The story of William Roberts Lindsay is a sad, lonely, and slightly bizarre one.

Lindsay amassed a fortune as a successful investor in Los Angeles and retired to Las Vegas in his mid-50s for the desert climate and low tax regime. He was a bit of a recluse – he never married and named his barber, Elton Marvin, and his pet pug, Midget as his closest friends.

When he died, he left only Midget and some dog treats to Marvin and the remainder of his estate he left to Scotland.

Yes, Scotland. The land of William Wallace, bagpipes, castles, and kilts.

For at least the last 10 years, Lindsay had been supporting Scottish interests. He funded the William R. Lindsay chair in public health at Glasgow University, and two years ago he made a $4 million donation to the National Trust for Scotland, a charitable organization dedicated to preserving Scottish heritage and history. Interestingly enough, he had previously been turned down for another Scottish academic chair because he was believed to be a “crank.”

Yet, Lindsay had never been to Scotland. His entire vision of the country was shaped by the movie Brigadooon, based on the Broadway hit musical of the same name, and staring Gene Kelly as one of two Americans hoping to discover a hidden Scottish village that emerges from the mist just one day every 100 years.

But Lindsay’s ancestors hailed from Scotland and that connection was the last important thing to him, imaginary though the impression was.

He bequeathed his estate – minus the dog – to the NTS before shooting himself in his home in November at the age of 79.

Bi aig fois, a’ Uilleam. (Rest in peace, William.)

James D. Perry

Over my years of practice, I’ve seen an increase in the number of women looking to create an estate plan.

Estate planning is important for women because they have a greater likelihood of ending up alone later in life. Women have a longer life expectancy than men and tend to marry older men often making them the final word on disposition of family assets.

In my own case, I had the good fortune to convince my wife Patricia to marry me, despite the fact that I am six years older. As a bonus for me, she loves to cook and bought me my first order of “Grecian Formula” which “restores lost color to graying hair naturally.”

Deborah Jacobs, writing for Forbes Magazine, suggests that women ask themselves a few important questions to help them craft their best estate plan, inclusive of powers of attorney, guardianship, life insurance, wills, and trusts.

1. Whom can you trust? You should have a durable power of attorney giving a trusted family member or close friend the legal authority to make decisions for you should you become incapacitated due to mental illness, medical emergency, or accident.

2. Who would raise your children? It’s often the hardest question to ask because the thought of orphaning your children is so painful.  But not asking the hard questions can leave your children at the mercy of the court.  If you haven’t named a guardian, the court will need to name one.  This can lead to a custody battle between relatives wanting to take the children, or, the reverse, no one may want to take them.

3. Do you have life insurance? Life insurance can help replace lost income when a spouse dies, or it may cover state or federal estate taxes.  If you have life insurance through your employer or a pension plan, be sure to keep your beneficiary forms updated.  You may want to designate a family member as the owner of the policy to avoid the proceeds being taxed as part of your estate.

4.  Do you have assets of your own? The estate tax applies to each person individually.  California is a community property state, so property that is used jointly in the marriage (e.g., the marital home or a joint bank account) is presumed to be community property.  If you are trying to balance the tax burden, you may need to transfer title to one spouse individually.  Otherwise, you may be rebutting the community property presumption in court.

5. Is there money in the bank? If your spouse dies, you will not have access right away to his individual bank accounts.  You want to be sure that there is enough money in joint accounts or separate accounts to which you have access to cover immediate expenses until the spouse’s estate is settled.

6. Should you shed assets to save taxes? Before you start giving away the farm, you need to make sure you have enough money for yourself to live and pay emergency or final expenses.  You can give away as much as $13,000 individually per year tax free, $1 million over your lifetime.  This year is an anomaly in estate taxation (0% on estates, 35% on gifts), but starting Jan. 1, 2011, unless Congress acts, you will be paying the death tax and the gift tax at a rate of 55%.

There are a great number of estate planning and financial planning vehicles you can employ to transfer assets prior to and after death and to lower your tax bill.  Take stock of your goals and your financial reality, and then talk to your estate planning attorney.

