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Memento Mori Minute
The stuff that has your clients calling you first. (I can be the second call. I speak Texan.)
by Doug Harvey
Hello friends.
Quick heads up: To keep with my promise of keeping this short, I'm tightening up the email starting this week. From now on you'll get a 60-second email with four things aimed at getting your clients to love you:
One way estate planning quietly breaks (a misconception, a pitfall, or a foundational concept worth understanding)
One Steal This Line — verbatim language you can use with a client this week
One If This, Then Refer — a trigger to watch for and what to do when you hear it
One Quote of the Week — just for fun
This week's theme: Clients who moved to Texas from somewhere else.
If you have a client that moved to Texas and hasn’t updated their plan, reply “intro” and I’ll send you a short blurb you can copy-past to them.
— Doug Harvey
In This Issue:
① Myth of the Week — “My Estate Plan Travels with Me.”
② Steal This Line — For the New Texan with an Old Plan
③ If This, Then Refer — I Wasn’t Born in Texas, but I Got Here as Fast as I Could
④ Quote of the Week — John Steinbeck (plus a special guest!)
Myth of the Week
“My Estate Plan Travels with Me.”
People are moving to Texas. Sometimes they have a plan from their former state, and sometimes they think they’re all set. They are usually not all set. Estate plans are drafted for a specific state, under specific rules, by an attorney who was thinking about that state and not this one. (Community property, independent administration, executor restrictions, homestead, the statutory form of the power of attorney — and the list goes on.) The binder traveled. The plan didn't.
Steal This Line
For the New Texan with an Old Plan
Most clients who moved here have a plan they paid good money for and have no interest in redoing. So the line cannot suggest they did anything wrong. It should suggest that Texas is different and the plan should probably be checked against the difference.
USE THIS!
"Some of your plan might still work in Texas. Some of it won’t. It’s worth having someone take a look."
If This, Then Refer
This Week’s Trigger: I Wasn’t Born in Texas, but I Got Here as Fast as I Could
IF YOU HEAR
THEN
“We moved here from [California / Florida / New York / Not Texas] a few years ago.”
Refer for a Texas review. Out-of-state plans almost always have at least one document or provision that doesn’t translate cleanly to Texas.
“We kept our house in [other state] and bought one here too.”
Refer. Multi-state property creates a probate problem and a residency question. The residency question is usually the more expensive one to get wrong.
“My spouse passed away after we moved here, and we’re not sure what to do.”
Refer now. Administering an out-of-state plan in Texas is a specific problem with a specific solution.
Quote of the Week
“Texas is a state of mind.”
- John Steinbeck
“But it’s also an actual state with its own laws, so don’t rely on your old state’s docs if you move here.”
-Me