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Estate Planning: Four Legal Documents Part 2
Two of the most important legal documents for your family’s farm operation are a power of attorney and personal representation documents. Extension Ag Economist Jessica Groskopf explains why it’s important to have these documents in place now.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Throughout the past few weeks, we've been focusing on succession, transition, and estate plans for farm families.
It's difficult, but necessary planning is critical to the future success of the operation, and keeping the farm in the family.
Extension ag economist Jessica Grosskoff, talked about the difference between succession plans and estate plans on part one.
She begins today's program by talking about the end of life or incapacity issues, and the legal documents you'll need to carry out your wishes.
[Jessica Groskopf, Nebraska Extension Ag Economist]
The 2nd 3rd and 4th document that are on this list have to deal basically with your end of life or your incapacity.
So I often think about these in the event of disability or incapacity, the most obvious one being something like Alzheimer's.
Okay?
So the 1st is a power of attorney and depending on how you set this up, it could be a durable power of attorney or general power of attorney.
And basically this person is an agent who will take care of the business aspects that you assign to them through the power of attorney document.
Again, I like to think about this in the in the event of disability or incapacity, but you can define when it is in force and what actions this person can take through the power of attorney document. 3 and 4, maybe separate documents, but they may be combined.
I've seen it both ways.
It just depends on what your attorney who's preparing the documents prefers.
So the next item is a power of attorney for healthcare.
This is someone who can make healthcare decisions on your behalf.
And then the final document is a living will or a healthcare directive that basically states what kind of care you want.
Okay?
So again, 3 and 4 can be combined.
The thing that's important here is that the 1st document, a will is only enforced after your death.
Items 2, 3, and 4 are only enforced while you are alive, and they expire at death.
So let's think about who we are putting in each of these positions.
The 1st thing is that I do not like to see co, personal representatives or co powers of attorney.
The problem with naming 2 people to that position is that basically you are forcing them to make decisions together, and that often causes tension within families.
So what I like to say is you want to pick the best person for the role.
So think about who the right person is for that role and name one person to each role.
The other thing I will say is it often, More smooth if we can make the power of attorney and the personal representative the same person.
If I am the power of attorney and I'm dealing with your business decisions prior to your death, then I pretty much have the information or have a lot of information that I will need to be your personal representative after death.
Okay?
So again, I also like to think about the ease of that transition between dealing with your business affairs prior to death and then after death.
I typically like those to be the same.
They can be different.
It's not required, but having seen families go through this process, I think it's more smooth when that happens.
The other piece about this is you might be sitting here thinking, Well, Jessica, I already have these things in place, but I'm just not really sure.
Any of these documents can be updated or replaced at any time, given that you are competent.
So while you are alive, you can update these documents.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Stay tuned for future programs on this important topic of the critical legal documents for farm families.
For Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Estate Planning: Four Legal Documents Part 3
Sometimes thinking about what would happen to the family farm if you pass away isn’t something any of us want to deal with. On today’s program, Extension Ag Economist Jessica Groskopf talks about making smart decisions about a family trust and how to determine what family members receive after you pass away.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Planning your succession and transition is an extremely important part of your family's farms operation future success.
We've been discussing these issues for some time on past programs, and today, extension ag economist Jessica Grosskoff talks about whether a family trust is right for you and other issues like family heirlooms.
[Jessica Groskopf, Nebraska Extension Ag Economist]
The most common way to bypass the probate process is by using a trust.
Okay?
Not everyone needs a trust.
Again, this is the you may want or need.
A trust it is not required.
A trust does not replace your will.
It complements your will.
Well, what is a trust?
A trust is a bucket.
Basically, it's like a container that holds your assets and helps with that process of transferring them.
The cool part about a trust or this trust bucket is that you get to write the rules of how the assets are used, who benefits from those assets and how the assets are removed from the bucket.
Now I want to be very clear here.
Not everyone needs a trust.
It does avoid the probate process.
The only thing that I see or one of the things that I see with trust is that if we create a trust, we have to put things in the bucket.
Okay?
So there is a physical process of what they call funding the trust that must be done.
So, my assets, if it was my trust, would no longer be titled to Jessica Grosskoff.
They would be titled to the Jessica Grosskoff living trust.
The important part about this is in the state of Nebraska, there's a limit to how many assets you can own prior to the probate process, which I believe is currently $100,000.
So if I have more than $100,000 sitting outside my trust, we're going to trigger a probate.
