January 16, 2020

Episode 81: Kim Melanson: Death and Marriage: The Legal Side of Financial Planning (in Ontario)

January 16, 2020

On today's show, we are joined by Kim Melanson who is a local lawyer in Ottawa. The bulk of the conversation is spent on the particulars of drafting a will and the considerations that have to go into this process. Kim also reminds just how important it is to have an up to date will, something many of us have heard but many of us do not act on! She talks about good times to update your documents and the ins and outs of naming guardians and executors before discussing inheritances, donations, and probate. We then turn to a few different types of wills, namely mutual will, mirror wills, and dual wills. Kim weighs in on the topic of 'will kits' and services that make the writing of a will appear a little easier. We also talk about some common errors that are made in the realm of estate planning before turning our attention to family law. Kim answers our questions common-law relationships, domestic contracts, divisions of assets and more, so for all of this from a true expert on Ontario legal matters, be sure to listen in with us today on the Rational Reminder Podcast!

Key Points From This Episode:

An important legal disclaimer about today's show. [0:02:21.9]
What happens if you die in Ontario without a will? [0:03:13.6]
Reasons that every adult needs to have a will. [0:05:34.7]
How often to update a will throughout the course a lifetime. [0:07:32.7]
Best practices for the naming guardians and executors. [0:08:34.6]
Kim's recommendations for allocation of inheritances, donations, and probate. [0:14:14.4]
Understanding dual wills, how they work and when they make sense. [0:19:14.3]
Considering the use of 'will kits' and where these services might fall short. [0:21:39.6]
Mutual and mirror wills; managing and policing of these documents. [0:23:19.1]
Common and important errors made in estate planning. [0:25:19.4]
The definition of a common-law relationship in Ontario. [0:26:50.6]
Approaching the conversation and weighing the utility of domestic contracts. [0:30:48.6]
The Family Law Act ruling on the division of assets; exclusions and subtractions. [0:34:54.4]
Kim's own definition of success and her hopes for a positive impact. [0:36:36.2]

Read the Transcript:

We've been talking about having a lawyer on this show since the beginning. We finally have you here, so this is amazing. First question for you, what happens if someone dies in Ontario and they don't have a will?

Well, I think there's a large misconception by the public that people think if they die without a will, the government automatically receives all of their assets and a lot of people are fearful of that. That's really not the case. Instead, people dying without a will, basically there's legislation that provides where their assets are to go. Instead of their wishes being respected, the government does dictate who's to receive it.

For example, if you are a married spouse and you have children, your spouse receives the first 200,000 of your assets, provided they don't decide to seek other remedies and the children then receive with the spouse sort of a portion between them. There's sort of a procedure to be followed. If you don't happen to be married or have children, it's your parents who inherit and then it goes to your brothers and sisters and sort of down the bloodline is the whole idea.

Who becomes the executor in that case?

There's someone would actually have to apply to the court to be appointed. Dying without a will becomes far more complicated than it needs to be if you actually take the time to do some proper planning.

You mentioned, so there is a mandated amount that the spouse would receive if someone dies without a will, but you said that the spouse could seek other remedy. Does that mean the spouse could try and get more than the $200,000?

Yes. A spouse has an option to elect either to take under a will, if there's no will, they can elect to take what there to receive by law. It's called intestacy or they can seek to equalize their property almost like what would happen if they were to go through a divorce. Those are the options. A spouse normally consults a lawyer and it becomes a matter of mathematics determining the best result then for the spouse and division of property.

Now, we're talking about Ontario and we have people all over the world listening to the podcast, but just within Canada, how different would this be province to province?

Estates and wills are governed provincially, so every province would have their own rules. They'd have their own determination of these matters. We really can only speak about Ontario.

Now, I've read somewhere that over 50% of Canadians did not have a will. Is it common that there's issues like this that happen?

Quite regularly, actually.

Wow! And is there a stage in life where you think having a will becomes much more important after having kids perhaps or getting married?

In my view, I think it's important for every adult. An adult is someone 18 years of age and older who owns assets, they should have a will, because ultimately, you want to be in the driver's seat determining where your assets go should you pass away. And so, you want your wishes to be upheld rather than the formulaic legislative decision that's telling you who's to receive what.

Do you think there's a point where it becomes critical? I know when I had kids, I was like, now I really, really want to have a will because then I get to choose how the assets and kids get treated.

