👩‍⚖️ Welcome and Overview of Blended Families in Estate Planning
00:00:00
Michelle Dexter: Okay. Okay. You want more? Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to attend our webinar today on blended families. For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Michelle Dexter, and I am an attorney here at Keystone Law Firm. I’m really excited to do this webinar today because prior to working at Keystone Law Firm in the estate planning, probate, guardianship, conservatorship, and trust administration fields, I actually did family law.
A lot of times people don’t understand the rules that go along with community property and separate property and how a second marriage, when you have children from a prior relationship, can really impact what you need in terms of documentation. It does not work the same way as it does if you are what we would refer to as a nuclear family, where you and your spouse have all of your children together. So, it’s really important that people understand what their situation is and what steps they need to take to make them appropriate and ensure things go the way that they want to go.
👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Types of Blended Families
00:10:02
Michelle Dexter: Okay. So, blended family types—generally, in my experience, there are three different types of situations with blended families:
You’ve got a second marriage where both parties are coming in with children from a prior relationship and maybe they don’t have children together.
You’ve got a situation where there may be kids from a prior relationship, and they’ve created kids together.
And then sometimes I have situations where one party may have kids from a prior relationship, but the other spouse doesn’t have any children whatsoever.
Different people are going through different things, and luckily, there are some different options that can be used in terms of accomplishing the goals that you have with those. Okay.
⚠️ Why Estate Planning is Crucial for Blended Families
So, why is estate planning more important with blended families? Well, here in Arizona, if you do not have an estate plan in place—and when I mention estate plan, I mean a will, a trust, beneficiary designation, some of those different types of things—things may not go the way that you intend them to go. Okay?
00:11:08
Michelle Dexter: There tends to be a mistaken belief that if you’re the spouse, you’re automatically going to receive your spouse’s estate even without documentation. But that’s not true in Arizona when you have a blended family situation. So, you need to be intentional about creating an estate plan to effectuate what you want to have happen to your assets. Okay?
Arizona law says that if you do not have a will or trust in place, that is what we call intestate succession, and the court follows the state statutes in how those distributions happen. Sorry, I keep—I meant to move my slides—my blended families types and then why it’s important.
There’s a statute here in Arizona that says that if you die intestate with a surviving spouse, if all issue are of the surviving spouse, then everything goes to the surviving spouse. That’s not a blended family situation. That’s a nuclear family situation where all of the children are the children of the decedent and the surviving spouse.
00:12:12
Michelle Dexter: So, everything goes to the surviving spouse. But when you’ve got children from a prior relationship, the statute says the surviving spouse will receive one half of the intestate separate property, but they don’t have any interest in the decedent’s half of the community property. So, the surviving spouse gets to keep their half of their community property, but they don’t receive the decedent’s community property. Okay? And that can be a really big deal for a lot of people.
The statute also says—make sure that I’m sharing the right thing with you guys—the statute also says that when we’ve got intestate, the decedent’s share that’s not going to the surviving spouse is going first to all of the children by representation. Okay. Everything’s going to the children by representation. Okay, that includes the children of the marriage and the children of the decedent prior to the marriage. As long as they are a decedent’s children, they receive all of that half of the assets that is not going to the surviving spouse.
00:13:32
Michelle Dexter: Okay. If there are no surviving descendants, intestate law says that it’s going to the decedent’s parents. If there’s no surviving descendant or parent, the descendants of the decedent’s parents, that’s your siblings, that it would go to intestate. And if there’s no surviving descendant, parent, or descendant of a parent, maternal grandparent, maternal—that’s generally the way that the intestate succession goes. Okay.
And so with these blended families, we’re talking about taking half of the assets, the share that belongs to the decedent, and that share going to that person’s children, all of their children by representation. That’s not necessarily what everybody intends to have happen.
In addition, if you’ve named beneficiaries on your accounts here in Arizona, even if you put your spouse or kids as beneficiaries, the unhappy person in that situation—so if you’ve named the spouse and the children aren’t happy, or you’ve named the children and the spouse isn’t happy—they do have the ability to sue, and the courts may reallocate based off of the intestate statute. Beneficiary designations, unfortunately, may not always control, which is also an important thing to be aware of.
🎯 Tailoring Your Estate Plan to Your Family Dynamics
00:14:50
Michelle Dexter: So, we talk about the different categories of families, right?
