Estate Planning w/ Dirk Winkler

Most people say estate planning is important, but the numbers tell a harsher story: a majority of US adults still have no will, no trust, and no powers of attorney. That gap creates real chaos when a family faces a death or, even more common, a sudden loss of capacity. We bring in estate planning attorney Dirk Winkler, who has nearly three decades of experience, to help us cut through the confusion and focus on what actually protects families.

We start at the macro level: what estate planning covers, how it supports young families naming guardians, and why “getting your ducks in a row” is really about legal enforceability. Then we get practical and direct, walking through the four foundational documents we want almost everyone to have: a will, financial power of attorney, health care power of attorney, and a living will. Dirk explains why the powers of attorney are often the difference between a smooth transition and a stressful trip to probate court for a guardianship.

From there, we unpack probate in plain English, including why a will alone may still lead to probate and why the process can take months or even years. We also discuss when a trust makes sense as a central hub for beneficiary planning, especially for minor children and grandchildren, and why retirement accounts require special caution. Finally, we touch on the tax side of legacy planning, including why estate tax rarely applies for most families while income tax and inherited IRA distribution rules can hit heirs at the worst time.

If you care about protecting your family, avoiding delays, and reducing costly mistakes, listen now, subscribe for more, and share this with someone who keeps putting estate planning off. After you listen, will you review the show and tell us what topic you want us to tackle next?

Sources:
https://trustandwill.com/learn/estate-planning-report-2026?utm_

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Disclosure: Information contained in this podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as financial advice. Financial Planning and Advisory Services are offered through Prosperity Capital Advisors (“PCA”), an SEC registered investment adviser.  Registration as an investment adviser does not imply a certain level of skill or training. Keystone Financial Group and PCA are separate, non- affiliated entities. PCA does not provide tax or legal advice. 

Transcript

Disclaimer And Quick Welcome

Announcer 0:00

The financial huddle does not provide tax, legal, financial, or other professional advice. Listeners are encouraged to consult with their own advisors in these areas.

Brian Minier 0:06

Alright, everybody, huddle up. Play calls in. This is the Financial Huddle. Ready? Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to the Financial Huddle. So thankful that you took some time today to join us. I am here as always with my partners in crime, Ryan Fleming. Hey everybody. And Ed B. Miller. Hello, hello. That's your thing. Hello, hello. That's my thing. Hello, hello. We are also joined by a guest, our friend, and someone that we use to help a lot of our clients, Attorney Dirk Winkler. How are you today? I'm doing great. How about you guys? We're doing well. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us, Dirk. Absolutely. So glad so glad that you are here. Um Dirk Winkler has been, man, how many years have you been practicing law?

Dirk Winkler 0:56

Almost 30. Right around 30. It'll be 30 this year. That's all. Well. So you you know a thing. Happy birthday. Yeah.

Brian Minier 1:06

So you know a thing or two about estate planning. Well, I hope so.

Dirk Winkler 1:11

I I've been focusing on that area for quite a long time.

Brian Minier 1:14

Three decades, man. That's impressive. Three decades. Well impressive. Well, Dirk, thanks for being here. As I mentioned, Dirk has done a lot of work with a lot of of our clients and people that we work with. Dirk is an expert in the field of estate planning. And so, Dirk, we got a lot of questions that we want to ask you today so that the listeners can be better informed and just better prepared as they go through life.

Stats That Show A Planning Crisis

Brian Minier 1:39

But before we do that, before we ask questions, I had some stats. We're going stat time early. Oh wow. With that, I got some interesting stats that uh I'd love especially to get Dirk's reaction to these. So this is from trustandwill.com. The first one 56% of U.S. adults have no estate planning documents, meaning no will, no trust, no medical power of attorney, no financial power of attorney, or any HIPAA authorization. So that's problematic.

Ryan Fleming 2:12

That that is problematic.

Brian Minier 2:14

Yeah. Here's another one. 73% say estate planning is personally important. So those really don't add up. It's important, but no action taken to get those documents in place. Gen X is the least protected generation. 62% have no estate planning documents higher than Gen Z, millennials, or baby boomers. Dirk, what what kind what demographic do you primarily work with?

Dirk Winkler 2:41

Uh 50 and older. 50 and older? I also do a lot of uh young, I'll get young families that want to want to get services. Yeah. So I would say that that stat, I bet it's more than I bet it's about 70% in my practice. Here's an interesting one.

Brian Minier 2:58

Forty-two percent of Americans would not know what to do if a family member died today. Just have no clue.

Ryan Fleming 3:04

Unfortunately, we've had some of that happen in our practice. Yes, we have. And there's a lot of just deer in the headlights, don't know what to do. For sure. So we need to address that. Yep.

Brian Minier 3:15

Two more. 27% have never discussed end-of-life wishes with their loved ones and do not plan to. Don't even plan to do it.

