Shadowing Practice: Estate Planning Explained: Trusts, Wills, and Powers of Attorney - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Most people are going to hear this and think this is just for the wealthy.

Only rich people do this.

I don't think that's accurate.

I think you may be missing out on a huge protection of yourself by doing this.

Estate planning, Mikey.

Is estate planning only for the wealthy?

No. Far from it.

In fact, here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize.

You already have an estate plan.

Meaning?

If you don't decide what it is you want to have happen in your estate plan, the government already made the decision for you okay

so where do you want to start with this you want to walk through what happens

if you're not planned you want to walk through why you

need to plan the benefits from it where do you want

to start well let's probably the best place to start is to first get to what is an estate plan

and what's its purpose is now disclaimer we're not attorneys we're

not accountants we're going to give you the information you do

with it with your professionals what you want i know you hate it

but i got to do it all right

so what what does the estate plan effectively do it's tackling

four things what it's basically telling you who's gonna get my things

when I pass away the second thing is who's gonna be in charge of making sure

that the person I want to get my things gets it third

and this is a big one

that a lot of people I think forget who makes decisions for me

if I'm still alive but I can't actually speak for myself that's big one

and the fourth one is what happens with my kids

and the estate plan and all the variables that go into it

which we'll get into are basically going to answer those four questions

and here's like i said at the beginning if you don't answer those four questions for yourself

the government and the court system is going to answer them for you

and it may not be the answer that you want to hear okay

so you recommend everyone should do this or is there a certain

net worth you should have before this comes into play i think anybody

that has kids should do it no matter what

and i think anybody that has assets should do it outside of an ira so like

and we'll probably get into this later

but ira assets kind of fall outside of the kind of state planning vehicle

so as long as you make sure you have beneficiaries on your ira

which a lot of people uh i assume and hope do

but i imagine some don't um you're probably okay

but the moment you start actually accumulating any kind of assets like real assets

or you have a bank account with i don't know even five figures i think you should have it okay

so what goes into your estate planning

things like creating a trust a will what all goes into it okay so the first thing is is you have

the whole plan the estate plan think of it as as an umbrella right

and what goes under the umbrella one is your trust the second thing is a will

and then the third thing are your um durable powers of attorney

and then the fourth one is your health care directives

so those four variables are the ones

that fall under your overall comprehensive estate plan that answer what happens

when i die how does it happen what happens

if i become incapacitated who's in charge what can they do what can they not do

and then there's separate from all

that the creation of the estate plan also insulates the tax protection

and the wealth that you built that's where i was going with this

so what does it look like

when you pass away are you being taxed who's being taxed at what rate what does

that look like okay so listen the the thing is there's a lot of like

mis uh statements or misunderstandings

when it comes to the estate plan especially on the tax side

so myth bust this thing i'm gonna myth bust some of it so the number changes and it moves

when obama was president if i'm not mistaken the estate tax limit was a million dollars and it's climbed up since then.

So first, what is the estate tax limit?

And this is the part that, yes, it touches more of the wealthy.

But up to a certain dollar amount, the transfer to your next of kin or your heirs

through the estate plan can move to them without being subject to the estate tax.

So we're all used to income taxes.

Estate tax is basically a double tax.

Yeah.

Right, because you paid income taxes throughout your whole life on the money that you made.

And then when you pass away, if you don't have these estate plans put into place,

then you're going to get exposure to an estate tax as well if you go over a certain limit.

Or even if you have an estate plan in place, the limit still throws you out.

So the limit started with Obama, as far as I remember, when it was a million dollars.

The big, beautiful bill, when it passed, it increased that number that was already much higher up to 15 million dollars per person

or 30 million dollars a couple so basically you have the capability of transferring husband

and wife up to 30 million dollars worth of your net

worth to your children without having them incur any type of estate tax

if you build it the right way okay and

that is basically all this money has already been taxed multiple times

but is the idea well you're you're just passing over a bunch of wealth?

