Urgent Tax Tips The Year You Lose Your Spouse
Survivorship:
Jessica Cannella: Welcome back to our fourth video in our Survivorship Series. Today we have a special guest, Joshua Langford, CPA here at Oak Harvest Financial Group. He is the VP of our tax division at Oak Harvest. I’ve invited Joshua to come on and talk about important aspects of tax planning and tax filing in the year that your spouse passes away. There is a lot of action items that you can take action on that you can only take action on in the calendar year that your spouse passes.
We know that when we’re talking about taxation and filing our taxes, that as soon as December 31st rolls around, the door closes. In this example, 2022 ends hard stop December 31st, and then we pick up in the following tax year, January 2023, and our taxes get filed in April of 2023 for tax year December ’22. With that, if your spouse is to pass in a calendar in that calendar year, we want to make sure that we’re taking advantage of any opportunity to file jointly in the calendar year that your spouse has passed away. Joshua is going to talk to us about some of the important considerations as it relates to your taxes in the calendar year that your spouse passes.
Joshua Langford: First thing we should discuss is filing status. There are three basic filing statuses around the area of when a spouse passes. First is married filing jointly. As you already discussed, that is available through the year in which the spouse passes. The second option is marrying filing separately, which is obviously the same thing. It’s if you’re married, but you file completely separate tax returns. Think of it as if you’re two single individuals but I guess are married, so two single tax returns.
The third one we’ll discuss is qualifying widower. Qualifying widower can be used in the two years after the spouse passes. There are qualifications for meeting that, which you’ll have to go over. Basically, you need a child and they need to be a dependent and then there’s qualifications after that. On each status, so married filing jointly obviously has the highest tax thresholds, which what I mean by tax thresholds is you’re taxed at 10, 12-
Jessica: 22, 24.
Joshua: -22, 24, 32 all the way to 37 I think is the current highest.
Jessica: Maybe even higher if the new tax law is passed.
Joshua: Correct. Depending on all that.
Jessica: I digress. [laughs]
Joshua: Exactly.
Jessica: We do the best we know with the information that we have today. The tax code is something that’s always going to switch depending upon where that political pendulum is. Right now, it’s Democrats. Once it swings back to Republican, the tax code tends to change, ebb and flow with that, so ever-changing. Sorry if I digress there.
Joshua: No. The difference there would be married filing separately is much like single and it’s basically half of the married filing jointly threshold. Let’s say it’s 200K for the 22% tax bracket married filing jointly, it would be 100K for married filing separately. That extra $100,000 there gives us wiggle room to do things that we’ll discuss later in the video. That’s one of the things you need to just look at. The qualifying widower that you qualify for the two years following, possibly qualify, I should say, it keeps the married filing jointly tax brackets, and most everything else follows married filing jointly. Therefore, you have the benefit, you’re not just thrown out into the wild back to your single status.
Jessica: I believe that filing single is somewhat punitive in our country as it relates to taxation because, as Joshua mentioned, those tax brackets effectively get cut in half. If you have up to, in your example, $200,000 of earned income in the eyes of the IRS, this can mean required minimum distributions. Any money that you’re distributing out of your IRA accounts and retirement is viewed in the eyes of the IRS as earned taxable regular income rates. When you’re married, those tax brackets are a lot wider by about 50%.
In Joshua’s example of saying up to $200,000 of earned income keeps you in the 22% tax bracket in your example, if you then lose your spouse and you have that calendar year to still enjoy filing jointly before you are then quickly escalating through the higher tax brackets because what was $200,000 filing jointly will now be $100,000 filing singles. It takes a lot less income. Again, distributions from the IRA count towards your earned income in the eyes of the IRS before you’re accelerating through those tax brackets.
Joshua: Exactly. We use those numbers as example, I don’t have the brackets in front of you.
Jessica: Yes. We’ll go ahead and post a link where you can find the current tax laws or tax brackets. They do change slightly every year.
Joshua: Yes.
Jessica: We’ll have that linked in the description box so that you can view it.
Joshua: Correct. That’s basically filing status.
Jessica: Filing status is very important, the widow’s filing status. We’ll also make a link to the requirements to enjoy the widow tax treatment, which is basically the same as Joshua mentioned as filing jointly, only the period of time that you can do so is extended to up to two years if you satisfy the qualifications-
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: -opposed to ending in that calendar year that your spouse passes.
