(2025) 11-23 David Carrier Show Podcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 (00:21):
Hello, and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. And sorry about the first hour.
Apparently the tin can the spring freight and so I
had to replace parts of it. So with any luck
at all, the audio will be better this time. I
get you know, first hour, I get messages. Just got

(00:44):
another call about the horrible audio. Well, you know, that's
actually kind of reassuring that actually anybody called in, you
know what I mean. I love the calls. But six
one six seven seven four twenty four, twenty four, that's
the number to call if you'd like to get your question,
comment or concern on the air. And if you're still
complaining about the audio, well, I don't know. We tried

(01:08):
to fix it. We even bought some new string there.
It should be okay. If it's not, let us know.
Let's see. This is the David Carrier show right right right,
got that part six one, six seven, twenty four, twenty four.
I said that. Drop me an email David at Davidcarrier

(01:28):
law dot com. Love to get the emails. We'll answer
those on the air, Davidcarrier Law dot com, David at
Davidcarrier law dot com. Or just go over to the website.
And I really strongly encourage you to go to the
website Davidcarrier Law dot com. We've got a new thing over.
Well it's not new now, I mean doing it for

(01:49):
six months or so. Anyway. It's a AI artificial intelligence
dunt dunt dum artificial intelligence assistant. And the idea is,
have you ever tried going to a website and trying
to find something and having a difficult time? You know,
click here, click there, click for this other thing, click, click, click,
you know, you go clicking and all the rest and

(02:11):
eventually give up in frustration. I understand. So what we
did to make it easier is we put this thing
on which pops up. If you don't have a pop
up block, or if you do, they have to hit
control or something like that. I don't know. It'll pop
up for you, click on it and what it does
is you can actually ask it questions. I mean, like

(02:34):
real questions, Like you don't even have to You can
talk to it if you want to. If you have
a microphone and headphones and whatnot speakers, I mean, you
can talk to it on your phone. It works, You
can talk to it. It's really kind of neat and
instead of having to search out stuff, it'll search it
out for you, right, it'll and then it will answer

(02:56):
your question kind of thing. Now, it's not legal, okay,
And so when I say answer your question, I don't
mean definitive answer, but it will definitely put you in
the right direction. Okay, you know, you'll go in the
right direction there, and it will it'll give you basic ideas, okay.
I mean it's it's trained on our stuff, so you're

(03:18):
gonna get sort of the the company line on that, right,
you know, kind of what we think about these things.
And it doesn't cost you anything. It's free. Uh, And
so I very strongly encourage you to head on over
the website David Carrier law dot com. Are you glad
my name's not long? And you know hard to you know, Carrer?

(03:40):
How how difficult can that be? David? How difficult, that
law law, that law good anyway, David Carrier law dot com.
And give it a try, give it a spin, see
if you like it. You can type in if you
want there are some pre uh suggested questions there. You
can just click on those if you want to, but
if you really like to. And the whole idea was,

(04:02):
we have so much good stuff. I think I think
it's good stuff on the website that people aren't taking
advantage of. So by doing it this way, with luck,
you'll you'll get a lot more advantage. Now, back in
the day an hour ago, when the then tin cans

(04:22):
weren't working, at least not working very well, we were
talking about why last week we had no live show.
I mean, we do emphasize really do want to do
the show live. We're live right now, unless, of course
this is the best of but right now today it's
live and you can call six one, six seven seven

(04:43):
twenty four twenty four get your question, common or concern
on the air. But last week it was it was
a recorded show because I was I was down in Florida, Florida.
Yes that was nice and warm, no wintry mix down
in Florida, and was teaching other attorneys how to do
this kind of thing. We even had. There's one one

(05:06):
of the sessions I did where where most of the
attorneys were not a state planning elder law attorneys. They
were other They did other stuff PI or immigration or
real estate and things like that, but they hung around
to see kind of how we do this, because everybody's
got clients, right, and everybody needs to have a plan.

