Law Talk with the Flock

Am I Too Young For An Estate Plan? Managing Your Wealth With Maggie Groteluschen

December 23, 2020 Jeana Goosmann, Maggie Groteluschen Season 1 Episode 34
Law Talk with the Flock
Am I Too Young For An Estate Plan? Managing Your Wealth With Maggie Groteluschen
Show Notes Transcript

Maggie Groteluschen, Trust Officer at The First National Bank in Sioux Falls, and Host Jeana Goosmann, CEO of Goosmann Law Firm, sat down to talk about banking and wealth management. 

In this episode they discuss:

  • Banking advise for individuals and business leaders
  • How Maggie helps with wealth management
  • Revocable and Irrevocable Trust 
  • South Dakota's unique and beneficial trust laws
  • What a Fiduciary is
  • How  people can do a better job at managing their wealth

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Goosmann Law Firm:

Do complex legal issues hold you back? Let's get energized and bring clarity to your top legal questions. This is Law Talk with the Flock by Goosmann Law Firm.

Jeana Goosmann:

Hello, I'm your host, Jeana Goosmann, a CEO, lawyer, author, and woman business owner here to help navigate you through the law, your business and life as a leader. And for today's episode, I am super excited to have with me, Maggie Groteluschen. Maggie is a Trust Officer at the First National Bank of Sioux Falls. And today we're going to talk about banking and wealth management and their trust services. Welcome Maggie.

Maggie Groteluschen:

Thank you very much, Jeana. I'm excited to be on the podcast.

Jeana Goosmann:

So excited to have you on. And I know you and I both shared the University of Nebraska

Maggie Groteluschen:

Go big red. You got it.

Jeana Goosmann:

Absolutely. And, and I think both of our company colors are red. Awesome! Well, I am thrilled to have you on, I know recently we've been working together more as I've most recently just had some clients that put together an irrevocable trust and we went and we interviewed three different trust firms and they selected you and just are really excited to be working with you. And as am I, I think that you provide great service to your clients.

Maggie Groteluschen:

We're really excited about the partnership with Goosmann too. We've gotten to know some of your Sioux Falls attorneys, but it was really great to work with you too, Jeana.

Jeana Goosmann:

So Maggie, can you tell everyone a little bit about what do you?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Absolutely. So I work here at First National Bank. I'm at the bank first and foremost because it's part of our family business. So the bank has been independently owned for 135 years now by the Baker and Keen families. My maiden name was Baker, and so I'm the fifth generation to be involved with the business, which is, big shoes to be a part of, but I just am honored to be part of that legacy. So on the day-to-day I manage our personal wealth team. So we are comprised of 24 professionals. We have quite a few attorneys on staff, as well as people with accounting backgrounds and financial planning backgrounds and we are just working with people who want to have wealth management services in individual account capacity or through the trustee or kind of a conservatorship or a state relationship.

Jeana Goosmann:

Outstanding. And what banking advice can you give individuals and business leaders because banking is such a big industry and what would you tell those folks?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Absolutely. So, I have two pieces of pieces of advice, the first one, here at First National, we really try to be a trusted partner for life's financial journey. And we mean that from, you know, starting your first account to taking your first steps in buying a house, to potentially starting a business. I just think it's really important to find that person, who's going to be that person that can walk alongside you through all those stages and find a bank that can have those conversations where you can have a person you're sitting across the desk with to get you from point A to point B to point C all along your life all the way to your retirement, a potential liquidation event, a sale or transition of a business, and then your legacy planning as well. So, um, find that, find that partner. And then my second piece of advice I have to say is if you can find a community bank, bank, local. Your community banks are supporting your communities with their dollars and employing your neighbors and friends. And so we're just a big fan of kind of keeping it all in the community banking family,

Jeana Goosmann:

Outstanding and Maggie, how do you help individuals with wealth management? What does that mean?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Wealth management. That is a big topic. You know, so our world wealth management really began in the trust world. So First National Bank has had its trust powers for over a hundred years and in that trust world, we work with individuals and we are, we are helping them with investing funds or planning through trust documents. But then also wealth management encompasses things like retirement plans. So we are helping businesses if they want to create a retirement plan for their employees. And we're also helping institutions manage their wealth as well. So non-profits, governments, municipalities. If they have some endowment funds or things like that, we are helping manage and administer accounts like that as well.

Jeana Goosmann:

And you brought up trust services. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Absolutely. So, within personal trust, which is the main, you know, amount of bodies, I guess that would be on my team. We are working with both revocable and irrevocable types of trust relationships. The way that we partner this is we get really to partner with our attorney friends. We work with them as the attorneys draft the trust type of documents, and then we're the ones who administer those. So, trust documents can be part of an estate plan. So if someone comes with a will, and then they have legacy planning in mind, they might put together a trust document with their attorney. And then trust documents can come outside of an estate plan as well. There are other reasons like potentially a special needs child or gifting to a future generation, things like that, where people are creating those trusts that are either revocable or irrevocable, so they can either be modified or they're kind of set in stone forever. And so we partner with the attorneys who are drafting those, and then it's up to the bank as trustee, to continue to follow those instructions for the duration of that trust.

Jeana Goosmann:

And Maggie, that's how we've gotten a chance to work together most. And in that area, South Dakota is such a leader in trust planning, and you are a South Dakota Trust Company. How could somebody, that's not a resident in South Dakota still have a South Dakota Trust?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Yeah, so a trust creates a really unique relationship. The parties, you know, there's usually a granter which is the person who's kind of offering and then kind of placing property into the trust. The trust then becomes the owner of the property. So it's hard for people to conceptualize that sometimes that it's not a person any longer owning this property, but as the trust itself. And then if that trust document is written where it States in there, this will be governed by the laws of South Dakota. And then there is a South Dakota trustee involved. That's how they can get property from all over the country and all over the world, to be placed into South Dakota, into a South Dakota trust, to take advantage of our really unique and beneficial Trust Laws.