Ed Beemiller 3:25

That's probably and and that's that could be a little more generational things too. Because I even um, like with my parents and my grandparents, there's like certain taboo subjects you just didn't talk about or they didn't talk about for whatever reason. I'm not saying right or wrong.

Brian Minier 3:42

That's very true in that generation. Yeah. This is a very interesting one as it pertains to AI. 30% of Americans now trust AI more than a human attorney for estate planning guidance. Uh-oh, Dirk.

Ed Beemiller 3:57

Dirk, are you worried about your practice?

Brian Minier 3:59

That's and that's up 10% from last year. So what it's saying is you're going to be replaced, Dirk, by AI.

Ed Beemiller 4:06

Well, as are we, too, probably at some point. I mean, everyone is. Yeah.

Ryan Fleming 4:10

So I've heard it said that if you have kind of like the triple-headed monster of a CPA, an estate attorney, and a financial fiduciary, you're you've got a good team uh assembled.

What Estate Planning Covers

Brian Minier 4:23

So I thought what we could do for the Huddlers, Dirk, is just let's go macro, let's go high level, and maybe just educate our listeners to like what actually is estate planning? Um, you know, what does e state planning cover? And let's maybe just start there.

Dirk Winkler 4:39

Okay. Well, thank you for the question. Uh, I would just the estate planning generally is just getting your ducks in a row financially, also for the family, and then just for the legacy, is the wealth going to transfer to uh later generations? Those are the really big issues. So um, for young families, we're dealing with guardians for the children. We're trying to fund, should something happen to the parents, make sure the estate plan funds uh the children's uh lifetime or at least through adolescence and into adulthood. But generally, estate planning is is just trying to get all your affairs in order in a legal context where they're enforceable and uh they have teeth.

Ryan Fleming 5:24

So so in that, would you say there's different like segments of estate planning, you know, like elder law, long-term care. Can you maybe break them down into sectors?

Dirk Winkler 5:36

Well, there yes, estate planning is a general legal field, and then there's elder law, which is more of a specific um nuanced area dealing with Medicaid and federal laws on long-term care. So estate planning in its general sense is when you pass, what assets will go to whom and under what circumstances? That's really what we're trying to get to. Uh, and then on the asset protection side is it's just simply what assets can we protect while also providing and getting us the necessary care should that arise in retirement. Yeah.

Ed Beemiller 6:14

And I'll I'm gonna jump in because it it kind of leads into the the next question, but kind of a precursor to the next question. Good word. So if you don't have a will, you don't do any estate planning, you die, what happens? Who who are you in business with?

Dirk Winkler 6:34

Yes, you are leaving it to the state of Ohio to make those decisions for you.

Ed Beemiller 6:38

Okay, yeah.

Dirk Winkler 6:39

And usually those decisions are not consistent with what you would have done.

Ryan Fleming 6:43

Yeah, what the wishes of okay we would probably want to avoid that at all costs. Yeah, right, Dirk? What do you think?

Dirk Winkler 6:49

Yes, and lawyers, lawyers provide a lot of services just because people don't deal with it ahead of time.

Ryan Fleming 6:56

Which is interesting that the numbers that Brian shared, just a complete dichotomy difference, right? People don't have it, but they it's it's high on their priority list. So this is where we got to keep uh pushing people towards you, Dirk, and making sure that people are covered. So I remember you helping me uh with my family trust, but you also helped me like with my um my my children and getting certain bits of information together in case something would happen to them before they became an adult. So

The Four Essential Legal Documents

Ryan Fleming 7:26

if you had to give some good advice as far as like what are the non-negotiables that people need to have uh within their estate plan, the the absolute essential documents that everybody needs to consider having, what would you say those are?

Dirk Winkler 7:39

Well, there's four basic documents that as attorneys we use. There would be a will, financial powers of attorney, health care powers of attorney, and the living will. Uh the living will is your exit strategy. Under what conditions do you want to have legal or uh have medical care removed and let you pass? But the two most important documents are the financial powers of attorney and the health care power of attorney. Even in young couples, their likelihood of dying the next dying tomorrow is significantly outweighed if their chances becoming temporarily or permanently disabled. Right. That's financial powers of attorney and healthcare powers of attorney are the two documents, if they're lacking, cause the most consternation because the only other alternative is to go to probate court and open a guardianship. And once that happens, the probate court is then involved in your decisions for the remainder of the ward's life.

Ed Beemiller 8:36

So

Probate Basics And Common Missteps

Ed Beemiller 8:37

with with you just mentioning that term, that that was kind of one of the questions where when you have discussions on estate planning and legacy, intergenerational wealth transfer, you know, the term probate comes up. In your words, in a in as simplified as possible, what's probate mean and what does that include?