Joshua: To be clear, the two years we’re referring to here, so if the spouse dies in June of ’22, you would qualify for married filing jointly up until December 31st of ’22. Then you would have until December 31st of ’24 for the qualifying widow period.
Jessica: Okay. We’re bonus six months almost.
Joshua: Yes.
Jessica: [chuckles] It’s a bonus when we’re talking about taxes and accelerating the tax brackets. I wanted to ask you what happens if somebody passes away on December 30th.
Joshua: In that unfortunate event, you have to make a lot of your decisions quick because it doesn’t matter what day you die. If you die January 2nd, you would have till December 31st. If you die December 30th, you still have till December 31st. Unfortunately, the way the tax law is written, it doesn’t matter what day and the year.
Jessica: Yes, the door closes.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: It’s important, especially if you have a spouse that maybe is on life support or you have to make a decision, that you have a medical power of attorney. If you missed the video on estate planning, please refer back to it. That’s a very important estate document and it can really buy extra time. Hopefully, you don’t find yourself in this situation anyway, but if the option is to, I hate this expression but pull the plug on December 31st or let them remain on life support until Jan 1, it could be advantageous from a taxation standpoint to make that decision.
It is personal, and I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but what I’m trying to express is that there is urgency as it relates to your taxes in the calendar year that your spouse passes. As we’ve mentioned throughout the series, the most important thing is to take care of yourself when you lose your spouse and finance second. Of course, refer back earlier in the series, I think it was video one, where there’s a lot of things that you can do proactively with your spouse to get ahead of it.
If your spouse passes away in October or November, you really don’t have the same luxury as somebody whose spouse passes away in January to make some of these important tax decisions. Joshua is going to speak now a little bit about some of the decisions that we’re referring to.
Joshua: Yes. The first big one is cap gains. As everyone knows, capital gains are currently under the tax code. They’re taxed at a different rate.
Jessica: Yes, 0% to 15%.
Joshua: To 20%.
Jessica: Oh.
Joshua: There’s two different brackets, or I guess you would say three, 0%, 15%, and 20%. Those are determined based off the rest of your tax return, how much money you make, which we’ll put cap gains tax rate into the documental link into the video. First is capital losses are tied to the individual that accrued them. Say between me and you, if you lost money on a stock and you have a capital loss that would be tied to you, I don’t get the benefit of that if–
Jessica: If it’s not a joint account.
Joshua: Correct. Once you have passed, but in the year of passing, you still have access to it. Say you pass in June of ’22 and you have $5,000 of capital losses, I in my account could sell $5,000 worth of capital gains to offset your capital loss. I know it’s a crude way of looking at it.
Jessica: We didn’t make the rules. [chuckles]
Joshua: Right. If you do not cancel out those losses, those losses could be gone or they would be gone because they’re tied to the individual and not to the spouse. That’s been clearly stated by the IRS multiple times and there’s been lawsuits over that. I don’t foresee that changing in the future. That would be the first one. The second one would be built-in step-up in basis. What a step-up in basis is, if me and you acquire an asset, say the plant, we acquire it for $10, and then someone offers us $20 for the plant, we’d have to sell it for a $10 gain, $20 minus the $10 we bought it for. If it is valued at $15 on the date of one of the spouse passing, you would then increase the value up to $15.
Then the gain for the remaining spouse would be $5 when they sell it for $20 at a later date. I should state here, one of the things very important about built-in step-up in basis is that every state is different, so it matters whether you’re a community property state, and also how the asset is acquired, when the asset is acquired. There are many circumstances that affect that, but the basic example explains what a step up is. That’s very important for many spouses because assets acquired early in a marriage could have appreciated quite a large amount.
Jessica: Yes. If somebody bought Apple stock back in the ’90s-
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: -and now it’s worth significantly more, as I understand it, it’s a way to reset the clock at the point in time that your spouse passes. Again, that’s in the calendar year that your spouse passes. Once the door closes on the year that your spouse passed, that opportunity to reset the cost basis is gone. Is that something that happens automatically? Can you elaborate on that process at all?
Joshua: Yes. It is something that absolutely happens automatically.
Jessica: Once you retitle the account to– If it’s a brokerage account, for instance, or the asset.
Joshua: Depending on the broker, the broker should do it. If you let them know the circumstances and everything, they should re-do it. Does that happen every time? Probably not.
Jessica: No, I see it all the time.
