(2025) 2-2 David Carrier Show Hour 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
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. Your show
about retirement law. That's right, it's all about retirement about
you know, how do we make sure we hang on
to what we got? Isn't that a song? Let's hang
on to what we got? Yeah, that's that's the song. Anyway,
That's what this is all about. It's how do you
hang on to what you've got? You built it up,

(00:55):
you did it, you did the hard work. Congratulations. Now
in the last couple of years of your life, we're
going to take it all away and leave you broke
and your spouse is going to be broke to whoops,
why oh, I don't know, Give me a call six
one six seven seven, twenty four twenty four. Dave Carrier

(01:15):
will explain it all to you. So if you have
a question, comment, or concern regarding wills, trusts, or probate,
like why do you need those things. Huh, just a
waste of time, just paperwork. Kill a tree, that's bad.
Isn't it bad to kill trees? Sure it is. But
think about it this way back in the day, when
most people were doing exactly the same sort of estate

(01:37):
planning that you're doing now, exactly the same. You have to, like,
you know, kill a sheep, right, and you know, use
its hide for vellum, make make the sheep skin, you
know what I mean, to write down the wheel. That's
what WILLIAMS Shakespeare did, right, or I guess he had.
They had paper by that time. But frankly, the estate

(01:57):
plan that most people do. You know, Abraham Lincoln would think,
oh yeah, I can do that, all right. It's exactly
the same sort of thing he did. I don't know
if you know about William Shakespeare, the Bard, you know,
the father or whatever you want to call it, of literature,
of everything good in the world, Romeo and Juliet, you know,
all the rest of that stuff. Anyway, Titus andronicas whatever, Okay,

(02:21):
he had a will, and in his will he got
rid of a second best bed. I don't know if
you have a second best bed, but if you have
a will, William Shakespeare would see if you have a will,
get it will Shakespeare William Anyway, it's that old that
it's the same idea. Everybody's doing it the same way. Oh,

(02:41):
I gotta have a will, got to leave my stuff
to my kids. I mean, do you think Duke's and
nobility and stuff they put their kids name on the
They put their kids name on it, just like you. Oh.
And nothing has changed in the last several hundred years,
has it. Oh no, no, no, no, everything's exactly the same.
We don't have you know, indoor plumbing now, we don't

(03:03):
have refrigeration, we don't have you know, pharmaceuticals that actually work.
All right, none of that's the case. We don't have
people getting you know, the average age. Which do you
know why they set Social Security? You get your so
security originally you got at age sixty five. They lowered it,
but you got it sixty five. Why because white guys

(03:25):
didn't live past sixty four. I don't even want to
talk about other minorities. Just talk about the you know,
the people that you thought they thought we're going to
be getting the Social Security you'd be dead, but on
average you'd be dead by the time it was time
for you to get the Social Security Okay. I mean,
that's how far we've come. It's a very different world
that we're living in now. And yet, and yet people

(03:48):
are planning for retirement the same way they did it
back in the day. Well maybe you think that makes sense,
but I certainly don't. And that's what this show is
all about. This is all about how do we make
sure that your stuff in this environment? All right? Think
about when you bought your first house. Okay, think about
when you bought your first house. How much did that cost?

(04:09):
I can tell you right now. My first place cost
fifty thousand dollars forty nine seven. Right. It was a
two bedroom, one bath, you know, post war place just
south of Alexandria, Virginia. When I was at the was
at the Pentagon. That's what it costs. The same thing
right now is like three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
It's ridiculous. It was It was like eleven hundred square feet.

