Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
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 on David Carrier.
Your family's personal attorney. And you have found the place
where we talk about retirement law. That's what it's about.
Retirement law, Yeah, estate planning, will's trust probate. How do
we beat the high cost of long term care? You
already paid for it? Why pay again? Isn't that That's
the truth. That's what elder law's about. It's like, why
(00:57):
pay I paid twice? I don't know, why would you?
It seems insane to me, but people do it. Most
people do it anyway. Also business law and real estate.
So give us a call if you've got a questions
about any of that good stuff. Six one six, seven
seven four twenty four twenty four six one six, seven
(01:17):
seven four twenty four twenty four. Of course we have
to brag on our artificial intelligence infobot or whatever you
want to call it anyway on the website Davidcarrier Law
dot com. That's Davidcarrier Law dot com and get on
over there and get your questions answered. It's not legal advice,
(01:37):
but it's helpful.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's a radio show answer, right, I mean, radio show
answers are not legal advice. So if you call in
and say, oh, what about all this stuff? And I say, well,
I think you ought to do this or that, you
can't suit me for malpractice, okay because I didn't know
all the facts. And I keep saying that, but you
don't get to you don't get to ignore that part.
(01:59):
It's not lead advice. You know. We need to look
at the documents to figure that one out. Same way
with the bot. But it can be it can be
very useful, and it's a lot better than everything else
I've seen, because I've looked at the other law website. Oh,
ask us a question, chat with us now, you know,
and the only thing they want is your you know,
name rank and serial numbers so they can call you back.
(02:20):
And it's like, well, I wasn't very helpful. So to
work the buddy of mine, I'm like, hey, you know,
if it's one of those things. I don't want it.
You know, that's that's not helpful. Oh no, no, no,
it'll be it'll be good. It'll be good. And it's
like people have been trying it and feedback has been
very very has been very positive because it's trained on
our stuff. You know that the problem with the AI
(02:42):
artificial intelligence is that it hallucinates stuff. I don't know
if you've ever tried it. Here's a good test for you.
Putting your own name and ask it for a biography
of you. Okay, you will find out you were the
first man on Mars and invented stuff and all kinds
of stuff that you never did. It will say that
(03:05):
you did. Okay. Lawyers have gotten into big trouble with
this because they've used it to create legal briefs, you know,
submitted those to the court, right, and the AI makes
up cases. It does. It makes them up and not true.
They don't exist anywhere, but the AI puts things together
(03:26):
in a certain way and it makes it up. So
if you're going to have any usefulness to this stuff,
you got to restrict what it looks at, right, You
got to train it on certain things and only those things.
So that's what that's what we've done with this AI.
It's primarily put it that way, primarily because you can't
(03:48):
really control it. But primarily it's focused trained on our
own stuff. So what you're going to get is going
to be things that are somewhat useful. Put it that way.
I wouldn't want to say reliable. Let's say useful. Anyway,
Let's get to some questions here, shall we. How does
the power of attorney help me? I have power of
(04:09):
attorney for my elderly grandmother. Specifically states that if Grandma's
unable to care for herself, I have full rights to
make healthcare decisions and full access to bank account to
do with you know, as I please, including purchases, deposits,
what have you. Well, it turns out that grandma's in
a nursing home. But the previous nursing home never took payment.
I guess it was a charity thing maybe or maybe
(04:31):
she was on Medicare. I don't know. Doesn't say. This
is why it's not legal advice, Okay, because you need
more details, but you get the picture. Anyway, did use
her account for other things since the nursing home didn't
take payment, He used Grandma's account. Now what did he
use Graham's account for? Well, maybe he used it to,
(04:55):
you know, take care of her house. Maybe he used
it for her groceries, maybe used it for additional items.