Joshua: Right? There’s failures all the time.
Jessica: One of the main reasons for doing this series is that we want to get ahead of it, being proactive is the best way to approach your finances while your spouse is still alive. It’s not to say that there’s nothing that you can do to improve your situation if your spouse has already passed, but the best time to plan is proactively.
Joshua: Yes. That would definitely be a conversation you would want to have with your CPA.
Jessica: Or a financial advisor.
Joshua: Absolutely, or both if we’re being honest. Let them know what the circumstances are, and then with that information, they can then address it appropriately. That is step-up in basis. The third thing which happens frequently in the case of a death of a spouse is sale of a home. This one’s very important for cap gains because traditionally, without death of a spouse, for married filing jointly, you have $500,000 worth of an exemption.
Jessica: 250 per person.
Joshua: Correct. A single or married filing separately would have $250,000.
Jessica: Traditionally, homes appreciate in value.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: We focus on working with retirees, people who are in their ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, and beyond. That generation tends to stay in the same house for a long time. Really if you’ve stayed in a home for 5 to 10 years, chances are your home has appreciated. Having the ability to use that capital gains– Is it referred to as a capital gains exemption?
Joshua: Yes.
Jessica: Can be really impactful.
Joshua: Correct. The home sale exemption is very powerful. $500,000 is obviously quite a bit of money. That is important. When it refers to a spousal death, in the unfortunate event, what you do is you have two years from date of death to make the decision.
Jessica: Okay, so two years.
Joshua: In this scenario, we’re not talking about December 31st, so we have a little time.
Jessica: That’s good because you should never make an emotional decision or a big decision when you’re deep in your emotions, especially after grieving the loss of your spouse, which would involve selling your home or buying a new home. You want to really make sure that you’re going into those type of decision-making processes with a clear mind that’s not you’re just jumping the gun because you’re in panic mode.
That is where having a dream team of professionals is going to be your biggest asset, is being able to rely on professionals like ourselves, financial advisor, investment advisor, and CPA. Having those two individuals on the same page on your behalf really eliminates the risk of you acting emotionally to make a decision. There are circumstances where somebody does need to fire sell their home, but professionals can help you navigate that and understand the consequences or benefits of doing so.
Joshua: Right. It should be noted that there are certain exemptions and there’s certain requirements for also meeting the home sale exemption.
Jessica: Always. [chuckles]
Joshua: Again, this is where I would say talk to your advisor and talk to your CPA so they can explain what all those are and whether you qualify or not. Just know that it is a possibility.
Jessica: To summarize that, you have two years to make decisions around selling your home.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: If you have a large capital gain in your home and you say, we’re here in Houston, you bought the home in the Heights, which was traditionally not a nice area to live. Now it has come full circle. I have a client who has a little bungalow home that’s about 800 square feet that she purchased for $80,000 that is now on the market for $800,000. Huge capital gains opportunity there or taxes or the exemption.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: To summarize, if her husband were to pass, she would then have two years to determine whether or not she wanted to sell the home and to utilize the full $500,000-
Joshua: 500K.
Jessica: -exemption, 250 per spouse. If it’s a day after that two-year mark, then she’s looking at that being cut in half and now she can use up to 250.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: It’s leaving a lot on the table for the IRS to enjoy and they get enough.
[laughter]
Joshua: Which is why, like you said, you don’t want to rush the decision. At the same time,-
Jessica: Be pragmatic about it.
Joshua: -if you are looking to downsize or if you’re going to move closer to other family or anything like that, that can be a very big part of that decision.
Jessica: Yes, absolutely. We’ve covered capital gains. We’ve covered the filing status, which is where you start wherever you’re talking about your taxes is how are you going to file.
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: Then we moved on to capital gains tax and how that’s applicable not only in your brokerage accounts but also with majority of your assets up to and including your home, and the exemption tax that you have there on your capital gains earnings in your home. Lastly, as a financial advisor, definitely on my heart to talk a little bit about treatment of IRAs or retirement accounts. Also, quick refresher, a 401(K) is the same tax treatment as an IRA. It is just an account for when you are working. If your spouse passes while they’re still working, those funds need to be rolled over into an IRA. Then Josh is going to talk a little bit about tax treatment as it relates to different types of inherited IRAs.
