We Create Your Legacy

 What do you want to accomplish with your money that is meaningful to you?

create a trust for your minor child to provide for him/her after your passing
pass on your lifetime accumulated wealth to your children with a minimum of taxes,
save the Sierras or Redwoods from commercial development,
set up a continuing trust for your grandchildren,
set up an educational trust for a special niece or nephew,
endow a fund to clean up beaches and the coast,
create a private foundation to be administered for one or more specific causes after your death,
fund a new program at a college or university,
have your name placed on a building in return for a major gift to a non-profit institution,
endow the chair of a department of a hospital, university or other organization, or
fund scholarships for first generation college students in low income neighborhoods?

There are so many possibilities for the amazing legacy you can create with your wealth.

YOUR LEGACY WILL NOT BE REALIZED

UNLESS YOU HAVE THE PROPER LEGAL ESTATE PLANNING DOCUMENTS IN PLACE AND
THEY ARE PROPERLY SIGNED, WITNESSED AND/OR NOTARIZED AND CAN BE FOUND AFTER YOU PASS AWAY!

Will Your Legacy Withstand the Test of Time?

Answer this one question!

If you died tomorrow,

Are your legal affairs in order?

What is an Estate Plan or Estate Planning?

Estate planning is a process, not a thing.

First of all, the word, “estate,” simply means “property” and there are two kinds of property in the whole wide world - real property and personal property. Real property includes land, houses, buildings, structures attached to land, condominiums and interests in land. Personal property is everything else which is not real property. Personal property can include everything from furniture and furnishings, jewelry and automobiles to bank accounts, stocks, bonds, patents, copyrights, life insurance, retirement accounts, annuities and more.

An “estate plan” is a set of coordinated legal documents which work together to handle your business, legal, personal and financial affairs for the period after your death and in the event that you become incapacitated while still alive.

The typical legal documents that an estate planning attorney will include in your basic set of customized and coordinated legal documents include the following:

• a Revocable Trust (also known as a living trust, a family trust or an inter vivos trust). The word, inter vivos, (pronounced, in-ter-vahy-vohs or in-ter-vee-vohs) means that the document takes effect during the lifetimes of the parties involved; between living persons. That’s why these trusts are called living trusts. Do not confuse with a living will;

• Schedule of Trust (and non-trust) Assets and Property;

• Trustee’s Certifications of Trust (official document for trustee to conduct business on behalf of the trust);

• Quitclaim Deed(s) to transfer of title to your real estate to the trustee of your trust plus a PCOR(s) for assessor - exempt from reappraisal;

• Explanations of Documents with Instructions and Trust Funding Checklist for transferring other assets to your trust such as bank accounts & investments;

• Beneficiary Designations for retirement accounts, life insurance and annuities;

• Digital Asset Organizer for websites, usernames & passwords;

• Estate Planning Letter for distribution choices for your personal items, furniture and furnishings of sentimental but nominal value;

• Pour-Over Will; and

• two Powers of Attorney (one for financial matters which are not covered by the trust, and one for health care decisions).

• Advance Healthcare Directive

There are other documents which may be included in an estate plan. depending on your personal and financial situation. You might be a candidate to consider a Charitable Remainder Trust, a Charitable Lead Trust, a Grantor Retained Annuity Trust or similar wealth transfer or tax planning tool.

What We Do:

We help you get your legal affairs in order so that your legacy will live on and withstand the test of time. We do this by listening to you and hearing what you want to accomplish with your money that is meaningful to you. We lead you through the whole process.

We give you legal and practical advice based on our 30+ years of experience fighting the family wars in probate court which are typically created by parents or individuals who didn’t plan ahead by doing estate planning. People who don’t plan - think death won’t happen any time soon; they think I have plenty of time, I’ll take care of that next month. Then the unexpected happens.

We’ve seen charitable intentions never materialize. We’ve seen substantial estates distributed to unintended next of kin because of failure to start or complete estate planning before it was too late. We’ve represented clients who have had to go through the public, expensive and humiliating experience of a conservatorship when they had a diagnosis of dementia and couldn’t handle their financial affairs or resist fraud or undue influence. We’ve watched children fight over their parents and steal their money when they were at the most vulnerable time of their life.