(04:31):
Are you kidding me? When we had a second kid,
we had a move. So that's what it was then. Okay,
Now that was what thirty forty years ago. It was
a long time ago, Okay, but it's forty years, really
all that long. Are the same things going on now
as that we're going on, then, I think a lot
of things are changing. That's what I think. I think

(04:52):
society has changed. I think people are living longer. I
think people are living longer with what used to be
life ending diseases. Come on now, right, how many people
do you know who had a new hip? How many
people do you know had a new need? Right? You
think they used to do those all the time back
in the day. They did not. Okay, So the point

(05:14):
is your the way you live has changed radically, Its
changed very much. Okay, the way most people live has changed,
and things get more expensive all the time. And yet
we're planning for retirement as if nothing had changed, as
if oh yeah, so security be plenty, right, or if
you have your savings and so many, so many of

(05:36):
our folks have the four oh one K or the
IRA or something. It's good, good, right, good to have that.
But what they've done, the hard part of it, all right,
they've done the I showed up at work, I took
three percent of my income whatever it is, and I
put it in the IRA. The four oh one K. Good,
nice to have done, or you saved, or you paid

(05:58):
off the house, or you did you know, pretty much
paid off the house, right because at one percent interest,
you don't want to pay off that mortgage. Heard that story,
understand it. But what have you done beyond that? You say, well,
I piled it up. What more do you want from me? Well,
what I would like from you is to hang on
to it for yourself. I'd like to hang on to

(06:21):
it for your spouse. That's the that's the key. You know.
There's so many people out there who are all about, oh,
you know, here's how you get the extra one percent
or two percent or ten percent or whatever percent. Here's
how we're going to manage your money till there's no
money left to manage. The rest of the day is
filled with that kind of show. Right, how do I
make sure, oh, you never go broke? You know? You know?

(06:41):
Market rises, yes, market falls? No? Not that all important?
All great stuff, all right, really important to make sure
that your investment portfolio is balanced and all the rest
of it. And guess what, I don't know, Jack Diddley,
about any of that. Okay, I don't know if you
need annuities. I don't know if you should invest in

(07:03):
rocket ships or whatever else. It looks like a good
deal to me. What do I know? Nothing, that's the point.
That's the point. I don't know anything about that. All
I know is that when you start getting a bill
every month for six thousand dollars, which is like nobody
gets it for that anymore. You know, niney twelve, you

(07:25):
go to the nice place in town. You know, it's
eighteen thousand dollars, five hundred and fifty dollars a day,
every day, every day, you know, eighteen thousand dollars a month.
What I know is I haven't seen a retirement investment
strategy that really addresses that. Okay. And you say, well,
you know, I may just die my sleep, And I say, well,

(07:46):
you know, you might just win the lottery too. That
would be great. Okay, Yeah, that would be a very
good thing, if you know, the last check bounces. But
that's not how it really works. It doesn't really worked
that way. The way it works is something happens that
should have been expected but is not expected. Okay, talk

(08:08):
to your friends, if you know anyone who's got a
loved one who has the dementia. And now everybody admits
that this person has the dementia, okay, of whatever kind
it is, or physical disability for that matter, Right, and
ask them when did they figure it out? When did
you figure that one out? Okay, about the dementia? What

(08:29):
have you? I promise you it won't be Oh when
the doctor told us, then we saw you know, then
we saw that from then on there was a problem.
Or as soon as we saw a problem, you know,
we've figured it out. That's not how it works. The
way it works is we all live in adaptation, in
figuring things out and making allowances in dare I say

(08:51):
the word denial. We all live in denial about that
kind of thing, about our own retirement, about our own health,
about the health of those people around this. And I
haven't heard a different story other than that's not quite
how to say. I don't really know how to say it.
But the idea is, whenever you get somebody with the

(09:11):
dementia diagnosis, right, you know what they always say, always
say every time everybody's like, oh, we should have seen
that coming. Oh you know, when he started putting the
you know, putting these galoshes in the refrigerator, that should
have been a tip off. We just thought he was
being eccentric. Eccentric. Okay, so that's the thing. You got

(09:33):
to be on your guard for this because nobody wants
to admit it. Nobody wants to see it. You tend
to see what you want to see. More or less,
we all do this, you know, cognitive dissonance and all
the rest. Right, we don't like to see what we
don't want to see. We have this thing called confirmation bias.
If we see some facts that confirm what we already
were believing, then we continue to believe that that's just

