New Estate Planning Laws and Trends You Need to Know in 2026 with Keith McManus – Ep 098

Planning for the future doesn’t stop once your estate documents are signed. As laws change, family dynamics evolve, and asset values grow, outdated estate plans can create unintended consequences.

In this episode, Keith Ellis Jr. is joined by estate planning attorney Keith McManus to discuss current estate planning trends, common misconceptions, and the real risks families face when plans aren’t properly reviewed. With over 30 years of experience, Keith McManus explains why estate planning is never a one-and-done decision and why proactive updates matter more than most people realize.

Together, they explore how blended families, beneficiary designations, and state-specific tax laws can dramatically impact outcomes, along with why trusts don’t all work the same way. Keith also addresses the growing trend of DIY and AI-generated estate plans and the costly mistakes that often follow.

In this podcast interview, you’ll learn:

• The importance of reviewing estate plans every three to four years.
• How blended families create unique estate planning challenges.
• What the Massachusetts estate tax exemption means for retirees.
• How beneficiary designations can override trusts.
• Why long-term care planning should be factored into your estate planning.
• Reasons why DIY and AI-generated estate plans can create serious risks.

Inspiring Quotes

• “We can’t call every single person and reach everyone so we’ll send out email blasts, but the best medicine is just a regular checkup every three to four years with a client so we can do a deep dive.” – Keith McManus

•  “If someone’s thinking about long-term care strategies, they should schedule an appointment with an estate planning attorney who accepts those kinds of cases and is very fluent in that kind of work.” – Keith McManus

•  “ People have to be careful because in Massachusetts, the legal marriage changes ownership rights. You can’t just automatically skip your spouse, even if the estate documents say so. And a lot of folks will come in, they go, ‘I got this already covered. My will or my trust says it all goes to my kids and my spouse so we’re fine.’ Did you know that that person could, after the death, walk right into a probate court, and they could challenge that and they’d win.” – Keith McManus

Interview Resources

• McManus Estate Planning, LLC
• Keith McManus on LinkedIn
• QTIP trust
• ChatGPT

[INTERVIEW]

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Welcome everybody to another edition of the Retirement Road Map, brought to you by SHP Financial. Today, we’re lucky enough to be joined by Attorney Keith McManus. I know Keith has been on the podcast before, but obviously, with the new year and another year under our belts, it’s always good to check in with Keith to see maybe some of the trends or some of the new advice that he might have, some of the trends, like I said, that he’s seeing, or just a general conversation on estate planning itself and some of the updates that we might have. So, I just wanted to say thanks, Keith, for joining us.

Keith McManus: Happy to be here, Keith.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, it’s a…

Keith McManus: New year.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I know.

Keith McManus: 2026.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: How fast did the holidays go?

Keith McManus: Very fast.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Blink of an eye.

Keith McManus: And people are getting back into the swing of things. They’re looking at their finances. They’re looking at their estate plans. They’re saying, does something need to be tuned up here? Typically, we have a three to four-year cycle with most clients to review documents.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, it makes sense.

Keith McManus: Yeah. And some of the trends that we’ve seen, I mean, there’s a few minor changes to the tax law. Nothing earth shattering. The federal estate tax exemption’s gone to $15 million. Not a big deal for most folks. Massachusetts has stayed at $2 million. Doesn’t adjust for inflation. It’s going to stay at $2 million. So, that’s a number people really need to be aware of that we want to plan around.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s a lot easier.

Keith McManus: Oh, yeah.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: As weird as that sounds, right? When you start to consider homes, 401(k)s, life insurance plans, it’s not to deter what you were going to say, but it’s amazing how many folks come in and they’re like, wait, I actually do have that number. You know what I mean?

Keith McManus: Yeah. And if you think about it, with inflation kicking in, house prices going up, everything going up, these values are continuing to accelerate, but the taxes sort of fixed at a $2 million point. So, as the years go by, even if people don’t have $2 million now, they might be surprised in years from now that…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, they don’t make that adjustment.

Keith McManus: No.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It took them 20 years to make the first one.