(05:28):
So they were kind of interested not only for themselves,
not only for their clients, I should say, but for
themselves as well, because it's it's just good stuff. It's
just that good. Anyway. The thing that struck me was
because I've had this idea of why don't we do
one of these trainings in a long term care facility.
I just think the DA spend a week a weekend

(05:50):
in a long term care facility. So it looked into it.
Our team looked into it. I didn't make the phone calls.
But here's the deal. You know what it costs a night,
And this is outrageous. Don't get me wrong, I think
this is absolutely insane. You know what it costs a
night to spend at the Diplomat Hotel on the beach

(06:11):
at Fort Lauderdale and think at a private beach and everything, cabanas,
the Holy Art. It's amazing, okay, very nice place. You
know what it costs for a night three hundred dollars
and change, I mean three hundred something, three hundred and five.
I don't know. It was three hundred bucks a night.
Very nice. I'm not I'm not complaining. Bed was comfortable,

(06:32):
everything else three hundred dollars right, And that was the
super duper group rate for speaker, You know what I mean?
It was a good group rate for the event. But
why can't so why would we go there instead of
a long term care facility? The answer is it's twice
as much in a long term care facility, skilled nursing facility.

(06:54):
Six hundred bucks a night. And you know it's not
for the weekend long term care facilit It not for
the weekend. It's you know, till the curtain comes down.
Are you with me on this? I mean, this is
the astronomical expense of long term care. I think, and
I have thought for quite a while, quite a while,

(07:15):
is just overlooked and shouldn't be. How are you supposed
to spend how are you supposed to pay for that
six hundred bucks. When did you ever go to a
hotel that costs three hundred bucks a night? It gives
me the willies, you know, it's like how much. Yeah,
well it's cheaper than your idea. Yeah, well about half
the price of my idea. And of course you can

(07:37):
go to a you can go to a very inexpensive place,
you know, and not a skilled nursing facility, not a
nursing and gee, that's cheap, you know, that's only that's
only the same as a luxury hotel on the beach.
And for a lotder day it's only three hundred bucks
a night. Ooh, what a deal. Cheap, unbelievable. Huh, But

(07:58):
that's what it costs actually, And you know, I was
serious about I was very serious about the idea of
doing a training where we did where we went to
a long term care facility, because I just think it
would be you know, I spend quite a bit of
time in out, but not overnight, you know, not twenty

(08:20):
four to seven, three sixty five, you know, even for
a few days twenty four to seven. I just thought
that would be a very you know, a very eye
opening experience. You know. Now I have visited people late
at night and all the rest of it. But you know,
there's no experience like the same experience. I just thought
it'd be a very good idea, and like I said,

(08:41):
the team was like, nah, it's too expensive. I mean,
let alone, let alone everything else. Just too expensive to
do it. So okay, forget about it. But because twice
as much, twice as much, holy cow, are you kidding me?
You might as well. You know, now they provided the service,

(09:03):
I'm not knocking them. And of course a long term
in the long term care facility. It's not the deal
with the long term care facility is you know, people think, oh,
at those rates, they must be making tons of money.
They're barely getting by at those rates because they're providing care.
They are providing care for twenty four hours a day,

(09:25):
seven days a week. You know, it's a very very
difficult thing to be proprietor of a long term care facility.
Think about it. I mean, you've got to have a kitchen,
you've got to have a laundry, you got to have transportation,
you got to have medical care, you got to have
the whole nine yards. Okay, it's just when when you
take what it actually costs and then put it into context.

(09:49):
You know, something you'd actually pay for, you know, and
it's just it's just astronomical. Which is why, which is
why planning ahead because you already paid for it. See
is this is what medicaid is. Medicaid is I already
paid for the long term care through my taxes. Okay,

(10:10):
just like you already paid for your Social Security you
already paid, and you're paying on an ongoing basis too
for medicare. Right, you're paying on an ongoing basis. You
paid for it, yes, faika, but now you're paying for
it on an ongoing basis when it comes to the
to the Medicare. But of course medicare doesn't cover does
not cover long term care. And I think it's super important,

(10:33):
very important that people plan ahead for the long term
care so that they can get the level of care
that they have earned, they have earned, they have saved
for that, they have planned for all the rest of it.
You're not going to get it if you're paying one
hundred percent. But if we're paying the top ten percent,
that's the difference that makes the difference between you know,

(10:55):
I got to do this and actually living the life
that you chose us to live because you made other choices.
You've been listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
This hour of the David Carrier Show is pro bono,
so call in now at seven seven four twenty four
to twenty four. This is the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, and now is the time for
you to give us a call. Sixty one six seven
seven four twenty four twenty four. That's sixty one six
seven seven four twenty four twenty four. Yes, we had
technical difficulties in the first hour and uh so I
apologize for that. But everything's working now, one hopes. So