Joshua: Right. Within the inherited IRA, the SECURE Act passed in 2019 which changed the rules on a lot of this. This is not my area of expertise, that’s why we advise you to talk to a financial advisor. From the tax size, a surviving spouse has different options than all other beneficiaries on a retirement account under the SECURE Act. The one thing that they can do now is basically they can treat it as their own. There’s multiple different variations of how you can do that. Again, this is why we advise you to talk to your retirement advisor. I want to point out that that’s important because when you treat it as your own, that can very much affect the tax that you would have to pay out in a given year.
Jessica: Yes, absolutely. Especially on an IRA account because an IRA, remember, grows tax deferred. You have not paid taxes on it until you start to withdraw from that account be it that’s part of your retirement plan, it’s an income source for you, or you’re required to do it with your RMD, which is what we call it internally. You probably heard that expression. It stands for required minimum distribution. It’s the deal that you made with Uncle Sam saying that he’s going to let the account grow until you are age 59.5. You can’t touch it without a 10% penalty for touching it earlier. Touching I mean withdrawing money from it.
An additional 10% penalty if you do that before age 59.5 unless we’re applying the 55 rule. I don’t want to inundate you with information, but in exchange for allowing that money to grow tax-deferred while you’re working, Uncle Sam then reminds you that he’s over here with his hand in your account. Your business partner is one way to look at it. At your age currently, 72, he forces you to take a withdrawal starting around 4%, for my engineers out there, 3.69, and it slowly increases over time.
The challenge with that is that not only do married couples as individuals have an individual retirement account or IRA, but often their spouse does as well. When they pass away, you are responsible for still making sure that that required minimum distribution is distributed so that the IRS can see that you’ve taken income and then they can tax you accordingly. What Josh is saying is that when a spouse passes, there are different options that are not available in the instance that it would be-
Joshua: Given to a kid.
Jessica: -you passing your IRA to your heirs or your children that the rules are more lenient with how it passes between spouses.
Joshua: Correct. Tax beneficial for sure.
Jessica: Absolutely. I had a client recently come into the office and we were doing a review of her situation. She made a very good decision to elect to have her deceased husband’s inherited IRA be labeled as a beneficiary IRA. Why that was so impactful for her is that she’s 55 years old considering early retirement as early as November 2023. The rules are slightly different with a beneficiary IRA as it relates to taxation.
I referenced that 10% penalty that you get for accessing an inherited IRA or any type of IRA except the beneficiary IRA. What I’m saying in English is that because, we’ll call her Catherine, is 55 years old, she has this type of IRA where she’s got options that she can change it later down the road. In her case, it was very beneficial that it’s a beneficiary IRA because she is able to access it prior to age 59.5.
She’s still going to pay the taxes. That is unavoidable. If you take money out of an IRA, you will pay the tax, but it allows for her to have more flexibility and avoid that extra 10% penalty. The point that I want you to hear as our viewers is that it is so important that you’re having this conversation with a financial professional in conjunction with your CPA so that when you are making these choices upfront, you are really positioning yourself to your unique situation to really maximize–
Joshua: Your benefit.
Jessica: Thank you.
Joshua: 100%.
Jessica: These rules are ever-changing. We have a great little flow chart, is what I’ll refer to it as, that I will also link in the description box that really helps you to navigate. It’s like, “Did you inherit this IRA from your spouse?” “Yes.” “Okay, read the next box. This is what happens with stepped-up basis.” All of that. It’s going to really be helpful tool for you if you are in that situation. An even better way would be to give us a call or request financial advisors in your market. We are very well networked and can refer you out, same with CPAs, but it is really important to get ahead of this and make those changes accordingly.
Joshua: Correct. The other major decision around retirement accounts that we know and we love because we do a lot of them are Roth conversions. Roth conversions, if we are falling under the married filing jointly, the filing statuses we discussed earlier, assuming married filing jointly is what’s best for you, then you have the wider brackets to be able to make Roth conversions.
This is something that would need to be done before December 31st, so the decision has to be made. If you’re speaking with one of our financial advisors, that conversation has already been ongoing, so it won’t be something completely out of the blue. While you still have the expanded brackets, you can make a Roth conversion at a lower tax bracket, which can, again, be very beneficial in the long term.
Jessica: Yes. I have a client, her name was Maryanne. Her husband passed away. She came into my office, I want to say it was maybe June or July, this was a couple of years ago. Her husband had passed back in February. She waited a few months, contacted our office, and she had no idea what a Roth conversion was or how it could be beneficial to her. Part of our retirement success plan is that we build in tax planning. That is something that we are going to talk to you about. It is not something that your traditional broker at Fidelity or Wells Fargo gets into because they don’t get paid to do it.