James D. Perry

We never read about a perfect celebrity estate plan. An estate plan that can smoothly transfer assets is not newsworthy, and happy relatives rarely sue.

From what I have read, esteemed film actor Dennis Hopper made every attempt to create a solid estate plan. Unfortunately, his name and estate plan have been in the papers because of a singular unforeseen problem: one angry widow.

Early this year, Hopper filed for divorce from his wife of 18 years, Victoria Duffy. She responded by filing a complaint in court claiming Hopper had cut her out of his will at the behest of other family members. She claimed he lacked the mental capacity to change his will, a charge his doctors emphatically denied despite his declining health due to inoperable and terminal prostate cancer.

Because Duffy and Hopper were still married at his death, she stands to inherit a quarter of his sizeable estate and a $250,000 life insurance property, but a clause in their prenuptial agreement may strip her of all inheritance. According to the document, the couple must have been “married and living together” on the date of Hopper’s death.

The prenuptial agreement categorized any property purchased or acquired by Hopper during the marriage as separate property. Just prior to his death in May, Hopper signed an affidavit under oath accusing Duffy of stealing more than $1.5 million in valuable artwork from him – artwork that was considered his separate property.

Hopper had created a revocable living trust and funded it with assets including works from his art collection. Now his trust is suing Duffy, asking a court to compel her to return the property so it can be properly distributed to his named beneficiaries.

Hopper took the responsible steps executing a will, creating a trust and funding his trust. But, all the planning in the world won’t deter a person with enough money for a lawyer and a nasty grudge.

James D. Perry

One of the most frequent questions I get from my clients is “Why should I spend the money to create a trust?”

The easiest answer to that question is that for the price you pay now, you save far more money down the road. But that answer doesn’t satisfy everyone. So here is one serious money-sucking situation that might make you think twice before dismissing your need for a trust.

In the event of your incapacity, the court may impose a conservatorship because the individual can no longer handle his or her own finances. Anytime you have to initiate court proceedings, you’re looking at a significant investment of time and money – more of both if the proceedings are contentious.

Also, nearly anyone can petition the court to become your conservator if they can show that you no longer have the capacity to manage your affairs. We have seen this most recently where an advocacy group for child actors, A Minor Consideration, petitioned the court to take control of the finances for the 14 children of OctoMom, Nadya Suleman. An Orange County judge has given the green light to the group to proceed with their case.

However, you might become incapacitated for any number of reasons in your life having nothing to do with the Hollywood scene, including dementia, illness, disease, or accident.

By creating a revocable living trust, you designate ahead of time a successor trustee who you want to be in charge of your affairs should you become incapacitated. Moreover, you can designate exactly what property that person can control and choose different individuals to manage multiple assets. Most people transfer the title to their house into a living trust so that the successor trustee would be able to manage the affairs of the home.

Your life is probably not as crazy as the OctoMom’s, and you may never have Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears’ problems (both have battled conservator petitions in court), but you may one day be struck by Alzheimer’s disease, or an accident or illness resulting in a coma, any one of a number of mundane real life disasters that strike regular people.

You and your estate planning attorney have tools available to prevent confusion in your family and keep them from fighting for control should you become incapacitated.

James D. Perry

Late-in-life second marriages are becoming commonplace in American society, and with it, anxiety has been rising among stepchildren. Estate planning lawyers have had to pay greater attention to the particular concerns and needs of blended families because also becoming more common is the courtroom brawls between stepparents and stepchildren and stepsiblings.

The first concern I hear from clients is often related to the financial security of the parents. If Mom moved into Stepdad’s home, what’s to keep Stepdad’s kids from kicking her out of the house if Stepdad were to die first?

The second concern is for the adult children’s prospective inheritance from their natural parent. Many state elective share laws dictate that when a person dies, the spouse naturally inherits a certain share of the estate, which will certainly cut into how much, if any, is left to the decedent’s natural children after the spouse dies.

In California, community property laws can be both a blessing and a nightmare for the adult children of a blended family. On one hand, generally, a surviving spouse doesn’t have a claim over to any property or account kept separately and in the deceased’s name.