(11:46):
you can call us sixty one six seven seven four
twenty four twenty four, and don't complain to me about
oh it's long distance. There is no more long distance.
It's on your cell phone, no problem. Six one six
seven seven four twenty four twenty four. Go to the
website Davidcarrier Law dot com because at Davidcarrier Law dot

(12:06):
com that's where you can sign up for one of
our life plan workshops. You know, if you're thinking, oh, yeah,
you know that guy, that Carrier guy. He makes a
lot of sense. There's got to be somebody out there
who thinks that. Maybe. Anyway, if that's you, then go
to the go to the website Davidcarrier law dot com

(12:28):
and sign up for one of our free workshops. Okay,
if you've now here's the other thing them seriously, well
you should do the first one. I was kind of
serious about that too, because we're doing these workshops everywhere,
you know, Grand Rapids up in Norton Shores, down in
Portage and over in Holland. Okay, so we're doing a
lot of these because why this is not Hey, the

(12:51):
circus came to town. What we're what we've been trying to
do for thirty five years. I was listening to the ads.
You know, my ad says twenty seven years hey years,
eight years old. See I haven't changed my tune. I'm doing.
I'm running ads from eight Think about that ads from
eight years ago. Well, they're evergreen because frankly, frankly, the

(13:13):
middle class has been getting screwed for that long longer, right,
the message really hasn't changed. And I say, oh, you're
a one trick, pony. Yeah, well it's life for death,
So I guess that's a good trick. Right, How do
we make sure that middle class people don't go broke?
We've only been doing it forever, right, and haven't changed seriously.
I mean, we're not trying to we're not trying to

(13:35):
do something new. Of course, every family's new, blah blah,
but everyone's unique. But one of the things that's common
is it's better to have the money that you save
than not have it. Can we agree on that one?
I mean, is that kind of a universal? You know,
I'd rather not pay twice for stuff. I'd rather not

(13:55):
go broke. I'd rather help out. But here's what's different here.
There is what's different from when you and I were kids. Okay,
like eight kids in my family. You already know that,
and we all got the lecture. It wasn't really a lecture.
It was more of a pronouncement from mom and dad.

(14:16):
And I was one of the I was the second oldest,
right might have an oldest sister. But we all got
the same message, which was, there's a whole pile of
you and you're all going to go to college and
we can't pay for it, Okay, so you better figure
out how to pay for it yourself and get started. Now,
that was second grade when I started delivering newspapers, okay,

(14:38):
to save for college. Right. And it wasn't crazy, Okay,
it wasn't you know, mowing lawns and shovel and snow
and the whole lane yards. Right, it wasn't crazy because
back then, you know, think about what you paid for
a credit hour at school, at college if you went
to college. If you didn't, god bless it, but if

(14:58):
you did, right, well, it's twenty times as much. Now
twenty times, right, it's so expensive you can't even you know,
I know it's fifteen bucks an hour at McDonald's, I
get it. You know that's a lot at a fast
food place. Right, you can get a job for fifteen
dollars an hour. Ooh, that's a lot of money. Yeah,
well that's like three times as much, four times as much.

(15:21):
It ain't twenty times as much. And it's the same
way with automobiles, the same way with housing, same way
with all the rest of this stuff. Okay, in order
to I just saw I just saw this the other
day five years ago, I guess it was five years
or something like that. The average age of somebody buying
a new home, right, their first home, starter home right

(15:44):
was guess what, thirty It was over thirty years old.
I was like thirty three. I think thirty three years
old was the average age of someone buying their first home.
Think about that, Okay, I mean how nuts is that?
And then if you you know it is today, it's
like forty. Think about that. Forty years old to buy

(16:05):
a house. That's crazy. I mean the house was the
way you were support to build wealth and all the
rest of the stuff. Right, And in the kids these days, well,
the kids new home buyers average as forty years old.
How do we get there? You know? Yeah, I know
the pandemic and the you know, the big chill or

(16:26):
the big short you know, the big housing crisis in
two thousand and eight. There are ways that we got there.
But here's where we are. Okay. If you want your
family to stay middle class, and I don't mean super wealthy,
I mean middle class, working, building, paying for the future,
raising the grandkids, all the rest of that stuff. Right,