Keith McManus: It sure did. It sure did. So, that’s a planning cycle that we see. You know, the other thing that we’ve been seeing a lot of, but we’ve always historically seen a lot of this, about 40% of estates are from blended families, as opposed to cohesive families, as far as the lingo goes. A blended family being a family that came together where maybe the spouses have different children or maybe one spouse has children, the other one doesn’t. You’ve also got non-traditional relationships. You’ve got people that are unmarried couples, and these folks come in, they need estate planning too. It’s about 40% now, believe it or not. And those are special considerations. We really want to be able to iron out some because people sometimes aren’t aware of these considerations and they should be.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, I mean there’s definitely, and in my shoes, when we sit down with folks in that scenario, there’s certain assets that maybe they want X child to get or maybe the wife has a child, the husband doesn’t, and like, how do we get all the money over to this person? You know what I mean?

Keith McManus: Yeah, 100%.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I completely see that. Now, for those types of scenarios, or are there any particular strategies that really jump off the page?

Keith McManus: Yeah, there are. And again, I think the strategies are important to dive into and the reasons for the strategies too. So, sometimes we want to make sure that we have this family cohesion that we can get. We want everyone to get what they’re expecting, right? But the problem is sometimes folks in a blended family or sort of a non-traditional arrangement, sometimes what they think is going to happen isn’t what’s going to happen.

And they’re relying on someone just giving them their word or saying, oh, don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Now we want to go one step extra for clients and document whatever their agreement is to make sure that when there’s a death, that the right assets just go to the right people in plain English. We also want to make sure that there’s circumstances that have to be dealt with. Like, sometimes folks that are in a second marriage or a different situation, they have prenuptial agreements. Sometimes they have postnuptial agreements. Those all have to be factored in.

And if there’s different sets of beneficiaries, then one of the strategies we want to look at is creating separate trusts for each of these spouses and clients. So, whoever we’re planning for should at least have their own trust that indicates what happens with their assets upon a death. Probate and the natural intestate laws of Massachusetts are such that the Massachusetts Uniform Probate Code doesn’t always account for this properly. You could have two people that are married and if one of them dies and leaves everything to the other person, when that second person dies, what if they just leave it to just their kids?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Right. Yeah, that’s a big concern that our clients have.

Keith McManus: And you want to make sure that everybody’s able to rest easy and have that peace of mind. Now, you can map all that out with the proper trust. Tying it into what you just said before, which is a great point about the estate tax and how it doesn’t adjust for inflation, more and more states in Massachusetts are becoming taxable estates. So, with a married couple, you also want to make sure that if you’re using trusts, that you’re using something called QTIP trusts and bypass trusts to try and deal with this estate tax.

Now, a lot of people don’t even have these, what I’m talking about. A QTIP trust sounds kind of a funny name. It’s a qualified terminable interest property or QTIP trust. This is the kind where you can leave assets to a spouse, but then dictate where they go when that spouse dies. So, see how nicely that ties into the goal of making sure everyone’s going to get what they want.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Is there any limitations as to what the remaining spouse can do with it?

Keith McManus: So, you can build that into the document. That’s the beauty.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Because I know that’s concerning as well.

Keith McManus: It really is, and everyone’s going to be a little different. Some people will say something like, when I pass away, I want to leave all my assets to my spouse. But when they pass away, if they haven’t used them all, I want them to come back to my kids.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Right.

Keith McManus: Or something like that.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yes, I hear that quite often.

Keith McManus: Absolutely. Now, that’s not going to happen with simple wills. It’s not going to happen with simple trusts. It may not happen with joint trusts, right? And also, you want to try and assess what their tolerance is for giving that surviving spouse autonomy, right? That’s an excellent way to look at it. Do we want to let this surviving spouse do whatever they want with the assets, including just giving them away?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: That was the concern that goes into my mind a lot of the times.

Keith McManus: Sure thing. Or other couples will be like, you know what? I think I want to pair that back. Maybe we want to co-trustee, maybe we want to do some other kind of arrangement where like, I want to make sure when I pass away that my spouse gets to keep living in the house. I don’t want my kids coming along and kicking them out, but I don’t want them to really own the house. So, we might install what’s called a life estate or use an occupancy agreement. We can bake that right into the documents.