It's a death tax.

Okay.

It's a death tax.

That's the best way to say it, right?

So look- Do you like a death tax?

No, I don't like any tax.

What kind of question is that?

So more than 99% of Americans are actually never gonna owe a dime of the federal estate tax because-

Because it's so high.

Yeah, the limit's really high.

So what you have, there are strategies that the wealthy do apply

when they have over the 30 million to help avoid it further.

But I think we should probably spend more time on the estate plan as it applies to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

100%.

So estate planning has nothing to do with taxes, and that's the key here.

It's about who controls what in the greatest moments of chaos in your life.

Yeah, that's really good.

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Actually, before we go into that, because I actually want to spend a good amount of time on

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that because I know we have a lot of listeners that have kids.

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For a protection, is there an added protection to your assets by having them in a trust?

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Is there any additional layer, like how we would create LLCs for different businesses or investments?

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Does a trust act as a moat in any way or no?

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That's a good question.

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I don't think, you're talking about like from creditors.

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I don't think your trust has creditor protection.

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I could be wrong on that one, though.

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I don't know off the top of my head.

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Okay.

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All right.

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Ryan, can you look that up?

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Let's have Ryan look it up.

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Let's have Ryan look that up.

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All right.

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So for parents and why this is such a big deal.

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God forbid somebody passes away.

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Well, I shouldn't even say it that way.

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It's life.

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We're all passing away, right?

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In that the kids are going through a hard time.

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Anybody passes away, you're mourning a loved one.

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There's high emotions through that.

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So making decisions can be challenging, right?

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And do you think this is imperative because you remove the kids potentially arguing,

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arguing, fighting, and potentially breaking up their relationships by not knowing the order that the parent instructed for them.

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Is that the right way to say it?

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Yes, if the kids are older.

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Right.

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Right, obviously.

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So if you don't lay out who gets what, you leave it up to interpretation for the kids to figure it out amongst themselves.

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Now, in the best case scenario, the kids are all in agreement that everything should be split,

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and it's easy, and you walk away, everybody takes their share.

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If you own assets, now the question becomes, okay, we should sell it.

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No, we shouldn't.

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We should hold it, and all of us should participate in income.

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No, we shouldn't.

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We should sell it, let everybody make their own decision

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and now you already have an argument without actual numbers being

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applied to it just in philosophy on what should be done

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so the more thorough you are in the directions of what

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is to happen the less decision making you put on the children

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which means the less they're going to have to argue about it in order to come to a conclusion right

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and unfortunately it's where you see a lot of families kind of fall apart is

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when it comes to this variable of money and what should be done

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everybody has different opinions

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so remove the decision from them completely yeah i think that's good yeah all right

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so for anybody who's hearing this they're a parent they haven't

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set up any of this stuff they have kids this is

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time to get going what what are their moves do they have to go

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find a financial planner is an estate attorney who are they contacting to do this all right before i answer

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that i want to you give me another disclaimer no i'm

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not giving you a disclaimer i want to hone in on just how important this is

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because you don't realize what you're doing by not doing anything okay that's good right

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so if you have minor children especially if you have minor children

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you have handed a government agency

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or a court the biggest decision in your children's lives

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which is who takes care of them

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if you're not around to take care of them oh yeah

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right yeah who raises them you want the family to

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if you don't say it it's going to go to court

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and family members are going to battle it out

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if they both wanted your kids okay so you're you're taking a step further

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and going this is for the well-being of your kids this

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isn't even about assets i don't even care about money here i care about

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and this was for jess and i when we decided

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that we were going to set up our estate plan after

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we got married money wasn't even a topic of conversation first

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and foremost was who's gonna take care of the kids right right

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and so for us and for many people family

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that they feel will raise their kids with the value system

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that they have easy decision if you don't have

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if you have family that you love

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but maybe they don't won't raise your children the way

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that you would want them to be raised you have the

