In Talks with the Dave Ramsey of Death: Estate Planning Attorney Jen Gumbel Answers All of Your Inheritance Questions
Feb 16, 2024
As-Salaam-Alaikum everyone! Welcome back to Muslim Women Invest.
Today, we are going to talk about Islamic inheritance and why is it so important to have wills and an estate plan while you're alive.
Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala did not leave the matters of inheritance to human interpretation.
Islamic law of inheritance is coded as law in the Holy Qur'an and in Surah An-Nisa. That underscores the importance of matters of money when a person dies.
Last month, I promised a guest who is an expert in this very subject matter, and we have her with us today. She is the self-proclaimed Dave Ramsey of Death, Jen Gumbel: an estate planning and probate attorney in Minnesota. She is also familiar with Islamic rules of inheritance, and I want you to hear about this from her.
Misunderstandings Around Estate Planning
Miral: What do you think is the most misunderstood thing about estate planning?
Jen: By far, the most misunderstood thing is thinking that you can stop your estate planning once you sign the legal documents.
Your legal document is basically an organizational system for your estate plan. Estate plan documents just tell us things like, “If something's stuck in my name, here's how I want it to transfer,” or “I want some rules in place for the long-term, so here are some rules about how to own something.”
But the key part of estate planning that people don’t understand is that assets have to say they're following the rules.
For example, the idea that if you lay everything out in your will, that's going to be what dictates what happens…it isn’t necessarily true.
For example, if you get a very clear idea that is meeting your religious requirements and you place it in your will, but your 401k is directed to a person and it’s not following the details you laid out in your will, that beneficiary designation is going to mean that it goes to your beneficiary instead of following those detailed instructions in your will.
You Must Do The Managing Yourself
Miral: So you're telling me that it is not the estate planning attorney's job to go into the different details of your estate plan and find these assets and say, “One-fourth goes to this person and two-thirds goes to this person, etc?”
Jen: Yes. That can be a mind-blowing thing to a lot of people.
Think of it like this: Attorneys are there to create a good strategy, but they can't deal with every asset.
They’re great for coming up with a plan for the legal issues that you're going to leave when you pass away, if you become incapacitated, can't deal with your finances, etcetera. They can come up with a great plan for where your assets go and how they get to the right place in the most efficient way. But they aren’t going to put those assets there themselves.
If you’ve seen any of those organizational reality shows on Netflix or other places, you’ll see those companies come in and organize a space…but they're not going to be there every day waiting for the truck to come in with the toilet paper and the water so they can put it in the right place.
That’s how estate planning works, too. With an attorney, you get the good legal documents to set up the good strategy for your situation, but you also need to have this understanding that you have a part to play, too.
For instance, if you start a new IRA, you need to know what your beneficiary designation should say. So you need to understand how beneficiary designation fits in with a will, fits in with the trust, and how that all plays together in your situation.
You came up with a great strategy with an attorney. But now that you have a new asset, what do you need to do to get that asset to follow the plan?
Do the Homework
Miral: So there’s homework to be done before you come to an estate attorney?
Jen: Yes, absolutely. There’s a large amount of education you want to go through to make sure that whatever your plan is actually plays out.
I’ve found that while a lot of that education happens in the meeting with your attorney, it doesn't always happen. Or you can end up working with a great attorney who just doesn’t explain things very well.
That’s where my online education stuff comes in; I’ve set it up to give people the information and tools they need to, firstly, be a good consumer of legal services. And secondly, to help them learn what they need to do so that the plan that they set up actually plays out when they pass.
The Power of Information
Miral: You mentioned your online education. Why don’t you tell us about your program?
Jen: So, something attorneys see more often than they would like to is this: a family comes in, and they see a great estate plan. They’re looking through the assets, and maybe they see a piece of real estate was purchased after the estate plan was put in place. The person who passed away didn't really understand how to get their assets in place, so suddenly you need a probate, and it becomes a total mess to try and get that property where it needs to be.
My program is based on the idea of people being empowered with the information they need to know so no grieving family ends up in that predicament or something similar.
I started my online courses and my signature courses, which are online and completed at your pace, because I know it’s overwhelming to be inundated with information at the speed an attorney usually gives it.
We have to get through so much information to bring people up to speed, and we’re usually running out of time before we can get into the strategy portion for their particular situation.
The point of my workshop is to give you that baseline of understanding in a very easy-to-understand, easy-to-digest way. Then, after each video, I give actionable steps you can take in order to get the things we just talked about set up.
That way, by the end, you not only have a good estate plan, but you also have the knowledge to make sure that the strategy you put in place with a professional actually plays out.
Living Wills
Miral: Can you talk about the difference between living wills, wills, and trusts?
Jen: Yes. People often mix the three up, and it gets very confusing.
A “living will” is a terrible word for what it actually is, because it has nothing to do with your assets. It's about the wishes you have for health care when you are in a position that your health is probably not going to improve. It’s a way for you to express your wishes on the kind of care and interventions you want.
Then there’s a will. A “will” has a very specific job. It's your communication to the court system about the things that the court system deals with after you die.
That boils down to assets that are left in your name that don't have beneficiary designations. This also includes your wishes for who will get custody of your children, if you have young children when you pass away.
If you don’t give that direction, the courts step in to handle the matter of custody with your children or other matters you haven’t assigned beneficiaries to, and that's called probate.
Most people want to avoid probate. That's part of their goal with a will. There can be a lot of expenses and delays involved with probate matters.
Now, a “trust” is a way to put rules in place about ownership.
For example, we talked about beneficiary designations. If you name somebody as the beneficiary of your IRA, that company's ready to kick that IRA to that person that you named. But for a lot of people, it's not that simple. If you want your kids to benefit, if you want multiple people to benefit from particular kinds of assets, you need a trust in place.
This is where Islamic law comes into play as well, because it’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, just send it all to that one person.” It's different than that.
So a trust can be really helpful to say, “Okay, here's the person who's going to sell the house. Here are the people who are going to benefit.” So instead of going through the court system and saying that in your will, you can put that information in your trust and have your assets point to your trust.
That’s how all of those different things play together, and I go into more detail in my course.
Work with Jen!
Don’t wait another day to begin getting your estate plan in place. None of us is promised tomorrow, and the Holy Quran is clear: this is an issue that cannot be left to chance.
Jen knows what she's doing. You can find all her links below, and I encourage you strongly to work with her. She's been an attorney for fifteen-plus years, and she has incredible resources to educate you on what you need to do for your particular situation!
WORK WITH JEN:
Join Jen's workshop to learn everything you need to know to get your estate plan in place: https://organizedafterlife.com/estate-planning-workshop/
CONNECT WITH JEN:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jengumbel/
WORK WITH MIRAL:
If you're ready to transform the trajectory of your life and the lives of your family members through investing, book a consultation with me: https://www.invest4lifemk.com/services
CONNECT WITH MIRAL:
Want to learn more? Visit my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@muslimwomeninvest
Follow me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/muslimwomeninvest/