(16:49):
it's a different world. The lecture I got, my siblings got,
the lecture you got from your parents was you know,
we'll feed you, we'll clothe you, we'll put a room
pretty much clothed it, we'll put we'll put a roof
over your head, and we'll heat it. Okay, and then
you're on your own. Good luck to you. Well that

(17:10):
was appropriate advice back then, all right, because a new
house didn't cost two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a
car didn't cast a used car. You know what the
average price used car is thirty five thousand dollars. Thirty
five thousand dollars. I remember when my dad bought a
country Square. It was like nineteen seventy five, you know,

(17:33):
with the with the with the plastic wood grain, you
know what, was beautiful four hundred cubic inch engine. It
was like driving a sofa down the highway. It floated,
you know, four hundred, four hundred cubic inches. Okay. It
was like it was less than six thousand dollars. I
think it was fifty five hundred bucks, you know, And

(17:55):
he was telling me the price as wow, that's expensive.
And now it's seven times as much for a used car.
Are you with me on that? I mean, so, my
point is that if we want to perpetuate if we
want our kids to stay middle class, right, hanging on
to some of what you have earned. Now, look, I'm

(18:17):
all favor you know this. I'm all in favor of
you using your money for you, screw the kids, right, totally, okay.
First step, Second step, you'll never go broke if we
can preserve what you've got from long term care. You
will never go broke because everything else is a choice,
and you will never choose to go broke. You'll always

(18:38):
save it. Okay. So then the question is how do
we make sure you don't go broke for the involuntary
things like long term care? But you already paid for
it your tax dollars. You already paid for that, and
then support the next generation because they need it. Because
the world has fundamentally changed the idea of working your

(19:01):
way through college. No, you can't do that anymore the
way you know, there there are more opportunities for different
things now than there used to be. You know, you
know what Ford pays a mechanic starting mechanic is like
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year. And then
I was telling a client about that and they said, oh, yeah,
well my brother's a lead mechanic. It's one hundred and
sixty thousand dollars a year. Right, those jobs need to

(19:25):
be done right. We need those people to do that
kind of thing right. But the point is that if
we don't pass on what we have, the next generation
is going to have a tougher than we ever did.
That's my point. Even listening to the David Carrier Show,
I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
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 (19:58):
Well, welcome back to the David Carrier Show on David Carrier,
your Family's Personal Attorney. You know you can drop me
an email and ask me a question. We do appreciate that.
And I've got a couple of questions your lined up,
So I'm going to demonstrate just how wonderful it can
be to ask a question and get an answer. How
about that? Or you can call us six one six
seven seven four twenty four twenty four, Or you can

(20:21):
send an email David at Davidcarrier Law dot com. Or
you can go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com
and come to one of our life plan worksopps. Also,
I did want to remember shout out to everybody who
came to our friends giving last Friday. You know that
was our We send out an invite to all of

(20:43):
our clients. You know, thank god you didn't all show up.
All I gotta say is, you know, we were planning
for about one hundred and well we had three seedings
and the first one I think we only had like
three people playing. You know, we do you know, go
through the line and then you know watch uh watch
Peanuts movies and do trivia. Yeah I'm boring, right, Yeah,

(21:05):
Well we had a good time. I had a good
time anyway, So thanks for everyone who came to friends giving.
H it get packed later on? That was nice. Remember
what for the only three of the people who signed
up showed up, and it was like, uh, where is everybody?
I made the turkey myself, and I smoked the pork,

(21:27):
you know, the pulled pork. I did that too. Yes, yes,
that's right, I actually do stuff anyway. Six one, six seven,
four twenty four. Let's get to the question what exactly
is in a state? Oh that's a good question. The
answer is basically leftover stuff when you're dead. Okay, but
the there's a better there's more detail here. The property,

(21:48):
the property house, I guess has a title that is
in the estate of my deceased dad. Well, your dad's
dead and his name was and says it's been like
fifteen years. That's not a record. That's not even close
to the record. It also has a deceased person's name
on it, probably Dad, right, I'm just wondering what it
means exactly, and is it the same as a trust. No,

(22:11):
it's completely different than a trust. The estate and a
state is the leftover stuff that's just kind of hanging
out there. Okay, you're in the supermarket, you're carrying your
dad's carrying around this land. He slips and falls, whoops,
the stuff goes flying, it lands on the floor. For
fifteen years, it's been on the floor. Okay, that's the estate.

