I wrote a blog post on this topic (An Inherited IRA Is NOT Protected From Creditors in Bankruptcy!) the day after the decision was rendered.  You can access the decision and learn more: click here.

To learn more about Dave Zumpano, click here.

If you are an attorney or financial professional that wants more instruction on the legal-technical aspects of this decision, contact Lawyers With Purpose – Click here.

Disclaimer: This transcript has not been edited for grammar, spelling, or punctuation.

Nicole Wipp: Welcome to the smart planning 101 podcast, episode 25. I'm Nicole Wipp and I'm your host.

Intro: Stay in control of your future, whether legally, financially, or with your health. Learn the latest strategies and best practices from national experts. Help yourself. Help. Mom and dad make the right decisions.

Nicole Wipp: Welcome to smart planning. 101 here's Nicole Wipp.

Hello, smart planners. Welcome back. Smart planning 101 podcast today I bring back Dave Zumpano, who as promised is back to discuss the issue of inherited IRAs with us in light of the June 12th, 2014 Supreme court decision in Clark V Rameker. Now, if you are a non-lawyer listening to this is something that, the fact that the Supreme court decided this at Clark V Rameker, and who cares right.

But let me tell you that this is extremely important to you because this has major implications for estate planning. And this is one of those things that people very often have not planned for yet we'll want to plan for. And so in this episode, Dave Zumpano, and I will be discussing why and how to protect inherited IRAs in light of the fact that the Supreme court of the United States has now said that inherited IRAs are not protected the way your own IRA will be.

Now, if you don't know who Dave Zumpano is, go back and listen to smart planning. 101 episode 20, where Dave is introduced and he does an excellent explanation of irrevocable trusts, which is actually important in the context of this conversation as well. Or you can read all about him at smartplanning101.com/20 Thanks for listening!

So welcome back to the smart planning. 101 podcast. Dave Zumpano. Thanks for coming to talk to us again today.

Dave Zumpano:  It's always good to be with you, Nicole.

Nicole Wipp: We discussed that the end of the last time that we talked about coming back, you coming back and discussing the implications of a recent Supreme court decision that was made on June 12th, 2014, in a case called Clark V Rameker. And it was a decision related to inherited IRAs. And this is something that a lot of attorneys have been really curious about, of course, but it's something that clients need to understand the importance of. To have you talk to us about that decision and why it's important.

Dave Zumpano: Okay I, nothing like being hot off the press, right? It's a couple of weeks old, a decision. And I think for a lot of people, they don't even know this is going on. And this is the difference between a lawyer with purpose and general lawyers. It's really staying connected to the issues that matter to clients and nothing matters more to clients in my experience and the protection of the assets that they've worked a lifetime to accumulate. And this decision, if I can give you a little bit of introduction to it what it really revolves around is IRAs exclusively. And the question at issue was the following is an IRA, an asset that is safe from creditors and predators. That wasn't the issue in this case. That is well established federal tax law that says if you have an IRA or other qualified account, 401k 4 0 3 B pension, things of that nature, those assets by federal law are not available to be attacked by your creditors and predators. And the rationale for that really goes to public policy. Public policy says that we well, there's two public policies, there's general public policy. And then there's tax policy.

General public policy says we want to create an environment where people save for their retirement. And what the federal tax code does to support that, as they say, listen, if you go and create an account for retirement, we're going to give you tax advantage status for that account. We know it as an IRA 401k, and what the IRS says is this. If you weren't, I'm going to keep it simple. If you're on $30,000 in a year, okay, then you're taxed on $30,000 in that year.

But if you are in $30,000, and you contribute $5,000 to an IRA, formerly known as an individual retirement account. Then the government only taxes you on 25,000. So they don't tax you. I'm that amount of money that you put into an IRA. Now, that's a tax advantage to support the public policy, to make sure that people save for retirement.

The government wants to make sure they save for retirement. So that they don't become a burden on the government when they reach [00:05:00] retirement age. So that's the general rule of law, but IRAs are protected from creditors and predators and bankruptcy. Now, what happened was there was a case and one of the federal district courts, and it really came through a bankruptcy court.

So bankruptcy is a federal court and whenever there's an appeal to a bankruptcy court, it goes to the federal district court. When there's an appeal to the federal district court, you go to the court of appeals for that district. So you can have there's nine districts across the country. So the base level federal court is the district court.

