As a financial planner, a lot of folks come to me and they want to talk about investing in taxes. And for the most part, there's some work you can do there to make some improvements. But the really big projects that most folks miss is going to be insurance and estate planning, not having enough or the right types of documents.

What are common mistakes you see folks making as an elder law and estate attorney? Two things that come to mind. One, improper, inappropriate beneficiary designations. I could probably scare everyone with stories and things I've worked on where beneficiary designations have been outdated. I've seen large chunks of change go to ex-spouses.

I've seen large chunks of change go to parents over kids. All because a lot of people don't realize that beneficiary designations trump what your estate plan says. And so a lot of people will think that, oh, I did my will, I did my trust, whatever. It like throws magic pixie dust on everything and just turns everything perfect.

No, that's not the case. So one is beneficiary designations and really making sure that you are having those beneficiary designations play nicely with your estate plan. They should very much like work in tandem, not against each other. Because when they go against each other, it's the beneficiary designation that wins.

So that's the first thing. The second thing I would say is one of my big bugaboos about general statements about estate planning is, do I need a will? Do I need a trust? And it just depends. It just depends on your family dynamics, your family setup, your goals, what you're trying to accomplish, your assets, the types, the values.

I always say that not everyone needs a trust. A lot of people benefit from trust, too. That's probably the second thing that really came to mind is how many people out there that either don't have an estate plan at all or have an estate plan that maybe isn't appropriate for what they're trying to accomplish.

Maybe they would have been just fine with the will, but they spent all these thousands of dollars on a trust. So making sure an estate plan is appropriate for your fact pattern, that is crucial. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

We'll see you next time.