What's wrong with me?

Today's lesson: I am human.

I was so focused on dealing with the IRS this morning and packing the right documents for my meeting with the attorney on Tuesday that I forgot to pack the keys to 1137. THE 1137. The home of my youth where I'm sleeping tomorrow night. Where there are no parents to come to the door when I ring the doorbell in the middle of the night. This will either be a major inconvenience to me - or to my son.

It's stressing me out. I'm not the type of person who forgets my keys. When I first realized (and even now, hours later), I was beating myself up. My husband doesn't get it. He's not the best pa let, he can be forgetful. In fact, he's probably shouting s big secret hurrah. He's been telling me I'm human. I can forget. Alas... I'm more like him.

Another lesson today which I still need to verify is that we might be able to waive minimum distrubutions from Mom and Dad's IRAs without penalty if we tell our story correct. I thought the IRS form needed to be filed by 12/31. I learned today that it needs to be filed in conjunction with the 1040. I'm hoping its next year's 1040 and not the 2013 I just filed. I hope.

Okay, I'm human. And I still have a lot to learn. Next post from 1137.

Another life lesson

Today's lesson: It's probably more of a reminder. I'm just not me. And when people tell me that I'm not me, I get teary and don't know where to go with it.

The other day my husband said he couldn't wait until I got back to normal. I thought he was referring to my knee, which I injured when my dad was in the hospital in August. No. He meant back to normal in life, to be the person I was before my mom got ill, before my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Before I dealt with the death of both parents in under 5 months. The me who I was before I became executrix and took over the trust. That me. I'm trying to figure out how I can return to that me. I'm just not sure.

This afternoon I got two very lengthy texts from my baby girl (who is 23 years old, lives almost clear across the continent and is anything like a baby). She told me she wished we were closer, even though she did move so far away. She's coming to visit next month, and she hopes we can have a great time. I hope we have a great time, too. It will be the 3rd time I've seen her since she moved across the country. The first two times were visits involving hospital rooms and cemeteries and bagels. We need to have a happier visit. I couldn't agree more. She told me she's grown into this totally awesome person since she moved away and she wants me to get to know that person. I hope that can happen.

I can't seem to communicate with my loved ones about what I need them to do to help me move back towards me again. I start talking about these things with them, these very deep feelings, and I'm brought to tears. Whether it's in person with my husband or on the telephone with one of my kids, I simply can't communicate what I need. Maybe if I knew what I needed, I'd be able to communicate better.

I'm still stressing about the extensions that needs to be filed with the IRS for my mom's estate tax return (is she really gone nearly 9 months?) and to try to eliminate the need to pay penalties because Mom never took her required minimum distribution from her IRA for 2013, due on December 31, 2014. Why haven't I heard from the accountant yet? Why can't my issues be top priority for everyone else the way they are for me? This is anything but normal. I don't want to live this way.

So what did I learn today? Just that I have a lot more to learn. About me. About normal. About me getting back to normal.

Another first

Today's lesson is a life lesson rather than a Trust & Estates lesson. Firsts are difficult, no matter what the connection was to the deceased.

I've heard this before. Don't make any big decisions until after the first year is over. It always made sense to me. Thankfully, I don't have any big decisions to make. But these firsts hit you when you least expect them. And because of the closeness in timing of my parents' deaths, I think I'm going to have to deal with all the firsts I thought I dealt with earlier this year (while my father was still alive), Passover, my mother's birthday, Mother's Day, my birthday and my parents' anniversary, all over again in the coming year.