The appellate court is the court of appeals and there's only nine courts of appeals. And then there's one court that settles if courts of appeals don't agree. And that's the US Supreme court. So in essence, what happened is we have this issue about IRAs and nobody challenged that IRAs are safe from creditors and predators, but what happened was when someone dies and they leave their IRA to someone else after they died, it's called an inherited IRA. So if I created an IRA, it's my IRA. But if I die and give it to my kids have what's called an inherited IRA, otherwise known as a beneficial IRA. Those are synonymous. Now, what happened was the federal bankruptcy court in one of the nine districts said, listen, the bankruptcy judge, not the judge, but the bankruptcy trustee.

Said to the bankruptcy judge. We don't agree. The debtor, the person going through bankruptcy has listed an asset called an IRA, and they've listed that asset at about $300,000. We want to go after that asset, we believe we can get it. Well, the bankruptcy client's lawyer said no, you're not entitled to get my clients $300,000 because that's an IRA and federal law protects IRAs from the reach of the bankruptcy court and other creditors and predators.

The bankruptcy trustee said to the judge, no, we disagree. We believe we are very clear that the federal statute protects an IRA for an IRA owner, but not for someone who inherits an IRA from someone else. So there's a distinction. The first thing that's really important for all of your clients to know their IRAs are still safe.

Now what's what came into question here was not whether an IRA is safe, but whether an inherited IRA is safe from creditors and predators. In this fact pattern called Clark v. Rameker. The client that was in bankruptcy court was not the client that created the IRA. It was the client that inherited the IRA from their parent.

So what happened? The federal district court in one district said the bankruptcy court said that the inherited IRA is protected. Okay? And another district court, a different district. They said inherit IRA is not protected. Okay? So we had two district courts that had a different answers. So the only way you could solve that is go to the court of appeals.

So each one of those courts went to the court of appeals, the court, the bankruptcy court that said it was protected. The court of appeals agreed the other district court where it said it wasn't. The court of appeals overturned it and said, yes, it is protected. So now the two courts of appeals agreed, there was no more an issue.

So we thought the issue was solved. Then there was a third district. It was actually the third district had a case out of Chicago where the bankruptcy court ruled it was protected, but on appeal, the court of appeals said it wasn't protected. So now we had two different district courts, two different courts of appeals disagreeing.

Now we had one district disagreeing with two other districts and the other six districts didn't rule. So now we have a problem because we have two courts of appeal that don't agree. And there's only one place to resolve that is you have to go to the Supreme court. And that's what happened. This case Clark V. Rameker Was heard before the Supreme court on March 27th or 25th, somewhere in that timeframe of this year. And then June 12th, we got the decision of that case and what the us Supreme court settled finally for all courts is that an inherited IRA is not protected from bankruptcy [00:10:00] pursuant to the provisions of bankruptcy law. Now, this was a critical decision.

Now, while it's shocked many in the industry across the country are shocked. Lawyers are shocked by financial professionals. It didn't shock us because we've been monitoring this since the beginning three or four years ago. And we have always taken a position at lawyers with purpose to be conservative. That is why risk it?

If there's, if there's a possibility that it could be concerned that an inherited IRA might not be protected, let's do it in a way that we know it is protected. Okay. We've always taken the position that an inherited IRA is not protected, even though we didn't know, we just assume the worst-case scenario and we plan that way.

So the bad news was it was a little more planning for our clients. Yeah, we had to jump through one or two more hoops to get a good qualified, to get a good plan in place. But the good news was in light of the recent us Supreme court decision. We have a lot of clients that are very happy. We did that, and that's really the essence of a Clark V Rameker here that now.

What happens is for all of those lawyers that never took the time to get caught up on the law and to understand what was going on. And for all those financial advisors that tended to take the quick and easy solution for clients, they are now forced to go back. And re-examine how they do this planning.

Now we're not, we're going to continue to plan the way we always have because the us Supreme court validated our form of planning. And that's really what I want to maybe touch a little bit about on this call today is really to understand for those listening, what is this type of planning? What does it mean?