(09:56):
human beings. That's the way human beings are always been that.
Look in the Bible. You can see examples of confirmation.
You can see it right where. But that's because the
Bible tells the truth about human beings. Say maybe this
is how we really are. Okay, so it's in there.
I mean you can find it, and the whole cognitive
dissence in there too. Okay, this is nothing, This is

(10:20):
nothing new. But what we're challenging you to do is
to say, hey, maybe we could break the mold. Maybe
we could actually address these things before they happen. That's
what retirement law is all about. It's about taking the
work that you've already done. Right, We're not gonna deny.
We're not gonna Oh that happens to somebody else. Hey.

(10:41):
At sixty five, you get a seventy percent shot. Look
it up. What's the long Term Care dot gov? Okay,
it's the National Institute of Health that says, I'm not
making this stuff up. At sixty five, you get a
seventy percent chance of three years of skilled care, twenty
percent five years and more. You hear me say it,
Go to the website. You can look it up. Your
tax dollars before. You've been listening to the David Carrier Show.

(11:03):
I'm David Carrier. You are a retirement long lawyer, and
you better stop swimming or you sink like a stone.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Of the time, this hour of the David Carrier Show

(11:34):
is pro bono, So call in now. That's seven twenty four.
This is the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
Ain't I said another fella, ain't judging by the toll
of their skin. He was raised to think like his dad,
never mind full of hate on the road, don't wear
fast to the price of God. God in the ways.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Then he saw the light and hit his knees and
cried and set up for rolls up.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier.
Come on, well to you s to do a change
something today. I'm just waiting till he gets to it. Change. Well,
there you go. Welcome back to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier, your retirement laws specialist. What does that mean? Nothing,

(12:38):
just means I've been at it for a long time.
You know, it's been uh what uh since eighty two,
so forty three years. Forty three years, that's right, and
doing it at the same stand for the last thirty five.
So there you are. Six one six seven seven four
twenty four twenty four. That's the number to call. Six
one six seven seven four twenty four twenty four. You know,

(13:01):
some people complain, and I have gotten a complaint. You know. Oh,
you guys don't do things in a customary way, right,
That's exactly right, That's exactly correct. Go get yourself a will,
that'd be customary. You know, put your kids on the
house to do some beneficiary designations. Everybody tells you that,
and I say, everybody's wrong. You be the judge. You

(13:25):
be the judge. Right if what you're worried about is
how do I get my stuff if I have any stuff,
to the next generation, to the kids, to something else. Right,
that is your top priority to a lot of people say, oh,
I don't want to leave a mess when I'm gone.
I don't want to leave a mess, and I want
my kids to get stuff. So you know what the
easy way to do that? You don't even mean for

(13:47):
this one. This is brilliance on display. You should break
this down. Give all your stuff to your kids right now.
See because if you give all your stuff to your
kids right now, then you will achieve those goals. There
will be no mess when you leave, right when you
depart this earthly sojourn, right when you continue on your

(14:08):
journey across the great Divide, right, there won't be any
mess because you won't have any stuff to have a
mess with. See how important that is. And then secondly,
you say you want it to get to your kids. Great,
we'll give it to your kids right now. Then you
can watch. I love when people say this, Oh, I
want to give my stuff to my kids now because
I want to watch them enjoy it. WHOA, what about

(14:29):
you enjoying? What about you enjoying it? Now? I don't.
I'm all in favor of, you know, the the help
them out gift and that that sort of that's that's great.
You know, the things that don't really don't really impact
your quality of life. You know how you're going to
handle things. That's that's all good. You want to pay
for the you know, for the religious school or something

(14:51):
like that, God bless you, Why not a good way
to cement that next generation. Sure, but maybe we should
kind of focus on you. Maybe we should focus on
your spouse if you got one, lucky enough to have one,
if you're lucky that lucky to have a spouse, maybe
we should make sure and fellas she's gonna outlive you, you