Who knows. He just says other things. If it was
the casit and then it says they called adult Protective services, whoopsies. Yeah, Well,
if Grahama's money is missing, then adult Protective services is
who you call. Now if grandson here or grandson here,
(05:21):
and I'm assuming it's grandson supposed to be grand granddaughter,
but we all know it's grandson anyway. Well that's not
really true though. Some of the most horrific cases you've
seen have been women taking advantage of their elderly grandparents.
I mean, I mean awful, awful stuff, awful stuff. So
(05:42):
I just assume it's a grandson from the writing, but
it could be granddaughter who knows anyway, moved her to
new location. They're pulling her social security directly. Okay, so
the social security is now going direct deposit to the
nursing home. They must be what we call the representative payee. Okay,
the previous home called APS. And now I'm being investigated.
(06:04):
They call today APS, I guess call today to discuss
the bank account transactions? Do I comply with the questioning
what can happen to me? Well, depending on what you
spend the money on, you're in deep doodo or clean
and green. Either way. Either way, you don't talk to
police without representation because you will say things. You will
(06:28):
say things that you think are innocent. It may very
well be innocent. In your innocence, you will think they're
on your side, in your in your naivete, you will
assume that you know everything's going to be. Everything's a okay, right,
(06:48):
that is your naivete, that is your whatever. But and
sometimes I would say usually with APS, I don't protective services.
My experience has been your typical a PS agent, and
they are police agents. Okay, APS is police. It's not
social workers. They're cops. They're police, right, that's what they are.
(07:09):
They're there to stop waste, for an abuse, et cetera,
you know, exploitation in the elderly, et cetera, cetera. They
take their job seriously. They're very good. Okay, but that's
that's that's who you're dealing with. You're not dealing with
your grandma now, you're dealing with the police who are
making sure that your grandma didn't get ripped off. And
because they see so many people ripping off their grandparents
(07:30):
that they're ready to come down with hobnail boots on
whoever they can catch doing it. Now, that doesn't mean
that they're not familiar with cases like yours, perhaps where
you were spending it on grandma's house and stuff. Still
in all, Still in all, it's a good idea to
be represented. It's a good idea to go see call
(07:52):
an attorney and say, hey, you know, here's what's going on.
APS is looking into this now. If they have been,
if the attorney has been doing this stuff before, they
will say, well you better come in and bring your
records and day dad did. They will probably have a
history with APS, probably most of us do, and they
(08:13):
will be the APS agent will say oh, yeah, yeah,
well you know what's going on, and you will have
hopefully the attorney that you talk with, we'll have some
credibility with the APS agent, and the attorney can say
here's what's going on. Did hear the records and presented
in a way an accurate way, a correct way, a
(08:33):
true way that it is exonerating of you. Okay, but
if you don't do that, if you just kind of
go in with the mess of paperwork that you've got
because you weren't keeping very good records and whatnot, and
then you're not clear about what actually happened, Well, there's
(08:54):
two reasons people aren't clear about what actually happened. The
first reason they're not clear is because people are a
mess anyway, records are a mess. They got shopping bags
full of stuff, blah blah blah. Okay, that's just natural.
But the second reason people are a mess, and sometimes
it's difficult to tell, is because they're stealing. All right,
guess which one of the APS thinks you're doing at
(09:16):
the very start. Okay, let me give you a hint.
It's the stealing one. That is your hint. They think
you're stealing. So what you want to do? But if
your records are all square, because that happens so infrequently, right,
you go to your attorney and attorney, okay, let's look
at this. Let's sort it all out. H blah blah
(09:37):
blah blah, and now you can demonstrate to the APS
person right exactly what happened, how it happened, what your
authority was, et cetera, et cetera. A power of attorney
is not a license to go buy a boat. It's
not a license to go fly first class. It's not
a license for you just to take grandma's money and
do whatever you want with it. It may be very
(09:57):
clear about that. You are held to a very high standard.
Use grandma's money for grandma, and if you did that,
then showing that you did that is very important. But
because if you can't show that you did it, they're
going to assume that you didn't. They're going to assume
that you spent it at the casino. And now you're
(10:17):
off to the races. Maybe they can prove it beyond
a reasonable doubt. Maybe they can't. But now you're in
the mangle. Right now, you're in the blender, and they're
about to hit frop a. Okay, it's bad, it's bad. Okay.