Category 1: Truly Blended Families
Some families have blended into one really nice family unit. They’re going to want everything to go to the spouse, and then once both spouses have expended everything, then they’re going to want assets to be split equally between the kids. Again, you’re going to need to have an estate plan in place to effectuate this so that the state statute does not trigger how the assets get divided.
Category 2: Non-Blended Families (Later in Life)
The second category is when people have never really been blended. You know, it may be a second marriage a little bit later in life. All of your children are adults. They haven’t really had an opportunity to interact. They didn’t grow up together. They’re not blended. And when you’ve got that type of situation, you may want to consider whether or not we look at specific gifts at the death of the either spouse. We may look at who’s going to administer the assets, and we may look at whether or not we want to do uneven distributions of assets.
00:15:54
Michelle Dexter: Okay? So, just know that there’s some different options there, right?
Category 3: One Partner with Children
The third category of families is when one partner has a child or children, but the other does not. And so, your estate plan may look like your share is going to your children, but his or her share is going to go to other family members or to charities. And so, again, we have to be very intentional in creating an estate plan to do that, right?
There are lots of different options when it comes to creating your estate plan when we’ve got not only nuclear families but also the blended families.
🛠️ Estate Planning Options for Blended Families
Option 1: Specific Gifts to Children at First Death
Specific gifts to children at the death of their parent. I really like this in a lot of situations, especially when the family is not particularly connected, because this gives the children an opportunity to receive something from their parent and not have to wait for the new spouse, in their eyes, to pass before they receive anything from their parent. This can be really helpful in situations where maybe you’ve inherited something from your parents and you’ve got that set in a specific account, and so you want that account at your death to go to your children because it wasn’t really intended for your spouse.
00:17:13
Michelle Dexter: It was really intended to maybe be maintained along the bloodline. And so, I find that this can be really helpful to help ease some of the tension after a person passes away and they’ve got a blended family because the children aren’t looking at the spouse in terms of, “When are we getting our money?” Okay.
Option 2: Spousal Protection Trusts (Marital Trust/Decedent’s Trust)
Another option is what we call spousal protection trusts. Okay. The spousal protection trust leaves everything in your trust, but we create two separate subtrusts within the trust:
The Survivor’s Trust: The survivor has full control over. That’s their half of the community property assets. They can be trustee. They can change who the beneficiaries are. They can do anything and spend that money any way they want to. Right?
The Marital Trust (or Decedent’s Trust): The decedent’s share of the trust goes into this. Those funds can still be used for the benefit of the survivor, right? The survivor is still alive.
00:18:10
Michelle Dexter: We want to make sure that their health is taken care of, their medical expenses, their housing expenses, those types of things. But we can put some limitations on that Decedent’s Trust and say, “Look, money should really only come out of here when the survivor’s expended all of their resources. The survivor can’t change who the beneficiaries are in that Decedent’s Trust.” And so that can help put some protections in place.
You can decide whether or not you’re going to let the survivor be the trustee of that trust. Maybe you’re letting one of the kids be a trustee of that trust. Maybe you’re letting a third party be the trustee of that trust. And so then they can decide when and where does the surviving spouse need any of the money out of that spousal trust. And we can put lots of different language in that spousal protection trust, just depending on the range that you’re looking for for protections. There can be language in there that says, “If my spouse gets remarried, I don’t want them being trustee.”
00:19:09
Michelle Dexter: “If my spouse gets remarried and doesn’t have a prenuptial agreement, I don’t want them taking any money out of this trust during that period.” And so there can be certain additional layers of protection that we can put within those spousal protection trusts to make sure that what it is that you want to have effectuated is effectuated. Now, keep in mind, if your spouse has some major health issue, needs long-term care, and ends up spending it, they’re spending it. And so that may be your ultimate goal—to allow the surviving spouse to be able to spend the assets that you have if they really need it. But to the extent that you’re trying to protect it for your children, the spousal protection trust helps with that. Right?
Option 3: His, Hers, and Ours Trust Package
Our third option is what we refer to as the His, Hers, and Ours Trust Package. Right? Husband and wife each have their own trust. Okay? That is where they maintain their separate property that they’ve brought into the marriage. The third trust is the Ours Trust, and that is what they are generating and creating together during their marriage.
00:20:15
Michelle Dexter: Right? So, His and Hers maintains their separate property. Ours maintains their community property. This—the Ours—is what they’re primarily working out of on a day-to-day basis. Their current income’s going in there. Maybe the house that they purchase together is in there. Just general things that they’ve accumulated together are going into the Ours Trust. And what the Ours Trust says is that when the first of them dies, we’re splitting that trust, and we’re distributing to the His and Hers Trust. Okay?
