AIR FEBRUARY 17, 1999

Thank you Larry and good morning everyone. Real quickly, remember the in depth alfalfa school in Marysville today. The van leaves the Extension Office at 8:00.

If you didn’t make the Ag Estate Planning Workshop Monday then you missed an incredible program put on by one of the premier rising stars in the field of ag law and ag estate planning. For those of you that were there and were disappointed that we simply didn’t have enough time to really get into trusts there’s good news. I talked with Roger after the meeting and we are working to set up an evening meeting where all we’ll discuss is the use of trusts in ag estate planning. I’ll be right honest and admit that I didn’t think the information would be of much value to me so I took along some items to read and work on. I spent the entire five hours riveted to Professor McEowen's presentation. And I came away with a lot of useful information. First of all, a couple in their, umm, early 40’s are definitely not too young to be thinking about estate planning. In fact one of the points that Roger drove home was that any couple with children, regardless of age, need to have a will at the very least just for the protection of their children. Now, after a five hour seminar I am a far cry from being an expert on estate planning, but there were some very basic and fundamental starting blocks that were laid out that I’ll pass on to you. First of all start early, we all think we’re going to live to 90 or 95 but the truth is that few of us do. We don’t know when our time is going to be up so start planning now. The larger and the more complex the estate the more critical the will and the estate planning become. But even for a two income couple with nominal assets and no children... hmm, that sounds familiar... you need to be making plans. You need to examine how property is owned or held. You need to review the family life insurance program. You need to look at alternative for disposing of property during life. But most importantly, Roger pointed out that estate planning needs to be a team concept with you and your spouse working with your CPA, your lawyer and possibly other family members, Just remember, you worked all your life to get to this point, don’t leave the next steps up to fate and chance.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary county Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook '99.

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