Do you want your family to fall apart, become resentful and to be estranged after you are no longer here or if you become incapacitated?

We bring all of our years of experience in and out of probate court with drafting, preparing and processing the paperwork to complete your estate plan. We bring our experience of representing and fighting for the rights of executors, administrators, heirs and beneficiaries in the probate court to the planning process. We help you and your trustee avoid probate, conservatorships, and guardianships by preparing the proper estate planning documents.

How it works:

First, we analyze your current assets and how title is held to each asset, then we project future income and expected inheritances, and discuss your wishes related to your family, the objects of your bounty and your intended beneficiaries of your estate. We determine whether there are any federal estate tax issues for clients with estates over $11,700,000 for individuals [or $23,400,000 for married couple with proper planning]. If you are in a second marriage, we talk about your decisions for distributions of community property and separate property. We look at capital gains tax issues and parent-child transfers of residential real property. We discuss whether you want to include charitable non-profit organizations in your post-death distribution choices and discuss the tax benefits of doing so. If you are charitably inclined, we discuss other charitable planned giving options and how those may be implemented. If you want to create a legacy at a specific organization we contact the charity and get specific details about how that legacy gift will be structured and fulfilled. We also offer philanthropic consulting services - to research non-profit organizations and to be the liaison to create and establish endowments and major gifts that will take place after your passing.

With your input, we establish certain estate planning goals, such as avoiding probate proceedings after your death, avoiding conservatorships if you become incapacitated, and avoiding guardianships if you have minor children. If you have children under the age of 18, you probably have goals and ideas about how money is distributed to them. We create continuing trusts for children and have options for a host of restrictions for distributions from which you may choose. We can create separate trusts for these children or a continuing trust which will benefit all of your children. If you have special needs children of children who will need special help throughout their life then we can customize trusts to provide for those children. We will discuss all of these options during a thorough and comprehensive consultation.

After you have made your decisions, we draft and customize your revocable “living” trust as the centerpiece of your estate plan. This document is the centerpiece of your estate plan and serves as a vehicle to provide for you (and your spouse/partner, if applicable) while you are alive, and then it distributes your estate to the individuals (or organizations) you care about after your passing and after all debts, taxes and expenses have been paid. If you have considerable separate property that you want to keep separate, then we consider a separate trust to preserve the character of that property. You review, make corrections, make any changes you want and then we sign, notarize and/or witness all of the documents as applicable. Then in most cases, your estate planning documents are legally enforceable.

Then we get to work on transferring title to certain assets to the trustee of your trust (yourself), such as your real estate, bank accounts, investment/brokerage accounts, personal property, business interests, patents, copyrights, corporations, partnership interests, LLC memberships and the like. We prepare and record the deed(s) for transfer of the real estate and file the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report with Assessor’s Office. This transfers title from how title is currently held to the trustee of your newly created trust. An endorsement to your title insurance policy is usually recommended since this is an uninsured transaction. Once you receive your recorded deed back from the recorder, then you can have peace of mind that the real estate will not have to be probated after your death. We can’t guarantee the actions or acceptance by third parties but we have years of success and experience with these matters.

Then we help you complete the beneficiary designations for assets which cannot be transferred to the trust such as retirement plans, life insurance and any annuities you might have as part of your financial portfolio.

Then we work on your businesses, partnership agreements, or other special assets in which you have a interest. Transferring title to businesses and special assets take careful planning and review of your business documents. But this is an important and essential part of the estate planning process.

Is a Will enough? No.

A Will virtually guarantees the requirement of probate proceedings because title is still held in your individual name after you pass away. One of the primary goals of estate planning is to avoid probate proceedings at all costs. To do this, you’ll need to create a trust and transfer title to your assets to the trustee of the trust. If completed properly, this process avoids the requirement of probate proceedings after an individual’s death.