To give you an inkling of what those were like... well, the first night of Passover found me together with my dad and my son in the Emergency Room at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn. My son... the superhero... who was there for Pa when he was most needed. My son and I had been sad to think that we wouldn't be spending Passover together. Little did we know... And my dad and I had been playing a dance for months about what we'd be doing together for Passover. I wanted my parents to come down for the two weeks at Passover that they'd normally be with us. My dad booked a trip of only 9 days, 5 of which I was going to be in New York! I was upset. My mom was upset. At some point, I had to just let it go. And now, in retrospect, how glad I am that I did. It would have stirred awful feelings. With my parents being 86 and 84, I didn't want to stir up bad feelings... because you just never know. And really? Who knew. Who knew that a few weeks after my dad booked their flights that my mom would have had a stroke. And that we would have her buried nearly 2 weeks before their proposed trip. During the shiva, our seven official days of grieving, we strong-armed my dad into booking a flight to Florida for Passover. There was no reason for him not to spend the holiday with us. We told our Florida relatives that we'd be celebrating Passover with them. (And then I worried that it might be too emotionally difficult for me to handle! How silly, looking back.) The morning of the day my dad was supposed to fly down to Florida was the morning that my son called and told me that I had to come back up. "Pa can't walk and he asked me to take him to the emergency room." We spent Passover in the Emergency Room of a major medical center in Brooklyn, in the midst of a very, very religious neighborhood, watching many of the other patients in the ER eating their special Passover foods as we were told that the reason that Dad couldn't walk is that there was a tumor on his spine and that Dad most probably had cancer.

My mother's birthday was another tough one. I needed to be in Florida for my husband to have some surgery. My aunt, my mom's sister, had been diagnosed with cancer the week after my dad. We spent that birthday Sunday with my aunt. In the back of my mind, I wondered if this was the last time I'd get a chance to spend with my aunt. Both my cousins were there and we had a lot of laughs. But overall, it was a heart-wrenching day. Tears are in my eyes as I even think about the afternoon. Too much so that I can't even begin to write about it.

Mother's Day wasn't too terrible. Especially not in comparison. My mom hated Mother's Day. I think she hated it because she lost her mother when she was only 32 years old and a new mother herself. I've never been a fan of Mother's Day, either. I've been disappointed far too many times on that holiday. My son was a super hero again that day. He and I went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one of my mom's favorite places in Brooklyn (and a place I hadn't been to since I was a girl, a place I'd most likely last been with my mom) and then we picked up pizza from L&B Spumoni Gardens in Brooklyn (another favorite of my mom's) and brought the pizza back to the nursing home to share with my dad and my brother. Perfect day. This coming year, I think it's going to be a first once again... back home, without dad there at the end. Probably with my son being 1,000 miles away.

My birthday was a day that was made very special by my dad, a good friend and my son. But do you see the pattern? My dad was part of the specialness. I was still someone's daughter. Someone was there who remembered me from the minute I first made an appearance on earth. Probably remembered me even before that.

My dad and I kind of ignored the first wedding anniversary (it would have been their 57th) without my mom. We made a casual mention of it. But with my aunt in Florida fighting for her life, I wasn't prepared to make more of a deal about it. It was a melancholy day as Dad and I were each grieving alone yet together.

For me, Hanukah has always been the holiday where I celebrated with the ones I was with. I don't know if there's a Hanukah that passed that I didn't see my parents at least once, but perhaps there was.  I had a large Jewish community in my former home in New Jersey. We'd gather together to light the menorah, sing songs, eat latkes and give the children gifts. In my family, gifts went in one direction only - from parent to child. Children didn't give gifts to siblings, daughters didn't give gifts to mothers. Parents gave gifts to children. This year, I am the child of no one... and I think that's where this "first" is hitting me hardest. Last year, I was with my parents for the entire 8 nights of Hanukah for the first time I was a young girl. This year, I am not. Hence, the sadness. There's a chance that I'll spend the 4th night of Hanukah with my son in good old 1137 lighting the menorah, singing songs, eating latkes and me giving him a gift. But even with that, the first of not being anyone's child for Hanukah, it's a tough first to deal with.

That Albert Einstein was a wise man

Lesson learned over the weekend: Handling estate matters is not a Monday through Friday job, 9 to 5. I need to be available to speak to the people who are helping me out when they are available to help me.

Lesson remembered: A sure fire way to determine whether or not you've mastered something new about trusts & estates is seeing if you are able to teach someone else what you've learned. (As a teacher, I used to see if any of my math students were able to teach new math concepts to another student. If student B was able to grasp a concept taught to them by student A, I knew that student A had truly mastered the material.)