Absolutely. I would say kids are a major motivating factor because one thing that you can put in your will is you can explain your wishes as to who you'd like to be the guardians for your children. And as parents, that's our biggest fear. If something happens to us, we want to know that our children are well cared for and that's something that your will provides for. Now, another misconception is a lot of people believe that whoever you name in your will, that they're automatically made guardians, and that's not the case. Rather, your will allows for your guardians to be appointed for 90 days and then after that, that individual needs to apply to the court and seek a formal court order.

I didn't know that.

Yes.

So it's not a permanent posting.

It's not. Rather, the court always wants to make sure that the individual or individuals named are actually capable of raising these children. And so, while the parents' wishes outlined in a will are upheld for the most part, the court still says, "Are these people appropriate?" Especially since we know a lot of times, people will make a will when they have a baby and they may never revisit it in 15 years and a lot can change. If you've named your parents, they may no longer be capable of raising your children.

That leads to a good question, how often do you think that a will should be updated?

All major changes in life. Number one, if you have a will and you get married, you absolutely need to get a new will because a marriage revokes a will. Having kids, if anybody named in your will becomes incapacitated, they pass away, otherwise, I normally say marriage, children, retirement, and then death of a spouse kind of thing. Those are the major milestones.

In Ontario, can you write a will in anticipation of getting married and it will be valid?

Absolutely. That's one of the questions I always ask clients when I'm doing my will interviews, are you likely to get married, especially if there are people who are living together and then we put special language in there to make sure then that the will isn't accidentally revoked when they get married.

That's really interesting. If you die without that language in a will, but you had a will and then got married, it's as if you died intestate without a will?

That's correct. Yes.

Wow.

I have a question about the guardian. I was the ones told not to tell the guardian that they had been chosen in case you un-choose them later on. Any thoughts around that?

Interesting. I haven't heard that. See, I'm of the view that managing expectations of everyone in your family I think is important. I would want my clients to actually approach the guardians and make sure that they'd be willing to take on this role. And again, I think there's a big misconception. We have all seen the whole Hollywood movies and things like that, where people feel that there's going to be a number of people running across the finish line to be appointed as guardians. When in reality, if you think of your own lives, if you have two children and you become the guardians and you're adding perhaps two more children to your family, that's life-changing.

No kidding.

You're needing a new home, all kind kinds of things. It's such a major decision that I think you need to have that heart to heart with the people that you're appointing. You want to make sure they have the same values as you and that they're capable of taking this extraordinary task on.

You can appoint a guardian or you can recommend a guardian. Can you have a different person be the trustee of the assets?

Absolutely. That's a really good point to make. You can divide it into sort of two roles. The first question is, is who will actually be the person or persons caring for your children, where are they going to live and that type of thing. The second question is, is who's going to manage their property or the trust fund that's been created for them. And sometimes, people like to separate out those roles because obviously there's a potential for abuse or just people are quite frankly are overwhelmed, so someone needs to be able to determine how best to spend the money, perhaps inject money into that household to help them sort of get set up and then on an ongoing manner.

Can you set rules around the use of that money like capital only or income only, income and capital?

You can. We can craft very specific rules on how it's to be used. The difficulty, of course, though, is that no one wants to be running in and changing their will frequently, so what we suggest is that you define certain capital distributions to the minor or your children, when they might receive a lump sum. And other than that, you really want to sit down then with the guardian of property and talk about your goals and your wishes. We need that discretion in order to function because we never know what life is going to bring. And so, we need to have it open enough that they can achieve what's best for those children, but yet, restrained enough that they're not abusing their power.

Now, in practice, do you see... I can just imagine that creating somewhat of a conflict where if the guardian is one person and they have to go to the trustee to ask for money for stuff, do you see in practice that creating that type of conflict?

Absolutely, because they're then running off then to each other and especially the guardians for the care. We often recommend when we're dealing with situations like this, that people get in touch with investment advisors like yourself to create a plan where they can look at an income stream and inject money where it kind of helps and operates on its own without people needing to pick up the phone every time they need some money.

Do you often see people coming in with really complicated wishes in their will that become frankly too complicated to craft?

