you have to maintain throughout your life once you do it?

118 - > Victoria Duke: Well, it's always good to maintain with really big events in life. 119 - > Victoria Duke: Asset purchases, you know, it's always good to have follow-ups, but some of the really hard… 120 - > Victoria Duke: Hard parts about, you know. 121 - > Victoria Duke: what do I want for my end-of-life care and things of that nature. That can sometimes be the really hard part for people.

122 - > Jesse Stakes: Makes sense. 123 - > Victoria Duke: And sometimes we can kind of get 124 - > Victoria Duke: Get that part done, and then we don't really have… you know, most people, once they've made a decision about that, they don't really… 125 - > Victoria Duke: come back or want to change that. Now, I will say, you know, estate plannings are usually ever-evolving, unless you've done a lot of thinking about it, and you don't really have changes after the fact. 126 - > Victoria Duke: But it kind of… again, everything just depends on a person's life and what happens, you know?

I've… I've done estate plans 127 - > Victoria Duke: For families that, a few years later, you know, unfortunately lose a child. 128 - > Victoria Duke: And now we're coming back, and we're… we're changing a plan because we no longer have a child to leave stuff for, and that's hard. And that's not something… 129 - > Victoria Duke: we ever want to, you know, plan for and things of that nature, but, you know, sometimes you have really bad things. Sometimes I have clients that come in that just moved to Florida, and they need a revamped plan because everything they had was from Virginia, and now we've got, you know, we still have our Virginia home, but we're mainly down here in Florida, and we need to revamp that and make it nicer, and that's a fun thing.

That's, you know. 130 - > Victoria Duke: growing your estate, growing your portfolio, moving somewhere different, warm and sunny, I mean. 131 - > Jesse Stakes: It'd be fun. 132 - > Jesse Stakes: I think when you're bringing these things up, it also… it evokes other questions, questions you don't think about until it gets brought up, but you brought up something that I think does bear kind of bringing attention to.

You have somebody who lived in California, or lived in New York, or in one of these larger cities that they decide to relocate their residence to Florida in retirement. 133 - > Jesse Stakes: There are things that change, that they probably should come see someone like yourself. 134 - > Victoria Duke: Oh, absolutely. I'm… the one kind of annoying thing about the states is that each state has their own… own laws, and own way of doing stuff, and own way of passing property off, so… 135 - > Victoria Duke: Absolutely, if you… because your estate is dictated in the state that you live at the time of your death, where you're domiciled.

136 - > Victoria Duke: So, if you come to Florida, and you are like, I'm staying here, I'm retired, this is my new home, absolutely, they need to come talk to someone like me, because… 137 - > Victoria Duke: again, Florida has really favorable things, too, that not other… that other states may not have, and we don't want to have to force you to go based off your California plan, when you could very well have a much better Florida plan in place. 138 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt, 100%.

I think that's… I think that's really important. I think it's very relevant right now for the state of Florida, because you have so many people that have moved here in the last 5, 6 years that are… if they haven't done it yet, it's… it's really something you hear… if you're hearing this now, you know. 139 - > Jesse Stakes: Give Victoria a call, because it could save you… it could save your family thousands and thousands, if not millions of dollars. 140 - > Jesse Stakes: One of the… one of the other things I wanted to kind of come back to a little bit, you had talked about being, you know, in the… in the… 141 - > Jesse Stakes: if you're incapacitated during your life, that having an estate plan is something that can help you actually inside of your life, not just for the people that are here after your death.

Can you talk a little bit more about that, as far as… 142 - > Victoria Duke: Absolutely. So… incapacity. 143 - > Victoria Duke: here in the state of Florida, if you are incapacitated and you don't have the estate planning tools to help with that, and I'll go into that, but if you don't have things in place, and you become incapacitated, and your loved ones, whether that be your spouse, your kid, your mom, you name it. 144 - > Victoria Duke: needs to help you by getting in touch, you know, getting into your bank account, getting into your finances, paying off your mortgage for you, or, you know, putting you in a home, or consenting to treatment, or making other medical decisions for you.

If you don't have your estate planning tools in place. 145 - > Victoria Duke: The only way that that person can have authority to help you is by getting guardianship in the court system, not only over you, but over your property. And that's a very, expensive, lengthy proceeding. It's actually two proceedings, but you have to have a panel of doctors come and evaluate you and determine that you are, in fact, incapacitated, and then the loved one that's just trying to take care of you has to prove to a judge they have to give their finger 146 - > Victoria Duke: prints, background check, credit report, you name it.

And then, during the entire length of your incapacity, which could very well be until your death, they're having to continue with this court case. 147 - > Victoria Duke: Every single year, they're having to come to the judge and file an accounting. If they need certain things, we have to petition the judge and ask for things. It can drain your estate, just because that's the nature of the beast.

Sometimes things are very expensive, and it's very hard on families. 148 - > Victoria Duke: So the way that we can actually avoid that proceeding from happening 149 - > Victoria Duke: is with your estate tools that are your durable power of attorney and your healthcare surrogate. Your durable power of attorney is the document that says this person can pretty much do anything under the sun. 150 - > Jesse Stakes: With my bank accounts, my social security, my mortgage, my mail, you name it.