So why do you want to go see an attorney
when you get accused of this kind of thing, even
though you're pure as the driven snow. The answer is
(10:38):
because you're a mess. Your records are a mess. They're
going to look suspicious as hell to the aps person
you want somebody who knows how to present evidence to
sort through that stuff or help you sort through it right,
so you can demonstrate easily that you didn't do anything wrong,
everything was fine, okay, and if it wasn't fine, then
(11:01):
they can talk about how minimizing your penalty, which is
also a good thing to do. I've been listening to
the David Carrier Show on David Carrier your family's personal attorney.
(11:24):
Take me tonight beside.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
This hour of the David Carrier Show is pro bono,
so call in now at seven seven twenty four twenty four.
This is the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show, where fat bottomed
attorneys make the world go at least one of them. Uh,
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. That's
the number to call. If you have a question, comment
(12:04):
or a concern, you can always head over to the
website David Carrier Law all squish it all together David
Carrier Law dot com and on the website. Now is
the new AI Artificial Intelligence Genuine Insight Ooh, that's a
good slogan, huh. Anyway, it's a you can actually ask
(12:28):
it questions like free form questions. Give it a try.
It's crazy, it doesn't catch anything, and it will be
I promise you it will be useful. Davidcarrier Law dot com.
Just give it a try. Now, you got to wait
a little bit before it pops up. And it was
having trouble with the Firefox browser. So if you're using Mozilla,
(12:48):
you know, but on the Google, on the Chrome and
on the other thing it was is working just fine,
but they were supposedly fixing it. But anyway, give it
a yeah, give it a try. It will kind of
pop up there and just click on it and you
can there are some preloaded questions. You can click on
those if you want, and it'll give you a whole Exejesus,
(13:10):
or you can just type in your own. And really
the hardest thing to do with it is you tend
not to ask it the questions you really want to ask.
You tend to be a little more formulaic, right, and
it will take, but it will take you know, real
free form questions. You just ask it something and you
(13:30):
can there's a little microphone there, so you can click
on the microphone and you don't even have to type.
You can just ask it the question and then but
there's the little paper airplane thing there. You have to
click on the paper airplane otherwise it doesn't know you're
done talking. So there you go. Give it a try.
Davidcarrier Law dot Com doesn't cost it nothing. Let's get
back to some more of our questions. Should I place
(13:52):
a new car that will be financed into my living trust? Well,
you're not gonna be able to. But I'm seventy three
years old and need a reliable new car. I'm creating
a living trust. Should I put the car into the trust,
you won't be able to because it'll be secured on
the title. It'll show the car company or the bank
or whoever it is loaning you the money to buy
(14:13):
the car. We'll be on the title and you won't
be able to clear transfer title to the You won't
be able to transfer title to the trust. My main
concerns I don't want my children to be burdened with
an auto loan, auto loan that may outlive me. Well, yeah,
if the if the auto loans upside down, then they
may very well come against your estate to collect that,
(14:35):
you know, collect the difference. But generally speaking, that's not
what happens. Generally speaking, auto loans are pretty near. You
send them, you drop the car off, you know, and
you're pretty much done with it. Not necessarily, not necessarily,
but pretty much that's what usually happens. Here's another thing.