I always say that we can, as lawyers, craft almost anything, or I would hope so. It really comes down to a matter of the cost, number one, of drafting those wishes and the cost to implement them. A big one that I see quite often is that some families decide that they'd like to leave small amounts of money to their grandchildren and they may have a number of grandchildren. And the cost of administering those formal trusts, which are taxpayers becomes just prohibitive and it's not effective, so we try to dissuade people from leaving small amounts of money to their grandchildren, but instead to do it while they're living, because they then get the benefit of seeing the joy and reaping the rewards of that.

What about naming an executor? Is there a good way to think about that? Should you name your brother as an executor or should you go with a professional like a law firm or I don't know who else would do it?

It really depends on the circumstances of each client, but for a lot of families, it makes sense to actually name your spouse, for example, or a family member. And in particular, someone who is a beneficiary of the estate. The reason we like that is they have a vested interest in carrying out what ends up being quite a lot out of work in administering someone's estate. And the other thing is really to ensure that there's that trust factor among the other beneficiaries, but there are some estates either due to family conflict or complexity that then I would recommend a professional executor be appointed. As well if we think of age, a lot of us tend to point people that are contemporaries and if you have trust for children or grandchildren that need to last a long time, by having a professional advisor, you have the ability to have younger succession within that organization taking care of your needs.

The question about when you decide who to leave the money to, I had a situation once where someone's parent left money to a number of charities in a fixed dollar amount as opposed to a percentage allocation of the estate, and he happened to pass away after a severe market correction and there actually wasn't enough money to pay out the charities because it was fixed dollar, let alone have anything left over for the family. Any thoughts around percentage allocation versus dollar or I've seen people use like a point system allocation?

Yes. My recommendations tend to be that you use the percentage or the points or a share because we never know how much money we're going to require for our care as we age. The last thing that you want to do is cut someone out of your will or not have your wishes reflect it by virtue of the fact that you don't have enough money to carry it out.

Can you talk about probate?

Sure. Probate seems to be one of those really bad words. And a lot of people approach my office when we're doing estate planning and they tell me that their primary goal is to avoid probate at all cost. I think that's a really big misconception in the sense that... so let's talk about what probate is. Probate is the formal process of submitting your will to court and having the court then affirm that this is your valid last will and testament and giving your named executor power to act.

The courts then produce what's called a certificate of appointment. As part of this process, you need to pay something called the estate administration tax. The estate administration tax is something that is, it's the highest in Ontario across Canada in terms of the amount charged, but when you look at the amount, it's really about one and a half percent of the value of the estate that needs to be paid for the purposes of this administration.

And the benefit of probate often is, is that it gives third parties like investment companies, banks, land title system, the authorization and the confirmation that they're not going to get sued and they can have the confidence to then distribute assets to the executor. And so, there's a lot of situations where we avoid it amongst spouses and things like that, but there are times where I've recommended it to clients where we could have avoided it, but it would've given the executor the protection that was necessary and allowed any claims to be flushed out early on in the process rather than being on the eve of distribution and everyone running off to court.

But is it safe to say that you think a lot of people will go too far in the efforts of avoiding that cost?

They do. One of the things that I see quite often is where you have the final parent remaining, so their spouse has died and that parent, let's say, they have three children and they decide then to make their accounts joint with one other child. And unless that's done in a very carefully planned manner, that can lead to a lot of difficulties.

Again, you put your bank account joint with your adult child. If they go through a bankruptcy, if they separate from their spouse, they're considered then to own 50% of the property that you've made them joint with, so that becomes problematic. The other difficulty becomes on death then is that child alone to inherit the rest of the bank account or are they really holding it in trust for their other siblings? We do recommend joint accounts some of the time, but we then do additional planning with it, which would involve something like a declaration of trust, which would set out the intention. We just want to paper exactly what the intentions were and to protect both the parent and the adult child.

What about things like naming direct beneficiaries on registered accounts? That's always sort of low hanging planning fruit, but can that lead to issues as well?

It can. Certainly, our goal often is to take advantage of the named beneficiaries, because then you avoid probate. Those assets can flow to the beneficiary more easily, but one of the things that people don't consider is if you leave everything, all of your assets, you've named beneficiaries or you hold joint accounts, and you would like someone other than the named beneficiaries to receive a part of your estate, in practicality and through the operation of how it works, the name charity, for example, wouldn't actually receive the money under your estate because it's all flowed to other named individuals.

Or what if you had a large rift, for example, the beneficiary gets the proceeds, but the tax liability stays in the estate, correct?

Correct.

What happens to that liability?