However, any property that was held jointly (i.e., homes, common bank accounts) is presumed to be community property and, unless that presumption is rebutted in court, it passes entirely to the surviving spouse. And, even separate property may pass in whole or in part to the surviving spouse if the deceased partner leaves no will.

Older adults bring a greater amount of personal wealth into new relationships and, experts say, they are more practical about the financial realities their late-in-life marriage presents.

A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can keep Mom in the house owned by Stepdad until her death at which point it passes solely to his children. Keeping property separate in trust accounts can prevent it from being transmuted into community property. And a clause inserted into Dad’s will can ensure that the separate property in his name passes to his children, not his spouse upon his death.

After you die, you could either be rolling in your grave because of the nasty legal battle you left your blended family or resting in peace.

James D. Perry

My wife and I are off to Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for vacation before the summer days slip away.    I’ve left instructions with my capable staff on when and how to contact me if needed, with any luck they will be able to get by just fine without me for a couple of weeks.  It would be horribly irresponsible of me to not just show up on Monday morning without telling them or my clients that I will be away.

But what if I don’t come back?   What if I choke on a lobster tail or have the big one whilst trolling for trout on Lake Winamasake?   Well, all of you that were counting on me to help you with your estate plan are just going to have find help or a referral from my staff.   And let’s be clear:  you, like me and everyone else, are going to die.

You really have to come to grips with this concept before you make out your estate plan because death is not the last thing you will ever do.   Distribution of assets is the true final act, and since you’re not going to be around to do it, you need your own capable staff to carry out your business.

That staff is your estate plan.  Your will covers the “what” and “to whom” of asset allocation, and any trusts you create handle the “when” and “how.”

Once death occurs, planning pays off for your heirs if done right.  Other than state law, your estate plan is the only roadmap a probate judge, or your trust attorney can use to settle your estate.  And state laws don’t discriminate based on your spendthrift kids, your no-good brother, or your favorite niece.

Hopefully, I will eventually return safe and sound to my office in September and be available to settle any unresolved issues that came up during my vacation.

If I don’t come back, at least I know my own estate plan is complete.  If yours isn’t, get to it before that banana peel trips you up!

James D. Perry

Open the newspaper and on any given day you can find a cautionary tale of an elderly person losing thousands of dollars to his or her caretaker, a scam artist, or some final friend.

The sad fact is that the elderly make easy targets of financial abuse, and you may be their first line of defense against scammers. If you have a parent over the age of 70, you should have a conversation with him or her about what would happen if they could no longer manage money.

Approach your parent respectfully, asking permission to talk about the subject. Your parent is likely to feel vulnerable – relinquishing money means relinquishing control.

You’ll want your parent to sign a durable power of attorney. And, if your parent is already showing signs of mental impairment, you need to act fast. A durable power of attorney must be signed and notarized while your parent is still competent.

If possible, you should include the whole family in the conversation and decision-making. Put all agreements in writing so that there is no argument or second-guessing.

If you already are in charge of your parent’s bank accounts, try not to micromanage. If possible, keep just enough for monthly expenses in a joint checking account and protect the rest in another account. Pay the bills together or help your parent set up automatic bill-pay to prevent forgotten bills.

The change in power can be a tough, emotional transition, but you don’t want to put off protecting your loved ones.

James D. Perry

With wills and trusts, people tend to “set it and forget it.” But it’s important to revisit your will and trust documents at least every five years, or whenever there is a major life event – new children, new son or daughter in law, new grandchildren, divorce, remarriage, new property, etc.

Guardianship appointments should be current if you have minor children so that you can designate who will care for them if you die.

Your beneficiary designation forms determines who will get your insurance and retirement accounts. This too, should be updated periodically. If you named a sibling or your parents as your beneficiary when you were younger on these forms, you might now want to make sure they go to your spouse or children instead. Many people aren’t aware that these forms override stated wishes in your will so you should consider these documents in tandem to prevent confusion.

Keep all these documents in a safe place – a fire-proof safe, a clearly marked file in your file cabinet, a shared folder on your home computer, or ask your lawyer to hold on to them – and make sure your loved ones know where they can find them if and when they need them.