They can pretty much do anything except vote for you or get married for you. A little scary. 151 - > Victoria Duke: It's a little scary, a little scary. It's a very powerful document.

And then the other side to that is your healthcare surrogate, which is the person that you've appointed that if you are not able to make medical decisions for yourself, this person can actually make medical decisions. And the reason that those two documents help you avoid guardianship is because you've already given somebody more authority than a judge would in that guardianship proceeding. 152 - > Victoria Duke: So we've cut that out. You went ahead and said, this is the person that I'm going to allow to be able to do that, and they have the power to do it in case something happens to me.

153 - > Jesse Stakes: Yeah, and the biggest thing that I hear there is that you are making the choice, as an individual, who is going to have control, rather than somebody petitioning a court and taking control where you didn't grant control. And I think that that is… I mean, anytime that we can have… have… 154 - > Jesse Stakes: Power over our own choices, I think it's fantastic. 155 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And that's, I mean.

156 - > Victoria Duke: that truly is, any interested party can petition to be a guardian over you. They just have to, you know, there's a certain level, and we have to put certain 157 - > Victoria Duke: different family members on notice, you know, depending, but yeah, technically, there's a lot of people that may not be the person that you wanted. And, you know. 158 - > Victoria Duke: those don't necessarily need to be the same person, either.

You may have somebody that you really trust that aligns really well with what you would like to see done medically for yourself, but then you might have somebody totally different that's a lot better at handling finances. 159 - > Victoria Duke: that you trust better to do that. And so, for you to be able to have control in that situation is the best. 160 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt.

Well, and I think maybe not everybody on… that's listening to this, but I… but it certainly brings to mind that whole Britney Spears thing in my head, when you talk about, like, somebody who did not… did not choose to have somebody control their estate from a financial perspective. 161 - > Jesse Stakes: And so, it's, you know, again, make the choice yourself. Don't give somebody the opportunity to choose for you. 162 - > Victoria Duke: Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. A lot of these fears. 163 - > Jesse Stakes: Sorry, I can cut that out if you don't want to be associated with that one. 164 - > Victoria Duke: I'm like, I'm thinking you're thinking you're gonna talk about, like, a song or something.

I'm like, oh… 165 - > Jesse Stakes: So, all of this… one of the biggest things, and I say this to people in the… whether it's banking, if it's, you know, dealing with their CPAs or anything, it's important to have a relationship with the attorney you choose, and I think that, you know, everything that you're talking about here, you're… 166 - > Jesse Stakes: everything requires that you develop a relationship with people to some extent. If they're gonna have these conversations with you, you know, it's… you're building trust.

You're… you're building… you're building something to where they feel like they need to know you, and you need to know them in order to make accurate and fair… 167 - > Jesse Stakes: recommendations for them, for them to make decisions based on your recommendations, they have to trust you as a professional and as a person. If people have really enjoyed what they're hearing, if they would like to have a conversation with you, and if they would be… if they're interested in doing business with Rock Solid Law, what's the best way for them to get ahold of you?

168 - > Victoria Duke: Honestly, the best way would probably just be to call up the office and get on my calendar to have a consultation. 169 - > Jesse Stakes: And that's something you do all the time, yes? 170 - > Victoria Duke: All the time, all the time. And honestly, I mean, if you… if someone calls in and says, hey, I listened to Victoria on… on, you know, Making Sense of It All podcast, you know, they'll… immediately, they'll know what you're talking about, they'll put you right on my calendar so that we can start, you know, moving and grooving on that.

171 - > Jesse Stakes: We'll make sure that everybody has a link to their office, to their website in the description of this video, and we'll put it on all the socials as well. 172 - > Jesse Stakes: Victoria, I want to thank you very much. This has been very educational. It really, like, I… you know, we kind of… we went from saying that this is potentially boring material to really being… No, in all seriousness, like, from thinking about it as something that is… that it… that it's kind of gray, or, you know, kind of… kind of… 173 - > Jesse Stakes: disc, like, you know, black and white to talk about, to something that's got a tremendous amount of color, and you really are dealing with all facets of somebody's life.

174 - > Jesse Stakes: the history of their life, the people that they love, the people that they care about. You're tying it all together with a bow, and you're making sure that what they care about passes on to the people that they care about and love. 175 - > Victoria Duke: Absolutely, yep. And it's… it's something I really do love.

You know, I… I love being a part… it's kind of like being a part of all of my clients, you know, families. You know, I'm involved in that, I get to know the good stuff, the bad stuff, the sad stuff, and, you know, my clients… 176 - > Victoria Duke: leave me with a peace of mind, and they do, they feel better, they have a good understanding, and it makes me feel like that's what I'm supposed to be here doing. 177 - > Jesse Stakes: No doubt. You couldn't have said it any better.

Thank you so much. 178 - > Victoria Duke: Absolutely, thanks for having me, Jesse.