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Oh, hello there. This is the trusted podcast. This is Blake Johnson, your host. And this is a podcast where we talk about all things involved, trusting others, especially other attorneys. And today we’re going to talk about non traditional estate planning. And what by mean by that is it’s a nontraditional family. So we’ve got, um, domestic partnerships. You’ve got common law marriage, you’ve got, uh, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender individuals, um, and what the state planning landscape looks like for them. So, um, couple of things. First, um, you know, um, gay marriage is now legalized. Um, the Supreme Court, a US Supreme Court made that pretty obvious. And so that changed a lot of things, you know, with Merritt, with um, the LG and B bt community, being able to um, now be married. Um, you know, the, the laws as far as intestacy, meaning that if you died without a will or a trust, um, are going to be the same.
Um, whether it’s, um, a gay couple or if it’s a traditional family, couple of heterosexual couple. And so that was, that was a huge, a change in the estate planning landscape from that perspective. Um, but it’s not always the case that, um, that people are married. So if, if you have a family where, um, you know, a couple has kids but they never formally get married, um, you know, Nevada does not have a common law marriage statutes. So that’s not an option. Other states have that. What that means is if you’ve lived together for so long and you know, uh, he basically lived like you were married for a certain number of years. In some states you are considered married. And so from an inheritance standpoint, the spouse can, or the, the person who lived with them are considered as a spouse and can inherit some of the property.
But like I said, Nevada does not have that. And so you do need to do your estate planning. Um, and, uh, if you, if you do not plan on getting married, even if you do, you know, we’ve been over this many times, even if you are married, you need to do a state planning. You need to have, um, you know, your, your wishes made known have, have everything set up the way you want it to be so that it doesn’t go through court. It doesn’t become complicated. And, um, you know, there’s, there’s less chance of fighting and so on. Um, so let’s talk about um, what your options are. So if you don’t want to get married, there is a domestic partnership in Nevada is established in 2009 by the Nevada legislature. Um, basically is a contract between two parties. Um, kind of like a marriage except for that’s a social contract, um, that grants each partner, uh, different rights that are not available to non married couples.
Um, so some of the benefits of marriage without the full commitment of marriage, um, little bit easier to get to, to get rid of the domestic partnership. Uh, if you choose to do so, um, to, to qualify for that, both persons have to share a common residence. Um, neither partner can be married, um, or part of another domestic partnership. And the individuals must not be related by blood and both individuals must be at least 18 years of age and be competent to consent to the domestic partnership. Now, um, let’s say you set that up, um, then you know, then that your domestic partner, uh, does have the right to inherit, um, under the state intestacy laws. So that’s, that’s good there. Cause at least it gets them something once. And let’s do some traditional estate planning when it comes to that. Let’s set up a trust a lot cleaner.
Say, hey look, even though we’re not married, we want everything to be treated. Uh, if I die, everything goes to my life partner or to this person, whoever it is. Um, you know, doesn’t matter if you’re heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, just do a trust. You know, it’s the cleanest, easiest way to make things happen from an estate planning standpoint. You know, definitely want to get your healthcare power of attorney in place, naming the person that you want, because otherwise, um, you’re, it’s gonna Default to family. That’s just the way the law works. And so you’re going to have, you know, your mom and dad or siblings making your healthcare decisions and not have your partner be able to make those decisions. So you’ll get that in place. Same thing with financial power of attorney. You don’t want to have to go through guardian shorts, a guardianship court to get that established.
Um, you know, with the will. Same thing. You want your personal representative to be family or do you want it to be your partner? Do you want it? Do you want everything to go to them or do you want it to go through state and test to see laws? Uh, do you want it to be protected? If even if you guys, uh, you have, um, you know, a gay couple and they want to keep things separate, great. You can do that even if it’s a heterosexual couple. Um, and then you have each, uh, party set up their own trust. Uh, their assets stay separate and it’s actually can be, I’ve been Tejas because when the first partner dies, everything’s held in that trust for the benefit of the partner and now becomes protected from lawsuits, from future marriages, from creditors, um, from, uh, bankruptcy, all those things because it was set up for the benefit of the other person.
Uh, so a lot of advantages to do traditional state planning for, um, you know, those who are not married, not a traditional family, you know, who are, you know, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, whatever the case may be. Um, you know, talk to an estate planning attorney. Uh, I, they think more than, than the traditional family. You may have more need to do estate planning. Um, get that revokable living trust in place. Uh, get your will, get your directives, get your power of attorney and get your healthcare power of attorney. Um, so that everything is set up the way that you want it to be. And not leave it up to the courts. Don’t leave it up to a judge and whatever, you know, when they’re on that day as far as who they’re going to approve to be the person that you want to or, or to to be the charge of making decisions if you’re incompetent to signing, um, your finances to, um, you know, disposing of your property. So that’s, that’s nontraditional family estate planning in a nutshell. Um, you know, a lot that can go into it. Um, but also a lot of it’s very similar than to traditional estate planning and setting up wills and trusts and so on. So hopefully that gives you a little bit of a taste of, of what, uh, there is in that area of Wa. Um, as always, you can always contact me if you have any questions and, um, you can reach me at, uh, the trusted epa.com and thank you for listening and have a great day.