(22:35):
It's just out there. It's not anybody's name in particular,
but we remember that dad used to own it, and
so now it's part of Dad's estate. That's what we
call it. Right, simple, fairly simple anyway, and it's going
to stay dads forever. As I say, it's not a record,
I mean we were working two cases. Now they go

(22:56):
back over back to the nineties for crying out loud,
the nineteen nineties, right where somebody died, and somebody died
in the filmy stay in the house and stayed in
the house, and then other people died, more people died,
and so now we're probating multiple estates because mom and

(23:16):
dad died and there were a bunch of kids, and
then a bunch of those kids died, and some of
them had kids and some of them didn't have kids,
and you know, and now trying to clear up the
title is like, hey, this is a lot of fun
for us, oh boy, having the good times. The inclination.
I ran into this early on when I first started

(23:37):
doing this thirty five years ago, when my client's name
was like Bob Smith, okay, and he had all these
titles and all these deeds, and we're deeding them into
the trust, you know, getting ready to deed them in
the trust. And Bob Smith says to me, you know,
the Robert Smith, the Robert E. Smith. You know, I'm

(23:58):
Robert Edward and they were that's my dad, Robert Edgar.
I'm Robert Edward Smith. I'm like, what the first time
I ran into this, it's like, yeah, I said, well,
you know it, it was in my dad's that's actually
my dad, that's not me. And I'm like, but what

(24:18):
about the taxes? What about the principal residence exemption on
this one house? There are a bunch of rental properties too.
It's like, oh, well, you know, you know, I was
told to avoid probate as long as possible, and I've
been able to avoid it. Afar. It's like, yeah, no kidding, Oh,
you also avoided the inheritance tax, which, let's hope they
don't catch you on that. You're also claiming you're also

(24:41):
claiming back then they call it the homestead exemption. We're
also claiming a homestead exemption. You're not entitled too, right
nowadays personal residence exemption. Okay, I mean this is like wrong.
Thank god he was an only child, right, I didn't
have siblings who were crashing on the door. So but anyway,
this kind of idea, right where you just kind of

(25:03):
let it go right for years and years and years
it happens. Is it a good idea? No, it's not
a good idea, especially given the way property taxes work
in Michigan the way you know our local property taxes work.
You're claiming a principal residence exempt. Yeah, I know, y'all,
but you don't own the place. The person who's claiming

(25:24):
the principal residence exemption, which is a major decrease in
the property taxes, right, major decrease in the property tax
is going to double. You don't get that principal resident
but you're not entitled to it. Your mom was, and
she died. She died twenty years ago. Holy cow. Now
what Oh and by the way, back when she died,

(25:47):
we had uncapping. Uncapping, in other words, you should be
paying more property tax as a percentage on a bigger
value of the house. All right, they got you. I mean,
it's at least we don't have an inheritance tax anymore
like we did with that guy. Okay, So my point is, right,
when somebody passes, get the thing done. Yeah, the probate

(26:10):
police aren't going to show up banging on your door
right to tell you you don't own it and all
the rest of it. And it's exactly the opposite of
a trust. The trust is the vehicle, the shopping cart
that you put the house in. So when dad passes,
slips and falls right in the supermarket of lives. Dad
slips and falls. Now the house doesn't go flying, and

(26:32):
the trust says who gets it? And that's enforceable. Okay,
this way we've got to go through the We got
to go through the probate court to figure out who
the heck, who the heck owns this thing? Terrible, don't
be doing don't be doing this. It's not good. I
mean now now we're getting multiple probates out of it. Oh,

(26:53):
it's wonderful for the lawyers. Isn't it great for us? Yeah? Sure,
we have to do all these estates all at once. Hurrah,
but terrible. Don't you dare do it. Here's another one
living trust. Now this is a I picked this one
because it's important. We my wife and I had set
up a family living trust with a signed trustee and

(27:14):
success or trustee or also to the beneficiaries, probably your
kids or somebody right. However, recently the primary assigned trustee
passed away. I'm sorry for that. Now I would like
to update the trust with new trustees, primary and successor,
update who the beneficiaries are and how the assets get
distributed to them. My question is from convenience and cost perspectives.

(27:36):
I think they mean perspectives. But anyway, do we need
to go back to the original attorney or as a
more local attorney can do the same updates for the
same reasonable fees. Okay, what's reasonable here? I mean that
this is something that has been a bugaboo for me.
Like right along, it's like, what is a reasonable fee? Well?