Nicole Wipp: Yeah, so I think that is an excellent point, Dave, because. There are, like you said, at the very beginning, there were a lot of people that even to this minute, have no idea what we're talking about right now. And so it's one of those things that if it's important to you if you're the client and it's important to you, that your money is protected, even after your death, this is something that you need to hear. And you need to understand that this is an option, but you may have to pursue the option.

Dave Zumpano:  You know, that's a great way to say it. Nicole, you expressed it very well. IF the big question is if you care, if the client cares about what happens to their money after they die, some clients say I don't care. Let my kids worry about it. There's one, which is okay, you're free to do that. But what we want to explain to those clients is before you just run off to that conclusion that you understand the options and you understand what's at risk because the truth is in this fact pattern, if the client does not address this, it is not something the kid can.

Nicole Wipp: Yes

Dave Zumpano: At this point in time. So it's a scenario where we say I don't care what the kids do. I understand you don't care what the kids do, but do you want to give your money to your kids in a way that other people can take it from them, divorce, lawsuits, nursing homes, or do you want to be able to give your assets to your loved ones, your children, or loved ones in a way that they can access it whenever they want?

But nobody else can. That's the question we're talking about in the rest of this communication, you and I are having today. If people don't care about that, they can hang up now, but if they do care about how to protect their assets for their loved ones, now what's beautiful about what I'm going to share with you is that applies to all assets.

But now there was a presumption that did not apply to IRAs. Now we know it does apply to inherited IRAs and if the client themselves do not proactively plan to protect the IRA after their deaths, then their children will inherit the IRA, but it will not be in a protective format and it'll be subject to the kids, creditors, predators, lawsuits, nursing homes, or any other liabilities, they may have.

Nicole Wipp: Dave, can I just say that what you just said? I actually want to repeat what you just said, but in the way that I explain it to people, just because I think it's so important that it needs to be said more than once. And that is, so what Dave is saying is. Just because you want to let your kids have control of the money afterward and you say, oh, I'm going to let them handle it.

Yes, we understand that's what you want and that you're not trying to necessarily control them. That's not the point of this. The point of this is that they, the kids don't have any control over what's going to happen to your money after your death. If you don't engage in this type of planning, is that a correct statement from your perspective?

Dave Zumpano: Nicole you're spot on. And I illustrate all that this way. Our goal is not to control from the grave. Our goal is to protect from the grave, and if that's a goal they have, then they need to participate in this conversation.

Nicole Wipp: Excellent. I agree. A hundred percent, of course.

Dave Zumpano: Yep. Yup. Yup. [00:15:00] Okay. So what does it mean?

Here's what it means: In a nutshell, there's two questions we have to address in our remaining time together. The first question we have to address is so how do we protect it if we haven't died yet? And then the second question is how do we protect it? If it's already been inherited from mom or dad and they didn't do this.

Nicole Wipp: Okay.

Dave Zumpano: Yeah, I think these are two questions in front of us. So let's address the first one let's address how we protected when you're healthy and you've created this IRA. What we have done traditionally for years in the planning strategy of clients who want to protect their assets is after they pass away, we never give the assets to the client's family or children, or beneficiaries.

We give it to a trust. For the clients, families, children, or beneficiaries. And then we put that child, family member, or beneficiary in control of that trust. And I'm not going to get into all those details. Nicole, as a lawyers with purpose attorney you deliver the two-hour workshops to really distinguish what the differences between control and access.

So I'm going to just presume clients understand them. It's not, I'm going to encourage them to attend a local workshop that will get them very clear on that, but essentially here's what it says, that if I have a dollar and I want to leave it to my son, I could leave it to my son one of two ways. And by the way, son, daughter, neighbor, dog, catcher, whoever you want to leave it to, I can leave it to my son where he can get at it whenever you want.

And so can all of his creditors and predators, or I can leave it to my son in a way where he can get at it whenever he wants, but none of his creditors and predators can. Creditors and predators can include a spouse in a divorce, a lawsuit, a nursing home, or other general predators. So given that scenario, and again, we don't have the context of how that works on this call, but they can attend the workshop to understand that.

But on this call, what we can set up is that if I can show you what it is to the creation of a trust. And when you pass, you, leave your IRA to a trust. For the benefit of whoever you want and you can put that person in control of it if you want. Now, if you do have someone you want to leave it to, but you don't trust their ability to manage money, you can still leave the money to that person, but put the control in someone else's hand that's.