On Sunday, after a long conversation on the phone with "Estate Guy," I thought I knew what was going on. I really did. We were going back to a moment in time, the day that my mom died, to split an account in Living Trust into two new trusts. One was an irrevocable trust. The other was a marital trust. Both  were for the benefit of my dad, who at that point in time, was still alive. I understood everything that "Estate Guy" explained to me. I was even able to repeat it back to him. Later last night, my brother called to ask me about my conversation to "Estate Guy." I was barely able to get much beyond, "Well, I filled out a whole bunch of forms and tomorrow I need to get two signatures notarized," when I realized I didn't fully understand what I was talking about. How could there be an irrevocable trust for the benefit of Dad? And what's a marital trust? Yesterday was the first day I'd heard about that!

Time for me to hit the internet since I couldn't seem to locate where this information is covered in the trust and estates book I'm currently reading.

Okay, so I think a marital trust was set up so that if my dad had needed any part of my mom's assets (half of the trust was hers) to survive once she had died, the marital trust could have provided income and assets, if he had needed them. My dad was the beneficiary of my mom's marital trust. I think.

I'm still trying to understand how my parents' revocable living trust became an irrevocable living trust for the benefit of my dad. Revocable trusts can be changed during the the lifetime of the grantors (the people who set up the trust). I guess that once Mom died, she had no way of revoking her trust. So at that point, the 50% of the trust attributable to my dad has to become irrevocable because they were grantors together. She was no longer around to make changes, and he was locked from being able to make any changes on his own.

I think a lot of this would make more sense to me if my dad were still alive. Then I'd be able to see what assets were considered (within the trust) my mom's and which were my dad's. But because he died so shortly after Mom died, it's all a moot point. Other than for tax purposes, it doesn't matter what type of trust the money goes into "for the benefit of" my dad. Eventually, the trust will get passed along to me and my brother. (And that's a whole other story. A new topic I'll need to read up about and try to make sense of.) But not yet. While I did these forms yesterday, they were just for one asset that my parents held during their lifetimes in their living family trust. Over the next few weeks, I'll go through the same process for many more assets within the living family trust.

I think I did learn a little something in an attempt to be able to explain to you all about marital trusts and how revocable family trusts become irrevocable family trusts (for the benefit of). Maybe I did learn something after all.

An 1137 spotting... on the plate

Lesson learned today: I finally figured out the real point of alternate valuations of assets. I will explain.

Let's supposed someone dies on June 15. That person's estate tax return and tax payment is due on March 15, 9 months later. Let's suppose in July or August... or maybe even October, the stock market tanks. A good part of the estate is in stocks. If the stocks are valued at the actual date of the death, June 15th, they might have been really high. Maybe they were $100,000. But by October, the market is at a new low and those stocks are now worth only $73,980. That's a big hit. So the IRS is kind of nice. (Well, not really. More on that in a minute.)

The IRS says that instead of using the value on the date of death, the value on the date that is 6 months out, in this case, December 15th can also be considered. The executor than elects to use the lower value when calculating the value of the stock portion of the estate. The estate taxes would then be paid on the lower value. And taxes on a diminished portfolio would be lower. It's almost like the IRS doesn't want to kick you, the beneficiary, when you're down.

Okay, so the IRS isn't really that nice. The beneficiaries now receive the stocks with the cost basis being the lower value. So once the stocks get back to the higher value on date of death - or even higher - the capital gains to the beneficiary will be higher and the beneficiaries will owe more capital gains taxes than they would have had the higher value been taken when filing the estate tax. Remember, short-term capital gains are taxed at your normal rate, whatever that might be. Long-term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate.

I hope this makes some sense to you. I understand that I was able to make an election. And I've been frustrated trying to get date of death values (and alternate valuations) on all my parents' assets for the past month or so. It's not easy. Now I totally understand why. I'm just not sure I gave you the greatest explanation.

Date of death valuations for stocks are the mathematical average of the stock price between highest and lowest on the date of death. For funds, the value is the amount the fund could have been sold for on the day of the death.

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

For the first time since either one of my parents died, I saw 1137 on a license plate. I was really caught short. It's creepy enough when I see 11:37 on the clock, which happens often enough. I just don't know what to make of it. It's not the affirmation of things being well that it was before. Does it, in fact, mean anything? I stared at it, I had enough presence of mind to pull out my camera and photograph it. And then I was left to wonder.

