Last month’s guest post here at Writers in the Storm took a look at wills in author estate plans. Today, we’ll look at the other common estate planning device: the trust.
A trust is a legal entity (a “fictitious person”) created by a trust agreement. Its purpose is to hold and manage property during the owner’s life and to distribute that property after the owner’s death.
The person who owns the property and establishes the trust is called the “Settlor.” That’s you, the author, for purposes of this discussion. The settlor can put as much (or as little) of his or her property into the trust as (s)he chooses, but anything not put into the trust will pass by will (or by law, if there is no will), and often that means a probate.
However, property in a trust usually bypasses probate, which means that if enough your property is placed in a trust, your heirs may not have to probate your estate at all. That means a shorter administration period and lower costs.
Trusts allow for greater flexibility in distribution of an author’s assets after death, including intellectual property rights like copyright.
Unlike a will, which can often be written without the assistance of counsel, trusts almost always require an attorney’s aid. However, the extra cost of drafting a trust is usually more than offset by the savings on probate costs.
Most people (authors included) will create a revocable trust, a type of trust which can be altered or terminated during the lifetime of the person who created it. This allows for greater flexibility, and also enables the author to change beneficiaries and named trustees at will or as the settlor’s needs change.
Trusts are administered by a “Trustee.” During the settlor/author’s life, the settlor normally serves as his or her own trustee. The trust agreement states who will serve as trustee after the settlor’s death, and usually names at least one “successor trustee” who will serve if the named trustee dies first or refuses to serve as trustee when the time comes. Like all other provisions of a revocable trust, this can be changed during the settlor’s lifetime, but only if the settlor chooses to do so.
While trusts are often the most flexible way to hold and administer copyrights upon an author’s death, estate planning is a personal process and each author needs to investigate all the options to find the one which best suits the author’s individual needs.
Revocable trusts are not the only kind (though they are the most common). Consult an attorney to make sure you have the type that works for you. Also, consult your accountant, because some trusts receive different tax treatment or require the filing of special tax forms.
Thank you for joining me for today’s discussion of trusts as estate planning vehicles. Next month, we’ll look at how authors should choose the successor trustee or executor who will manage the literary estate after the author’s death.
Have you got a trust? A will? Are you just starting the estate planning process? Have questions? Hop into the comments: I’d love to hear from you.
About Susan
Susan Spann is a publishing attorney and author from Sacramento, California. Her debut mystery novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Thomas Dunne Books, July 2013), is the first in a series featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori. Susan blogs about writing, publishing law and seahorses at http://www.SusanSpann.com. Find her on Twitter @SusanSpann or on Facebook.
When writing, we have to describe all kinds of people/characters. I’d venture to say that older adults or seniors are one of the most difficult people groups to describe.
Why?
Because what you see is not always what you get. Okay, this might be true with any age group, but it’s doubly so with the older generation. There’s a world of experience and living under their belts and their faces don’t always tell the story.
Also, yesteryear’s elderly are now a cliché when compared to the modern seniors.
My grandparents had false teeth they’d take out at night and dunk in a glass of water on their bedside tables every night.
Current grandmothers, if they have the funds, opt for veneers or dental implants that permanently screw into the jawbone.
Both of my grandmothers were old timey one-room schoolteachers who never worked outside the home once they married. Modern grandmothers prefer to stay active and often that means working until a ripe retirement age – maybe longer.
Fashion comes and goes but my grandmothers were never seen in anything but modest, below-the-knee dresses or slacks no matter the fashion. And if you had suggested an exercise program to her, they’d claim to got plenty of exercise cleaning house. Modern seniors exercise more than today’s youth and have bodies fit enough to wear the latest fashion, even if they choose to go for comfort instead.
On the list below you’ll see physical descriptions as well as actions and doings of old people. Some phrases are unflattering, some humorous, some are clichés but all serve as an idea springboard.