Jeana Goosmann:

Oustanding. And so I am excited that you touched upon that because I think there are more people that park their money in South Dakota than any other state, if I know, right.

Maggie Groteluschen:

Yeah. It's really taken off in the last couple years. And it's been intentional you know, the governor has created a task force and they're utilizing it as a way to expand the South Dakota workforce and creating really great jobs here in our state.

Jeana Goosmann:

So can you explain, what is a fiduciary and do you serve as a fiduciary?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Totally. That is a great question. It's a big intimidating word that we throw around a lot, but, fiduciary is definitely the capacity we operate in, whether we're acting as trustee or just simply an agent for investing funds. And a fiduciary is the highest legal standard that you can possibly have. So as a fiduciary, we are legally obligated to place our client's interests ahead of our own. So that means that if we were questioned or push comes to shove and we would have to prove to a judge at some point that we were following those instructions in the trust document and making decisions that are truly in the best interest of those clients involved.

Jeana Goosmann:

And I think that's so important. And I know personally I look to that designation and I hold it in high regard too, because it does have legal meaning and legal consequences behind it. Now maybe talk about how someone could, how could they better manage their own personal wealth?

Maggie Groteluschen:

Yes, that is a great question

Jeana Goosmann:

And do a better job with that.

Maggie Groteluschen:

You know, that's where I would, I would say wealth can come to people in so many ways. You could be working your whole life and your business to build an empire. You could inherit wealth, you could win the lottery. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen that often, but anyway, not, not very many people. When you look at the grand scheme of things, earn their wealth, by becoming or by being a professional investor or a professional working in wealth management. And so when you're looking at your wealth, you just have to become informed and you have to find those professionals that you're going to partner with and you have to plan how are you going to grow this wealth, utilize it for yourself. What kind of legacy do you want to leave with it? And so we definitely just recommend people create that partnership team around them, CPAs attorneys, financial planner, trust wealth management, things like that, because it's, it just is the thing that will sustain your livelihood and be your legacy. And so that planning becomes really important. And I would mention too, you know, we have in our wealth management area, we are managing around well, it's four and a half billion dollars of wealth within trust accounts that's closely held or privately owned businesses. So it's people building that wealth, and doing it within their own family and their own business capacity. And then there's$1.5 billion that we're managing that is liquid wealth. So it's just invested in the market. And so when you're looking at that, a lot of people will not understand that you can be a fiduciary and be investing for people in that regard versus just working with a broker which would be somebody who is operating at a little bit of a lesser threshold, brokers only have to follow the suitability standard. And so, we, we take those investments and we are open to the entire market. So we're also able to work with you to do really intensive financial planning, d istribution modeling, things like that, to make sure that your wealth is, is going to be there to get you through your retirement and to m eet all the goals that you want to meet with it.

Jeana Goosmann:

And Maggie, just as we wrap up, I have one more final question. Trust planning, isn't just for the Warren Buffets of the world? Is it? It also comes into play when we talk about, you know, somebody's grandma that owns the farm and, it's for real people.

Maggie Groteluschen:

Yes. That is, that is so important for you to bring up. You know, if you, if you don't visit with your attorney and create a will and an estate plan, when you pass away, the state gets to decide what happens to your money. And I have, friends that are my age that have reached out and they're like, we don't, you know, we don't really need to do this. Do we? And, um, they don't, they don't realize that they have accumulated assets and it's, and it's like, well, you own your house, you're employed, so you have some 401ks, you have insurance policy on your life. And pretty soon, you know, they're talking, they could, they could have assets of a million dollars, even as a young couple. And you don't want, you don't want somebody else to make those decisions for you, especially if you have children. And so, those trust documents can become essential because that's where you can lay out. This is who I want caring for my children every day. And then this is who I want making financial decisions for my children. And then these are the guidelines I want to put in place for those decisions, so that you understand what my intentions really are. And that's where those trusts, become really relevant to younger people, not just the Warren Buffets of the world. Like you said, the grandmother that owns the farm, because real estate, closely held businesses, like what assets, all those things can go into a trust. And then continue to be governed the way that that grantor would want it to be governed after they pass.

Jeana Goosmann:

And I just always remember too, you sharing a story where you have a lot of, little old ladies mail that you open up for them.

Maggie Groteluschen:

We do, that gets to be the personal side of personal trust business. You know, generationally speaking. Women tend to live longer than men and women who are widows currently, maybe were more homemakers than business women. And so we do have a lot of, current clients whose husbands have passed away and their husbands basically left them instructions that said, here's the binder. You know, this was the lawyer that wrote it. You go, you go to that lawyer and then that lawyer will take you to the bank. And we just were just able to hold their hands and take on everything. We make sure that their insured, we make sure that their taxes are getting paid. We make sure that their bills are getting paid, anything financial related. We operate like a power of attorney for them. The mail just gets changed to come straight to us and they just don't have to worry about it or get stressed by it. And we're just really happy. Those are some of our favorite clients, because that's where you just feel like you're truly making a difference for them and, making somebody else's life easier and better.

Jeana Goosmann:

Outstanding. Well, thank you so much, Maggie for sharing your insight with our listeners. And I want to encourage our listeners to go make it worth it.

Maggie Groteluschen:

Thank you, Jeane. I appreciate it.

Jeana Goosmann:

Thanks for joining us for Law Talk with the Flock by Goosmann Law Firm. We hope you feel energized and ready to soar past your goals. Become a flock fan and subscribe to our podcast for weekly episodes. Learn more@goosmannlock.com.

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