In a medical emergency, or in moments of mourning, you will not want your family and friends to be in a frenzy when all they want is to honor your wishes and your memory.

If you haven’t started any of these documents, you should immediately create a balance sheet that lists the basic information about your assets and schedule an appointment with your estate-planning attorney as soon as possible.

James D. Perry

At the end of May, parties claiming deceptive business practices by LegalZoom filed a class action lawsuit in California against the online legal document preparation service. They argue that LegalZoom’s advertisements give consumers “a false sense of security that people do not need hire a traditional attorney.”

In July 2007, Anthony Ferrentino asked his niece, Katherine Webster, to help him use LegalZoom to prepare a will and living trust. But, when Katherine went to transfer her uncle’s assets into the trust, she found that the financial institutions that held his money refused to recognize the LegalZoom documents as valid. Katherine tried to get help from LegalZoom’s customer service representatives to no avail, and the trust was still not funded when Anthony died in November 2007.

Katherine is now one of the plaintiffs in the suit against LegalZoom suing on behalf of herself and on behalf of anyone in California who paid LegalZoom for a living trust, will, advance directive for health care, or power of attorney.

The internet has brought a lot of convenience to our lives with its wealth of information, online shopping, and the ease of staying connected to our loved ones. But sometimes convenience means cutting corners, and the one area you don’t want to cut corners is in protecting your loved ones and your property.

These legal document preparation services are not the same as going to an actual attorney, but they do not clarify that in their user agreements. And, customer service representatives may look over your documents, but they cannot dispense legal advice, identifying problem areas or correcting mistakes. The documents are customized with your personal information, but they are not tailored to your needs.

After her uncle’s death, Katherine hired an estate planning attorney to petition the court to allow the post-death funding of the trust and to convince the banks to transfer the funds. The attorney also discovered that Anthony’s will was never properly witnessed.

Correcting the mistakes ended up costing Anthony’s estate thousands of dollars. Doing it right the first time would have saved time and money, and a lot of emotional stress. In the end, the “convenience” simply wasn’t worth it.

James D. Perry

My Dad was a guy who loved is family and took care of little things behind the scenes to make his kids lives a bit easier. One of those things was to prepay a cremation of his body and interment of his ashes at plots that he and my mother purchased years ago at Rose Hills.

When he died, his preplanning saved me many hours of decision-making and legwork. The only downside, if there was one, is that I get periodic calls from my Rose Hills representative urging me to prepay my own plan.

Paying in advance combines pre-planning with pre-funding, which makes it an attractive estate planning mechanism. Often, prepaid burial plans are a tool used to “spend down” excess funds to qualify a client for MediCal Long Term Care benefits.

There are primarily three ways to pre-pay for a funeral: insurance, trusts, and individual funding.

An individual may buy a whole-life insurance policy to cover the costs when needed, or money may be put into a trust run by a financial institution or statewide funeral directors association.

Individual funding may be done through so-called guaranteed and non-guaranteed plans. Under a guaranteed plan, a funeral home promises that if you pay today, it will provide services to you when needed no matter how much prices rise. Many of them exempt other costs, such as flowers and music, though, and changes to the plan potentially void the price guarantee. A non-guaranteed plan offers no such price protections.

Whatever route you might choose to take in pre-paying your funeral, though, be aware of the risks.

Revoking a prepaid plan is not easy. California imposes up to a 10% fee on prepayments in trust. And, canceling an insurance policy entitles you to receive only the cash value of the policy – not necessarily the value of premiums paid – minus commissions and costs.

Also, there are widespread allegations of fraud and mismanagement within the industry. State and federal legislators are working to curb abuses through regulation and disclosure requirements, but consumer protections for those caught in a scam are still not strong.

Some consider it sound financial planning – a hedge against inflation locking in today’s prices in an industry where prices continue increasing. Others simply wish to spare their loved ones the trouble of picking out caskets, buying burial plots, and making other arrangements during their grieving.

As with any investment, diligent scrutiny and seeking legal and financial advice where needed are key to ensuring your money and your loved ones are protected.

James D. Perry