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December 1, 2024 • 40 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
He served at the Pentagon as an army jag. He
graduated from Notre Dame and has two law degrees from
Boston University and Georgetown University. He's been practicing law for
over thirty years. He's your family's personal attorney. It's time
for the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Hello, and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David
Carrier in your family's personal attorney, and you have found
the place where we talk about estate planning, elder law,
real estate and business law. So give us a call.
Why don't say if you have a question, comment, or
concern about Will's trust or probate. If you're a beneficiary,
if you're the if you're the I was gonna say,

(00:59):
poor Sam. But if you're the generous, open handed, considerate
person who's agreed to be trustee, give us a call.
And you're wondering, you know, what do we do? Now?
Give us a call. Six one, six seven some of
them for twenty four twenty four. That's six one, six
seven some of them for twenty four twenty four. What

(01:20):
are the best choices you can make? You know, planning
ahead always works out better. Like you know, I always
say Thanksgiving if you know, if you start on Wednesday night,
it's gonna work out better than if you started Thursday morning.
Just's kind of simple as that. And if you started, oh,
I don't know, a whole week ahead, then God only

(01:40):
knows what wonderful thing Martha Stewart would show up and
rise up and call you blessed. If you know, start
out early. The more planning you do typically the better
off you are. But the typical planning that's done is well,
you know, you just have to shake your head out,
and it's like, what were they? What were they thinking?
Or more accurately, I believe what were they not thinking?

(02:04):
What were they not thinking about? How come? Why are
these why are these plans? Why do they fail so often?
Why do you why do you see people going broke
in long term care? What did they not know that
there were ways to avoid that? Did they not figure
that one out? Why do you see inheritances, you know,
get seized? Why do you why any of this stuff? Well,

(02:25):
mostly it has to do with a lack of engagement,
lack of seriousness about this stuff. And look, I know
I'm saying I've seen the surveys, the kinds of things
that most drive me crazy. Are exactly the kinds of
things that most people don't worry about, all right, they don't.
I mean mostly what you're afraid of, and it's a

(02:47):
reasonable concern, and it happens anyway. Mostly what people are
concerned about is the is the the mess that you
leave behind, right that's the that's the big concern. They
don't want to be, you know, you don't want to
be a burden of your family while you're here or afterwards.
And yet the way people do it, it's almost as

(03:09):
if they were planning, they were planning for a disaster.
Well they'll remember me because it was a disaster. I
guess I don't know so. But there are better ways
to do it. There are ways to do it so
that you know your rights, your ability to manage your
life stays with you mostly mostly to the very end.
You know, stay stay at home. There's ways to do

(03:32):
this stuff. If you have any question about it, give
us a shout. We've got Harriet on the line. Hello, Harriet,
welcome to the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well, good morning, how are you.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
I am just perking and working and having a bomb.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
I just have a question. I have a granddaughter a stepdaughter.
So it's fairly well and found out this weekend they
have a will. And I always thought trust was stronger
than a will, so I wanted to ask, what is
the difference and are they safe now?

Speaker 2 (04:13):
So here's the thing. They're different. They're tools. A will
is a tool, a trust is a tool. Okay, And
you don't want to say it's strong stronger. I mean, yeah,
it's more virtuous, leads, buildings and a think about all
that kind of thing. It's certainly more useful, I would

(04:33):
say right to have a trust than a will. But
here's the way to think about it. Okay, your will
is well, imagine you go to the store and you're
just running for a loaf of bread. But before you
know it, you've got an armload of stuff. Okay, if

(04:53):
you're well to do, you've got a big armload of stuff. Right.
That's your daughter or your daughter in law, whoever it is.
So they got to be armload of stuff. Well, if
you slip and fall carrying that big armload of stuff,
and by slipping fall I mean death or disability, this
stuff goes flying and makes a big mess. Now somebody's

(05:14):
got to clean up that mess. That was made by
the slip and fall somebody who had all these assets
in your own name. And so the probate court is
the janitor that comes out to clean up the mess
and figure out where this stuff goes. Okay, that makes sense.