Dirk Winkler 8:58

Well, probate is a court that has specific jurisdiction over end-of-life legal issues, such as wills, uh caring for uh individuals that are uh disabled or incapable of caring for themselves. From an estate planning standpoint, we always have a will regardless. But the only time the only way the will becomes effective is if it is submitted to the probate court, which means you're invoking the probate court's jurisdiction. And once you get into that, uh then you are subject to the statutory requirements and the a lot of a lot of people will say delay and cost. The problem with probate court is it can take anywhere from six months to two years on average to get the assets to the beneficiaries. And there's a much more efficient way to do that in estate planning, but probate court is the court we have to go to of last resort when we when there's no planning done, uh, and test a sea statute for the state of Ohio takes over.

Brian Minier 10:01

And even a will doesn't mean you're gonna avoid probate, correct? Uh we want a will, it's um it's an important document, but it doesn't mean that you're not gonna go through probate. You have to take other steps to avoid the probate process, correct?

Dirk Winkler 10:15

We want we're always gonna have a will. We never want to have to use it. There are alternative means through pay transfer on death designations, beneficiary designations, your financial assets, depending on your financial assets, can pass directly to the beneficiary.

Ryan Fleming 10:30

Yeah, and that gets into maybe a discussion. Maybe at a later time, we'll have to invite you back on. But just, you know, on our side of the house, when we open up these solutions and um strategies for people, it's very important to work with uh the estate attorney and making sure that we get the beneficiaries you know labeled correctly so that it avoids what you're trying to say is just a delay passing on to the next generation with as little uh delay and cost as possible. I mean, it's very, very important. And that's why I made that comment about having kind of a triple-headed team monster between an estate attorney, a fiduciary, and a CPA. And so you can see kind of the crossover right there, Hungers. Yeah.

When A Trust Should Be The Hub

Ed Beemiller 11:09

We we one question that we get a lot, like when we're sitting down and going through a fact finder and and uh trying to get a good picture of what our prospective clients or current clients have, uh, not only in terms of financial accounts, but in terms of the planning side of it, is you know, comes in in the question of trust, meaning we're talking about beneficiaries, which we just mentioned, and in most cases, a married couple, you know, the other spouse will be the primary beneficiary. If they have kids, often the kids are listed as contingent beneficiaries. But a question I've been getting more and more is oh, I have this trust. A, there's a lot of different forms of trust, which which I'm not gonna, you know, you need to speak to us about those. But what do you typically recommend for for a financial account when you're talking about beneficiaries? When does the trust become potentially a primary beneficiary or maybe a contingent beneficiary, or is it really on a case-by-case basis? If what would you say to that?

Dirk Winkler 12:15

Absent a single individual with a home, no descendants. We would do really just the well-driven estate plan, what I just described, the four documents. The trust becomes very useful when you have minor children, you're leaving money to grand grandchildren. And then also simply uh as you enter into retirement, there's other considerations. Um, but trusts generally become much more flexible. They apply, they're adaptable any stage of your life with kids and in retirement. And the point is that a a trust, and a trust is simply a contract between the grantors and the beneficiaries. Grantors create the trust. The beneficiaries are the intended recipients of the assets held in the trust. And then in between that, there's a number of terms and conditions in the trust agreement. Now the issue is the trust agreement becomes your hub. And what I mean by that is you have um you have financial accounts and you have beneficiary designations. You can make the trust the beneficiary and let the terms of the trust, who gets what under what circumstances, um, let the terms of the trust control, and then you're just simply making the trust the beneficiary of your assets. Now, the the only other asset that's outstanding we wouldn't use that for would be retirement assets, 401ks, IRAs, those kinds of things. And that's a whole set of other circumstances why we don't. But a trust becomes the hub. So uh we spend a lot of time in our practice meeting with clients, especially uh those with children and grandchildren, and going over okay, how do you want your grandchildren to take under this trust? And most uh most of the time nobody really wants to give the child or the grandchild any access at age 18. Normally it's usually right around 25 and 30 for good reason. Yeah. But the point is the trust becomes then the trust is the sieve for the entire assets uh that go through the estate, and the terms of the trust um apply. So you don't really have to figure out who's going to get the bank account and how much and what percentage. It's already spelled out in the trust. You just have to fund the trust, and that's with the assets at your debt, that's where the assets pour into the trust and then the terms control.

Ed Beemiller 14:39

And so it with if that occurs you're not necessarily avoiding probate, but you're making the whole process a lot easier.