(28:01):
Is cutting corners? Reasonable is not doing the whole job.
Reasonable is giving you a letter with instruction so to
do things that everybody knows you're not going to do.
It saves a lot of money to do that, right,
The fee is much less, but it doesn't work. Is
that reasonable? I don't think so. I don't think so.
So reasonable fees. Let's we can have that conversation. Okay,

(28:25):
but when you talk about updating documents, okay, I used
to be all. I mean, we did amendments and you know,
consiles to wills and all the rest of this back
in the day. We don't do it anymore, okay, hardly ever,
will we simply amend the document or what have you,

(28:47):
Because it's a it becomes a patchwork, right, you're patching
the tire and what we're trying to do with the
documents is frankly, it is not easy stuff. We're trying
to prot it against creditors. We're trying to get the
banks to accept it. We're trying to make things go
nice and smooth. Think about your taxes, right, do they

(29:09):
have a file a tax return? I know you have.
The government makes it difficult for you to give them money.
Not easy to give the government money. They give all
these forms and stuff like that, right, How difficult you
think it is to get them to actually pay for
something now they agreed to do it. I mean, thinking

(29:30):
about your applying for Social Security, easiest thing in the
world in terms of government stuff, but it's still not
so easy. Right. So what we're planning to, what we're
trying to do here, what we are actually doing day
after day after day. Right Right now, we've got about
forty folks, forty one, forty two folks who we've done

(29:51):
the medicaid applications for. Right. Well, we'll get back to
that when when we get back in the last segment.
In the meantime, you've been listening to the David Carrier
Show on David Carrier your family's personal attorney. Yeah, yeah,
Michigan's the leaders in best Okay, fine, I'm good with it.
But who beat Syracuse seventy to seven? Yeah it was

(30:14):
Notre Dame, that's right, seventy to seven. I don't know
if you've seen that game, but if you, if you haven't,
I owed to yourself at least the highlights. You know,
it takes you ten minutes, so it's hard to get
ten touchdowns in less than ten minutes. But I saw
one of them. It was nine minutes and thirty seconds.
So nine minutes and thirty seconds you get to watch

(30:34):
ten ten touchdowns. Unbelievable anyway, six one, six, seven, seven, four,
twenty four, twenty four. Don't bother calling because this is
the last segment and I'm not gonna have time anyway,
But you can drive me an email David at Davidcarrier
Law dot com and we'll get after it. Now, what
I'd like to do. What I would like to do

(30:55):
is talk a little bit about amending trust. I mean,
that's what the question here is. Do I have to
go back to the original guy? No you don't, No,
you don't. They're your documents right now. Our goal, our goal,
my goal is to have such a relationship with my
clients that you wouldn't You wouldn't even consider going anywhere else.
Why because we treat you right, and you like us

(31:16):
and we like you, and you know what have you?
I mean that that would be the goal. Okay, So,
but you can take them anywhere. They're your documents, and
we don't. We're not like some of these big downtown
law firms that they hang on to your originals and
if you want original documents you have to go back
to them. Oh no, no, no, we don't do that.
You get all your originals. We do keep electronic copies, yes,

(31:39):
we absolutely do, and we can certify those as authentic
in case your house burns down or you know, you
don't pay the bill on your storage unit and you
know they wind up on a TV show or something.
Your your personal documents. But so we do keep them
safe and safe in town all that. But no, you
get your original documents taken wherever you choose. But the

(32:02):
idea here, the idea behind this question, which is from
convenience and cost perspective. Convenience and cost perspective, do we
need to go back to the original attorney or a
more local attorney who can do the same updates for
the same reasonable fees. So look, you know it's a

(32:22):
reasonable attorney fee zero for free, all right, I get it.
You know, like you know, a dollar here and do
it for a dollar. Presumptively, attorney fees are unreasonable to
the people who have to pay them. I get it,
I understand. So let's just start with that. But here's
the thing. We used to pre COVID. Pre COVID put

(32:45):
it that way, we used to amend documents or do
consicils to wills and stuff like that. Even then, it
didn't make any sense, and we didn't do it all
the time. Most of the time we would restate documents, okay,
But nowadays it really makes no sense because it's very

(33:06):
difficult this again personal experience, very difficult to get a bank,
a financial institution, an insurance company, or somebody to accept
to accept amended documents. You know, it's not a legal
technical thing. It's not legally they're supposed to Okay, legally,