(15:14):
know that. I think the stats are like six years.
I always say ten, why because it tends easier to
deal with, And I think it's true. I actually think
it is true, just my experience. But you know, the
stat says, you know, six to seven years on average,
whatever it is. But the point of the fact the
matter is, if you suck up all the family resources

(15:35):
having your dementia, what's left for her? What is she
supposed to do? Oh and by the way, two thirds
of Alzheimer's victims are women. So this is not all
about it's not a one way thing. Okay, it goes
both ways. So it's about everybody caring for everybody. You know, love, honor,
obey That obey one's pretty problematic, right, but anyway, love

(15:57):
and honor, sickness and health, all the rest of this stuff. Oh,
you work too hard to go broke. I don't understand
why I have to preach about this. All right. See,
here's the thing, here's the thing about human beings, right,
and this is uh, I don't know. This is centuries
of philosophy talking. But but you know, people say, oh,

(16:17):
you know you're trying to scare us. Yeah, yeah, because
guess what. I've used the statistics. I've shown you what happens.
You've seen what happens. You know what happens. Okay, I
mean if you know anybody, right, you've seen people go broke,
you've seen people lose the cottage, you see people you know,
and then then you know your spouse winds up greeting

(16:40):
people at the Walmart, Which is fine if that's what
you want to do, God bless you, go ahead, right,
but it shouldn't be because you need your groceries. Huh.
You know you would think that logically, rationally, et cetera.
Because see, here's the thing. When I first started doing
this right with this whole retirement law idea, which it

(17:00):
was really thirty five years thirty five years ago, after
they bounced me from the big law firm, which they
should have done, I wouldn't have put up with me
for more than six months in an environment like that. Now,
don't get me wrong. The Army loved me. Okay, I
got extra medals, you know, et cetera, cetera. Good good,

(17:20):
you know I got it was good. Okay. Then I
go to the big law firm and I think, oh
I'm pretty, I'm hot stuff. And no, I wasn't, not
in that context anyway. So you know, so two years
and they were wonderful to me. I am nothing bad
about that law firm. They were super, super wonderful. Law

(17:40):
firms still around, great people, wonderful if you want a
big law firm. It's just, you know, I don't know.
Some people put salt on their oatmeal. I'm not one
of them. So didn't fit. So for this many years
it's been hey, you know the way everybody's doing it
is wrong. The way everybody's doing it is not right,

(18:01):
doesn't get the results. Now. Thirty five years ago, twenty
five thousand clients ago, one hundred and twenty thousand, one
hundred and twenty thousand client contacts, that's what we're up to.
One hundred and twenty one thousand people. We've contacted, people
we've talked to all the rest. Okay, not everybody hires us,
you know, it really bothers me, but there it is. Anyway.

(18:24):
The point is, thirty five three decades ago, three and
a half decades ago, you could say, oh, yeah, what
makes you so smart? What do you know? Right? Which
fair enough, very very good. And I was, you know,
young and arrogant, and I'm now I'm old and arrogant.
But same thing. The point is, back then, you know,

(18:45):
you could say, well, how do you know if that works?
And now I can say, well, here's a couple thousand
successful applications. Here's all the people who've passed, and this
stuff actually went to the kids. Here are the forty
percent of people who take advantage of the full of
the full benefits of what we're offering after you pass.
Here's how we're protecting it for the next generation. In

(19:06):
the next generation and the next generation. This is this
is not experimental stuff. Back in the day, you could say,
how do you know, Well, in two thousand and six
when they changed the law, when the federal government changed
the law regarding how long term care works and made
it national, made it, you know, throughout the whole federal system.
So what you do here works everywhere else. You know,

(19:30):
before then you can say, oh, I don't know about that. Well,
you can't say that anymore. This stuff just works. It
works all the time you want to do it. It
works so logically, you know, if you don't want to
go broke, if you want to actually get some payback
for what you paid in right, right, But that it
doesn't work that way. People aren't that way. So what

(19:50):
do we have to do? So now I have to
do this. I have to I have to do this
radio show, which is fine by me, right like it.
But it's a matter of hey, guess what this stuff
actually happens. And people are like, ooh, you're scaring me. Well,
it ain't me doing it, you know what I mean.