(05:34):
So if you if you own stuff, okay, you own stuff,
and you die or you become disabled, somebody's got to
figure out what to do with your stuff. Who's gonna
do that? Me, Tom Dick and Harry off the street. No,
you have to have a legal process for figuring that out.
That's why I say clean up the mess. That's what

(05:55):
the probate court is there for. A will. A will
is a note that's in the scattered groceries, all right.
It's a piece of paper that says to the janitor, Hey,
here's where I'd like this stuff to go, pretty please,
with sugar on it. Okay. That's what a will is.
It's instructions to the janitor. A trust is very different.

(06:19):
A trust is a shopping cart where you take the
stuff that you've been carrying around in your name and
you put it into the trust. We call this funding
the trust, transferring it, conveying it, whatever you want to say,
I take this stuff I've been carrying around and it
goes into the trust. Now it's still my stuff. If

(06:42):
I want to take it out, that's fine. If I
want to put it back in, that's fine. I want
to use it, that's fine. I want to get some
more stuff and put that in my shopping cart and
my trust. Okay, go right ahead. We also call this
the red wagon. The idea is, you know it's the
red wagon, and you put your toys in the red wagon.
Now you haul it around, it's your stuff. Here's the difference, though,

(07:05):
here's the difference. When you slip and fall in the
grocery store, you don't have any You're not carrying anything.
So when you slip and fall death or disability, instead
of the stuff going flying all over the place, it's
right where you left it in the trust. Do you
see there's nothing for the janitor. There's nothing for the

(07:27):
prote court to do because you took care of that already, right.
That's the big difference between a will and a trust.
And typically the more stuff that people have, the more
likely it is that when they slip and fall, they're
going to have people coming out of the woodwork, you know,
to help themselves or they think they ought to get something,

(07:48):
and sometimes you just have fighting people and it doesn't
matter how much there is. But the point is that
when there's a big mess, there's the chaos, there's the
cleaning it up. That's a very different dynamic then it
was in the trust, and I'm just carrying out the
well thought out plans of the person who created the trust.

(08:10):
Very different. In one case, it's janitor power. In the
other case it's daughter power. It's my power that's creating
this thing you see, and judge the judge, the janitor
has all kinds of rules about where stuff should go
and how it should get there, and on and on
and on. So that's the big difference. Now, most trusts fail,

(08:36):
and the reason they fail is because people are carrying
their stuff around and they say, wow, you get the
shopping cart. That's shiny, that's great. I'll get me one
of those things, and they get one. But there's no
process for putting the stuff in the trust. There's a letter.
They give you a letter and they say, hey, they'll
lead the house and and they say, hey, don't forget

(08:59):
to put the stuff in the trust, which hardly anybody does.
And so when you die You've got a shopping cart, right,
You've got the cart, the trust, but you're still carrying
around your stuff. So when you slip and fall, the
stuff still goes flying and you still get the janitor involved.
You see, this is the big tragedy, it seems like

(09:19):
to me of estate planning as it's currently done. You've
got the tool. Lots of people have the trust, but
they don't make use of it, and it's hard for
me to accept that that isn't that isn't part of
the plan because trust administration tends to be a lot

(09:39):
less expensive, a lot less you know, attorney fees than probating.
So if you set up a situation where they pay
you to do a trust, but the trust doesn't work,
and you can blame the client because the client didn't
read the letter you gave them, which never works anyway,
hardly ever works anyway. Right, Well, that's a pretty good
deal for Yeah, are you with me on? So that's

(10:02):
my that's the thing, all right, So definitely do the trust,
I would say one hundred percent of Yeah, the trust
is the right tool. Now, there are sometimes when we
use wills, because there are some things that wills can
do that we cannot do with the trust, and if
you want to hang on, I can explain a couple
of those. But basically, for your is it daughter in

(10:24):
law that did I catch that right? Daughter? That's nice?

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Stepdaughter, step daughter, step daughter?

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Yeah, yeah, So for her it would be unusual if
the best plan wasn't to avoid the chaos and go
for the ordered distribution that a trust offers. And there
are other advantages to doing the trust, which we can
talk about if you'd like. Okay, sure, all right now

(10:52):
music means that we need to get by if you
if you want to hang on, Harriet, that'd be fine.
You've been listening to the Daily Carrier Show. I'm Davy Carrier,
your family's personal attorney.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
This hour of the David Carrier Show is pro bono,
so call in now. At seven seven four twenty four
twenty four. This is the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Hello and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Now's the time to give us
a call. Six one six seven seven four twenty four
twenty four. At sixty one six seven seven four twenty
four twenty four, we're talking with Harriet, who's had a
question about, you know, which is better, wills or trust,

(11:56):
and I'm always hesitating which is stronger. It's kind of
hesitant to, oh, it's always this or it's always that,
because it isn't always this and it isn't always that.
They work very differently. And I think when we understand
that the purpose of the trust is to intervene before
the mess happens, before chaos occurs, right, so that we

(12:20):
never get to chaos, then you see the difference. You know,
will instructions to probate court trust your own instructions maintains
privacy of the rest the tragedy as I see it,
even with traditional estate planning, you know, all you're worried
about is what happens to your stuff when you're gone.