The beauty of trust is you can really set them up any way you want. As we say, lawyers with purpose, a trust is your rule book. You get to decide how it works for you and for the beneficiaries you're leaving it to. So in essence, what we're doing, the prem properly, the proper beneficiary designation on your IRA should be your trust.

Now pause because a lot of people panic when they hear that many people will say, oh, you make a trust, a beneficiary, it's all going to become taxable when you die. That's not true. It can all become taxable when you die. If you do the trust improperly, there's four key tests that have to be met to make sure you don't violate those tax rules, which would make it all taxable.

I'm not going to go through those rules. I go through that when I'm talking to the lawyers, when you got a lawyer that understands what they're doing, that's never an issue. So the client inherited in a trust. It does not cause taxation. In fact, the IRS uses the beneficiary of the trust as the measuring life and calculation of the payout of the IRA.

They don't use the trust as the beneficiary. They use the beneficiary of the trust as the beneficiary of the IRA. So they it's called a see-through trustee. They looked through the trust and they look to see who the beneficiary of the trust is. And that's who they use as the beneficiary of the IRA.

Even though the beneficiary doesn't own it. So the trust will own it, which means the trust controls it, which means the trust can protect it. But the IRS will use the beneficiary of the trust for all the necessary calculations to make sure it doesn't create any adverse tax consequences to the beneficiary.

And that's the beauty of the two worlds when they come together because now we can have asset protection and we can have client control, meaning the beneficiary can control or not. Depending upon the client's goals.

Nicole Wipp: Dave. I think that there's two things that I'd just like to point out and have you adjust this a little bit, which is, first of all, there are a lot of people that don't understand how this works. And this includes both attorneys that do estate planning and financial advisors. Would you agree?

Dave Zumpano: Oh yeah. And I want to be respectful. They say they don't even know to be aware of it. It's one thing that they don't even know how to do it. It's another thing. Most of them don't even know. They should know.

That's what makes it so problematic. [00:20:00] And I'm going to give you a quick example, Nicole, I'll go right into that second scenario. I talked about what if somebody already gave it to their kids? So I did this plan for a client about two years ago and I work, she was a widow. She had a son and a daughter.

And we worked over four months to get her estate plan together. And part of her plan had a substantial IRA. It was greater than a half, a million dollars. So we recommended as part of the planning that the beneficiary of the IRA should be the trust to make sure that the kids inherit the IRA and the trust.

So that it's protected. We went through all of this planning. Everybody got along. We got through it. A year goes by. Mom dies. So this was about six months ago. Mom dies and the kids come back to us and we say, okay, kids now we're ready to implement that second part of the plan we implemented the first part when mom was alive on all of her other assets, but now the IRAs we have to implement with death because we couldn't put mom's IRAs and trust while she was alive.

We can only put them in when dies. So the kids will go, why do we have to do this? We said, again, for the asset protection reasons. At this point, mom wasn't there anymore to keep everybody on the same page. And the kids started to get different opinions from different people. And here's the funny part, Nicole, three different lawyers, and two different financial advisors said to my clients that I didn't know what I was doing.

In fact, they went so far as to accuse me of creating extra work so that I could charge them extra fees on the trust. Now. Okay. Many things in life, but I'm too busy to create work. And I took this personally, so I got the clients on the phone and I said, listen, you've had other professionals tell you that I did this for these reasons.

And you're frustrated. And you think I took advantage of you. So here's what I'm gonna tell you. I'm not going to offer you your money back because we didn't do anything wrong. In fact, I think you're going in the wrong direction by not following the plan we created. And I reiterated, I said the law is unsettled, there's a Supreme court decision pending.

I told them we don't know which way it's going to come down. We erred on the side of caution and we told you this, when we designed it, we were erring on the side of caution. We all agreed. I said, so the bad news. I said, the good news is the way we designed the plan. We allowed you to blow it up. So we allowed you not to have to make the decision.

When mom was alive, we allowed you to defer all the decisions because of the way we structured it so that you could be having this decision. Now, after mom's passing, the bad news is you're making the wrong decision we believe. You're making a decision to undo all the planning we did and the inherit, the IRAs directly.

And you're making that decision because you say three other lawyers and two financial professionals have told you that we don't know what we're talking about. And I will not take that from them or anyone else. And I challenge you to get all of them in a room and I will go through it with them. And then we will see how they defend what I have to say about why we're doing it.