If you own real estate in California, then you need a trust
as part of your estate plan, not just a Will.

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Our Firm’s Values:

 1.      Integrity through competent, ethical, honest, reliable and efficient work product based upon my 30+ years of experience practicing law in the areas of trusts, sophisticated estate planning and real estate law plus working on complex planned giving strategies for a  major non-profit charitable organization. 

2.      Creative Innovation through my vision, initiative, connection, authenticity and uniqueness gathered from my 30+ years of experience in law and my 7+ years in journalism, advertising and marketing from my undergraduate career. 

3.      Making a Difference through giving back, service to others, generosity, usefulness, compassion, collaboration and gratitude. Janet is connected to the San Diego community and knows how to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others through charitable gifts to non-profit organizations.  She also gives back through her involvement and service to non-profit organizations.

Our Mission:

The firm’s mission is to provide superior, comprehensive, legal estate planning services.  We aim to customize the client’s legal documents to fit each client’s unique needs and to transform complex legalese into easy-to-understand language.  We strive to treat each client with respect, courtesy and dignity.   

Our objective is to do our very best to make sure that each client understands, to the best of their ability, the content, use and function of the legal documents they are signing, by providing clear and comprehensive descriptions and instructions both in writing and verbally during all meetings. 

We provide great value for the quality work product we produce.  Our vision is that the legal services we provide will help each estate progress smoothly and privately through administration after the client’s death and will save the cost, time, extra work, stress, anxiety and frustrations by avoiding most types of probate, conservatorship and guardianship proceedings. 

Are you ready?

How to Get Started with Estate Planning:

If you are you mentally competent, and you are free from undue influence and acting of your own free will, and you are able to gather and copy your financial documents, and able to make your own independent distribution and successor trustee decisions, then call me to schedule your first appointment at (619) 234-6534.

Documents To Gather, Personal Information and Preliminary Decisions to Make for Your First Appointment

As attorneys, we can’t plan your estate until we know what your “estate” consists of -

• a description of each asset with account numbers, assets within the account such as stocks, bonds and mutual funds etc.,

• how title is held to each asset/account,

• estimated value of each asset within the account,

• list of your outstanding debts, liabilities, mortgage, loans etc.

Action:

1. Find, copy, or make an electronic/scanned copies (pdfs) of the requested financial and personal documents. These documents will give us sufficient information to determine how title is held to each of your assets, their estimated value, and a sufficient description of each asset. Go to the Checklist Financial and Personal Organizer page to order your organizer and to read about the information and documents we need to begin.

2. We need to know your basic personal information and information about your immediate family, or if none, then your next of kin.

3. Decide on a Successor Trustee - the individual or company who will handle your financial matters after you pass away or in the event you become incapacitated during your lifetime. Make sure that the person or company has agreed to act in this fiduciary capacity and that he/she/they understand that there is a lot of work and responsibility involved. Also decide on two alternates, if possible. Read about How to Choose a Successor Trustee and then choose one main trustee and two alternates and ask them the questions posed on the How to Choose a Successor Trustee page.

4. Make decisions on how you want your estate distributed after your passing - the beneficiaries of your estate. Go to the checklist page and read about the Basic Minimum Distribution Choices and the types of gifts you can make - such as specific gifts, general pecuniary gifts, and a percentage of the rest, residue and remainder of your estate. Most importantly, you must choose alternate beneficiaries.

5. Contact Janet McDonough to make your first appointment.

   Note: an attorney client relationship is not established until you have met with Janet McDonough and a written agreement to the terms has been signed and accepted by all parties.

WHEN YOU ARE READY AND INTERESTED IN RETAINING US TO COMPLETE YOUR ESTATE PLANNING LEGAL SERVICES, YOU START BY REQUESTING A NEW CLIENT FINANCIAL AND PERSONAL ORGANIZER by sending me an email, then COMPLETING IT, GATHERING YOUR FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS AND THEN CALLING 619-234-6534 FOR YOUR FIRST APPOINTMENT. It’s that simple.

Thank you for your interest in hiring McDonough Law Firm