Terms For Growing Older -- All Clichés
Advancing years
Autumn of life
Declining years
Long in the tooth
Old as Methuselah
Old as the hills
Old fogey
Old fossil
Older than dirt
One foot in the grave
Twilight years
Winter of life
Word And Phrase Descriptions
A little too ripe to be job hunting
Age-spotted pate
An Anachronism – as in old fashion, something old that is out of place
Ancient bones creaked
Ankles swelled with gout
Arthritic
Banging his cane demandingly
Battered shell of his youth
Bending forward to keep his balance
Beyond the first blush of youth
Bingo night is her social life
Blue-rinsed hair topped with a pillbox hat
Bushy salt and pepper brows
Cabinet of medicine, hot water bottles and Ben Gay
Cackles of the old biddy
Calcified grin
Called the shop girls girlie
Cemented in his ways
Changes his underwear after a sneeze
Cheated the undertaker once again
Codger, geezer, graybeard,
Contrary, and snappish
Crabbed with age
Crone, witch, hag
Crotchety old man with his
Damn young whippersnapper
Dapper old chap
Doddering along the park lane
Double-dumpling figure, bent with age
Dowager Queen
Dowdy old maid
Dried up
Drooping eyelids he could barely see out of
Dunked his false teeth into a water glass
Eyes bright with age
Face lined with experience and wisdom
Face was road map to his glorious past
Faded blue eyes
Faded version of his son
Feeble-minded, forgetful
Feisty antique of a lady
Forgot where she put her dentures
Frail old woman slowly shuffled
Fuddy-duddy
Fusty and set in her ways
Getting some action, he ate his fiber today
Gnarled hands knitting
Gramps zones out once in a while
Grandma and grandpa-might used a derogatory for anyone old
Gray dandelion hair
Growing love comfortable shoes and clothes
Grumped at the noisy children
Grunted and creaked with every move
Grunts when he sits, then sighs with relief only to grunt and rise
Hair a crown of faded glory
Hair billowed cobwebs in the draft
His get-a-long got up and went
Hoary, whiskered old fellow
Humped over and leaning on her cane
In his declining years
In his dotage
Infernal loud music
Infirmities aside, she was in good shape
Jowls flapped when he talked
Laugh like crackling paper
Laugh lines bracketing twinkling eyes
Long nose hair
Looked 45 but liver spots hands gave her away
Loved the decadent indolence of retirement
Matriarch who rules the roost
Matron aunt
Ol’ fart
Old and decrepit
Old duffer is deaf
Once a rock and roller, now he rocks only the chair
Patriarch of the family
Prune juice a staple of her diet
Rheumy eyes
Rocked and rocked and stared within
Room full of crooked backs, colorless hair and time-faded eyes
Ruminating on when she was young
Sagging skin
Sat on the tenement steps and watched the world go by
Senile and helpless
She’s a classic
Shriveled by half
Skin as thin and white as parchment
Skin like used tea leaves
Skin of leather
Skin stretched over knobby bones
Smelled of Chantilly Lace and moth balls
Sparse eyebrows with a chaotic growth pattern.
Stale, moldy and far-sighted
Stooped and bent frame
Strains to hear
Stroke left her expressions scary/endearing
Tottering and unsteady
Transparent blue-veined skin
Trapped behind the walls of age
Tufts of hair grow out of his ears
Turkey neck
Wattle neck
Wise old eyes widened with a twinkle
Withered skin
Wizened and shrunken like a fading rose
Wrinkled skin costumed a youthful heart
Young mind trapped in an old body
Youth was waning
Definitions
centenarian -- person 100 years old or older
glaucoma -- hardening of eyeball resulting in poor vision or blindness; associated with aging
leucoma -- disease of the eye in which the cornea becomes white and opaque
noachian -- old enough to date back to Noah
octogenarian -- person in their 80’s
preadamite -- dates back to before Adam
quinquagenarian -- person in their 50’s
septuagenarian -- person in their 70’s
sexagenarian -- person in their 60’s
Dementia -- loss of cognitive ability
Alzheimer’s disease -- type of dementia that causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior.
Sharla has published three historical romance novels: SONG OF THE WILLOW, LOVE AND FORTUNE, and SILVER CARESS. SONG OF THE WILLOW, her first solo effort, was nominated by “Romantic Times Magazine” for best first historical. Her current work, HOW TO FELL A TIMBERMAN is in the submission process.
When she’s not writing and researching ways to bedevil her book characters, Sharla enjoys collecting authentically costumed dolls from all over the world, traveling (to seek more dolls!), and reading tons of books. You can find Sharla here at Writers In The Storm or on Twitter at @SharlaWrites.
Please give a welcoming WITS hello to Ruthie Knox who's here celebrating the launch of her latest novel (releasing today, btw) and talking about why she chose to write about a flawed hero.
So I wrote a romance novel where the hero stutters. A lot.
Actually, this is only partially true. For the first third of the story, he barely speaks. He never speaks to the heroine. THEN he stutters a lot.
This is . . . this is not done.
In Julia Quinn’s fabulous The Duke and I, the duke is a former stutterer who occasionally stammers a teeny, tiny bit (and he’s also awesome). Edie Harris’s forthcoming The Corrupt Comte has a stuttering heroine. But in the land of contemporary romance, I believe I’m on my own. (If I’m wrong, tell me! I would love to read more romance novels with stuttering characters.)
Diving in
You know how sometimes when you’re writing, you plunge head first into something that you think will be fun without stopping to wonder if there’s a really good reason no one else has done it?
Yeah. That.
But I love these accidental immersions—at least in retrospect—because they’re such amazing opportunities to learn.
When I decided to write a stuttering hero, I knew my heroine already. Katie Clark was a character in the preceding book, fully fleshed out. I also knew who the guy was I wanted to hook her up with, but he was only the barest suggestion of a character in that earlier story. All I knew, in fact, was that he rarely talked to anyone, and he never talked to Katie. I didn’t know why.
