“Show me a man with a great golf game and I’ll show you a man neglecting something” - JFK
I hope that you saw the final holes of the BMW pro golf tournament last Sunday. It was one of the most exciting endings to a sporting event in quite some time.
Dustin Johnson and Jon Rahm, the first and second ranked professional golfers in the world, performed a golf masterpiece with a stunning finish. The BMW is not regarded as a major golf tournament, but Johnson / Rahm sure made it feel like one as they dueled over the back nine.
Down by one stroke on the eighteenth green, Johnson faced a daunting forty-three foot downhill birdie putt with several feet of break to force a tie. He smoothly nailed the carnival putt to force a sudden death playoff.
Not to be outclassed, on the first playoff hole Rahm drilled an impossible sixty-six foot putt with even more downhill break to post a birdie and win the tournament. Their putting feats would have been the talk of the office for days - if people still commuted to offices anymore.
Exciting and golf in the same sentence? You bet. Not since Tiger Woods emerged in the 1990s has golf enjoyed this much buzz. COVID is a factor, but so is the legion of young golf studs now on the pro tour driving a golf ball a quarter-mile and making ridiculously difficult putts.
Putting a golf ball well is one of the hardest facets of the most difficult sport on the planet. Yet, these two superstars make it look easy.
Robin Williams has a funny schtick imagining the origins of golf: “Two Scotsmen were sitting around drinking single malt hundreds of years ago and one announces he’s invented a new game whereby you knock a ball into a gopher hole.
You mean like billiards? No way, says the inventor, you don’t whack the ball into the gopher hole with a straight stick, but a broken one. Like croquet? No way, you put the gopher hole hundreds of yards away. Like a bowling alley? No way, you put hills, trees and high grass all along the way so you can lose the ball. Then you place a small flat space with a flag above the gopher hole to give some hope. But then you add a pool and a sandbox to grab the ball. Do you play it one time? No way, you suffer it eighteen times!”
Every golf round is a four-hour opportunity to choke around a hundred times. It has been said the game is played on a five-inch course, the distance between your ears.
I’m not good at golf, yet keep I keep returning to it for the suffering. A golf coach would advise that I am standing way too close to the ball after I hit it.
Carrie will occasionally ask why I subject to myself to the torment; the answer is because it is so damn difficult. Golf is the ultimate test of skill and mental discipline, all while enjoying the outdoors in a park setting. Sometimes, beer is even involved. As Mark Twain remarked, golf is a good walk spoiled.
Estate planning is much like the putting phase of life. You may have a long putt to the hole, which means years left to craft your estate plan. Or you may have a tap in, which means it is high time to have your estate in good order.
Of course, the uncertainty of life can have adverse financial consequences if something happens to you suddenly. Lee Trevino quipped if you’re caught playing golf during a thunderstorm, just hold up your lowest iron club into the sky for safety because even God can’t hit it. This approach doesn’t work off the course, however, so get your estate plan in final form sooner, not later.
The COVID pandemic has pushed estate planning to the forefront. Estate planning attorneys are busy advising folks now jarred into dusting off their old wills and powers of attorney and updating them to reflect their current goals and wishes.
Some are even contemplating creating a will and power of attorney for the first time. If it took a virus to motivate you to secure these important documents, so be it. We too are having more conversations with clients about organizing their affairs and affirming their estate plan is okay.
Aside from outdated documents, one of my biggest concerns is parents sending children off to college without an executed health care power of attorney. Once your child turns age-eighteen they are a legal adult and third-party institutions are not legally allowed (per HIPAA) to share information about their personal health situation without power-of-attorney authorization.
With the serious health risks associated with COVID, getting your child to sign a healthcare power of attorney naming the parent(s) as agent is as important as a new laptop when sending your teenager off to Germ Pool State this fall.
Another estate planning issue to watch is the federal estate tax exemption. Right now, the exemption is a relaxing $11.6 million per person in 2020. Not many married couples are making lifetime gifts to their son-in-law to reduce their taxable estate below $23.2 million these days. However, this high estate exemption amount expires after 2025. Moreover, if the Democrat geezer defeats the Republican geezer this fall, we are likely to see the estate exemption drop fast and hard.
If a Biden presidency were to materialize, it will likely render 2021 the year of estate reduction planning for many folks who don’t consider themselves “wealthy” to avoid exposure to this form of wealth tax.
The COVID pandemic really is a great opportunity to get your affairs in order. Gather all of your information, including account passwords and electronic device security codes, into one central secure location so your loved ones don’t flounder once you’re gone. We can help to get your estate organized if you ask nicely.
Until next time, be well…Tim