No. I don't want to do all that. I'm just hiring them and they're going to do it. And it's a lot less money. Quote, unquote, that's the words that came out of the client's mouth. And I said, sure, it's a lot less money. Be a lot less money if we did that for you too, we set up. So that could be done.

We don't think it's the right decision. We think you should keep it in the trust that we set. To make a long story short, they told us to pound salt and they went their merry way. Three months later, this decision came down. And what I know now is I got to send them a letter and say, Listen, you didn't follow my planning. And as a result, now, the half a million-dollar IRA that you inherited from your mother is no longer protected. And it is now available to all of your creditors and predators. Had you followed the model that we created with your mother and had you not listened to all the other quote, unquote experts, your asset would have been fully protected and not be able to be reached by anyone but you.

And this is the problem. Nicole, that we were dealing with lawyers who don't know a lot sometimes. And they think the way they create value for their clients is to help save them a dime on a legal fee. The real question should never be how much something costs it should be. What do you get for what you pay?

So they did save a lot of money by not putting it into the trust. Not much they saved about eight or $9,000. That was the feed that kind of converted at that point in time and do all the other work associated. But now what's the cost to them. The cost is they have a half, a million dollars that it's unprotected and no way to protect it.

And that's the next question that we don't know from the Supreme court decision is there a way now to protect those monies that have already been inherited by children? And we believe there is. We [00:25:00] believe the IPUG protection trust.

Now that the IRS has ruled that an inherited IRA is not a retirement account. And that's the keyword that said it's not a retirement account for purposes of the bankruptcy code. Now, the question is it a retirement account for purposes of the IRS? Because now that the Supreme court has ruled this. We can make a very solid argument that says, okay, we, the Supreme court decisions really clear.

If you want to inherit an IRA, it's just a regular asset that has no restrictions on it. No restrictions on it, just like any other account, but what's different about an inherited IRA is whenever you take money out of it, you got to pay the taxman because the tax has never been paid. So while the Supreme court decision was very clear that it was a, not an asset for purposes of a retirement account, it didn't make any comment or address any issues regarding the tax code.

And nor do we think it should. The question now is, does that mean that someone who has an IRA could protect it in an iPUG protection trust? Just like they do. If they have a regular bank account, we believe the answer is yes. Again, most of the lawyers aren't even having this conversation right now because they don't even know the issue to begin with.

But again, as attorneys and the lawyer with purpose network, we're all working together and I'm going to be working with the IRS to determine their position on this because obviously, we don't want to irritate the IRS. So can I say unequivocally that we can, no, I could say unequivocally that if they did the planning, the way we set it up, yes, it would be protected and safe.

But now that they did not protect it, they unprotected it and inherited the IRA directly. Now we have to go on a new journey to determine how the tax law would coordinate with the legal law and the bankruptcy law to protect those assets. Now that the children already own. So that's an unknown answer right now, but we have some very strong reasons why we believe it can be protected, but again, we got to stay engaged in that conversation and not try and pontificate, but rather try and strategize the solutions to protect the.

Nicole Wipp: And this is such a great illustration, in my opinion, Dave, of why you can't take what has been considered conventional wisdom and base every decision that you ever make on it, because oftentimes what we view as conventional wisdom really doesn't work in today's legal and regulatory environment. And. If you really want to have certain outcomes and achieve certain goals, you need to really understand these options. And this right here is just a prime example of that.

Dave Zumpano: I love your word, conventional wisdom. You know what I call it sometimes. You know what happened? Here's what happens with people.

It starts with well you can't do that. Why can't you do that? Provision 1, 2, 3 of XYZ code says, if you do that, it's going to create this result. We say, wow, that wouldn't be a very good result. So we shouldn't do that. So we, as lawyers say, okay, we know we shouldn't. An example would be you can't name a trust, the beneficiary of an IRA because if you name a beneficiary if you name a trust, a beneficiary of an IRA, it's a non-human beneficiary.

And as a non-human beneficiary, it triggers code section XYZ, which makes the whole IRA taxable within five years of death. Absolutely. There's absolutely that provision that says so, but. When people hear that they're only hearing it from the source that said it many times has a vested interest in that solution.