The liability will actually, in the case of a rift, will flow to the ultimate beneficiary-

Oh, it does follow-

... the tax is not paid, but typically, if you have a small amount going through your will, that would satisfy it, but then defeat the other beneficiaries you might have named in your will. I know there's a lot of sort of do it yourself-ers. We all like to save money and that's really a concern is that with a lot of times you see these will kits where they're asking questions about your wishes. Who's your executor? Who would you like to receive your estate? But I think hiring a lawyer involves looking at your greater assets, how you hold title and looking to make sure that your wishes are actually carried out in practice.

Can you describe how a dual will works?

Sure. A dual will is where a person who owns shares in a private company would create two wills. One will would be a will that dealt with their personal assets. And the second will would be one that would deal with their shares in their company and any other assets where you are trying to avoid probate, where you're not reliant on third parties to require that probate certificate. And the benefit of doing that is that you allow the shares in this privately held corporation to be left to the named beneficiaries without the need to have the shares the company professionally valued and go through that expensive probate process.

Is it safe to say that anybody with CCPC shares, does it make sense for them to have a dual will?

In most of the time, it does. And the one qualifying thing that I often warn clients is, is just because you create it, you still have to have the authorization from the other shareholders or the directors. Just because they're privately held shares, if the people running the corporation demand the certificate of appointment, then you still have to go through that process. It's often not the case, but that's one qualification to keep in mind.

Is there a certain dollar value that a company or the assets should be worth to make it worthwhile?

Yes and no. If you think of the probate process, one of the requirements for the purpose of calculating the estate administration tax is determining the fair market value of all assets. The cost associated with having a corporation valued, even a corporation that has little value can often be in the thousands of dollars. The cost of having a second will done could be as little as a couple thousand dollars as well. We sometimes run the math early on, but again, for prudent planning and especially if your company ends up doing well in the future, it makes sense.

You mentioned that will kit idea, and there have been a ton of these online companies that make that really easy and look nice and user friendly and things like that. I have not personally used one. What types of issues could somebody expect downstream by using one of those services? And maybe another question on the same line of thinking is, do you think it ever makes sense to use that type of service?

I, as well, unfortunately have not looked at any of these kits, so they could, I guess, potentially address a number of these issues. My sense, though, in seeing the end result where people have done a will kit, and then when they go to update it, they seek my services, I see that there's often a gap in how these programs or the will kits are working. Like I was explaining earlier, really, a will is only part of the question. I think when you're doing estate planning, you really need to look at the relationships of family members. People require advice on whether it's a good idea to name a non-resident executor, so that's one issue. You need to advise people on what their legal duties are. We all, as adults, have a duty to provide for our dependents and our will. Someone may have a dependent spouse or children and decide to leave all of their assets to charity, then they're exposing their estate to claims.

Really?

Yes.

That's interesting. You haven't tried the softwares, but you've seen the end result?

That's right. And when I do my standard sort of will questionnaire with my clients, I try to get to know them, know their family dynamics, their family tree, their relationship, their assets, their income, then I realize that some of the end result and what they believe that their wishes are going to be carried out through these wills in practicality, they wouldn't, because again, they've named beneficiaries on everything and yet they've left specific bequests to individuals in their will and no money is going to flow through their will.

Interesting. Can you describe what a mutual will is?

Yes. A mutual will is different from what's called a double or mirror will and I think we need to start with that. Normally in a spousal relationship, whether a couple is married or common law, they would typically create what are known as mirror wills and that's where they look the same as each other. You named each other as executors. Your beneficiaries are the same.

With double wills, either of those spouses are allowed to change their will at any point in time and in so doing, they could defeat their combined wishes. If one spouse dies, for example, the surviving spouse could then create a brand new will and leave the money to beneficiaries.

With mutual wills, it becomes a legal contract where the couples agree that they will not, at any point in time, be allowed to change their wills. On the death of the first spouse, they can die with confidence knowing that the named beneficiaries will remain the same even after they're gone and that the surviving spouse then must honor those obligations.

They might be able to oversee the money, but where the money ultimately goes on their death continues on. Is that the benefit from that?

That's correct, yes.

How is that policed?

It's similar to creating a domestic contract, where you have a prenuptial agreement. Again, it's a binding legal contract. And again, when you get into administration of the will, that's how it's dealt with. And so, even if someone were to become, let's say, no longer competent in older age, their power of attorney would be bound by the requirements of this contract.