So that's why we have to make sure that everything goes into the trust bucket.
Again, this is not a replacement for a will.
It is a compliment to the will.
And basically what will happen is your will will say everything goes into the trust.
We call this a pour over or residuary clause in the trust.
Your will is very simple.
Moving forward are funeral instructions.
These typically are not legally binding documents.
Funeral instructions are just usually the 1st thing that your family is going to look for.
And if you have strong feelings about what you want.
As far as a funeral is concerned, you can place those in funeral instructions.
And the final piece is the bequests of personal property.
I will tell you that more fights happen over things like heirlooms, that causes more fights in families than anything else.
Quickly, an attorney is not going to allow you to put those personal property items in the will.
They're going to ask you to create a list called a bequest of personal property list.
Please do this and do it the right way.
In Nebraska.
It can be typed or it can be handwritten.
However, it must be signed and dated.
So basically, it's a description of the item and who it goes to.
It does not require an attorney signature or anything.
You just have to keep this list and they usually will give you like a form to write this out on.
Do not.
Play the put the sticky note on the back of something game.
Do not do that.
Why?
It's not legally binding, and magically, there are 2 sticky notes.
There's one on the back and one on the bottom.
Magically there's 2 different handwritings.
Magically, the sticky note just fell off.
Again, if we're talking about reducing the tension within our family, let's do things the legally correct way.
And in the state of Nebraska, that's a bequest of personal property list.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
There are detailed articles and other podcasts on this topic of succession and transition on UNL Center for ag profitabilities website at cap.unl.edu, or download from Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
For Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR Media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
Fall is Prime Time for Weed Control Part 1
With fall weather right around the corner, pastures and rangelands can benefit from weed control. Livestock systems Extension Educators Ryan Benjamin and Ben Beckman discuss why fall is one of the best times of year to tackle weeds.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Weed control in our pastures and range lands might not be a top priority right now, but fall can be one of the most effective times to control some of our toughest range land weeds.
Extension educators, Ryan Benjamin and Ben Beckman, discuss why fall is prime time to control certain species of weeds.
[Ryan Benjamin, Nebraska Extension Educator]
As we move into the fall.
A lot of these perennial and biennial plants start to move a lot of resources into their roots to overwinter and winter annuals as well.
And it provides a really good time to apply some herbicide and get that herbicide down into the roots of those plants and be really effective on some of these more hard to control pasture weeds and range weeds.
I think that's kind of the gist of why the fall can be really effective at treating some of these wheats.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
And I jump on too, Ryan.
You know, I think it's a difficult time of year.
We're busy bringing cattle back from summer past year and everything that comes with that.
If you've got, you know, crops, we're we're dealing with fall harvest, we're getting hay put up and things around for winter, and so there's a lot going on, and you have to hit the right window for a good effective fall treatment too.
It's getting it while that plant is actively growing and pulling those nutrients down to the roots like Ryan said, are translocated herbicides.
We can get really good kills on our perennials and biennials and winter annuals as they're pulling it down.
You know, it's pretty much ideal for a herbicide treatment, but we got to hit the right window in order to get that done effectively.
I would say it is a little bit different depending on what species you're dealing with, mostly because, again, we need an actively growing plant.
And so for a lot of our plants.
Once we start to get close to frost, you know, we want to hit it good 7 to 10 days before we actually get cold weather because at that point, especially our perennial plants are going to start shedding their leaves, you know, once the leaves start to turn color, that's a sign that a lot of the nutrients have actually been pulled out of those leaves and translocated down already and that plant is really preparing for winter at that point.
So we still want to get it while it's green.
And that's, again, it's kind of a tricky window to figure out usually later September in through October, just depending on the weather conditions when we want to hit that.
We also want to kind of avoid just chili periods in general.
You know, we've had a cooler stretch here as we're recording this, which has been really nice, but we still have, you know, highs in the 70s, you know, across the state, once we start to get into the real fall temps where we're getting, you know, highs into the low 60s, 50s.
At that point, the plant's not really actively growing as much anymore and we don't get as much translocation.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Ryan and Ben detail some of the weed species that respond to fall herbicide treatments.
Yeah, there's several.
A lot of the thistles, obviously.
Leafy Spurge is another one. That responds seemingly really well to fall, herbicide application.
And I think Leafy Spurge, something like 24D or, well, Pickleram and 24D mix is probably the most effective that I've heard of.