Recap of today's lesson: If a decedent left investments as assets in the estate (whether in a probate account or within a trust), the assets will be valued at the date of death and then again exactly 6 months later. The executor can elect which value to use for the estate. Normally, the lower value would be elected. Estate taxes are paid on the lower value. The beneficiaries assume the cost basis of the lower value. So if the investments ever return to their original levels, as soon as the beneficiaries sell, they have a larger gain and pay higher capital gains taxes.

If you don't get it, ask! Ask me. Ask your attorney. Ask your lawyer. Read about it in a book.

Procrastination Queen is alive and well...

Today's lesson: Maintaining a blog in 2014 is not the same as maintaining a website in 2004!

Yesterday I created a fairly short list of what I wanted to accomplish today. I woke up early this morning to attend a holiday brunch for my club. I'm club historian so I took about 90 photos, came home, tried to teach myself how to create web-based photo albums. I'm really pretty tech savvy... but these online albums, tricky! I maintain a physical scrapbook for the club so after I played around online for a little bit, I created my collages and sent them off to be printed.

Centerpiece at our holiday party

Then I decided that it's really time to work on the estate stuff. My library book is due at the library in less than a week. At the very least, I should have read my book. Instead, I downloaded a few statements that my brother sent me. I looked at some forms. I got overwhelmed.

Since I'm a new blogger, the only time I've ever blogged before was on my honeymoon 4 years ago - and that was only for family and friends - I have a lot to learn about blogging. So I spent the next few hours playing around with blogger. Back in another life when I was an elementary school teacher, I kept a class website and I guess I thought blogging would be sort of like keeping a website, with just more writing. I knew html back in the day. But somehow it's not translating well for me here. The words coming out are words I want to share. It's the formatting that leaves a lot to be desired.

It's now nearly 8pm. I could sit here until 11:37 and I am sure that wouldn't help at all. Please bear with me as I learn the ins and outs of formatting a blog.

I've also learned that it's more fun to learn how to format a blog than it is to settle an estate. And as long as I'm learning, it's not really procrastination, right?

The open-faced sandwich

Is it still a sandwich... when your kids are young adults? And your parents are no longer alive? Am I still considered the sandwich generation?

Today's lesson: COBRA is available for dependent children who turn 26 and age off their parents' family health insurance plans. At least in New York State, where they can extend coverage for up to 36 months. It's costly but possible.

Today I took the day off from all things trust and estates and had an adventure with my husband. While we were out, my soon-to-be 26-year old daughter called with good news. Even though she turns 26 in a few weeks, it's after the first of January... and she's allowed to stay on her father's plan until December 31 of the year she turns 26. What a bonus.

Twice the fun

Today's lesson: If a spouse doesn't inherit the deceased spouse's IRA before he himself dies, the IRA cannot be transferred to the subsequent beneficiaries without going through probate. I'm now left wondering what other glitches we'll come across because Dad died prior to "officially" inheriting anything that belonged to Mom.

Mom died in late March. We observed the traditional seven days of shiva. We were in mourning. On the day after we got up from shiva, I asked Dad whom we needed to notify about Mom's death (besides the obvious friends and family who were notified prior to the funeral). He said we had time. A few days later I asked, "Don't we need to call a lawyer or something?" His response was, "We have time."

Ten days later, Dad was in the hospital battling cancer. I asked the same question again and would get the same response. Over the next few months, I asked the question again and always got the same response. I trusted my dad, I figured he knew what he was doing. And it seemed like we had time. Mom's social security had stopped coming in as did her pension. Her health insurance companies knew she was deceased. I assumed that Dad inherited everything through some last-to-die clause in their papers. (I can admit now that each time Dad handed me the trust papers, I merely glanced through them and never carefully read them figuring I'd have plenty of time once the inevitable (but unthinkable) happened.)

Now, several months after his death, I'm realizing his mistake - and my mistake for trusting him. Things are so much more complicated because we didn't go through the process of Dad inheriting Mom's assets and then us inheriting Dad's assets. I know he had trust in the "trust." Even though it's only one trust, I'm still technically dealing with two estates, and I'm sure the IRA glitch is just the first of many.