(33:26):
it's fine, all right to amend the documents. Legally, technically, yes,
they should accept them. They should. They shouldn't have a problem.
But I've had banks, you know, Mom and Dad is
the trustees, Sunny Boy takes over. He's got the death certificates,
you know, for one of the one of the parents,
and so he's supposed to take over. Oh no, well

(33:47):
we can't take that, you know. It's like, what do
you mean you can? Or or they'll say, oh, that
power of attorney is stale, stale, What the hell? What
does that mean. It's a power of attorney. It's not
a little for bread. It doesn't get stale, there's no staleness.
But they still won't take it. So we live in
the world of what world do we live in? We

(34:07):
live in the world of practicality. We live in the
world of let's get it done. And can we eventually
argue somebody at a bank into accepting the documents they
don't want to accept? Can we do that sometimes? Sometimes?
And sometimes it'll just take them sometimes. Do you want
to live in the world of sometimes or do you

(34:28):
want to live in the world of you know, all
the time or as close to all the time as
I can possibly make it? Okay, See, here's the thing.
When you need these documents to work, when you need
your power of attorney to work, your trust to work,
your healthcare power of attorney patient advocate to work. That

(34:49):
is generally a very bad time for your family members.
Very stressful time, very expensive time, very confusing time. There's
so much going on. It's not just the legal technical
aspect of things. It's the emotional, it's the it's everything
is all crushing down at the same time. Frequently. I'm

(35:12):
not saying every always. Sometimes things go like a like
a Hallmark movie. But that's that's a little bit unusual
for it to work like that. Okay. Generally it's a
very frustrating time. And so to have a document that
now I've got to argue with the people to accept it,
and they send you away and then I come back

(35:32):
and then we argue with them, and maybe they do it,
maybe they don't, you know, And can you go to
court and have it enforced? Yes, legally, technically the documents
amended and all that are sufficient. Okay, I'm not We're
not talking about legal technical here. What we're talking about
is real world. Okay. Should the British have left Washington alone? Yeah,

(35:56):
but he had to cross the Delaware on Christmas Eve
and kill him in their sleep after they were drunk
celebrating Christmas. In order to make that happen. Okay, sometimes
you got to do stuff that you would otherwise not
want to do. Well, I don't want to cross the Delaware, right.
What I would prefer to do, and this is what
our practice is is we restate the documents. Look, it's

(36:18):
only paper. You don't have to go out and kill
a sheep or pound papyrus or put them in clay
tablets anymore. It's not that ard. You've got laser printers
boom boom, boom, one hundred pages of a second or whatever.
It is crazy, it's wonderful, right, So we can redo
the documents. The actual production is not that big a deal.

(36:38):
And like last year, last year State of Michigan revised
powers of Attorney for healthcare and powers of Attorney for finances.
There's new stuff and there's new law. Okay, well you
got one from ten years ago. You want to patch
it up? Or the will a will or a trust?
What you want to patch it up? Or do you
want to get the latest and greatest. My view is

(37:01):
the latest and greatest. Why wouldn't you do the latest
and greatest? Because it's not so much a matter of
production of putting you know, ink on paper. That's easy
to do. That's cheap to do. What's difficult is thinking
things through. Okay, you say, well, I just want to
do this one thing. Why can't I cross it out,

(37:22):
white it out, and write in these new names. Because
that's not how it works. Okay, if you want to
wind up in probate court, I you know, go ahead
and do that, white it out, you know, write in
new names. Oh, that's a good idea. Instead, if you're
making changes like this, it's a great opportunity to rethink
what it was that you wanted to do. There are

(37:42):
things you can do now that you couldn't used to,
that you didn't used to be able to do. Does
that make sense? Yeah, you couldn't do them before, but
you can do them now. Okay. There's lots of stuff
like that. And if you take this stuff seriously, then
things work out very well for your family, right they
work out very well for you. You you know, like
I said, we've got forty two folks right now in

(38:03):
long term care, well forty times what nine hundred dollars
a day, thousands of tens of thousands of a day.
Our clients are actually saving right now because they did
the planning, not patchwork quilt, but serious focused planning. I've
been listening to the David Carrier Show. On David Carrier

(38:24):
your family's personal attorney. Happy Thanksgiving.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
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

(38:59):
visit Davidcarrierlaw dot com.