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opportunity now as difficult as it may be to say let

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me have these friends of ours who apply the same moral code

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and value system as we do be the ones to raise our kids now

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if you don't put that on paper the court decides well yeah

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but the court's always going to go with the family

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so you by default just put your children in somebody's hands even though they're your family

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that aren't going to necessarily raise your kids the way you want them to be raised right

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so that's an example of where you have to put this thing out on paper

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so that they know exactly what's going to happen with your children

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and i can't stress enough how much this is of severe importance

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because the reality is we might be gone tomorrow yeah we don't know yes

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if you're young

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and you're healthy great you get hit by a bus you

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get into a car accident whatever could happen unfortunately happens

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if you don't outline what's going to happen to your kids

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you have no idea what they're going to get exposed to

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and it can be completely opposite of what it is

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that you want okay so if i'm hearing this right because

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when we first started we were talking about a trust

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and once you have assets to invest or kids right

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when you have kids this is a move you should do right that's why i started with even

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if you don't have assets but you have children you set up a trust okay

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and when you're creating this outline of what happens

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when you die is this in your trust is this in your will where does

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that go so the trust deals with what happens with you

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if and when you pass away who takes care of the the money who takes the children

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if they're minors and mostly those are the two variables

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that the trust drives itself on

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and then it can get more complicated depending on like what kind of assets you have like

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if you have let's say you own real estate do does the does the executor of the trust

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or the trustee the successor trustee have to sell the piece of real estate right away

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do they have leeway in how much time they have before they make a decision is there a ceiling on

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so as you gain additional assets the trust kind of evolves based on your needs

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and what it is that you own but at its core principle

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if you did nothing else for a trust

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or you own no assets it's what happens with my children at

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that time okay

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so the trust deals with what happens after death okay now from the tax side of

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that though in California you have probate.

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So not in every state this applies.

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But if you don't have the trust, your assets goes to the court system to decide what to do.

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And then when it goes through probate, the state is going to take a piece of it.

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And sometimes it can get very expensive.

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And that just means you disincentivize your beneficiaries, assuming they're your children, you just disincentivize your children from receiving what is

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that you work for because you didn't take pen to paper.

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Okay, so is there a scenario where you can create a trust

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because you want some you want to make sure the kids are okay

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when if you pass away

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and make sure they're being raised by the family you wanted

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to be raised by moving over to the assets you still

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have to put the assets in the trust right is there

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a scenario like what we see on iras where people open iras

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and they never invest the money are there trusts

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and there's a funding gap and nothing in them i wish

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that there was data but i can't imagine who would aggregate this data

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because just in my anecdotal experience it's the overwhelming majority

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that unfortunately do this which means they set up a trust

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but they don't fund the actual trust

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so a trust once you create the vehicle it doesn't go out

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and grab assets and put it into the trust you have to go out

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and title the assets into the trust in order for the

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whatever the trust says to be put at work meaning

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if you create a trust and you have a house and let's say

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$500,000 in a bank account not an IRA

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but in a regular bank account and you

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and your wife own the house and you're you

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and your wife own the bank account

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and you pass away those two assets are going to probate

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they are not following the path of what the trust says

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because you didn't go out and fund those assets into the trust

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so what do you have to do you have to file

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a deed change the deed of trust on the property into

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the name of the trust super simple happens all the time

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and your attorney if you set up with an attorney will be able to do

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that for you for whatever the filing fee is

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and then you just have to go to the bank

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and say hey look we created a trust for the family

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and we need to switch this account from joint ownership into

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the name of our trust you do those two things now

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whatever the trust says is what happens with those two assets

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and it doesn't go to the state okay

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so the funding of the trust is key

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and here's other thing too this is the other trap a

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lot of people make they set up the trust they fund the trust in the beginning

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but then as time goes on and they build more wealth

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and they acquire more assets they don't keep funding those they don't keep putting those assets in the trust

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so for like me Properties in the trust, IRAs are individual because they don't apply here.