Finally, it's not like I learned any lessons settling Mom's estate. Although I wouldn't have been trustee or executor on that one, Dad would have been. But I'm in a crash course trying to figure things out for Mom - and Dad - on difference schedules, trying to figure out which are the important deadlines.

In a nutshell, when a person dies, even if the trust is joint, don't trust the trust. Start the process of administering the estate immediately. Ask the questions about "second to die." Don't assume the surviving spouse will have a good long life, even when there's no reason to assume he or she won't. (FYI: Until a few days before Dad's death, there was no reason to think he was going to die that quickly. A little over a week before he died, two days prior to his final hospitalization, we'd learned he'd beat the cancer.)

11:37 - Just another minute on the clock?

Lesson 1: 1137 is just another number and 11:37 is just another minute (or two) on the clock each day

I'm not sure when I started giving special powers to 1137... or 11:37. It was definitely past the point when digital clocks were more popular than analog clocks. You know, those clocks with the faces and the hands and all that.

You see, I grew up at 1137... as did my brother, my mom and her sister. One day, as I looked at the clock, I must have been living away from home by then, I spotted 11:37 and thought, "Ah ha, everything is all fine at the old homestead." And for years and years that, I believed it. And for years and years, it was true. I'd phone my mom almost every single night and almost every single night she'd reaffirm that "We're fine." Me seeing 11:37 on the clock, whether AM or PM, kept my parents safe. Sometimes I'd see the numbers on another house. That made them even more safe! And once I saw those numbers on a license plate. I was crazy positive that all was well at home.

And then one day, things weren't okay. My parents were no longer safe. A little bit of my magical world was torn apart. I'd spotted 11:37 on the clock that morning, as I'd been going about my business. I smiled to myself thinking, "Oh, good, Mom and Dad are safe and well." Several hours later, my dad called me on the phone to tell me that my mom had had a stroke. Huh? Did my lucky number on the clock deceive me? Was seeing it on the clock lucky at all?

I learned on that date, March 6, 2014, that 1137 is just another number, it's just another minute on the clock and it possesses no special powers. Over the next 5+ months, I learned many more things. Some things I learned for the first time. Other times, I learned things that I knew before but that just needed to be reinforced. And yes, there are still many things that I haven't learned. Things that I wonder about. Things that I'll never get the answers to. I learned all these things and developed all these questions during the process of caring for my parents during the final days of their lives. From time to time, I'll share with you what I learned during that time.

Now I'm bogged down with learning about the process of settling an estate... and disassembling long lives, trying to lose the bad stuff and retain all the wonderful stuff. The memories, the family treasures. It's difficult to do all that at the same time. At the same time that I'm grieving. Now I'm learning even more new things day by day. I'm learning lessons that God willing I won't even need again. I mean, it's not like I have another parent who might die and I might ever have to do this again. The stuff I learned from March through August is about nurturing and caring. Mostly it's the warm and fuzzy stuff. The stuff I'm learning about now, not so much so.

Taking care of my parents came naturally to me. I loved my parents. I'm a nurturing person. I did all I that I could to make sure they were comfortable and well cared for. Each and every day. I tried hard to make sure that they knew they were loved. Each and every day. Every day for about 5 months, my dad and I would kiss each other goodnight. He'd look at me and thank me for being there with him, telling me he didn't know what he'd do without me. I knew I'd done a good job doing what needed to be done each and every day, until the day he didn't seem to know I was there. Then, a few days later, he was gone.

This estate stuff does not come naturally to me. It's confusing, overwhelming and fully charged. It seems so important to do everything right. To dot my "i"s and cross my "t"s. Day after day of researching and consulting and trying to figure things out, I'm still confused. I have no one there to thank me for doing what I've done. To say that they don't know what they'd do without me. No one to even hint that I might have done a good job. Such a thankless task. I'm still grieving - and this business is way too much sometimes.

I hope to share some of the lessons I learn along the way... and when I have nothing to share from the present, I'll share with you some of the things I learned during the 5 months of caring for my parents. Those are the really important lessons I'll need to carry with me anyway, through life once the estate is settled and the assets are distributed. Life lessons learned. Beginning with 1137 is just another number.