Are there any, and this is the last question on wills, and then I want to move into some family law questions. Are there any common, but maybe easy to correct, but also very expensive if they're not corrected errors that you see when it comes to estate planning?

One of the big things this day and age where we have a number of blended families, second relationships, is some of the old drafting that lawyers used to use is we would refer to people's children or issue and children or issue really relate to adopted or blood relatives and it goes down the family line.

If you have a stepchild who's perhaps been in your family with your new spouse since the age of one, and your will said, "I leave my assets to be equally divided among my issue or my children," you would exclude then the stepchild. The safer course of action is to actually name all individuals. Now, it's difficult because when people are young and they're still having children, they're not going to run back to your office to make a change every time they have a child.

The younger the clients, we tend to name and say that their children are to receive under their will, but when we're dealing with second relationships, then I tend to name the actual individuals. And I think that's, again, why it's important to see a lawyer because you wouldn't think of those things. I go through a number of questions with my clients. They, at times, seem invasive, but they all have a purpose, really, to make sure that the ultimate goal is achieved. And that's making sure that people's wishes are actually carried out and practiced and that some semantic or drafting doesn't get in the way.

We'll move on to family law. We have some questions for you on that. Can you tell us what defines a common law relationship in Ontario?

Common law relationship, it depends on the piece of legislation you're dealing with. Let's just talk maybe about family law matters. Under the Family Law Act in Ontario, you become a common law spouse if you have lived with someone for three years or if you are the parents of a child together and you're living in a relationship of some permanence.

Three years.

Three years.

So many people think it's one year.

Well, there are other pieces of legislation where you would be considered common law after one year, but for the purposes of family law, it's three years.

Again, this is specific to Ontario and would be different in other provinces?

Agreed. Yes, very much so. And I think the other important distinction between married spouses and common law spouses is so you're living with someone for three years, that only opens the door for spouses in the event of separation to claim support. Under the Family Law Act, you separate, you then are entitled as a common law spouse after three years to make a claim for support and you'd have to look obviously to see whether you meet the test and it's a bit more of a complicated process, but you need to at least meet that threshold that you are considered a spouse, first of all.

After three years, common law relationship, you can get support on breakdown of the relationship. Are there other differences between... Well, I guess that's a similarity. Are there differences between married and common law couples on breakdown of relationship?

Absolutely. Married spouses actually buy into a bit of a shared property regime in Ontario. In the event of a separation or divorce, a married spouse can make a claim for what's called an equalization of net family property. And on very simple terms, it means that the spouses are sharing in the growth of the assets during their relationship, whereas common law spouses don't have the ability to make the same claim. Instead, they would have to advance trust claims, things based on equitable principles that they've, for example, put some sweat equity into the home that should justify that they have some sort of ownership or trust interest in it. And it's a more difficult test to meet. And so, there is still a very big distinction in Ontario between being married and being common law.

Regardless if you're more than three years.

Correct.

If you have stock options or a private business or other assets, if you're never married, they don't put into that equalization calculation.

Correct. They would have to make a trust claim. And then if we go back to the will issue again, you are an unmarried spouse on death, let's say you're only just a couple, you have no children. And we talked about the rules of intestate, that common law spouse would not have any entitlement under the intestacy rules to share in your estate. Instead, that spouse would have to bring a dependents claim against the estate in order to seek some level of support.

Wow, that's huge. If you're a common law couple with financial co-dependence, having a will becomes more important than if you were married almost.

Extraordinarily so.

Wow. I didn't know that one. That's really interesting.

Because in that case, if you had adult children, for example, your assets within, under the rules of intestacy flow to your adult children, whereas your wishes may be for it to flow to your spouse, but you just didn't happen to get married.

If you're not going to get married, but you have kids together or any financial co-dependence, then that will becomes... If you're not going to get married, at least get a will.

That's why I say, if you're an adult and you have assets and if you move in with someone, get a will.

Now on that topic of moving in with someone, what do you think about domestic contracts and when does that make sense and in your experience, how do you even approach that conversation with a spouse?

I think domestic contracts are very important, but they're not sexy, they're not romantic. A lot of people, they frown upon it and couples really struggle with the concept of that because when you're getting married, it's meant to be something exciting. I usually recommend that couples sit down and have a discussion about finances and that they start by talking about their expectations regarding how finances are going to be dealt with during their relationship. And then that tends to lead to a good segue to say, well, what if we weren't together, how do you believe that we should separate things? And then that becomes a good sort of opportunity to discuss that and by creating a prenuptial agreement, you're then managing expectations. You're setting the roadmap to say, this is what happens if things don't work out and with separation, divorce being extraordinarily high, it's quite important these days.