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Properties in the trust, bank accounts are in the trust, and my interest in my companies are all in my name,

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but there's an assignment into my trust.

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Or you could just put the member of your company, if you're in an LLC, you can make the member, instead of Michael, you could make it Michael's trust.

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Okay, all right, so make sure your assets are either owned by your trust or Deeded to your trust.

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And then what about power of attorneys or who's managing this thing?

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How do you structure that?

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Okay, so this is not in the trust.

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This is a part of the estate plan, but not a part of the trust.

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So the next part, actually, the next part of the estate plan should be the wills, but we could skip over that temporarily and go to the power of attorneys.

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So the trust deals with death.

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power of attorney deals with what happens if i'm alive but i can't make the decisions for myself

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god forbid you get into a coma you are incapacitated in some way shape

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or form you become disabled

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and you're no longer capable of making the decisions for you on two fronts one is finances

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and the other is health care and

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so you can elect a power of attorney that comes into place the the moment you're declared incapacitated in any way, shape, or form.

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So you can have a power of attorney have the power today, or you can do what's called the springing power of attorney, or springboard power of attorney,

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which is generally what most people do, which is what I said.

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This person has the power to make my decision, if and only if I'm incapacitated.

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Okay, so usually if you're a husband, that's most likely gonna be your wife or vice versa.

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And then if something happens to both of you, you set the next person.

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Yeah, and that's a good point because the trust is a family decision.

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The power of attorneys are an individual decision.

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So I've seen where a husband won't pick his wife to manage the money or the health care decisions.

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They will pick a friend who's a doctor to do it, or they'll pick their brother.

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Why everybody makes a decision is different.

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Generally speaking, you'll see the spouse be the one to make the decisions, but the point is you nominated somebody.

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Now, there was a case, I can't remember how long ago it was, where somebody was ill and they were in the hospital and there was a wife and a mom.

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And the two of them were battling it out over how to manage the health care of the person that was sick.

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And they had differing opinions.

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And I think it was almost extreme as one was like, pull the plug, the guy is suffering, he is not going to live.

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And the other one said, no, I want to fight, I want to figure out whatever needs to be done, done, and maybe a miracle will come.

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There's no right or wrong.

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well there is a right or wrong I'm not gonna get into what's right

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or wrong the point is

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if you don't say who makes the decision you are potentially

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putting your family in a position where they're gonna have to

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battle it out over what they think is the right call

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so you make the decision as to who's making your decision

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and the next part is you can actually make some of the decisions in advance yourself

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which is the advanced health care directive right okay

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so you to go into healthcare you want to go into

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will uh let's go to healthcare directive as a as a continuation of the power of attorney for healthcare

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so the healthcare directive is

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some big decisions that you can make for yourself ahead of time

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so that you're not putting the responsibility on the family member there are people

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that love this because they don't want to put

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that onus on their spouse some people say it's too hard

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for me to know like what will come out of this

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so i don't want to make this decision in advance let my wife

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or my husband figure it out if and when

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that situation comes up

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so like things like you can have it where as an example two doctors determine

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that there's no way for you to recover from this

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and the only path forward is to pull the plug

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so to speak yes you could have a do not resuscitate order like if you're in surgery

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and something happens and you code out hands off don't try to make the person recover

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so there are some larger decisions that you can make ahead of time

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or you could just say i'm not making any of these decisions

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and let my power of attorney for health care make the decision

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if and when those things happen

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so that's kind of the continuation of the health care i

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want to go back real quick to the power of attorney

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because as i said earlier the power of attorney has two decisions one is healthcare

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and the other is finances and they can be different people

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so one person makes your healthcare decisions the other one manages your money right

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so they make sure that the mortgage is getting paid they you know

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if you have to do ira distribute like they'll take care

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of all the they have the ability to execute all of

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the financial decisions on your behalf until hopefully you recover yeah

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and i would say we are all gonna die but

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when you start going through your estate planning and your will

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and the power of attorney and what happens if you're in a coma

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and you can't make decisions i remember going through that with jen

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and going what do we do here and i ended up making the decision

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if i'm in this situation pull the plug you know that's how many times did jen cry

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when you did this at this conversation you know what she

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didn't cry we didn't cry it was just it was uncomfortable

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because we were young we were in our 20s doing this

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and to think about those decisions in the future was it's weird.