A lot of our options that we would use, I would say, typically throughout the year are going to work.
It's just, again, that timing of application, and then hitting that new growth on your leafy Spurge, just early spring applications, we don't want to skip in order to do a fall application because we're stopping seed set.
So that's that's the benefit of doing a herbicide application earlier on in the year, you know, like our can of thistle, Leafy Spurge, many other really tricky perennial plants like that, a lot of our noxious weeds.
We don't want to skip that spring application because we're stopping seed production and stopping the spread that way, but if we can hit it again in the fall.
I just want to make sure we're reading the labels and not overdoing exceeding the maximum rate.
A lot of times it says how much we can apply per year.
But if we can hit it again in the fall, that's when we can really get kill and really start to control a patch really good, if you can kind of do that 12 punch.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Ryan and Ben will return to this discussion in future programs to discuss integrated management strategies for fall weed control, for Nebraska Extension Almanac, I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans.
Go to extension.unl.edu.
Fall is Prime Time for Weed Control Part 2
Today’s Almanac continues a recent program on fall weed control in pastures and rangelands. Livestock systems Extension Educators Ben Beckman and Ryan Benjamin discuss timing and how mowing can help herbicides work more effectively.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
In part one of our discussion of why fall is the best time of the year for weed control in our pastures.
Extension educators Ryan Benjamin, and Ben Beckman talked about some of the weed species and techniques to control them.
On today's program, Ben starts the discussion by focusing on an integrated approach to weed control.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
And I think it goes for a lot of different species, you know, not just, like I said, those noxious, noxious weeds like thistle or leafy Spurge, you know, the tricky thing when you are doing something like that is making sure that you map it out good.
So, you know, either putting out some flags or having it GPS or something like that because if you're mowing it and you're knocking it back, sometimes there's a few plants on the edge of that patch that might escape your notice, if you've been stressing it and they're hidden down in the canopy a little bit, and you, we want to make sure that we're getting good application across it.
So, you know, doing something like that, we just want to make sure that we're getting the entire patch sprayed.
But it's the same principle for some of our other thistles that are biennials, you know, they are essentially growing in the fall, producing that rosette, late summer through the fall, and then they shoot that seed stock up the next year.
Our winter annuals are doing the exact same thing where they're germinating here in the fall, things like, you know, cheat grass.
Um, a lot of our mustards.
And so if we're hitting them as they're translocating their nutrients, you kind of see a theme here, we can get really good kill.
And if we're stressing them beforehand, that's even better.
Um, even for some of our brush species, you know, things like buck brush, you know, Sue MAC, things like that, if you go in and you brush hog it ahead of time, and then you do a spray or or something like that where you've got some new growth, you've set it back and stressed it already.
You know, it's a great time to do it.
There's a caveat to that, though.
The stress side of it is we want it to be in conditions that it can regrow.
So this year we've had lots of moisture, and so that works really well.
If we would have, you know, had a really dry summer and we mowed off, you know, that Canada thistle patch or something like that, and it stayed dry, and those plants aren't really regrowing much, and they're drought stressed already, we might still have some action and get some herbicide control, but it's going to be a lot less reduced because, you know, as that plants are out stressed, It's not growing as actively as it normally is.
It's not absorbing moisture in the same way and the stomata aren't open.
A lot of different things happen when plants get drought stressed.
And so having natural stress in the environment isn't always a great time to do a fall application necessarily.
[Ryan Benjamin, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Then you were talking about making sure that you map it well and get a good application that way.
I think another thing that's really important to point out for a lot of weeds, but especially something like common molen, or some of these weeds that have a little more hairy leaves, is using a surfactant so that those herbicides can actually reach the, reach the leaf surface and get absorbed.
It's pretty easy to think you're getting an effective treatment and not actually get those herbicides down into the plant on some of these sweets.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Sometimes the weeds that we notice the most this time of the year are not the ones that we want to go after, though.
A lot of our summer annual weeds, things like pig weed, you know, our foxtails, kosher, you know, rag weed, things like that, are at the end of their life cycle, they've already set seed.
They're already, you know, dying off.
And so spraying those really noticeable weeds at this point isn't going to do a whole lot for control.
Really need either a perennial species or something that is going to be growing and, again, absorbing those nutrients into their system to get through the winter, spraying our summer annuals that are really noticeable right now because they're producing all their seed or they have produced their seed and they're at the end of their life cycle, isn't going to be effective.