And so at that point in time, you can say, “Hey, if I’m the first to go, I still want my trust to provide some income, some assets to the surviving spouse, but my surviving spouse has absolutely no control over my trust.” Or maybe they can be trustee of your trust. It just really depends on what it is that you’re looking to accomplish, right? But there are some great ways that you can do that to kind of keep separate those assets that you’ve brought into the marriage that remain as separate property if you’ve set it up correctly.
00:21:27
Michelle Dexter: The fact that you get married in Arizona doesn’t mean that every asset you own is now community property. It means that the assets that you acquire together during the marriage are community property. If you receive an inheritance during the marriage, that technically is still separate property. What we find is that people don’t realize that that is the situation, and they will go ahead and deposit that into their joint account and they commingle it with everything. And then if somebody files for a divorce and they’re like, “I want that money back,” they don’t really have the ability to get the money back at that point in time. And so that can be really frustrating for people. And so it’s really important that they’re intentional about how they are setting that up so that they are getting what they want out of it. Okay.
📉 Case Examples of Intestacy in Blended Families
00:21:58
Michelle Dexter: So, I am a big example person. I appreciate having examples to understand why sometimes these things have been problematic.
Example 1: Contested Assets and No Will
We had a case a few years ago where husband and wife were married for 12 years. Husband had two adult children from a prior relationship. Wife had an adult son, but they had no children together. Husband dies without a will or trust. Kind of young, kind of unexpectedly. Filed for a formal probate. Wife has priority to act as personal representative under the law. Of course, his children weren’t happy about that.
The distribution of husband’s estate was that his interest in their community property goes to his children and one half of his separate property goes to his wife, and the other half of his separate property goes to his children. That matter was particularly contentious. We had two adult children. There was a safety deposit box where we had hoped that there was maybe a will. We had to drill into the safety deposit box after probate was opened in order to attempt to see if we could find a will. Both parties, the kids and the wife, thought there was a will someplace. Unfortunately, we never found it. When the children went to the house to retrieve the things from the house, it required a civil standby by the local sheriff’s office.
00:23:38
Michelle Dexter: The children wanted the ashes, you know, wife wanted the ashes. There were just so many different things that they were at odds with. And finally, in the settlement agreement, wife agreed to give the children the real property, and she kept the liquid assets.
Wife had been named in that matter on numerous accounts as the beneficiary. In that particular case, the children contested it. And because there was nothing in writing showing his testamentary intent—in other words, there wasn’t a will or trust indicating that he intended for his wife to have those things—the court allowed them to be included in the estate. And so instead of those things going directly to her, they came into the estate, and they were divided pursuant to the statute. Okay. Super frustrating situation for that lady, because not only did she lose her husband, but she was also in this litigated battle with his children, which was just not a good place for her to be. Okay.
Example 2: House Ownership Divided
In another matter that we had, husband died. He was married. They had a joint child, and then he also had a child from a prior relationship.
00:24:54
Michelle Dexter: Both of those children living with the surviving spouse. No will or trust in place. Husband again was relatively young and died unexpectedly. The house is their primary asset. The accounts and liquid assets were used to pay expenses, creditors, and attorney’s fees, but the house ownership is going to have to be divided between the surviving spouse and the two kids in order to equalize what the kids are entitled to receive.
Now, in this situation, the child from the prior relationship is going to turn 18 before their child together turns 18. And at that point in time, she technically will have the authority to say, “I want my share out of the house,” and can either force a sale or force the other owners to pay her out. Right now the mortgage interest rates are not necessarily as good as they were, say, 10 or 15 years ago. And so being forced to take out a loan when maybe you aren’t prepared or don’t want to at the current interest rates just feels like something that’s really out of your control.
00:26:06
Michelle Dexter: And it’s just frustrating to think that had some documentation been in place, this situation wouldn’t need to be happening. And so that’s kind of part of what we’re trying to convey to people is to understand, especially in a blended family, if you don’t have some documentation in place, you could really be putting the survivor into a bad situation and adding stress to a time when they’re already grieving your loss. Okay.
đź’ Risks and Considerations for Distributions
When we’ve got everybody happy and blended, in a lot of those cases they’ll say everything to the spouse and then everything equally to the children. That’s generally what we would do in a nuclear family. When families are kind of blended well, and everybody’s kind of on the same page, that can work well. But there’s always a risk, even with the nuclear families, that the surviving spouse may change the distributions from the kids to benefit somebody else. And so you always want to be a little bit cognizant of that ability.