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It's definitely eerie feeling.

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And then you start going through the things like we both, something happens to both of us and where did the kids go?

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And one thing I'll say is as you start getting older, some of your relationships change and some of your overall views change.

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And so you can change this up as you go on.

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Maybe one family was going to get the kids if something happened and 15, 20 years later, maybe they're not in your life anymore.

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Things have just changed.

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And so that's on the board too.

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It's not like you're setting something in stone forever.

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You can always amend it.

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Right?

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As long as you're both alive.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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Fair.

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If you're, if you're still.

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If one passes away though, something happens, which we can get into later if we want, but I real quick, just want to go back to the wills.

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Okay.

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Before I do though, I do want to touch on the point that you made that it is a very uncomfortable conversation.

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Oh, it sucks.

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And generally speaking, I've seen a lot of, especially the wives, crying at the possibility remote thought that their husband's going to be gone.

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Because you're faced with a reality that isn't in front of you, but might be in front of you.

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And it's very hard to work through them.

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But the thing is, you work through it once, you revisit it every so often, and at least you know that you're taken care of.

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Is there like a timeframe that you should revisit it?

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Is it every two years, every five years?

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I mean, I would revisit it usually every year.

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I think there's a lot of value of having like a strategic planning session for your family, right?

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Just like you do in your business, you get together with your partner, you say, what are our goals this year as a family?

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What do we wanna accomplish?

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Is it a financial thing?

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Is it a vacation thing?

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Is it a, you know, you kind of go through like, what does 2026 look like for us?

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And one of the things that you can do in five minutes is just say, hey, here's the high level parts of our trust.

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Did anything change for us?

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There are so many people that don't touch that for years.

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I had one client who came in, they set up their trust 20 years ago, and we were reviewing it for them.

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And when we told them who their successive beneficiaries are, they literally were like, we haven't talked to that person in 10 years.

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Yeah.

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We have no relationship with them anymore.

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And they were going to be the ones who were going to make sure that their children got their assets.

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So I think at the very least, you probably want to do it once a year.

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But even if you do it like once every three years, probably going to be fine.

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So let's kind of go back now to the will.

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So we did the trust.

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we skipped to the powers of attorney and the health care directives

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and let's kind of work our way back to the wills the wills are an individual decision as well

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so the the husband makes a decision for his will

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and the wife makes a decision for her will who is

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the executor of the will meaning who executes whatever the will says

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and this is the part where even if you forget to fund something in your trust,

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the will can kind of pick it up for you after death.

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So they call it a pour over will and they say that because if you take a cup and pour it, it takes the acid and it pours it back into the trust.

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So let's say in a hypothetical example you have a trust

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and you put your house in it

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and you put your bank account in it

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and then you have a business

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but you forget to put the interest of the business in your trust you pass away

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and then the trust picks up the house and the money

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but it doesn't pick up the interest in the business then the court comes in

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and the first thing they'll say is oh this person had

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a trust fine they there this doesn't own the trust okay

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or the trust is not part of this did they have

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a will the first question the judges usually could ask and

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if they have a will they're gonna say okay what is the will say

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and the will is going to say grab any assets

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that i forgot to put into my trust

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and pour it into my trust after the fact now it will take care of it in the sense

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that whatever you said for the trust you know 50 to child one 50 to child two it'll do

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that the problem is it's still going to go through kind of the probate yeah

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so the will will be a catch-all