This is a fancy language for basically just saying, hey, if one of us passes away, you get to keep living in that house rent free for life. No one can kick you out. But when you pass away, that is going to go right back to my set of beneficiaries. And you can easily arrange for that in the documents. It’s a great way to find that middle ground where you’re taking care of your loved ones that you wanted to take care of, but if the deal that you had with your spouse or loved one, if the deal was that upon both of their deaths, that it goes to these three people or those two people that we really want to make sure they actually get it.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. I can see one spouse passes away, the other spouse is alive. The kid’s saying, hey, why don’t you give me– I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong.

Keith McManus: Absolutely.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I mean, but that is a major concern that I would say some of the clients that we work with have. A blended family where they are trying to get something more set in stone in regards to, look, I have these assets. I don’t want my spouse to suffer because I pass. I want them to be able to maintain, live their lifestyle, do what they want to do. However, when that spouse passes, I do want these assets to go to my kids, right? So, it’s just a lot more complex of a situation.

Keith McManus: It is. And as you know, the taxation can play a part. So, if we’re able to nestle these assets in the right kind of trust, now, remember, not all trusts do these things, but the right kinds of trust with the right kind of tax provisions, it’s like writing computer code to get this thing right. You want to try and see if you can preserve things along the way, like tax credits, marital deductions, a cost basis adjustment for capital gains tax. So, if you can work in the tax aspects of it, you’re really optimizing that plan for those folks too.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, and what I would say is, in regards to the complexity, also making sure that your accounts are beneficiary correct. That’s a huge thing.

Keith McManus: Huge. Beneficiary designations sometimes will skip trusts.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Exactly.

Keith McManus: So, when people run out there, they’re buying life insurance, they’re setting up their retirement accounts, what do they do? They sometimes just name their spouse?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Well, they’re in a rush. They just go, right?

Keith McManus: And then their kids.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, exactly.

Keith McManus: Yeah. Go spouse to kids. And what happens if it goes to that spouse is that’s an outright distribution to that survivor. They could do anything they want with the asset. So, there’s some circumstances where you have to be careful of that. And sometimes, it’s going to the spouse, but then it sometimes goes to the trust instead, or goes to the trust instead of the children. And there’s tax ramifications. So, when people are doing this, it’s not a do-it-yourself project. It’s a very common scenario. Like I said, about 40% of the clients are in that boat. And they really need technical experts, like SHP Financial, McManus Estate Planning to work through those intricacies.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. I would also say that folks do come in with trust, right? But their lives change and so do laws, and so do situations and goals, right? And like you said, you review your trust, what, every three to five years? I think that’s a really good, or at least try to, I mean, you reach out to folks, but whether folks come in or not, that’s…

Keith McManus: I think, get drag of them.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, exactly. That’s kind of on them. What I would say is like, as people move forward, how important is it to them when they hear like a new law change or they start to shift their– how often should they be reaching out to their attorney or how often should they review their trust?

Keith McManus: Well, absolutely. If a client is reaching out to their estate planning attorney, absolutely, it’s time to sit down with that estate planning attorney. You should email or call or schedule with that attorney. I’d say more often though, the estate planning attorneys is reaching out to the clients and saying, hey, we’ve had this change, we’ve had this adjustment. Now, this is my 30th year in law practice, believe it or not, I can’t believe it. 1996 to 2026, 30 years. Insane.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Flies by.

Keith McManus: Yeah. And meeting with a lot of clients every day.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It doesn’t look a day over 29 years.

Keith McManus: Yes. So, so that being said, we can’t call every single one, reach everyone so we’ll send out email blasts, but the best medicine is just a regular checkup every three to four years with a client so we can do a deep dive. And you catch things. Every now and then, with these blended families or non-traditional relationships, you also encounter sometimes folks that have different requests. They’ll say things like I want to skip my spouse completely. And that happens too.

Let’s say people, they have their own assets. They’re entering into a marriage or some kind of a domestic situation with each other. And they say, gosh, you know what? We’re going to be living together and having a great life together, but my stuff’s my stuff and your stuff’s your stuff.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yes. I see that also quite a bit.

Keith McManus: Now, people have to be careful because in Massachusetts, the legal marriage changes this. You can’t just automatically skip your spouse, even if the estate documents say so.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Correct.

Keith McManus: You have to have them sign client waivers. They have to sign a spousal waiver. They’re waiving a bunch of rights that they have.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s almost like if you have a pension plan, right? You have to get the spouse to sign a waiver to be able to take a lump sum.

