Looking Back, Stepping Forward: Jenna’s Transition & What’s Next

But what I thought for this session, we could take a few minutes just to talk about a few things.

I came up with the three Ts, tips, trends, and themes as a way to maybe galvanize a little bit of our thinking for the past number of episodes over the last two and a half years, and maybe some parting thoughts or wisdom, Jenna, for you as we go through it.

So maybe let's talk about some of the tips.

Everybody loves a tip and it's maybe, why don't we start with, if you had to leave a tip for the audience that would be helpful in the context of all the episodes we've done geared towards the state administration, what would that be?

I think I've said this almost every episode since we've chatted.

It's my tip, my main tip is around communication.

Communication is key when you're administering an estate, communicating with the necessary beneficiaries, all other stakeholders, advisors, anyone related to the estate.

Communication is the number one tool to reduce conflict, reduce unanswered questions, reduce suspicions and to build trust.

And so as an executor, if you can only do one thing, it would be communicate.

The good and the bad news is better than no news at all.

It is interesting because this past weekend I had the opportunity to join a family meeting.

where the parents as well as the beneficiaries were in the room having this discussion before anyone passed away.

And the parents communicated their plan with respect to the estate.

And it was such a powerful moment because I thought how many families wish they could have had this conversation prior to death.

And be in that room and ask those questions and build those connections.

And we've talked about estate administration, but I would also stress that if you're in a position to do your will or do your estate plan and you want to communicate it to your beneficiaries, I would highly recommend you do so because it's an amazing moment.

And just, I think great things come out of that.

Yeah, no, that is powerful.

And while we focus this podcast on being of assistance to executors and administrators, having that in place from a planning perspective, we think about reducing contention, but just it's more fulsome, more meaningful, I think, for the beneficiaries, in this case, the kids, right? If parents pass away, they go, here's the plan.

And they're going to go, yeah, the executor's executing on the plan.

That's all good.

Excellent points.

And I, yeah, you can't stress that enough.

We see that all the time in our practices.

And good tip on that.