Dirk Winkler 14:48

Yes. You can. Our goal is to achieve a probate avoidance. Okay. We will always have a will in case the decedent died the day before that you know they're holding on to the lottery ticket. Lottery ticket has no ownership other than possession. We always have a will, because in that circumstance, we're gonna we have to probate it because it's not indicated who owns that lottery ticket. So we have to go probate. We do try to avoid probate. You can't avoid probate. It just you have to have tight beneficiary designations and a well-thought out trust. And you understand everything goes into the trust and think of it as just uh spring water, it's just filtering through the soil and it comes out and the terms of the trust control. So we can do that, Ed. Um, and we strive to make sure that we that we get the assets in such a way, we explain to the client in such a way that the uh that the trust terms will control and make sure that it meets with their approval.

Ed Beemiller 15:50

Yeah. A topic for another episode to to dig into the weeds a little bit here. Sorry about that.

Brian Minier 15:55

Yeah, because then you get into well, do I need a revocable or irrevocable? And right, what does that mean for each one of those?

Ryan Fleming 16:02

And another another thing we can talk about at a later date, I think it'd be good for the Huddlers. I know Ed, you were talking about this actually earlier today. We get a lot of questions about can we shelter our assets? How do we how do we shelter our money from you know getting taken and from the government and from the state? And so the five-year look back rule for long-term care, like all that good stuff. So we we'll have to invite you back on, Dirk, and uh dig more into the estate planning. But I mean, it's a it's a massive topic. Oh, yeah. You know, it's a massive topic.

Brian Minier 16:28

I think

Estate Tax Myths And Real Tax Traps

Brian Minier 16:29

one one other question that we get quite a bit is when it comes to estate taxes, and maybe you could speak a little bit about what does it mean? How how do you determine if there are estate taxes owed? Um, what is your experience in that area?

Dirk Winkler 16:46

So estate taxes for the most part only apply to the top two percent. So the state of Ohio got rid of the Ohio estate tax in 2013. Federally, the exemption amount for married couples is now at 30 million, and uh, and then for individuals 50 million. So we're not we're not necessarily planning to avoid estate tax, but we do have capital gains and income taxes that are implicated uh in estate planning.

Brian Minier 17:16

And those are very different things that people get confused.

Dirk Winkler 17:19

So income tax has nothing to do with the estate, it's to the realization that there's been a taxable gain realized now, and the government uh is always have its hand out.

Ed Beemiller 17:30

Yeah, what's their money now?

Brian Minier 17:33

Passing an IRA to a loved one, to one of your kids, you're gonna pay the taxes on those distributions. On the distributions, you can't escape that regarding regardless of whether you have a trust or a will or whatever, whatever planning you do.

Dirk Winkler 17:47

Right. So then the IRAs, I mean, retirement accounts to non-spousal beneficiaries have to be spent down in 10 years. Yeah. Spousal beneficiaries, it is like they owned it their entire life, so there's really no strings tied to it. Um, but we also, though, it becomes more of an income tax issue a lot of times as we're distributing assets. And uh that's probably the biggest tax issue that we face right now, not the estate tax.

Ryan Fleming 18:16

One little nugget there, Huddler. So you talked about distributing IRAs to the next inherited IRAs to non-spouses. You know, this is why it's important to consider passing assets to the next generation that are tax-free when they have to pull those dollars out. We've talked about this and alluded about this on uh other episodes about trying to mitigate taxes, and that's one way you can do that. You know, you know, Roth conversions, Roth IRAs, life insurance, things like that that don't burden the next generation uh relative to the form of taxation while they're grieving and having to do all that, maybe at the highest income thresholds that they're earning in their life, and now they have to drain an account in 10 years, that becomes a problem, right? As we've talked about that. So yeah.

Do It Now And How To Connect

Brian Minier 18:55

So, Dirk, what we're hearing and and what we try to encourage people that we work with, I think you would agree with this, is estate planning, having those discussions is important. Do it now. Even if you're younger, uh, it's important to have those conversations and even work with someone like yourself to get those documents in place because once you need them, it's too late if you don't have them. Right? Any any final comments regarding that advice?

Dirk Winkler 19:24

No, I think that's great advice. I mean, again, uh state planning, you're you are getting your affairs in order, but the the couple or the individual doing the planning, the powers of attorney are so important, so important because you're exactly right. Should you lose capacity or been unable to consent, probate court's the only way we can go.

Brian Minier 19:45

And and I'm sure the the loved ones in those situations are gonna wish that they did it. So that is our encouragement to all of you huddlers, get your documents in order, talk to someone like Dirk. And if you do want to reach out and talk to Dirk, you can call our offices, we'll give you his contact information. Uh Winkler Legal LLC is your official office name, correct? And so we're super thankful that you're here. Really good information. Thank you, Dirk. We're gonna have you back on for some some additional episodes because there's a lot of yes, a lot of information in this space that people need to know. So, with that, Dirk, thank you. Huddlers, thank you for your time. Make sure that you hit that follow button, and uh, we will see you in the next episode.

Ryan Fleming 20:31

Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.