00:27:21
Michelle Dexter: We often joke about wife meeting the cabana boy or husband running off with the nanny or those types of things, but we joke because those are things that we’ve seen before. And when you have a surviving spouse that comes in and changes beneficiary designations, even when they’ve told you, “Oh, neither of us would change those,” and then they come in and they change them, that’s their right to do. So, just know that even when you’re choosing this option to leave everything to your surviving spouse, you’re going to want to take into consideration that possibility.
You might want to take into consideration as well the amount of money that you may anticipate being available to your beneficiaries after the death of the second of you. Consider what your respective ages are, health issues you’re having, and personality traits that make you question the ongoing relationship between the surviving spouse and the decedent’s children. Those are all things to just kind of have an honest conversation with yourself about to make sure that if you leave everything to the surviving spouse and then it gets split between the children equally, that that’s really what’s going to happen.
00:28:27
Michelle Dexter: For those that are not necessarily as well blended, those are the times where we see the spouse come in and change the beneficiary designations and eliminate the decedent’s children from the estate plan.
I’ve seen it because they felt children were being disrespectful to the surviving spouse after the death of the first spouse to die.
I’ve seen it where children failed to contribute to the care of the decedent before their death, and that really upset the surviving spouse.
I’ve seen surviving spouses enter into new relationships and they fail to protect the assets that they brought in from the prior marriage.
When decedent’s children fail to maintain a relationship with the survivor or appear to be greedy after death, that can often leave a bitter taste in the mouth of the survivor, and the survivor may come in and make changes to the terms of those trust documents or estate plan documents.
In addition, we’ve seen matters where the surviving spouse may become incapacitated, and their children will try to take advantage of the situation to benefit themselves and not be concerned about the decedent’s children.
00:29:39
Michelle Dexter: And so those are things that you just again, you know, you want to be cognizant of those types of things.
More Detail on Specific Gifts
When we talk about the ability to give a specific gift to children at the death of a parent, I mentioned earlier, you know, maybe you’ve inherited something, you want to keep it along the bloodline, that type of thing. We can say at the death of this spouse, his children shall inherit this specific account or this dollar amount or those types of things.
In general, I prefer accounts or percentages over dollar amounts because if the dollar amount is all you have and there’s a specific gift for it, they may be the only beneficiary receiving something. So, it’s in my opinion, it’s better to say, “You know, I’ve set aside this account at this bank and it’s account number one, two, three, four, and that account is to go to my children at my passing. Even if my spouse is alive, I want to make sure that this account goes to them.” Okay. So, know that those are options that you can do.
00:30:42
Michelle Dexter: It just allows your children to receive something at your death, and it relieves a little bit of the tension of the kids wondering, “Am I going to have to wait until the survivor passes? Will the survivor spend everything?” You know, children are often very sentimental about things. And so, if there’s separate property that they think that they should have, if there are family inheritances that they think should stay within bloodlines, that’s your opportunity to kind of set that up in the way that is right for your family. Okay?
More Detail on Spousal Protection Trusts
As I mentioned earlier, those spousal protection trusts just allow you to say, “I’m going to set aside my share of the assets.” You can decide how much control your surviving spouse has over it, what type of access they have to it, and you can include those provisions to stop a surviving spouse who has remarried from being a trustee, type of thing. They can still use the funds in emergencies, but it may limit what they have direct access to.
00:31:50
Michelle Dexter: And so that can just be important when you’re concerned about the spouse’s next chapter after you’re gone, you know, and how they’re going to manage those monies. Okay.
More Detail on His, Hers, and Ours
I often—when I have clients, and some of you who are even on here, I may have had this conversation—if we’ve created a trust for you, and you come in and tell me that you’re so excited you’re getting remarried, and I’m always super excited for you, but I always try to talk to the clients, and sometimes it’s the client with their fiancĂ©, and say, “Let’s talk about what community property rules are. Let’s talk about what separate property is, and let’s talk about if it’s appropriate to protect these assets.” You know, sometimes it’s a His, Hers, and Ours Trust. Sometimes she’s coming in with a lot of assets, and she’s maintaining her separate, and then they’re building something together. I’ve had situations where they say to me, “We’re both putting in an equal amount,” which makes me feel a little bit better that if the situation were to dissolve, they’re both getting an equal amount out.