(12:42):
The problem is people will do the trust. Thousands millions
of trusts have been done and millions have failed, and
the reason they fail is because people don't put the
stuff in the trust. So for thirty forty years now,
you know, doing this on my own, you know I'm
practicing before then, but doing it on my own. We've
always had some what do you want to you want

(13:05):
to call it coersion exactly. We've always had a way
to make sure that people are getting the stuff in
the trust, and that's evolved over time. Now we're doing
a workshop model which seems to be very effective and
at the same time much more reasonably reasonable cost. But
but that's what's going on with the with the funding.

(13:25):
So if you're giving an advice Harriet, to your to
your stepdaughter, then I would think that looking into doing
the trust based plan, it makes it just makes a
lot of sense.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Okay, yes, I think so too. I would What is
the reason, Well, I get you explain to it's to
avoid chaos, the reason to avoid probate.

Speaker 2 (13:56):
Well, you know, they will, I would say, I would
say usually usually, but there's no guarantee, you know. And
when you've got when you've got people who are when
you've got kind of that free for all going on, right,

(14:19):
will they follow it? Won't they follow it? Things? I'm
just saying psychologically, things feel much more open to discussion
the personal representative or executor of the will, right because
you're already in court. See, if you're the trustee and
you're doing a reasonable job, you're doing a good job, right,

(14:40):
very difficult for the beneficiaries to challenge you. Okay, they've
got to pay a lawyer, they've got to go to court,
they've got to initiate everything. Okay, it's like Thanksgiving dinner. Okay,
you want to have Thanksgiving dinner, right, Well, you've got
to do a lot of work to get that thing going.
But if you're going to someone else's house where the

(15:03):
Thanksgiving is are, it's easy to spoil. Maybe that's the idea.
If you want to have a rotten Thanksgiving, okay, and
you want to do it all on your own, we'll
invite over people over and then start talking politics and
religion and everything else and their kids.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
Right.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Oh, well, that's a good idea, right, But it's one
thing when you're the one setting the table, where you're
the one who has to take the effort to create
the situation where the fight can happen with probate, the
table's already laid. You're going to someone else's house. Someone
else did the work of bringing this thing in court,

(15:41):
filing the case. All you have to do is show
up and be a jerk. Okay, And they already did
all the work and they're just crossing their fingers and
hoping you don't screw things up. Whereas with the trust.
You're not in court. Now, how are you going to
get to court if you're not in court already? Well,
all you got to hire lawyer, you gotta file a complaint,

(16:01):
you gotta have something complain about d You see, it's
just things tend to go more smoothly, not for what
we would call legal reasons. Not legally. I mean, can
you amend a trust, can you compromise a trust? Yeah?
You can. But what's more likely to happen in the
real world. Well, look, if I'm getting ten thousand dollars

(16:26):
out of a probate case, right, and I tell the trustee, well,
I'm supposed to get more, and if I don't get more,
I'm gonna file a bunch of complaints and I think
you did a terrible job, and blah blah dah dah dah.
Well it's easy to do that. And now you say, oh,
but legally we could stop him for frivolousah blah blah. Yes,

(16:47):
it's true, legally you could do that, but remember the process.
The procedure is the punishment. Okay, So let's just give
the jerk fifteen thousand, and I hope he goes away.
It'll be cheaper for us. Okay, well you don't have that.
That's an appropriate case. You don't have that situation in
the trust because now the jerk has got to be

(17:07):
the one bringing you into court. They've got to put
out the money up front. It's a very different dynamic,
is what I'm saying. Legally, legally, you know, it's it's
equivalent in some I guess, not exact equivalent, but you know,
it's not that different. But as a in the real