So when people say that, I said yes, but there's another provision that says, if you do name it to a trust, if you meet these four criteria, then it won't make it taxable. So what happens is you have somebody that heard the first part of the law. But they never heard the second part of the law. And so it really becomes what we call tribal knowledge and nobody really understands why they're doing it.

So what happens is so many tax professionals start just relying on the way it's always been done. And they don't really understand why it's been done that way to know that when there's been a change, that it could change the way we do it. And that's where conventional wisdom sometimes comes back and bites people because they just continually do what was always been done.

And as a result, they don't know why it's being done that way. They just know it's always been done that way. And then when somebody like us comes around and says, guys, you don't have to do it that way. That only related to this fact pattern, we have a different fact pattern. And the law very clearly allows it in this fact pattern.

So what you have to do is just create your client so they can meet the conditions of this fact pattern instead of that fact pattern. And now what you get is you get informed lawyers that say all that's easy. We can just do a, B and C, [00:30:00] and then you get the conventional lawyers. It always did what they've always done, but they never understood why.

And all they knew is you don't do that. And then you have, what's called conventional wisdom, but it's not good. It's not timely. It doesn't stay current with the laws and rules. So again, the question isn't what you always have to do is this why can't I, why would one person say I can have one person say I couldn't, instead of telling me that the other person tell you, I just can't.

Why wouldn't we ask the other person what they're relying on to allow us to do it because obviously, they believe they can do it. Why. And that's what we got to constantly remind ourselves, not to get in the habitual patterns of what I call legal laziness. We get lazy and comfortable with the way things have always been done, but the laws have changed so much over the last 10 years, Nicole anyone that hasn't been keeping up to speed on them on all levels. Really is doing a disservice to themselves and to their clients.

Nicole Wipp: And this is both attorneys and financial professionals, right? Dave, because just, I think that just as much as I get pushback from other attorneys, I certainly also get a lot of pushback from financial professionals that also say the exact same things to me. You can't do that.

Dave Zumpano:  They're experts in conventional wisdom, right? And so there's one other group CPAs. CPAs are a tough nut to crack. Talk about. Now, listen, I'm an attorney and a CPA, so I'm not speaking ill of CPAs. I'm saying CPAs are trained and they're entrenched in what they know for the tax law.

The challenge of the tax law is no longer the tail wagging the dog. I find CPAs doing planning, estate tax planning for people that don't even qualify for estate tax. They don't even have in the estate, that's going to trigger in estate tax. Yet, there's so routinely planning that way they don't even pay attention that one client's different than the other.

So it's all professionals, it's CPAs, financial advisors, it's lawyers. We all have to work together, not attack each other. We got to work together and say, look, here's what I know. Let me share it with you. Don't attack me. You don't even know me.

These three other lawyers convince this client to unprotect, the half a million dollars, and 99% of the work was done. It was all set up and ready for them. All they had to do is turn the key after mom died and finished the plan and all the rest was protected, but the half a million of IRA is not protected, not because of the quote-unquote conventional wisdom of these other lawyers.

And so we have to just always keep our eyes and ears open to when somebody is saying something different now, how do they know we're not lunatics? We've been doing this for 10 years. If we're lunatic's, we would have been caught by now. But the bottom line is we're not relying on a motion to support our positions.

We have, I have a law review article. We have full legal strategies that are expounded by very concrete laws that support those positions. And we have 10 or 15 years of not only doing it, my, my firm, but in the hundreds of firms that follow our philosophies here at Lawyers with Purpose. So it's just a mindset, but it's also have a little bit of stamina behind it. You've got to have the legal support that justifies those positions. And that's what we do in the organization. We all work together to make sure that we, we meet those goals.

Nicole Wipp: Absolutely. And so the point here too, is if you're listening to this and this is the kind of planning that you would like to engage in, and you're hearing this conventional wisdom and you want to understand the other side, then you want to contact an attorney that understands this, where do you find people like that you can, of course, contact my office, but this is a national audience. So we're not just looking at talking to me cause I'm not. And Dave, we are licensed to practice law in every state in this country. And so you would, I'll put the links on, into the show notes for this episode, but you can of course contact my office and I can help you get to the right place.

Or you can always contact lawyers with purpose, but I will put the links for that in the show notes of this episode.