00:32:53
Michelle Dexter: And so, you know, there’s just some different—every situation is unique. I used to say when I did family law, “Every divorce is different. Don’t compare your divorce to somebody else’s,” because their income, their assets, their children, all of that information is unique and different to every single divorce. And estate planning is a little bit the same. It’s not a cookie cutter for every single person, every single family. And you’ve really got to take into consideration your situation, your finances, your children, and what your ultimate goals are.
It’s nice because with the His, Hers, and Ours, you can maintain your own separate assets and maintain that in the way that you want and know that your children can have something that’s set aside for them. And yet, you can still help provide for your spouse and make it so that if your spouse needs the money, they’ve got that ability to do that. Okay. And often having somebody like your children or a third party act as the trustee of that separate trust helps with just making the kids feel as though they’re going to have their assets protected and that there’s somebody advocating for them.
00:34:10
Michelle Dexter: The spouse can still feel confident that they’re going to receive distribution should they need them. Okay.
🤝 Considerations for Naming Trustees
Some things to consider when you are creating an estate plan for a blended family. Often the tendency that people come to me with is that they want a child from each side—you know, a child of the wife and a child of the husband—to act together if neither trustmaker can act for the trust. So, they would be co-trustees type of thing.
When we force two people to work together, it just automatically becomes more complicated. And when we’re forcing two people that don’t necessarily have a relationship or don’t get along to work together, that’s often when they end up in our litigation department. And so our goal really is to try to avoid that.
The other thing to consider when you’re forcing two people is are they close in location to each other? Because many of the financial institutions will require, at least in the beginning, for them both to come into the same branch to sign the opening accounts, to transfer assets, to do the signature cards, those types of things, and so it can just be more complicated.
00:35:38
Michelle Dexter: Generally what I say is, you know, if there’s a family member that both sides respect, that’s who I would go for. If there isn’t, and if there really is a lot of contention between the two sides of the family, look at naming a third-party fiduciary because you don’t want the management to be where the issues arise. And if there isn’t somebody there that everybody trusts that they’re doing the right thing, then take it out of the family’s hands and let a third-party agent handle those things, who’s going to be more neutral, who’s not going to be favoring one side or the other. But oftentimes I think you guys will find a friend or a family member who can have the respect of both sides and will be able to execute the administration of the trust when you guys can’t.
🗣️ The Importance of Communication
I also really encourage people to communicate with your children about what the plan is. It can be really hard on a surviving spouse at the time that they’ve just lost their spouse to have their stepchildren inquiring about their inheritance and having the spouse being concerned about their future. Being concerned about their financial stability, they’re already concerned with the loss of income.
00:36:49
Michelle Dexter: But when we start taking away their house and potentially half of their assets, it is just a whole new level of stress. And I’ve had more than one client come in, primarily wives, where their spouse has passed away, no documentation in place, and I have to break the news to the surviving spouse that half of the house is going to be owned by the kids unless they can buy them out. And that is just a really stressful thing for a lot of these parents or these surviving spouses to have to consider. And it’s just a really stressful time anyway. And then trying to figure out if they’ve got the finances to stay in the house, if they’re going to be forced to sell the house because the children are going to force them to. Those types of things can just be really hard to kind of manage and deal with at an already stressful time. Okay.
🔑 Final Takeaway
So, you know, the moral of this story really overall, the lesson to learn is that having an estate plan that identifies your goals and sets forth the rules after the death of a spouse is even more important in a blended family.
00:37:54
Michelle Dexter: We really want the surviving spouse to have what they need to survive the rest of their life and to have what you guys intend for them to have available to them for their ongoing support. I highly recommend in a lot of these situations, crunch the numbers. Make sure the surviving spouses can be self-sustaining after you pass. If they’re losing your income, even if that’s just your social security or they’re losing their social security because your social security is higher, what do the rest of the expenses look like? Do they have the ability to stay in the house? Can they afford that? What does that look like for them?
And just generally, have a plan. How much do you want to take care of your surviving spouse versus your children? Take all of those things into consideration so you can just make sure that for everybody, things are laying out the way that you want them to lay out and that it isn’t the type of thing that is suddenly unexpected and stressful for the surviving spouse.
00:39:03
Michelle Dexter: Okay. So, I would love to take anybody’s questions. If you have questions about any of the different types of trust options that I’ve mentioned, if you have questions about specific situations, I’m happy to answer those. Just remember that this is being recorded and will go on our YouTube channel. So, please leave any personally identifying information out of it. But I’m happy to answer anybody’s questions with regards to this.