(17:29):
world psycho everything else, it's very different. So that's what
I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Okay, well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Hey, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. Have a merry Christmas.
We've got Carol on the line. Hello, Carol, Thank you, Harriet.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
Hi Carol, Yes, good morning.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Good morning.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
I'm just oh, I'm sorry. Yeah. Well we're doing fine,
doing fine, getting over the Turkey Koma and all that.
It's not bad. Absolutely, my cup of coffee here, that's good.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (18:15):
I have a question about estate planning that I would
like to ask you, perhaps two questions.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Sure.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
I'm just I'm just a regular normal person with almost
no savings, and I have a house and I have
a rental income coming from this house. I live in it,
and it has two extra apartments. When when an if
I may go into a nursing home, I mean, I
don't have any reason right now, but you know, I'm

(18:45):
seventy nine years old. I would like to protect I
would like to protect this asset and it's income until
until if I were in a nursing home and my
son had to maintain my house, right and you know,

(19:09):
until I don't know what kind of instruments do I need?
What kind of documents do I need?

Speaker 2 (19:16):
These are good questions, very good questions, Carol, And I've
got about a minute left, so if you don't mind
hanging on, we'll get to them. But here, let me
let me just kind of the fact that you're a
regular person doesn't mean that you shouldn't be. See here's
here's here's my philosophy, and we'll play it out when

(19:36):
we get back. But wealthy people, wealthy people can take
a hit. Okay, wealthy people, if they get faced with
long term care. You got a million bucks, you can
lose half of it and you're still okay. Regular folks
have to plan more intensively. We need to use all
the legal tools more importantly for you, for p people

(20:00):
with not so much, because you don't have any margin
of error. Okay, you can't screw this thing up. We
gotta get it right the first time. Does that make sense.
That's my philosophy on this. You can disagree with it.
Some people do, but that is my philosophy. I think
the most okay, okay, most advanced legal tools for the

(20:20):
middle class not be because it's not about dollars and cents.
It's about autonomy, it's about control. It's about your quality
of life. That's what I think. So you've been listening
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's
personal attorney. Hang on, Carrol, and we'll get to your
questions when we get back. Thanks.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
David's got the how too you're looking for. Just call
seven seven twenty four twenty four. This is the David
Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Hello and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Now's the time to give us
a call. Six one six seven seven four twenty four
twenty four. That's six one six seven seven four twenty
four twenty four. We'll get your question on the air.
We also have a website, Davidcarrier Law dot com. And

(21:26):
at the website Davidcarrier law dot com, we've got all
kinds of good stuff on the website, including when our
next workshops are happening. For all you Red Wagon Club
members out there. We are. You know, we're going to
be at the Meyer Gardens in a couple of weeks. Now,
oh my goodness, you should have gotten your invite in
the mail for our annual event. Hope you to postcard

(21:49):
with comics on it, you know, a lot of fun. Anyway,
we're talking with Carol from Three Rivers. Carrol has a
house with a couple of apartments that you read it's
out not much in the way of financial savings, but
she's got the she's got the real estate. And the
question is if I need long term care, what next?
And here's the problem that you've got, Carol, with the

(22:13):
house with the apartments in it. The it's not homestead
one hundred percent anymore. You know right now, your principal
residence exemption, you know, which you get on your annual
tax bill probably shows like, I don't know, seventy eighty
percent principal residence exemption, and the rest eighty percent there

(22:33):
you do. And then the rest is by square footage
is the are the apartments. Okay, so your homestead is
only eighty percent. Let's say it's a one hundred thousand
Just say it's one hundred thousand dollars property. That means
that twenty percent of the property is not homestead. In
other words, as far as Medicaid's concerned, you have twenty

(22:53):
thousand dollars in the bank, or if it's two hundred
thousand dollars, you've got forty thousand dollars in the bank.
That's what they think, that's how they look at it. Okay,
so you got forty thousand dollars in the bank, guess what,
you don't qualify for medicaid And say, wait a second,
it's not money in the bank. I can't sell this.
I can't just sell off part of it. Or and

(23:15):
the problem is now you're disqualified. So here's what you
here's what you wanted. Here's what I would suggest, because
your situation is a very typical situation in that you've
got enough, you're comfortable if everything works out. Okay, you're comfortable,
but things go teeter totter on you, now what, and