And so you might as well save some time and money and keep your herbicide for next spring or early summer for those species.
[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Today's program was a portion of an interview from the Beefwatch podcast offered by Nebraska extension.
To hear the entire interview, go to beef.unl.edu or download from Apple Podcasts for Nebraska Extension Almanac.
I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of I.E. And our media and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.
The Hidden Cost of Spoiled Silage
Some farmers might think a little mold on top of a silage pile isn’t a big deal. On today’s Almanac, Extension Educator Ben Beckman says farmers should understand the cost of spoiled silage and make plans to keep it under control.
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[Brad Mills, Program Host]
Nebraska Extension Almanac.
Traditional farming spends a great deal of time on yield and harvest timing, but when it comes to silage, extension educator Ben Beckman says preventing spoilage should be a priority.
On today's almanac, Ben talks about how minor adjustments can make a big difference in silage preservation.
[Ben Beckman, Nebraska Extension Educator]
Whenever we're working with silage.
We've got a really great feed resource there.
And it's something that a lot of times can be really misleading in the amount of loss that we actually have that can occur in a silage pile from actual harvest time, all the way to feed out.
Silage is something that we are using a anaerobic condition to maintain quality on.
So when we've got a forage that we want to store for a long period of time, There's kind of 2 routes that we go about doing that. Either we take the moisture out of it, like in dry hay.
And so we're removing the moisture so we don't have any, you know, bacterial or yeast growth and decomposition going on, or we need to do something like ferment it, where we take the oxygen out, and we stop the decomposition that way.
And so silage and siling something is that 2nd route.
And so as we go about that process, the big enemy to any silage, however we're putting it up and wherever we're storing it is getting oxygen down into that pile, disrupting those anaerobic conditions because as soon as we start to get oxygen in there, basically we're making a giant mulch pile at that point.
Our bacteria, our yeast, start to grow, start to decompose, all of that, you know, hard work that we put into harvesting that feed source.
And so we kind of went over in this article, just some different scenarios, different ways that we can reduce that, looking at covering and how we pack that pile, where we store it out specifically, and then what that really means to our bottom line.
Dry matter loss in a silage pile is is, again, really difficult to wrap our mind around, especially if we've got like a drive over pile, where we're not covering it.
That loss is going to be in that outer layer.
And so while that might not seem like much, just looking at it, you think about how, you know, even a couple of inches on that outer layer, if you take all of that off, is a large portion of that actual piles total mass.
And so you have quite a bit that's exposed to oxygen that we can have decomposition in.
And then as that area starts to decompose, it actually compresses, you know, on the weight or if we've got precipitation, that beats it down and as the bacteria and yeast start to break that down, it releases gas.
And so that mold layer or that decomposition layer actually is really shrunk down from what it started out as as good fresh silage.
And so it's very tricking if you kind of just look at your silage pile and you see that.
Oh, we've got just, you know, a couple inches of mold on the top.
That's not too bad.
You know, that couple inches could be, you know, a foot or more of actual silage that we actually lost there.
So getting our mind around that and then looking at ways that we can keep that loss to a minimum is really going to help us from, you know, protecting what we put up and then having a good quality project that we're actually going to be able to feed out later.
Anytime that we can start to plan ahead and mitigate how much loss we have, I think is going to be really, really important.
And so if we know how much, we actually have to feed out, we can either adjust that piles dimension somewhat.
So that way we get it to a point where we can have pretty consistent feed off across that face and we don't have, again, that oxygen getting in from the front as we feed it out.
Or like you mentioned, look at other options that might be a little bit more expensive, like, you know, putting it in a bag or something along those lines where it might cost a little bit more upfront.
But if we crunch those numbers again and we reduce how much, if we go from 20% loss to 10% loss even, that might pay for itself.
And so doing some planning, I know it's not always the most fun to sit down and do the math on some of these things, but figuring out what works for your operation and giving, you know, your local extension office a call if you want to and talking through it with us as well.
You know, we can figure out what's going to be the best opportunity for your operation, what fits kind of the scenario that you have, and then how can we keep that loss to a minimum?
[Brad Mills, Program Hostess Ho-Ho]
For Nebraska extension almanac, I'm Brad Mills.
Nebraska Extension Almanac is a production of IANR media, and Nebraska Extension.
For more information on how your university is serving Nebraskans, go to extension.unl.edu.