Keith McManus: And a lot of folks will come in, they go, I got this already covered. My will or my trust says it all goes to my kids and my spouse or it says the same thing, so we’re fine. Did you know that that person, after the death, they could walk right onto a probate court and they could challenge that and they’d win and they’d get a statutory or an elective share? So, you have to have them waive that in advance or the outcome they were expecting might not happen. You could see an entire lifetime’s worth of accumulated assets that you thought were going to your kids or your loved ones go somewhere else.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. I mean, this is why it’s so important, in my opinion, to work with an attorney like yourself, which is why we say to most folks that come in that either have a trust, hey, you should have it reviewed just to make sure it is what you think it is because a lot of times, it isn’t. Or if you don’t have a trust and you reach out to SHP, a lot of times folks will ask, hey, do you work with an estate planning attorney? We work with a few. But you know, a lot of times, we’re saying, hey, look, you should meet with Keith because the different types of planning and the different types of things that you can handle.

Keith McManus: Yeah, and it’s a great point to build on that statement. Another bad or negative trend that I’ve seen is people starting to use AI that’s online trusts, some wills.\

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s funny. That was going to be literally my next question.

Keith McManus: Oh, my goodness.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: So, talk to us about that. Why can’t I just hop on ChatGPT, say, create me a trust?

Keith McManus: Yeah. They have at it, right?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: That’s some good, right?

Keith McManus: Hey, same thing with financial advisors.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Keith McManus: Get some financial advice from ChatGPT. What should I invest in, right? See how good of a job they do. And on top of that, sometimes even worse, you’ll see professional advisors telling clients, you know, what you could do is you could just go on to trusts and wills or whatever. And they get these templates and stuff. I’m sure you’ll be fine. You’d miss all of this stuff if you went down that path. And this could be life changing on top of it. For the financial advisor that tells people to do that…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s a lot of liability.

Keith McManus: It could be even a breach of their fiduciary obligations. They’re prioritizing cost cutting over the quality of an estate plan, all the lifetime accumulated wealth. Wow. I don’t want to…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Plus potential tax savings if it’s not structured correctly.

Keith McManus: I don’t want to be that attorney or financial advisor, whoever that made that recommendation, because those, if it doesn’t work out in an optimal way, who’s going to come for them are those beneficiaries.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Sure.

Keith McManus: And my goodness, I say that is a concern, seeing people going down that route to try and do it themselves. It’s too much. It’s everything people are going to accumulate in their life is going into that estate plan.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. Now, there’s more and more noise about the potential use of artificial intelligence and things like that. But I completely agree with you, it’s not a cookie cutter.

Keith McManus: And it’s not a great place to save money. I mean, if people are going to try and save a few bucks, there’s plenty of places to do it. Not like your estate plan or who you pick for your CPA or something. You know what? Go down that route. So, I think that that is one of the negative trends that we’ve seen. And I’m sure that we’re going to see lawsuits, we’re going to see cases coming our way of results of people doing that kind of do-it-yourself transaction. It can’t go well.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Yeah. It just leads to faulty planning, in my opinion. You know what I mean? So, one of the things that we focus on, like I said, at SHP Financial is our Retirement Road Map where we build an income plan, an investment strategy, a tax strategy. So, we revisit that each and every year, making sure, one, we talk about the estate tax. Are you impacted by that? How can we mitigate or minimize that? But also, income tax, healthcare, and the final thing is estate planning.

Again, making sure that your estate is up to date, making sure that– I mean, I’ve folks that we’ve been working with folks for 10, 15 years together and every meeting I have with them from a review standpoint, we’re going through each of these parts of the road map. But my final question is, when’s the last time you sat down and met with Keith? Because this law has changed. This law has changed. This law has changed. You need to continue to update. It’s like your car. You want to continue to tweak that to make sure for optimum performance.

Keith McManus: And a lot of times, people will say, oh, nothing’s changed in my family. I don’t think I really need to do anything.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: But then you have a few…

Keith McManus: There’s taxes. There’s laws.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Well, not only that, you ask one question, they’re like, oh, yeah. You know what I mean?

Keith McManus: I didn’t think about that.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Exactly. Exactly. So, whether it’s a new grandchild that they want to include or whether it’s, sadly, a child that they want to exclude, which happens. So, talk to me about that actually.