(20:11):
It's your own body, it's life, it's the way, it's
the way of the universe. You know I didn't make
this stuff up. You know, you can find all the statistics.
They're all there. How many people, isn't that are hitting
the gateway ages? Now? How many baby baby boomers are
hitting the gateway ages? I mean I'm seeing different numbers
like fifteen thousand. Okay, if there's fifteen thousands, it's almost

(20:34):
as many as there are undocumented people in the gateway ages.
So all these people we're hitting the gateway ages, right,
and we don't like to admit it. I get that.
I don't like to admit it either, But there it is,
all right? So what are we going to do about it?
That's what the retirement thing is all about. Let's not
lose it. Please. Even listening to the Davy Carrier Show,

(20:56):
I'm David Carrier, your Families Retirement law Specialist, and.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
My times running wild and being dead on the street
sound every time I thought I got it made it
seems David's got the how too. You're looking for Just

(21:25):
call seven seven twenty four. This is the David Carrier Show.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
Get back and reached the stars O one dow shining
on the so you could see true than this love,

(21:52):
I hanside.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Everything It seems, but no.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Soly that I can shame there it is. Welcome back
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier. You're a
retirement lawyer, retirement lawyer, I don't know, retirement lawy specialist.
Well I have is the thing I wrote on a

(22:27):
you know post it notes saying I am retirement law
I don't even know what it is, but I do.
What I do know is it's all about you. It's
about your family. It's about making sure that you don't
go broke, that you live the life that you have earned.
There's no handouts here. You get that you know. Here's
here's the well. Six one six seven seven four twenty

(22:49):
four twenty four. That's the number to call, sixty one
six seven seven four twenty four twenty four. We'll get
your question, comment or concern on the air. And if
you're if you're bashful, if you're a wallflower, that's no problem.
Just send us an email David at David at Davidcarrier
Law dot com. That's at Davidcarrier Law dot com. You

(23:13):
can always go to the website and get all your
answers right then and there, all all about the retirement,
about making sure that your retirement is everything you have earned,
and we do it the old fashioned way, right, we
earn it. That's correct anyway. Six one, six, seven, seven four,

(23:33):
twenty four, twenty four. The key here is, let's focus,
let's use the legal techniques that are available to make
sure that you get what you have put aside, what
you've earned, what you've paid in for all the rest
of it. Now, there are some things that are pretty
obvious and that are not that hard. For example, social

(23:54):
Security pretty obvious, you paid in, pretty obvious. Yeah, fifteen
percent of everything you've earned has gone into that, and
part of it for the medicare as well. Right, So
social Security, medicare pretty obvious. You put in, you get out.
Everybody accepts that that's fair. But what the current system

(24:14):
ignores is the fact that many, many people will need
well seventy percent according to the NIH, will need three
years of skilled care. Now, sometimes that's nursing home care,
sometimes that's assisted living, sometimes that's at home care. Sometimes
it's provided by family, sometimes it's provided by friends, and
sometimes you got to pay for it. And as I

(24:36):
was saying last segment, the fact that everybody's getting older,
I don't know if you've noticed this, look around you. Okay,
the baby boomers are aging out or aging up or something.
And the baby boomers didn't have as many kids as
their parents did, which means that let me spell it
out for you. Remember you know here I am now warning,

(25:00):
I'm going to scare you. Oooh scary. Anyway, the point
is that there's a lot more older people than there
are younger people. And when demand for something goes up
and supply goes down, When demand for care is up,
supply is down, guess what happens to price? Right now.
I can say that all day long, and I don't