For reasons I can’t remember, I decided that Sean Owens is a man who spent several years of his life escaping his stutter. It essentially destroyed his childhood, which he left behind—a trauma he ran from instead of dealing with it. But now he’s back in his hometown, and he just knows that if he tries to start something with Katie (his unrequited high school crush), the past will come rushing back, stutter and all.
“Real” fictional stuttering?
Is this realistic? Sort of, yes. It’s simplified, of course, because fiction simplifies. But it is the case that many people who do intensive therapy are able to stop stuttering completely. It’s also the case that a large portion of these people do, at some point, begin stuttering again, and that emotionally stressful situations can be a trigger.
Romance novels are inherently emotionally stressful. :-)
In reading about stuttering, one thing I discovered right away is that stuttering is widely variable. It doesn’t have clear and absolute causes, a standard pattern of development, or an accepted “cure.” It is, like most things human, variable, complicated, and malleable. There are some common developmental patterns, some therapies that help a lot of people, some things that make it worse. Everyone’s mileage varies.
This was tremendously liberating, on the one hand, because it meant that I could take a free hand with how I developed Sean’s stutter. But it was also kind of alarming, because it highlighted the degree to which I really wanted to be responsible in the way that I depicted Sean’s speech disfluency. It’s not a cheap thing to be manipulated at my will, after all—it’s real. People stutter. And I would hate for someone with a stutter to open the pages of this novel and find all the worst stereotypes reproduced here, or, just as bad, the struggles of their own lives repackaged and spat onto the page for cheap emotional payoff.
So, yeah. Just get everything right, Knoxie. No problem.
The balancing act
Flirting with Disaster, Camelot series, book 3 Releases June 10, 2013
The tricky thing, for me, was not the technical details — which sounds make him stutter; how to represent repeated, prolonged, or blocked sounds on the page — but in the balancing of authenticity and story, research and romance. I wanted to write a book about a man and a woman falling in love.
My hero, Sean, has emotional baggage. He has deep vulnerabilities. And in a very real way, his stutter is bound to these vulnerabilities. It reminds him of a past he doesn’t want to deal with. The act of stuttering triggers feelings of helplessness and exposure that he loathes.
BUT — and this is such a big but — the stutter is not the problem. His feelings about stuttering are the problem, and really only the surface layer of the problem, at that. As the story digs deeper, it becomes obvious that Sean’s feelings about stuttering are tied into the same emotional vulnerabilities many of us carry out of childhood: those complicated emotional legacies of conditional love, feelings of inadequacy, and misdirected ambition that haunt our adult lives.
Which is to say, I wrote a hero with an on-again, off-again speech disfluency, but I didn’t write a hero who is only “hot” when he’s speaking fluently.
I wrote a hero who stutters when he is under emotional strain, but who also stutters, pretty much always, on the hard “c” sound that begins his heroine’s first and last name: “K-k-k-katie C-c-c-clark—a stutterer’s worst nightmare,” as Sean puts it.
I wrote a hero who, like all of us, is weak when he is weak and strong when he is strong. And he stutters. But his stutter is not a weakness.
Happily ever after
When you construct an arc for a character who stutters, but whose stutter is not the basis of internal conflict, the question arises: What does his happily ever after look like?
This is a bit of a spoiler, but at the end of this novel, when quizzed about why he wants to be with the heroine, Sean says “She makes me stutter.”
I’ll admit, I did write this line in part to flip convention on its head. No magical healing! Yay!
But I also wanted to convey the peace Sean has found by the story’s end with the sound of his own voice. I wanted to show him beginning his journey to reconcile past with present. And, finally, I wanted to get across his acceptance that the woman he loves is a partner for him not because she is perfect already, or because he is—far from it—but because she brings out his imperfections and forces him to grapple with them.
I like to think this is what all of us search for in a partner—someone who loves and accepts who we are now, but who also encourages us to grow into the best people we might become.
Have you ever written a flawed character? Why did you decide on that flaw?
About Ruthie
USA Today bestselling author Ruthie Knox writes contemporary romance that’s sexy, witty, and angsty—sometimes all three at once. After training to be a British historian, she became an academic editor instead. Then she got really deeply into knitting, as one does, followed by motherhood and romance novel writing. Her debut novel, Ride with Me, is probably the only existing cross-country bicycling love story. She followed it up with About Last Night, a London-set romance whose hero has the unlikely name of Neville, and then Room at the Inn, a Christmas novella—both of which were finalists for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA Award. Her four-book series about the Clark family of Camelot, Ohio, has won accolades for its fresh, funny portrayal of small-town Midwestern life. Ruthie moonlights as a mother, Tweets incessantly, and bakes a mean focaccia. She’d love to hear from you, so visit her website at www.ruthieknox.com and drop her a line.