Keith McManus: Well, obviously, incapacities and deaths too. People enter different phases of their life, and sometimes when they’re young and healthy, the last thing they’re thinking about is long-term care expenses or nursing home coverage. Different kinds of trust cover different kinds of things. And another mistake people sometimes make is they think trusts are just a utility tool that solves all of our problems.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I was going to say that.

Keith McManus: And they’ll see a movie that says trusts do one thing and a TV show that says it does another. And they hear a podcast about different kinds of trusts. They glob them all together. And they say, oh, I guess my trust must do all that.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Many times, folks will come in and they’ll say, I have this trust protected from the nursing home. And they’ll say…

Keith McManus: No, it doesn’t.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Unfortunately, you’re not. So, talk to us a little bit about that, I guess. That is a big concern beyond just making sure the trust is structured correctly. Do I have the right trust? And is this done correctly to have the beneficiaries go where I want it to go? Am I avoiding probate? Am I minimizing taxation? I would say the next thing beyond that or I guess, one of the common confusion, scenarios is around long-term care.

Keith McManus: Long-term care and skilled nursing, yeah.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Most of the times, folks say, look, I don’t want to buy insurance, which I get, or I don’t like this idea.

Keith McManus: Expensive.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: It’s expensive. I can’t qualify. I guess, what are some other tactics that people might be able to deploy to help preserve wealth?

Keith McManus: Well, number one is demystifying what’s covered and what’s not because as you said correctly, so many people mistakenly think that they have a trust already and it somehow protects against the nursing home. Almost all of the time, if you have a trust that you’re the trustee and you’re the beneficiary, and it’s like one of these trusts that you can change, that is zero protection.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I would say, like you own and control, you’re in trouble.

Keith McManus: You’re in trouble. And you don’t have to ditch that. That’s usually kept in place for many clients for assets they’re planning on using during their lifetime.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Correct.

Keith McManus: But there’s certain assets that you might want to scoop out of the estate and put some kind of a red line protection around it. We usually use irrevocable trust for this, sometimes mixed with life estates. Sometimes these are called Medicaid irrevocable trust. I could do an entire podcast on this. I would say that this is a very complex and extremely underrepresented area of estate planning. Many estate planning attorneys don’t touch this, and it’s a very high liability kind of law to practice. And we absolutely help people with that ask. The average cost of a nursing home in this area, in southeastern Massachusetts where you are, it’s around $16,000 to $18,000 a month.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Wow.

Keith McManus: So, this is not going to be an easy fix. So, you have to first kind of set that client’s expectation. Gosh, this trust that you set up 10 years ago, that’s five pages long, probably doesn’t cover an expense like that.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: No.

Keith McManus: It doesn’t replace long-term care insurance. But there are very good strategies you can employ. The key is all of these strategies, almost all of these strategies, we’re going to need a five-year lookback period. So, we’re going to want to cook off five years before the darn documents are useful.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: So, it’s only like I can get sick and call you.

Keith McManus: Yeah. You can’t wait until you’re already about to be admitted to skilled nursing and give us a call. We’re not going to be as helpful as we could if you called me five years earlier.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Sure.

Keith McManus: So, people need to do it when they’re still well, when they’re still healthy, and we look at options. Those are very much different person to person, but super important to have that conversation. Most of the time, to answer your question directly, we’re using irrevocable trusts. We often mix them with life estates and we’re not necessarily, almost never are we taking all of the assets and getting rid of them or giving them into these structures where the client just totally loses all control of the assets. You want to offset skilled nursing planning with the client’s wellbeing, like what if they don’t go to the nursing home? What if they need assisted living or go to assisted living? Instead, they need money for that. What if they want care to come into their home? So, we cover all of those. We also work with geriatric care managers for people that need some guidance, folks that will come to that client’s home.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: I think that’s a big thing.

Keith McManus: Yeah. Do a needs assessment and be able to place them. So, if people want to start planning for that, the time to plan for that is now, when you’re healthy and well. You can’t wait until you’re already sick. Sadly, we’ve seen some people very recently that waited way too long to do any planning. And they come in and you’re like, oh, God, I feel so bad for this person. They should have done this planning years ago.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: 100%.

Keith McManus: But people will say the same thing. They’re like, oh, if that happens to me, I’ll never go to a nursing home. You know what? You don’t have a choice.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: A lot of times, you don’t, right?