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but again you want to fund your trust with all of your assets the moment you create otherwise it's irrelevant

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so you want to avoid probate court at all costs in california especially

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and i'm sure many other states

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but not the probate thing is kind of a state-by-state thing

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so you want to you want to have a general knowledge of what your state looks like now

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if you don't want to go to an attorney there are platforms

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that will do this like i think um it's called will

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and testament is like an online platform they take all the

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state laws they draft all the documents it's a fraction of the cost

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in the state planning attorney now i think probably like the going rate is around three grand i think will

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and testament does it for a few hundred bucks dang um

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and you know obviously we're not paid by them we're not

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you know it's not a sponsored thing just i've heard of them

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and from the research that i did i think they just apply all the state laws

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but they won't fund the trust and they won't revisit it in the future

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so it's a lower cost way to do it

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but it means you have to do a little bit more work on your end

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so you can get it done in multiple different ways but But the point is to just do it.

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Okay.

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So is that everything that we need to go over as far as your estate planning?

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Do we miss anything?

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If you want, we can get into an A-B split of what happens if, you know, one spouse dies and the other remarries to protect the kids.

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But that might be too technical.

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Okay.

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We'll skip that.

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We'll make a whole episode out of that one.

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Okay.

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I want to close on this one.

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You brought up making sure you're having a family team meeting every year and seeing what changed, right?

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Big changes, you're probably amending your trust, right?

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Your state planning is going to have some tweaks.

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What are those big things?

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Marriage, like you get divorced and remarried.

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That's going to be a big one.

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If you get divorced, remarried, let's say that you had a falling out.

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Let's say your sibling, your brother, is the one that's going to take your kids if something happens to you.

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And let's say you had a falling out with your brother

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or your brother relocates out of the country

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or he's gone down a path that differs from you and your value system, right?

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Like you're a faith-based person and he's not, and you want your children to be raised in that faith-based environment.

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I bet you political has become a thing.

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Political is probably a thing too.

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Yeah.

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So maybe your brother shouldn't be the first person that takes kids.

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So, okay, who should it be?

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By the way, it's not just one person.

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So like we have three people, none are family, by the way.

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we have three uh families

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that we have in our trust to take over for our children

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if something happens to us

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if the first family says no then it goes to the

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second family second family says no goes to the third third says no then it goes to our family

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but we set it up that way strategically

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because we're raising our kids in a little bit of a different system than how my family raises their kids

467

so it's not a knock on them i just want my

468

kids to grow up in the same environment we're raising them in right now okay

469

so if you went through creating a trust and a will

470

and you if something happens to you you know a family's gonna be raising your kids do you tell

471

that family that you put them into the will or do you surprise them no no no so really good question

472

you want to meet with that family for even

473

if it's your your family

474

and your brother your sister you want to tell them hey

475

look i'm putting you as the first person to take over

476

for the children are you comfortable with it make sure

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that they're on board second and third also as well and

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if they are you set it up

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and then you want to give them a copy of it too

480

so that they have a copy of your documents this way any potential issue

481

that comes up of not knowing who and what

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and where gets resolved because

483

that person knows like you know this person passed away i have to step in now

484

and do my thing if they choose not to do it 20 years down the road

485

or 30 years down the the road you have the succession

486

plan set up too by the way we're talking about beneficiaries

487

but this applies to your your successor trustees as well

488

so your successor trustees are the people that execute yeah what it is

489

that you say in the trust they close the bank accounts

490

they distribute it to the beneficiaries they sell the assets you could put somebody

491

that you thought was wildly competent in the beginning

492

and then you had a complete falling out with them

493

or you no longer think

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that they're going to be able to do the job well

495

you need to figure out who your new successor your trustee is going to be

496

and then you got to talk to them about it too.

497

So there's the who gets it and then there's the who makes sure that they get it.

498

Yeah, you imagine that surprise.

499

We put somebody who has two kids as taking ours and all of a sudden now they have seven.