(25:21):
think it's I don't think you can really argue it. Okay,
but what that means is that our long term care
facilities are packed. Our long term care facilities almost guarantee
that you're going to go broke. And the system for
actually paying for all this right, like Social Security, like medicare, Well,
we got a system that pays for the long term care,

(25:42):
but it requires that you be broke broke before you qualify.
And people say, oh, but I get to keep the house. Yeah,
you get to keep the house, but you don't get
to keep any money to pay the taxes on the house,
or the utilities, or the upkeeper or anything else. So
what are you telling me, especially when you see time
after time after time, you know where the house gets

(26:04):
lost to back taxes because who's going to pay the
taxes on the house. Oh, but you could always sell
the house. Yeah, you could sell the house. What happens
when you sell the house? Well, now you don't have
a house, true, but what you have is a lot
of countable cash. Okay, what are we going to do
about that? What are you going to do about that?
My suggestion for thirty years now has been what if

(26:27):
we recognize that that is reality? What if we recognize
that this is what actually happens and plan for it
not be surprised. You know, when the world changes when
you go from being large and in charge to this
is for me. I'm still large, but not so much

(26:47):
in charge. Right and now you need help. Now, you
need somebody to give you that help in hand. Right now,
you'd like to get a little payback on what you
paid in very natural also to care for your family,
care for your spouse. Well, now you've got to get
into it because the way the system is set up,

(27:08):
it's not like you know, we're not out here saying, oh,
let me help you apply for Social Security. No, they
made that easy because if it let me help you
apply for Medicare, No, they made that easy. Now there's
the supplement insurance. We do have our visiting experts on
and we help you with that. But but you know,

(27:28):
basically applying for the easy stuff, all right, just do
it on your own. They made it easy for you.
Why did they make it easy for you, because if
you didn't get it, you'd vote them out. Right. The
simple as that, simple as that. But when it comes
to long term care, three years on average, according to nih, right,

(27:50):
is that the first three years of your retirement. Is
that the middle three years of your retirement. No, No,
it's the last three years. Last three years. And what
happens at the end of those last three years, Well,
then you go onto your reward. Let's ope it's a reward.

(28:11):
Let's hope it's a good one. Okay, you don't wind
up with the chocolate chip cookies and no milk. Let's
hope that's not the place you're go into. All right,
But that's the end of See, there's no retribution. You
can't hold the politicians responsible, and which is why they
feel very comfortable. They have been comfortable in stripping away

(28:33):
everything that you've earned. So there is nothing for the kids, right,
So that there's a there's a house that now goes
to back taxes, right, that you don't have what you need?
And how do I know this? People? Well, do you
know that that happens? Well, I don't know. I just
talked to the people, come in my office, you know,
and I find out that, oh yeah, well now we're

(28:55):
down to say, fifty thousand dollars. Right. I don't know
how we got here exactly, but you can't do it
anymore now what right? Well maybe if you call me
when you had three hundred thousand in your IRA or whatever.
But even at fifty we can still save a significant
amount of that. Right, You don't actually have to go broke.

(29:16):
It's not how it works. Well, it is how it
usually works, but it doesn't have to be the way
that that works, you know. Is that scared? Am I
fear margering saying hey, guess what people get old, you know,
and then they need care? Oh boy, that's that's just terrible?
Or is the fear marguring part where I say, you know,
if you plan for this back in the day. If

(29:38):
you came to one of our Three Secrets workshops and
we explained how this all works, right, and you worked
with workshop workshop workshop with other people who are going
through exactly the same thing you are, compare notes. You know,
you think we're full of bs. Great tell that when
you know you've got people there, you know, And that's
our whole idea, rather than isolate, rather than one on one,

(30:02):
which is the way we did it for years now,
it's like, hey, guess what if we get a group
of people together in a room, then you can because
we're telling you the truth, right, then you can tell
the truth to each other. And it's like it's not
just the guy in the front of the room who's
saying this stuff, not that just a guy on a radio.
It's like people share a story. It's very very powerful.