(23:40):
because you're an awful lot of folks in your situation
are like, oh, I don't need that fancy estate planning.
I don't need that older law planning because I don't
have that much. Let the millionaires do that. Let the
millionaires save millions, which is fine, and some of them
do it, But frankly, once you get a million dollars,

(24:01):
you think you're invincible anyway, and you don't take care
of business people in the you know, three to six
hundred thousand dollars range net worth. You can't kid yourself
that you can actually pay for this stuff. You can't
kid yourself. So those are the people we mostly serve
because there's a sense of reality there. Okay, So here's

(24:25):
how we fix your situation. You come to one of
our workshops, all right, I mean, or what you want
to do is what we call a medicaid divestment trust,
the red wagon, the root seller, we have different names
for it, but it's the same thing. It's a trust.
When you put the asset in the trust for medicaid purposes,

(24:46):
only for medicaid purposes only. Let me say that again,
only for Medicaid purposes. Do you give up ownership of
the asset, You divest the asset. It's a Medicaid divestment
trust designed to trigger the five year period. Why is
that important because five years go ahead?

Speaker 4 (25:09):
Are you saying it's a little fuzzy on the line,
But are you saying a Medicare divested.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Trust divestment trust Medicaid not Medicare because Medicare doesn't pay
for this. It's Medicaid that pays for it, okay, And
the way it pays for it is by taking your
tax dollars. Say again, yeah, so we call it a
Medicaid divestment trust. There's other words for it. But what

(25:42):
it does is the transfer of the real estate to
the trust or financial assets whatever is treated as a
divestment as if you had given it away. Now, you
didn't give it away because you're still living there, you're
still collecting rent, all the rest of this stuff, all right,

(26:04):
but for Medicaid purposes, you gave it away. What that
means is and this is all according to Hoyle. I mean,
we've done this literally thousands of times now and gotten
people benefits in the whole nine yards. It may sound crazy,
but it works. And five years sixty months after you
create the trust, Medicaid doesn't care what's in the trust.

(26:27):
So when you're eighty four years old and you decide, hey,
I think I need some long term carrier. And for
me to my way of thinking, what you should be
doing is PACE program of all Inclusive Care for the elderly,
because that's an at home care program keeps you at home,
you keep your income, everything else, right, but it provides

(26:48):
the care that you need to age in place, so
you die at home ninety five percent of the time.
That's what happens, okay, nationally when people are involved in
the paceport. So that's what we want. That would seem
like a good thing. But the way you do it
is we put the property in the trust. It's treated

(27:09):
as if you had given it to your son, as
if you had just deated it over to him. Now,
the advantage of not deating it over to your son
is that your trust doesn't have a daughter in law
that doesn't have kids, doesn't have all the risks that
are attendant with being a younger person, with being your son.

(27:29):
All right, there's no risk with the trust. It's you.
It's the same thing, okay, But now five years later,
Medicaid won't count it. Medicaid will not count it. And
now you apply for a pace or you apply for
one of these other programs, and they say, hey, where
are you living And you say, I'm living in my
house and they say, oh, yeah, well you better sell

(27:52):
the house because there's rental income and all the rest
of it. We see it from your taxes. And then
you say, well, here's a copy of the trust plunk,
here's a copy of the deeds, here's a copy of
my bank statements. Here's a copy of everything that I've
done over the last five years, right, which is really
no different than what you're doing. Now. You're still doing
your schedule lee and reporting the taxes and all the rest. Yeah,

(28:13):
you're doing all that, but now it as time goes by,
as the five years expire, now the house doesn't count anymore.
The income doesn't count, and you've saved it up. Let's
just say you can save it up because it's in
that trust. That income doesn't count either. Okay, and now
you're so security, does you know, you're pension whatever it

(28:36):
is that counts. But the assets in the trust, okay,
we just accumulate those. We accumulate those within the trust,
they don't count. And every single time we apply for benefits,
we always give them a copy of the trust. We
always give them the funding documents. We always prove that, yes,
it was more than five years ago that I put

(28:57):
these assets in the trust. And guess what approved approved
to prove to prove because why because we're following their rules.
We don't make up these rules. We just use the
rules that they create. That says I got to pay
my taxes. I pay my taxes. Says you got to
do this. I do this. You say you got to
do that. I do that. You say you know I

(29:19):
have to drive seventy miles an hour. I'll screw that.
I'm driving eighty. Sorry, but even by large, you know
we're gonna we're gonna meet. They make the rules, we
follow them. And now you get to keep your house.
And when it goes to your son, he gets all
the tax benefits stepped up basis the whole nine yards

(29:41):
that he would have gotten anyway. But my view of
the world.