How does that process work of drafting up a prenup agreement?

Typically, only one of the parties, one spouse would meet with a lawyer and receive advice on what the Family Law Act provides and how they want to opt out of that regime. Because without having a prenuptial agreement, you are then having to follow what the Family Law Act says. It's kind of like dying without a will. There's rules for intestacy, it's the same in a family law situation and you're then dependent on what legislatures have decided is appropriate for the division of assets. Whereas if you say we want to create a prenuptial agreement, you are writing the roadmap as to how you'd like things to happen in the future, again, on division of assets and potentially on support issues as well.

Support issues, that's interesting because we're kind of talking about doing this before getting married. What if you are moving in with somebody for the first time or if you're coming up on three years, do you think it makes sense to have domestic contracts in that case as well?

Yes. And I think in my experience, it's much easier to broach that subject before you move in, before you get married, the earlier the better. I'm consulted by clients, sometimes people, but will go through a rough period where they might have a trial separation and they reconcile and that's another time that people say, "Okay, finances are at the heart of what we're arguing over. Let's create the roadmap now." And so, in order to make these agreements those sort of stand the test of time, because they're often challenged, people make them early when they perhaps don't own as much, they could be together a long time, it's important that both sides have their own lawyer.

But I've dealt with people that do have quite a bit of assets and it can be quite a complicated especially private investments because you do have to do full disclose closure, correct?

You do. That's one of the other necessary items is to completely disclose the extent of your assets, so that the party that's really giving up the rights under the Family Law Act knows what they're giving up and that they're then agreeing to sort of sign up for a different state of affairs. And the third sort of, I guess, criteria that needs to be met is that there's no undue exertion or pressure. And so, having that delicate conversation is important. If someone were to say, I'm not going to marry you unless you sign this prenup and then they sign it under duress, that could be a ground for setting that contract aside in the future.

Even if they have independent legal advice, they could still say they're under duress when they signed?

They could try to. Each set of circumstances has to be evaluated, but when I advise clients on these matters, it's really the three items that each side needs effective legal representation. Secondly, that they need to fully disclose the extent of their assets and debts, and thirdly, that there can't be any undue exertion or pressure and that's what we try to achieve.

Now, in talking about the prenup, we were talking about deciding on a division of assets that falls outside of the Family Law Act. What does the Family Law Act say about division of assets? What assets have to be divided and is anything excluded?

Married spouses then on separation would have to go through a calculation of their equalization of their net family property. What is that? It's almost like a balance sheet is created by each party and you say on our data separation, so the date, number one, becomes very relevant. What did each party own? So you're looking at the fair market of all of each person's assets. You subtract their debts. Each person gets to take out their net worth on date of marriage. Whatever you brought into the relationship, you're allowed to deduct from your family property. And the other thing is gift or inheritance from a third party during your marriage subject to some certain sort of tracing rules, but that also gets to be excluded property.

Interesting. Are there things that people should be thinking about if they do receive a gift or inheritance while they are married in terms of, like you mentioned, traceability? Should people keep those assets separate?

Absolutely. Often when I'm doing estate planning for some parents and they're leaving large sums of money to their adult children, I often recommend to them that if their own children don't have marriage contracts, that they have a conversation with their children to advise that if they receive the inheritance, it should go into a discreet account, one that can be traced and that is in their name alone.

I think a lot of people though, when they get an inheritance, the first thing they do is they pay off their mortgage, so they're, in essence, gifting 50% to their spouse. And then if they were to separate, they cannot carve out that money that they receive from their family because it's lost, it's been spent and commingled.

Kim, last question, we always end each interview with the same question. Ben and I are curious as to how you define success in your own life?

That's a tough one. I would say I would feel that I've achieved success if I have a positive impact on the people that I come in contact with. Professionally, if I can have a positive of impact on my client's life by giving them advice and recommendations so that they can make informed decisions that will help them feel that I've achieved it, and personally the same thing, if I can forge those relationships where I'm helping people bring out the best in each other, I think that would be great.

Terrific answer, Kim. Thanks very much for joining us. This has been a great time spent.

Thank you very much.