But, you know, I’ve had more than one client come in that is a blended family that they didn’t have any estate planning documents in place. And I say to them, “I’m so glad to see you because if something were to happen to you today, this is how your assets would get split.” And they’re completely shocked because they assume that because they’re married that everything would go to their spouse without an estate plan. And that is not the way that it works here in Arizona. So, we like to make sure that we’re continually educating the public about what the rules are.
00:40:04
Michelle Dexter: You know, whether or not you get your estate plan done through us is a whole separate issue, but making sure that you have documentation in place to protect your surviving spouse, to protect your assets, to protect your children. It’s just really important documentation to have in place, and we want to make sure that people are aware of how important those things are, for sure.
So, if anybody has any questions, there is a chat box. It looks kind of like one of those speak bubbles over in the lower right-hand side that you can add questions to. Here, I’ll put a little note there and maybe that will pop up for you guys if anybody has any questions or anything that you’d like me to go over in more detail. I am happy to do that. But I think overall that covers the topics of what I wanted to do. Our YouTube channel is Keystone Law Firm. And so I believe you can just Google search YouTube Keystone Law Firm.
00:41:06
Michelle Dexter: Oh, or thank you, Francisco, and add it in there. These webinars are being recorded, and they will be placed on our YouTube channel. There are a few other ones that we’ve done this year that are already up there, and we’re super excited to hear that our clients are watching those and learning from those. And we’re excited. We sat down a couple of weeks ago and kind of mapped out what next year’s topics will be. Right, Francisco?
Francisco Sirvent: Yeah, we did. We easily came up with topics from all of your guys’ questions and things we talk about. So, we have a whole full calendar for next year. So, yeah. And which reminds me, our next one is actually next week, if you guys are interested. It’s on the 11th at noon, and it’s going to be taught by Cari Gutman, our sister company, Lifestyle Planning, the CFP over there. Carme is going to talk about, Is this another tech bubble that’s building in the markets?
00:42:06
Francisco Sirvent: We see kind of those big seven giant companies really are taking up a huge share of that S&P 500. So, if you want to hear Carmy’s take on that, you’re welcome to join. Again, it’s free. It’s online, just like this. I’ll just put that link to register in the chat. So, you’re welcome to use it yourself. You’re welcome to share if you know somebody who should come or you’re talking about it with someone. Mention it. You’re welcome to pass along that registration link. We’d love to have you. Um, but that’s all I got. Michelle, nice job.
Michelle Dexter: Thank you. Thank you. Well, we really appreciate you guys coming to these webinars. Francisco and I are both big proponents of educating people. I try to tell our clients, “It’s not our choice. It’s our job to educate you on what your options are, so you are making an educated choice in what you decide on.”
00:43:00
Michelle Dexter: And I find that a lot of our clients in other experiences with other attorneys aren’t learning quite as much about their options. And so, we’ve kind of made it our mission to make sure that we’re getting as much education out there as we can because it really—it just helps, you know. Thanks. We appreciate you guys coming, and you—that are current clients—should have my email address. If there’s anything that you want to hit me up about directly, please feel free to. If you don’t have an estate plan in place and would like to come in for a consultation, give our office a call: 480-209-6942. Our YouTube channel has a lot of good other information, from the basic estate planning world to the finance world and some more complicated trust options that are available out there. So, definitely check out the YouTube channel and continue to go back because as we mentioned, we’re continuing these next year, and we’ll just continue to add to that YouTube channel.
00:44:05
Francisco Sirvent: And I’m just now also sharing the consult link. If you want to, you can just click that link and schedule right online. That’s all we got.
Michelle Dexter: Terrific. Terrific. Well, we appreciate all of you giving us a little bit of your time today. We hope that you learned something from this and feel free to share with those other families you know that might be in a blended family situation and help us to just continue to educate the public on why they should have an estate plan, especially in a blended family situation. Because unfortunately, I think that that’s probably one of the bigger areas that we have litigation in is when we’ve got that blended family and people are expecting something at the passing of their parent or are not in a good place with the surviving spouse.
00:45:06
Michelle Dexter: There’s a whole long list of different reasons that people are unhappy with the way things go, and you know, you’re definitely unhappy if you think that it was going to go one way, and it ends up going a different way because of the way that the law reads and you weren’t aware of that. So that’s definitely a place where people are extremely frustrated. So hopefully now you know and can help educate others as well.
Francisco Sirvent: Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, everybody, for coming. We’ll see you on the next one.
Michelle Dexter: Have a great day, you guys, and happy holidays.