Dave Zumpano: Thank you, Nicole. It's always good. I appreciate the public service you're doing in these open forums to get these very complicated issues down to bite-sized pieces for people to understand.

And if by chance, you're a lawyer listening to this call or a financial advisor or a CPA, please don't take offense of what we're saying, but rather embrace knowledge and embrace the way that we can do this to support our clients because, in the end, it's really about the client. It's really not about us.

I don't have any vested interests. I can care less if our clients protect their assets, or if they don't protect their assets. But if they do hire me to be that person to protect their assets, I at least should be aware of all the most state-of-the-art ways to do it and all the big issues. And this one.

The Supreme court and Clark v Rameker are just coming down on July 12th, 2014. As a very important note, again, not new to us, but because it's so new to the rest of the world, we felt to at least come out and do a quick presentation to help people understand it.

Nicole Wipp: And there's really nothing to be offended about either in the respect that this is an [00:35:00] opportunity for an attorney and or a financial professional to become a greater value to the clients that they serve. It's an opportunity to gain knowledge. That's not readily available to people and to be the go-to person on this topic. So there's nothing to be offended about you. This is an opportunity to actually be a greater value, right, Dave?

Dave Zumpano: Absolutely. It's about, and it's not about having the answer. It's about having options and being able to counsel the client into the option that best supports their goals and objectives.

Nicole Wipp: So this has been so great, Dave. I think that there's going to be a lot of people shocked about this conversation. And yet I think that from just what the conversations I've had with different financial professionals and clients at this point, they're just so grateful to know that they do have options. And that there is a way for them to protect the money that they worked their whole life for, because at the end of the day, for some people that is just the most important thing.

Dave Zumpano: Yeah. That's so true. And I would add one other point, Nicole, for those. Lawyers or financial professionals or CPAs who are unsure.

I did host a nationally recorded live one-hour CLE that walks through all the legal provisions and all the legal elements of these areas that is available to any professional. If they contact us, we'll be happy to give them the link for the one-hour recording, that kind of outlines and brings them through the legal analysis associated with this type of stuff.

And, like I said, we do that complimentary because we want the folks, the people, the end-user to be protected. And the more people that know how it works, the more people can be protected.

Nicole Wipp: Yes. And I actually, Dave, I did get a chance to attend that myself and it was excellent. And just the much more detail from the legal technical side, which is in just essential for somebody that's actually planning.

Dave Zumpano: I don't want to listen to that, but they're financial professionals, and yeah, exactly. So your clients will want to listen to it because they want to learn everything, but it's really designed for a professional audience where we go through the.

Nicole Wipp: My engineer clients most certainly will out of which I personally have many because I'm in Motown engineer car land. So we have lots of engineers in this area, but most certainly not everybody is like that. So it just depends on your level of tolerance of that. But like Dave said, it's available to get all the nitty-gritty details. You just have to access that. And like I said, I will put the links to get that information in the show notes for this episode. So please feel free to access it in that way. Dave, that's something that we can do.

Dave Zumpano: Absolutely.

Great. Thank you so much, Dave Zampano.

Dave Zumpano: Thank you, Nicole!

Nicole Wipp: This concludes my interview with Davis Zampano and the critical importance of protecting inherited IRAs. If that's something that you wish to do, it's really a great resource to know that this is available and that even that this is an issue because this is something that you probably didn't know about before.

And that's what we're trying to do is bring that kind of value to you about the things that we don't know about that we might want to know about and that we might want to protect. So once again, I hope that this was valuable and I hope that you learn something good today. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions.

And if appropriate, we will definitely try to get them answered for you. I'm looking always to provide the best information regarding planning techniques to you. To access the resources discussed in this episode, please visit smartplanning101.com/25. And the links to all the resources will be embedded in there.

Thanks a lot and have a great day.

Outro: Now that you're starting to get the knowledge you need to make better planning decisions. Don't let your journey stop there. Nicole's incredible guide five tools you need to be truly in control of your future includes smart planning options and worksheets. You can gain access too right now. And the best part is you can download it for free by going to smartplanning101.com/tools right now, time is flying by so don't wait another day to download. This must-have guide and we'll see you next time on the smart planning. 1 0 1 podcast.

The information contained within this podcast does not constitute legal or financial advice. It's for general informational purposes only. For advice specific to your situation, consult with your legal or financial professional.