500

Yeah.

501

Whoo, that'd be a big move.

502

That'd be a big surprise.

503

One of ours has seven.

504

And I was like, are you sure you want 11?

505

And got a plus and they're like, yes.

506

All right.

507

All right, Mikey, close this thing down for us.

508

If you have kids or you have assets, please do not hesitate on doing something like this.

509

It is so unbelievably important and it's so wildly underestimated

510

that the majority of the people in the country don't actually have this thing set up for themselves.

511

Don't think that it's not going to happen to you.

512

It's going to happen to all of us.

513

The question is going to be when.

514

when it happens spare your spouse spare your family spare your

515

children from all of the let them mourn your death

516

and not have to be in a position to have to fight over what happens where

517

and how and to who and all

518

that stuff the more you take care of this today the

519

less the burden is going to be upon them after you die

520

so just get it handled do it once revisit it once a year and you'll be fine later

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47 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Estate Planning Explained: Trusts, Wills, and Powers of Attorney”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: trust, decision, estate, happen, assets. This video has 519 sentences and 6016 words to shadow. The speech runs for 30:11. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 91% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
probate noun	/ˈpɹəʊbeɪt/	The legal process of verifying the legality of a will.
beneficiary noun	/ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.ɚ.i/	One who benefits or receives an advantage.
revisit verb	/ɹiːˈvɪzɪt/	To visit again.
trustee noun	/tɹʌsˈtiː/	A person to whom property is legally committed in trust, to be applied either for the benefit of specified individuals (beneficiaries), or for public uses; one…
directive noun	/daɪˈɹɛk.tɪv/	An instruction or guideline that indicates how to perform an action or reach a goal.
incapacitate verb	/ˌɪn.kəˈpæ.sɪ.teɪt/	To make someone or something incapable of doing something; to disable.
spouse noun	/spaʊ̯s/	A person in a marriage or marital relationship.
successor noun	/səkˈsɛsɚ/	A person or thing that immediately follows another in holding an office or title.
pour verb	/poɹ/	To cause (liquid, or liquid-like substance) to flow in a stream, either out of a container or into it.
variable adjective	[ˈvæɹ.i.ə.bl̩]	Able to vary or be varied.
disclaimer noun	/dɪsˈkleɪm.ɚ/	One who disclaims, disowns, or renounces.
remarry verb	/ɹiːˈmæɹi/	To marry a second or subsequent time (the same spouse or a different one) after the end of a marriage.
execute verb	/ˈɛksɪˌkjuːt/	To kill, especially as punishment for a capital crime.
plug noun	/plʌɡ/	A pronged connecting device which fits into a mating socket, especially an electrical one.
scenario noun	/sɪˈnɛəɹioʊ/	An outline or model of an expected or supposed sequence of events.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
pass away verb		To die.
go through verb		To travel from one end of something to the other.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
go out verb		To leave, especially a building.
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
go over verb		To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze.
pick up verb		To lift; to grasp and raise.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

I don't think that's accurate.
Ryan, can you look that up?
How do you structure that?
What do we wanna accomplish?
Did anything change for us?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	if they have a will they
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being taxed · been taxed · should be split
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has already been taxed · have handed · have let
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	this which means · ones who were · somebody who has

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 156 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: myth /mɪθ/, hypothetical /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkəl/, thorough /ˈθʌɹoʊ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: beneficiary /ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.ɚ.i/, continuation /kənˌtɪnjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/, succession /səkˈsɛʃ.ən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: beneficiary /ˌbɛn.ɪˈfɪʃ.ɚ.i/, incapacitate /ˌɪn.kəˈpæ.sɪ.teɪt/, executor /ɪɡˈzɛkjʊtɚ/, continuation /kənˌtɪnjʊˈeɪʃ(ə)n/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like probate, beneficiary, revisit.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Estate Planning Explained: Trusts, Wills, and Powers of Attorney - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?