(30:23):
People share stories in the workshops about what's actually going
on in their own lives right what they've seen, and
it's much more credible than I over be because they
got no axtagrind. You think I got an astrogrind. Okay, fine,
but that's the key, right, That's why we do these
Three Secrets workshops around the website Davidcarrier Law dot com.

(30:45):
And you know, you can tell me that you know
what Abraham Lincoln did back in the day log cabin
right now, Wills, you can tell me that that works
just fine in this age of robots and tariffs and
every other thing that's what's going on here. You can
tell me it's all nothing's changed. I would suggest that
that's a I don't know. You might want to rethink.

(31:07):
You might want to rethink that one. But I think
things have changed. I think things changed significantly. If you
don't change with it, you get run over. You've been
listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, pioneering
the concept of retirement law.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
David's work as working and taking your calls. Now this
is the David Carrier Show you can listen to.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your retirement law lawyer, especially whatever you want to call
it anyway, retirement law. That's the part about how we
get from here to there without going without going broke.
And you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, we do the whole
void probate, safe taxes, get it to the kids, thing.

(32:14):
But really, isn't that the second act? Isn't that the
less important thing? I would suggest let's get to one
of our emails here. This is a great one because
it brings up so many issues. My father passed away
and my mother and I are still married. I don't
think that's what he meant. Who is in charge of
his final arrangements? I'm reaching out for legal guidance regarding

(32:36):
my father's recent passing, passed away on Sunday. Okay, we
could go, I guess, and I'm currently facing complications regarding
the final arrangements. My father's girlfriend, with whom he lived,
made all the funeral and burial arrangements without consulting me
or any of my siblings. Okay, so let's stop right there.
Apparently he's got a girlfriend. He's not living with the wife. Oh,

(33:01):
we don't judge anyway. The point is that the girlfriend
with whom he lived made all the funeral and burial arrangements. Well,
if he gave her the power of attorney, right financial
and health care power of attorney, if he designated her
as his funeral representative, then she has all authority to

(33:21):
do that. Okay, I mean, you get to decide who
makes these decisions for you. It's not just it used
to be, you know, just oh it's just next to
can and you can't really decide. Well, now you can decide. Actually,
those can be hurtful decisions. I'm not saying it wouldn't be,
but there you are. While my mother is still legally

(33:41):
married to my father, his girlfriend has access to personal information,
including so security details and life insurance policy. As a result,
I'm concerned about who has a legal right to make
decisions regarding his final arrangements and his estate. Well, I'm
going to suggest that the way things are looking, she does, okay,
I mean, helped me out here, but there is no

(34:07):
Now in Europe it's different. I mean there's some in
European countries. I have been reliably informed. You don't get
to decide who gets your stuff. I mean the family
of relationships. You can't just give it away like that.
Exactly how that works? Well, I haven't been European, and
no one in my family's been European for one hundred

(34:27):
years or so, so anyway, I don't know. I don't know.
But in America you get to decide, you get to choose,
and the trend has always been has been in favor
of more personal autonomy, less second guessing about what people
want to do. You may not agree with it, it

(34:48):
may be contrary to your morals. Okay, well what do
you want? People get to decide. So in this case,
the girlfriend, if she has power of attorney, if she's
trustee of the trust, if he did that, we don't know.
We really don't know. But for the kids to be wondering, oh,

(35:09):
you know what happens to dad's stuff, Well, you're not
entitled because you're a kid. There's no entitlement here. Okay,
this is all about personal decisions. So girlfriend that access
personal da da da. I'd like to understand the following. Okay,
here we go. Who has legal authority make decisions about
father's final arrangements given that my mother is still legal spouse,
but his girlfriend was living with him, that is completely irrelevant.