Speaker 4 (29:45):
Is that go ahead, and the income generated from the
apartments is also included in that trust.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Yes, we just accumulated within the trust.

Speaker 4 (29:59):
Okay, So all the.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Taxes, utilities, insurance expenses of the trust. Now and you say, well,
wait a second, I want to spend that money. I say, well,
what do you want to spend it on? You say, well,
I want a couch? Fine, I have the trust by
a couch. Put it in the house, no problem. Oh
I want to put a hot tub in the backyard, Fine,
put a hot tub in the backyard. That's fine. Okay,

(30:27):
you know, and you need it for living expenses. Well,
there's a way that there's four ways actually to do
all this. The point is they made the rules. If
we comply stringently with the rules, there's no reason for
you to go broke. There's no reason for you to
leave your house. You know. Look, if your bedridden or

(30:48):
something like that, you might have to, but only in
that extreme situation. As long as you're large and in charge,
stay that way, stay home. No problem can be done. Okay, okay, Carol,
that music means all right. If you want to hang
on to the last segment, that'd be fine too. If
you've got another question, But right now I got to
get out. You've been listening to the David Carrier Show.

(31:11):
I'm David Carrier.

Speaker 5 (31:12):
Your family's personal attorney.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
David's working and working and taking your calls. Now this
is the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Carol has left us, but you know,
I want you to think about this. Carol is like,
she's the person that this whole practice is for. Really,
I mean a very very real way in that she's
not wealthy, but she's got some stuff. She's worked her

(32:03):
whole life, she's made good choices, she's done good things,
and now we're at a point where if you don't
make the right choices, you're gonna you're screwed. Because here's
the thing. She's got a couple of rental apartments, right, Well,
there's an income limit that most people don't have to

(32:24):
worry about for receiving PACE benefits about twenty eight hundred
bucks a month for the individual actually receiving the benefits. Okay, well,
I'm going to guess that was Social Security. That's not
a problem. But if you had the rent from the
two apartments, and it's gross rent, it's the gross amount,
not the net amount, the gross amount and the twenty okay,

(32:45):
same way with so security and pension whatever, it's the
gross amount that counts. So she's not going to be
eligible for pace. She might be, you know, but oh,
I'm sorry, you got the income. Oh yeah, well the
income's low enough, right, The income from the apartments is
low enough, So she still qualifies. Yeah, but now she's
got to qualify as if it was a regular Medicaid case. Well,

(33:08):
now she doesn't qualify. Again, she doesn't have any money
to hire people at thirty bucks an hour to come
in and help out. She doesn't have that. But she
did pay for all these years paid into Medicaid, and
so she should be able to qualify four pays. But
she can't because the one source of additional income that
she does have the apartments in her home. Right, she's done.

(33:30):
She made that decision to rent out a couple of
rooms whatever, right, that money because the twenty percent of
it of her house two hundred thousand dollars house, twenty
percent is given over to the rentals. What that means
is she's not going to qualify because Medicaid looks at
that as forty thousand dollars in the bank, and you

(33:53):
can say, well, it's not forty thousand dollars in the bank.
It's two apartments, it's twenty percent of a house. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we don't understand at take it somewhere else. We don't
get it. It's money in the bank. It's what we
call accountable asset, countable asset, same thing as money in
the bank, which is what drives you nuts when parents

(34:13):
put all their kids on the account and now they've
got countable assets they never dreamed of. Anyway, the point
is for Carol, right, it's like, yeah, but I don't
have money to pay all this money for a new
for a trust and do all the rest of this stuff. Okay,
that's where we get into the new model because one
of the things that's frustrated me over the years is

(34:34):
how do you deliver what people actually need? Right? And
that's always been my focus. It's like, how do we
do it? Well, Okay, it's one on it's a workshop,
then one on one throughout the whole process, and then
we we do what's necessary, whatever we have to do
in order to get the trust funded, which is very

(34:55):
easy to understand why most people don't bother because not easy.
It's very very difficult to do that. Okay, So about
two years ago, faced with this face with the situation
that look, the only people the only reason people don't
go with us because it makes so much sense to
do it. The reason people don't is because it was