Offering tax planning does not increase a big brokerage firm’s bottom line or a big bank for that matter, but I believe that it really is impactful for client retention and to the consumer, to the client that needs that guidance. Maryanne came in, we took as part of our process a deep look into her tax situation. They were considered higher net worth. They had about $5 million together, and she’s going to pay taxes. Glad she was sitting down at the conference table as I broke that news to her that she’s going to pay taxes.
When we look at a Roth conversion, the question is, do we want to pay taxes now under certainty, certainty being we know what the tax brackets are, we know that it’s 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, so on and so forth, or if you’re of the thought process that I am, that taxes are going to go up in the future and do nothing but go up, do you want to leave it up to chance for when now you’re having to take money out of those tax infested IRAs that have grown tax deferred for your working years and up to age 72?
We said it starts at 3.69, it goes up from there. What the heck are taxes going to be when you’re in your 80s or 90s should you enjoy a long life? Then of course the tax burden that that leaves for your heirs. In Maryanne’s case, we ran all the analysis, looked at it for her, and we had just enough time, five months, to really let her wrap her mind around it because it was going to be a big check that she wrote to the IRS, but when we looked at this cost benefit of doing so under the filing jointly status, which she had until December 31st to make the decision and pull the trigger, it was going to save her over $400,000 of future taxes paid.
Then it became a lot easier to write the check now. I don’t remember the amount, but it was six figures, but still a considerable savings. It was 400,000 savings after she wrote the check. Then it becomes just a decision, and there’s follow-up questions that need to be asked like where are you paying those taxes from? Are you doing a withholding in your IRA, therefore less is landing in the tax-free Roth, or do you have after-tax dollars? In her case, she did. It was a no-brainer to go ahead and pull this move. Had she waited another few months, this may not have been available to her. That is the urgency that we want to put on the situation around Roth conversions.
I’ll just summarize by saying that Roth conversions are impactful because you’re taking money out of your IRA that’s tax infested, has grown tax-deferred, you’re moving it, you’re paying the taxes in the interim based on the amount that you moved. If your tax bracket in the 22% is up to $200,000 and your earned income, you’re still working, is $100,000, then you have wiggle room of $75,000 to $80,000. You always want to leave a little bit of buffer because we do have things like capital gains taxes in our non-qualified accounts that we see at the end of the year. We don’t want the next dollar if we go a little over to bump us into the next tax bracket.
There’s wiggle room in this example of about $75,000, $80,000 where you can convert that into a Roth. You pay the taxes in the tax bracket of 22%, you get the money out of the IRA into the Roth, and now for the rest of your life, as it stands now, it’s going to grow tax-free. The really special part about a Roth IRA is that you do not have to take the required minimum distribution. When you take a requirement of distribution, it is viewed as income, your tax on the standard income rates. That said, it’s a snowball effect. What your income is affects your social security taxation, affects your Medicare premiums, affects the IRMAA tax if you qualify for that additional 3.8% tax. Tax, tax, tax, tax.
Getting it into a Roth, that no longer applies. You can withdraw money out of your Roth without it setting off the alarm bells with the IRS that that’s income, it’s no longer considered income. It is 100% tax-free on the gains and the principle that you put in it. Some stipulations around that. Again, do not hear this as you should go and fire off a Roth conversion. You need to talk to a professional unique to your situation and make that decision for yourself.
Joshua: Everything we discussed today and everything in general, please talk to a professional because your direct circumstances affect everything. Everything we have said today in two months could be wildly different with the tax law change. Unfortunately, we do not control that. That’s all done by the government.
Jessica: We stay on top of it. That’s what you’re paying professionals to do is to really continue education in their field of expertise. There’s always learning. You made a comment to me offset where you said, “If anyone tells you that they have the tax code memorized, they’re lying and you should run.” [chuckles]
Joshua: Correct.
Jessica: Another thing that you brought up earlier that I always want to circle back to is that your state laws are really going to be meaningful for some of the things that we’ve discussed today. Can you speak a little bit to that, the difference of a–?