Keith McManus: Many times, you don’t. You’re unconscious, you’re incapacitated, right?

Keith Ellis, Jr.: The ideal is to stay home, but sometimes it’s not in the cards, right?

Keith McManus: Right. So, sometimes when you set aside that, that’s more bravado than anything, and actually, sink our teeth into real planning. That’s going to protect your loved ones, and your legacy, all those assets you’ve accumulated takes a little bit of time and effort, but we can absolutely do it.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: One more question before we kind of wrap up here. And we hear often a lot about life estates and the purpose of them, what they allow clients to do, what they can’t do, should they have them, should they not have them? I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit.

Keith McManus: Yeah. So, it’s part of a larger conversation certainly. But just taking on its own, simple life estates is probably not going to do the job. A life estate is a powerful tool, but it’s usually used in conjunction with other structures like irrevocable trusts. The nature of a life estate in general, you usually see these on quick claim deeds in Massachusetts. And this is typically where you’re giving someone the lifetime use of the property. And upon their death, it will snap back to what are called remaindermen, which are the beneficiaries basically.

This is a time-tested strategy, but in and of itself, if someone were to just pop a life estate onto a deed and put their kids as the remaindermen, you’re going to have a lot of holes in that strategy. Is it better than nothing? Yeah, it is, but you can’t really have beneficiary deeds in Massachusetts, where you’re naming beneficiaries outright like you would in a life insurance policy. So, this is close to that. It’s no substitute though. It’s really not a standalone tactic, but it’s definitely…

Keith Ellis, Jr.: And I think sometimes people think it is.

Keith McManus: They do. You be careful with those two because when you give a life estate to someone indeed, there’s trade-offs. And again, I think we could do a whole separate segment on this.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Again, you’re more than welcome back any time you want.

Keith McManus: It’d be a lot of fun. Yeah. But what I’d say is if someone’s thinking about long-term care strategies, they should schedule an appointment with an estate planning attorney who accepts those kind of cases and is very fluent in that kind of work. But make sure, in my opinion, I would shy away from an attorney that wants to take all of your stuff and kind of just get rid of it all.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Sure.

Keith McManus: I just don’t think that’s a viable strategy for most clients. It’s kind of scary.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: The options are very limited.

Keith McManus: I have actually seen attorneys make these recommendations and I’m hopeful that they had really good reasons to do it, because it would be something I’d be extremely uncomfortable with, unless there was some clear-cut reason for doing so.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: And again, a lot of times, folks come in. They think they have X, they have Y, or they’ve set something up 5, 7, 10 years ago, was never funded, or they set something up 5, 7, 10 years ago and they never tweaked it, did anything. And I talk to folks all the time, new folks walking in that are like, yeah, I set this trust up years ago. My life has changed completely.

And if that’s you out there, I highly recommend sitting down, working with, or at least getting a review done with Keith McManus, McManus Estate Planning, and you could find him at CapeCodEstatePlanning.com or PlymouthEstatePlanning.com. Again, CapeCodEstatePlanning.com or PlymouthEstatePlanning.com. What I love about what you do because how many times have I said, yeah, you should meet with Keith, you’ll sit down and talk to someone at no cost.

Keith McManus: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: At no cost, kind of say, look, here’s what you have. This is great over here. This piece might be good, but here’s some of the things based upon whether it’s a law change, a change in goal, a change in situation, a divorce, something like that. Here’s some of the things that we need to change and tweak to meet and get and to optimize the plan to help you meet your goals. So, I really, truly, now that it’s a new year, maybe people are starting to think of, like you said, about their plans, kind of taking a look at things, dusting them off after the holidays and saying, hey, look, do I need to do anything with this? Do I not? My recommendation is at least get it looked at. And again…

Keith McManus: In states of all shapes and sizes. We don’t have a certain number. You don’t have to be a multimillionaire or something to do this stuff. We do it for very modest estates.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Absolutely.

Keith McManus: We do it for very complex estates and everything in between.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Again, that’s CapeCodEstatePlanning.com or PlymouthEstatePlanning.com. Keith, thanks again for coming in. Thanks for joining us.

Keith McManus: My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Keith Ellis, Jr.: Absolutely.

Keith McManus: Much appreciated.

[END]