(35:15):
so expensive, now not relatively okay, and you look at
it and brought the scheme of things. It's less than
a month of long term care. But even so, you
know that's somewhere off in the future, maybe doesn't happen,
all right. So the question then was, well, how do
we reduce the cost. And the way everybody reduces the

(35:35):
cost is by savving their conscience by giving you a
letter that says, hey, do these things which I know
you're not going to do. Well no, no, I never
accept that. Not a good idea, No, just not going
to do that. I can't live with myself. So how
do we make this And the answer has been red
wagon club, the workshop model instead of workshop, and then

(35:58):
go to one on one with an attorney, and then
with the funding process again with attorneys and paralegals and
all the rest. But it's always been a one on
one situation. Well, it turns out you don't have to
be one on one all the time. There are some
things that. Yes, it's got to be one on one.
You know, we're not going to tell the room what

(36:20):
you're doing with your stuff or you know, the confidentiality
and all that. Yeah, yeah, we've got to safeguard that.
But what if instead of one to one family, right,
what if instead I could spend my time, attorneys could
spend their time. Our attorneys could spend their time talking
to five families where ten families or twenty families? What if? Okay,

(36:45):
now the cost comes down because I still have the
same attorney, but now he's not talking to one person
talking to five. We still got to do the one
on one. Yes, for that, that's there's no way around that,
which is fine because you don't want to find a
way around that makes sense. Yes, but everything that we
can do in a workshop scenario, that's what we're going

(37:06):
to do. And that's not appropriate for everybody. Yes, that's true,
it's not appropriate for everybody, but you know something, it's
appropriate for an awful lot of folks, just like Carol.
So it lets us bring the cost out. It's less
than half now to get it done. Then it used
to be why because yeah, we still have to do
all the follow through. We still have to do all

(37:26):
the documents the way we do. We haven't changed that,
but what we have changed is the way we deliver that.
Do you see? And now it's the people like Carol
who were before was like, oh, it's just ridiculous, it
can't afford it. Now it's like, well, you know, and
we do payment plans and we don't charge in dry
us in all all all kinds of stuff to make

(37:47):
it possible for regular folks to get this done. But
the point is, the point is the fundamental that by
doing it in the workshop model, okay, with a community
of people, and then the follow on we charge. We
have a Red Wagon club. We charge a monthly fee
for what for any changes that there have to be.
It's always a free phone call, it's always a free visit,

(38:09):
that never changes. But now you get the services included,
and there's meetings every month and we do all kinds
of stuff. Go to the website you'll see it. But
the but the point is for regular folks now you
don't have to go broke, because in Carol's situation, she'd
be forced with selling the thing and then consuming all

(38:29):
the money two hundred thousand. Great, that'll take that will
be gone in about a year of a year or
so of long term care. Now that's all gone, and
now you're broke, and now you're on the Medicaid and
you got no nothing for the kids, nothing for to
be used to supplement to add to what Medicaid will

(38:50):
pay for. And that's our goal number one, to make
sure that everything goes nice and smooth, no mess, nice
and easy, comply with everything. Yes, number two, make sure
that you don't go broke, make sure that your choices
matter throughout your lifetime. And then finally, because you're always
paying it for it, you're always thinking about, well, you know,
I'm gonna have a little extra because I might live tomorrow,

(39:12):
you know something. And then the leftovers that are gonna
be there. We don't force you into the artificial go
broke thing. No, we maintain and now there's something left
for your kids as well. Okay, and because we're doing
the workshop model, there's a lot more. You know. The
biggest surprise to the workshop model has been how much

(39:33):
more interaction we have. The price is way down, the
interaction is way up. It's just been a great thing
for a lot of our folks. You've been listening to
the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier inviting you to
a life plan workshop with the Three Secrets. I just
go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com and we'll
see you at a workshop.

Speaker 1 (40:08):
You've been listening to the David Carrier Show a lively
discussion addressing your questions and concerns, but not legal advice.
There is a big difference, so when making decisions that
affect your family, your property, or yourself, the best advice
is to seek good advice specific to your unique needs.
If you missed any of today's show, or would like
additional information about the law offices of David Carrier, please

(40:30):
visit Davidcarrier Law dot com.
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