The Berrys: Our Estate Plan Story | The Plan Firm

The-Plan-Firm-clients-Jim-and-Karolyn-Berry — **Karolyn and Jim Berry**

“To know that behind the scenes, our family is covered, all of our financial structures are in place, and our houses, cars and other assets are protected? That gives us enormous peace of mind.”

That’s Jim Berry. Together with his wife, Karolyn, the Berrys have worked with Buzz Suuppi to develop a comprehensive and fully funded estate plan, and they sleep better knowing that’s in place.

Jim, 74, and Karolyn, 73, are retirees and residents of Port Huron, Michigan. Before they retired, Jim had worked as a professor at St. Clair County Community College and an adjunct faculty member at University of Michigan, and Karolyn had worked as a nurse at several different hospitals and health systems in the area.

The Berrys have been married for 52 years, and invested along the way. But getting an estate plan covering all of their assets and everything else that was important to them? This was a critical investment they were slow to make.

In 2012, a year before retiring, Jim and Karolyn knew it was time to hire someone to help them with an estate plan.

Second time’s the charm

“We initially had a living trust set up with someone else, but it wasn’t fully funded,” Jim says. “It was like a pretend will, and we realized that it wouldn’t protect us, so we knew we needed a better solution.”

There is often confusion surrounding what a trust is, and what it does. And there are many types. It’s not a one-size-fits-all type of solution, and setting up the trust is just the first step. Without the follow-through to fully fund it by transferring assets into the trust, it’s essentially an empty container that doesn’t offer protection of your financial assets.

Not long after the Berrys set up their initial living trust, Karolyn read about a local estate planning seminar.

“Jim and I decided to attend, and this put us in contact with Buzz,” Karolyn says. “Right away, he seemed like the right person to help us.”

No stone unturned

“We had multiple meetings with Buzz to establish two separate trusts and get them fully funded,” Jim says. “He had a huge whiteboard in his office with all the necessary documentation listed on it so you could easily see everything that needed to be done.”

Meetings would often last two hours, and Buzz educated the Berrys on how to protect their assets and prepare for the unexpected.

“You could tell he really cared about us and our family,” Jim says.

A huge relief

“We quickly realized just how important a comprehensive estate plan was for ensuring our two sons would not need to go to probate court in order to receive our homes and other assets,” Karolyn says. “And that was a huge relief. We could really see the value of everything we were required to do.”

This included “homework.”

“Buzz would give us assignments to complete before our next meeting,” Karolyn says. “One week we’d focus on the necessary steps to get the trust set up for our homes and another week he’d focus on things like the cars and banking accounts.”

“He would send us a worksheet, and we would fill it out with information on our stock portfolio or other investments we had,” Jim says. “It was very rigorous, but worth the time.”

And having been a nurse for so long, Karolyn knew the importance of proper documentation to help plan for unexpected medical issues.

“As part of the process, we also set up a power of attorney for healthcare and a living will and disability panel,” she says. “Working in hospitals, I saw people unable to make decisions for loved ones who had become incapacitated, and I didn’t want that to happen to us.”

Focusing on the family

The Berrys also got their two adult sons involved in the process, naming them as trustees, and they included their two parents who were alive at the time. Jim’s mom and Karolyn’s dad were both getting close to 90 years old.

“It was a very long, involved process to pull everything together,” Jim says. “It took about a year to set up our trusts and get them fully funded, but all of us felt better at the end of it, and along the way Buzz made sure we understood every step.”

The process also encouraged the Berrys’ parents to set up their own estate plans, and just in time.

“Jim’s mom would not have cognitively been able to do it much later,” Karolyn says.”

An annual estate plan meeting, and one simple call

Ever since the Berrys finished their initial estate planning with Buzz, they’ve largely been able to forget about it.

“If we have any financial or other changes during the year, we’ll let Buzz know and he can advise if we need to make any immediate changes to our estate plan,” Karolyn says. “But other than that, we just meet for an annual review.”

And in the event that something major happens?

“When our parents passed in 2015, we made one call to Buzz, and he handled everything else,” Jim says. “The other thing that’s important is that one of us will probably go first. We feel comfortable that the one who’s left behind will have an easier time of it, thanks to Buzz and our comprehensive estate plan.”

The Berrys: Peace of mind, thanks to a comprehensive estate plan