(35:32):
That she was living with him, that has absolutely no
legal significance whatever right and appears to have control over
his personal information. Again, there's no legal significance to the
fact that the person living with you knows what your
social Security is or your finances or stuff. That's not
the point. Okay, it's also not the point that we

(35:54):
have a marriage, that you're married and you have a
spouse who's still your spouse because you're the spouse. Just
because you're the power, I should say, does not entitle
you to make decisions for somebody else. Maybe it worked
that way back in the day, but it doesn't work
that way. It does not work that way now, nor
as long as I've been I've been at this. You

(36:16):
have to have a specific grant of authority. That's why,
you know, spouses always think, oh, I get to make
decisions for my spouse. In fact, I just had a
last week. We're talking to a retired nurse and I'm saying, well,
you know, you don't have you got to get the authority,
blah blah. She's a, oh no, you don't. And I'm like, oh, yeah,

(36:36):
you do. I mean, why do you think you don't? Well,
because when she was a nurse in the emergency room,
apparently they just glossed over it. It was like, yeah,
we always did whatever the family said. I'm like, oh, well,
I hope the statute of limitations has passed, you know
on that you can't do that. You're not supposed to
do that. Put it that way you're not supposed to,

(36:57):
so which brings me, you know, sort of a tangential
point here. It's not like people don't get away with stuff. Okay.
So when I'm telling you what's going on, when I
when I'm telling you, hey, we should do it like this,
do it like that. What I'm saying is, here's how
you make a plan that is as bulletproof as possible,

(37:18):
it's as reliable as possible, which understands that the world
doesn't always work out the way we think it does. Okay,
I get you know, I hear. Oh, you guys plan
for things that never happened. It's like we're planning for
it because it did happen. And I agree, the probability
may be low. But see here's the thing. If the

(37:41):
probability is low but the consequence is high, all right,
you ought to take care of it. You ought to
be thinking about it. This plane crash, you know, the
helicopter in them and the jetliner, right, they're going to
pull that apart. And like in every every one of
these investigations, there're gonna be a whole bunch of things
that went wrong in just the right order in order

(38:03):
to cause a catastrophe. Does that mean we don't worry
about it? Does that mean we don't care about it
because it hardly ever happens. Well, the reason it hardly
ever happens is because people did an awful lot of
work to make sure that it would not happen. That's
what we're doing here. That's what this whole retirement thing
is about. You're gambling with the rest of your life.

(38:24):
You're gambling with your spousals, Like, why would you do that?
Why wouldn't you just make sure that everything lined up,
that everything that you could possibly do you did do,
whether it's flying an airplane or driving to the store
or whatever else. Just be careful about stuff right, do
it correctly, and then you don't have to worry. That's
the point. The legal authority, it depends who did he

(38:48):
give legal authority to? Whom did he give legal authority?
Probably the girlfriend who's entire life insurance proceeds. Ahh, Now
we get to it right, well, whoever he put his beneficiary,
considering girlfriend may have access to his accounts and policies
despite not being his legal spouse. It doesn't matter, doesn't
matter what steps should we take to ensure my father's

(39:10):
final wishes. Maybe this is his wishes, right, What should
you do? You could file in probate court. You could
open in a state and say, okay, prove to me
that you're entitled to these things, and then she shows up.
Here's the power of attorney, here's the trust, here's the
beneficiary designation, all that kind of thing. But that's what
you would have to do. You would have to open

(39:31):
the probated state to discover all this in all likelihood,
you know, I mean, look, if somebody's living with a
girlfriend instead of the you know, the married spouse, well
you're not going to be surprised to learn that they
took other steps to make sure that the girlfriend is
the one who's being who's being cared for. Here now,

(39:53):
is the spouse entitled to social security benefits? Absolutely? How
about the pension if there is one, Yeah, yeah, they're
entitled to that. But as far as the rest of
it goes, not so much. You're listening to the David
Carrier Show on David Carrier, your retirement lawyer. That's just

(40:20):
the way it is. That's just the way it is.