Joshua: Everything we discussed today has been really at the federal level as that affects everyone across the 50 states. You are correct that each 50 states has their own individual tax law so that would be, again, where you need to talk to someone that knows your state, but also knows your circumstance so they can advise you on what happens because some states, like I was looking at one today for a client, doesn’t tax retirement. That client will be able to make a Roth conversion and not pay tax on it.
Jessica: Wow.
Joshua: That is a big difference. Every state is different and every circumstance is different. You need to identify each circumstance to make sure you make the right decision.
Jessica: Absolutely. Also, the third player to the dream team, we have a CPA, financial advisors, what I’m representing, an estate planner because there are estate tax exemptions and things of that nature. Again, being proactive is really the secret sauce for getting ahead of things as it relates to all types of planning in your total financial picture.
Joshua: For estate planning, as taxes goes, that wildly affects it because if your inherited assets go into a trust or if they don’t depending on what happens with that, whether you have an estate tax return, all of this is very important and affects it wildly. Currently, the current tax rate is basically 40% on estate tax. That’s the value of the account if you’re past the exemption, which currently is set to be reduced in 4 years, I think ’28.
Jessica: It’s generous now, but it’s $12 million?
Joshua: $12.06, I believe.
Jessica: To be exact. [laughs]
Joshua: Yes.
Jessica: About $12 million under the Trump tax code-
Joshua: Correct.
Joshua: -is the exemption. Your estate can be up to $12.06 million before you’re looking at that 40% estate tax.
Joshua: There’s a bracket in there as well.
Jessica: Yes, you’re right.
Joshua: For ease.
Jessica: There’s a lot of technicalities as we mentioned. That said, that $12 million, that’s generous. It has been as low as $600,000 per household. It wasn’t for a long period of time, but as the political pendulum slings left to right, right to left, those type of rules change.
Joshua: Yes. I think it was below a million 10, 15 years ago, is when it went up above a million. Then it jumped to $5 million, and then now Trump temporarily, that’s one thing that’s important, it’s temporarily, at-
Jessica: Till 2026.
Joshua: -$12 million. Yes. When the tax cuts and drawback-
Jessica: They’re saying that that’s going to be reduced.
Joshua: -reduced, it will go back to the $5 million adjusted for inflation, so we don’t know exactly what it’ll be. Yes, it’ll be at the reduced rate.
Jessica: We’ll look forward to that surprise. [laughs] The next series, guys, that we’re going to be looking at, just teaser, is going to be about transferring your legacy, transferring wealth, and we’ll dig a little bit deeper. We’ve talked about how wealth transfers spouse to spouse. Our next order of business will be discussing what does that look like for your family? How does that wealth transfer down to your heirs and how can you get ahead of it in that regard?
Many of you out there who watch our videos are in your 50s, 60s, 70s, have aging parents. We’re going to discuss how to have that conversation with the silent generation who don’t like to speak about their finances so that you can help to prepare yourself because what is their tax problem becomes your bigger tax problem when we’re talking about things like inheriting an IRA as a beneficiary and a non-spouse. Joshua, is there anything else that you feel is imperative to mention that we haven’t covered today? So much. [laughs]
Joshua: My one advice is just be knowledgeable when you make your decisions because having the information, speak to someone that is knowledgeable, a financial advisor and a CPA, and be comprehensive in the plan you form. Knowledge is power.
Jessica: Yes. Thank you. Being pragmatic and having enough time to heal your heart and also the ability to take the next steps. Time tends to heal when we lose a spouse. We’ve heard that when we’re in the grief process, time can be your biggest asset. Time is also very detrimental as we’ve gleaned from this video today as it relates to your finances. It’s really striking the balance between being proactive and healing your heart and not making emotional decisions. The best way to do that is have a plan going into it when emotions are not high, so when your spouse is alive, to have that conversation then.
If you have not signed up in the description box to receive our Survivors Guide, go ahead and do that because it’s got a lot of this information and so much more in it, and it’s an excellent tool that you and your spouse can work on together to help to prepare you, and that’s going to eliminate the risk of making decisions emotionally. Thank you so much for joining us on our fourth segment of the Survivorship Series. I hope that you found this information valuable.
I know that it’s a lot of information that we’ve covered throughout the series, but we are here for you to be your guides and we are happy to refer you to local individuals that also specialize and understand your specific state laws. We are here in Texas and we are happy to continue to provide guidance. I look forward to seeing you back on our fifth and final video in the series. We’re going to do a recap of everything that we’ve talked about. hope to see you there.
