Presentations

Trust, Are You Kidding?

Imagine—your family home threatened to be taken away from you permanently because your family lawyer wrote himself into the family trust and is now taking the family assets for himself.

Imagine—you daughter cannot go to college because the money you set aside in trust was not there when she turned 18 because the money was eaten up by administrative fees, attorneys, poor investments, etc.

Sue Farley is a long time litigator of trusts gone bad. She's seen everything that could go wrong with a trust or estate. She's witnessed families destroyed, fortunes lost never to be recovered.

As a child, she watched helplessly as her mother and grandmother fought for what was rightfully theirs. She vowed that what happened to her mother would never happen to anyone else's mother if she could help it. As a practicing trial lawyer, she's worked to protect families from invasive and dishonest trustees. She has also worked for trustees and estate planners to assure that they are doing their job right. For the past 8 years she has been developing a system of accountability, transparency, and methods to assure that what we leave behind actually gets to our intended beneficiaries—our children and families.

The trust system is broken, and Sue Farley offers a viable way to fix it. But this isn't the "same ole same ole" stuff you read on every estate lawyer's website. Farley presents solutions that are based on her 25 years of trial experience dealing with all aspects of a trust and from all perspectives.

Sue offers an audience real solutions to the enormous problems trust creation and administration face today. These solutions are clearly laid out and easy to follow. She helps clear up some of the mysteries of the trust business, and she let's us know that there's no one clear "villain" in this drama. We're all to blame and no-one is to blame. If you want to know what you can do to fix this problem, listen to Sue Farley!

Speaking Topics:

Breaking the Bad Egg—
Exposing the Pitfalls of the current Trust system.
Establishing a Trust that Works

We all know the trust system isn't working. It's a trillion dollar industry and everyone wants a piece of that juicy pie.

There is also an enormous amount of distrust in financial institutions today. People are losing a staggering amount of money even though your trust is supposed to be set up to protect your money and family.

What can you do to protect yourself?

"Breaking the Bad Egg" is all about empowering you to protect your family and assets by keeping your trustee honest and your money safe.

In this speech, Farley discusses:

• What could go wrong with your trust
• Demand a better model for trust creation and administration because the current model doesn't work
• Learn how to feel confident that you can protect your assets in trust

You will also find out how a good trust addresses the issues of

• Ambiguous language in trusts that lead to abuse
• Will your money go to your beneficiaries or the people who administer your trust or estate?
• Priorities for beneficiaries
• Settling disputes between beneficiaries
• Handling the problem of a bad trustee.

We can do this better! is Farley's battle cry. Join her and feel safe about your assets.

How to Write a Better Trust

Face it. We rely on our lawyers to do our trust planning for us. We don't really understand all the ins and outs of the process and we don't really care. They are protecting us aren't we paying them to do this?

Trust and Estate planning today is focused around avoiding taxes. The emphasis is not on reaching your goals for your families. Goals are treated as a byproduct of tax planning. BUT the reasons you set up a trust in the first place is to accomplish the GOALS you have set for your family. Taxes should NOT drive the planning process. In fact tax savings can often wind up irrelevant because the administration of your trust cost more than the taxes saved.

Transferring complete control over everything we have to some person or institution granting them broad authority and discretion constitutes BLIND FAITH that that person or institution will honor our goals, preserver our assets, and do as we have directed. There is no oversight from anyone that this blind faith or ours is justified. In fact evidence today is to the contrary.

Our trust assets are being siphoned off legally in the form of administrative fees, asset management fees, attorney's fees, accountant's fees, management fees, investment fees, appraisal fees, real property management fees, service charges etc. Is anyone overseeing this abuse? Sue has seen trusts completely dissipated never to go to their family or the intended beneficiary.

In this speech you will learn how to protect yourself and your family.
Learn what you need to know about:

• Setting parameters and boundaries for the trustees decision making
• Empowering your beneficiaries and family to remove a poorly performing trustee
• Requiring accountability from your trustee so they meet the goals you have set.
• Protecting your trust assets from excessive fees for administration
• Monitoring your trustee's performance to assure compliance with the trust terms
• Resolving family disputes and pre-empting dissipation of assets
• Protecting your family and assets from the conflicts of interest that are rampant in this industry.

Sue will give you insights into a trust system you know nothing about. She will open your eyes to how to get your family to work together to obtain the benefits you have left, reach the goals you have set and how to avoid family break up, the loss of assets, and avoid unqualified trustees.

What to do When Someone Dies

Losing a loved one is difficult. We are saddened by our loss and often times it is a confusing time. However, death is also a trigger event that prompts the transfer of property. Also, the government, the banks, creditors and lawyers are insensitive to your grieving process. Even relatives take advantage of this vulnerable time to take assets.

Do you have your papers in order? Have you left adequate instructions on how to take care of you in death?

"What to do When Someone Dies" may be a tough speech to confront, but it could be one of the better hours that you've ever spent. Don't be naive about this process.

Sue Farley, long time trust and wills litigator, has seen what has happened to a person's assets when they have not properly planned for their distribution while alive.

In this speech, you will learn such important information as:

• The steps you need to take to protect your family when a loved one dies
• Getting critical documents and powers issued before assets start to disappear.
• Commencing probate why and how.
• Why it's important to lock down all the assets and personal effects until the will or trust is put into effect.
• The steps you need to take if there is no Will or no named Executor of a will.
• The right to decline assumption of duties as administrator or trustee —and how to do just that.
• What happens when you volunteer to handle your loved one's assets, even though you may not want or expect to shoulder the responsibilities of the estate.
• The liabilities of being a trustee or executor

This speech is packed full of useful information that an audience concerned about their assets and how those assets are to be handled after they are gone.

NEW Trust Technology: How to Establish a Better Trust

The current Trust system is broken. Estate planners are concerned primarily with taxes. Professional fiduciaries are concerned that their investments in a trust are sound. Personal fiduciaries, a friend or family member, are oftentimes clueless as to how to administer a trust. Beneficiaries all too often find themselves with their hands tied and uninformed about what is going on in their trust.

The current system slogs along. People lose money. Families wind up hating each other. What can be done about all this mess?

Sue Farley, long time trust and wills litigator has a viable solution. Farley spent 8 years working with top technologists to develop a system for trusts that works—through all stages of a trust.

If you're concerned about trust creation or administration. If you're worried that you can't do anything about the failure of the current system, "A New Trust Technology" will offer you surprisingly easy answers!

In this speech, you will find out that:

• There are three distinct stages to a trust. If any one of those stages is not planned for, then the trust risks failure
• The more specifically you can define your values, the better able the trustee is going to be able to execute the demands of the trust.
• Using advanced computer technology, it can take a trustee minutes to answer a request from a beneficiary as opposed to the weeks or even months it takes now.
• What's needed to bring this technology into actual workable form NOW!

If you want to see the "New Trust" technology and a different way of planning, implementing and executing trusts where risk is reduced, accountability becomes the norm, decision making rests with the grantor NOT the administrator and benefits are predictable—listen to this mind-awakening new model for trust, a system that takes arbitrary, discretionary, subjective decision making out of the equation. It places decisions in the hands of the grantor who through a series of questionnaires, sets boundaries within which the trustee is to operate and anticipates events so the grantor projects himself into the future to touch the lives of his children and beneficiaries in a way not seen before.