We get a lot of folks who want to put
(14:56):
automobiles in trust, right because they wanted to go to
particular kid. The good news is, and we give you
this as part of your part of the package. You
can fill it in and explain it to you. But
you can if you identify the vehicle and identify the
beneficiary that you wanted to go to. So let's say
you have a few kids and you want to give
(15:17):
the you want to give the green Volkswagen bug to
one of them. Well you can, you know, get the
vehicle identification number. You put that on this form. You
know that we generate for you, uh, and then the
vehicle and the kid vehicle and the kid. You know,
if you if you've got that many vehicles, you want
to spread them out or and this this happens a
(15:37):
lot where you have a paidoff vehicle, right that's very reliable,
and you want it to go to the kids who's
not doing so well or at least to have a car,
right in addition to whatever else they're getting, So you
can you can use this form to do that. There's
no probate involved, you don't have to account for it
as part of the trust. You don't have to change
(15:58):
the title. It's after you die. They bring this thing
to the Secretary of State and then get retitled in
their own name. It's so much easier than what we
used to have to do. It's just great. So that's
the deal with vehicles. Putting it into the trust is
not going to relieve the debt that's secured by the vehicle, right,
(16:22):
you can't really do that. So there you go. Um
bum bum boom. My kids are nineteen and twenty. Their
father just recently passed away. He was not in their lives.
Are they entitled to anything? Yes, intestate share. He did remarry.
Whoopsie's kids are asking if they're entitled to anything. Stayed
(16:45):
half his ashes to bury with Grandma passed six months ago.
We just don't know what they're entitled to being blood related. Well,
here's the thing. People who own stuff, get to decide
where the stuff goes. Okay, they get to design. So
if they if dad here did a who's not in
their lives, if dad did a will or a trust
(17:07):
or something, says hey, I'm giving it all to my
now spouse, my current spouse, well, the current spouse is
gonna is going to get it, although if it does
go through probate, there may be some allowances that the
kids will get. But in any event, in any event,
this really kicks in if it's intestate, if there is
(17:28):
no if there is no will, the current spouse, whoever
you're married to right now, when you die, they get
a certain amount. And if you had kids who were
not kids of your current spouse right then your current
spouse gets x amount of dollars. I think it's like
one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars the first hundred
(17:51):
seventy five thousand, and then you split everything that's above that.
So if you know, if he's a millionaire, let's say
he's got one point two million, we'll figure two hundred
thousand goes to the spouse and then the rest gets
split with the kids. Okay, so it might be worth
looking into. But this is only for probate assets, right,
(18:12):
And if he was joined down on everything with this spouse,
well there's no probate assets. If if he did a
trust or a will, let's say, give it all to
the current spouse, then the current spouse is gonna take Okay,
so there you go. But but you know, most people
are very surprised. And it's works with parents too. If
(18:33):
you're in testine, right, your spouse doesn't automatically get everything.
You got to split it with the other kids. You
got to split it with the parents. How about that.
And if it's your kids, then again you get more.
The spouse surviving spouse gets more, but you still have
to split with your own kids. How about that? Nuts,
Where does it go when the owner dies? His lawyer said,
(18:56):
there's no such thing as a will and a power
of attorney. The lawyer is correct, there's no such thing
as a will and a power of attorney. That's not
what it's for. But and this is something we always do,
which I see very rarely done, but should be done
in my opinion, is we give the person with the
power of attorney the ability to do a trust. Now,
(19:17):
if you give that person with the power of attorney
the ability to do a trust. That's even better than
doing a will, right, because now you're gonna not only
will I have the distribution plan in it, you're also
going to avoid probate and you can put a you
can't put a trust in there. What you do is
what you do is you put the ability, the ability
(19:38):
to make a trust in the power of attorney. Okay,
now you got to use the power of attorney before
somebody dies, so you can't like wait until after they're
dead and say, oh, I have a power of attorney,
let's make a trust. Doesn't work like that. But while
they're alive. While they're alive, then you can give them
the you can give them create a trust using the
(20:01):
power of attorney, which will avoid the need for probate
or will whatever later on. That's why this stuff is
so darn confusing, right, because there's all kinds of different
ways to do things. That's why you go see a lawyer.
What we've been doing for a while just saying if
my mother died, is her boyfriend allowed to keep her belongings?
(20:23):
If they wasn't married, my mom dies, as her boyfriend
allowed to keep her stuff? If I'm next to kin. Well,
the question is, how do you know it's her stuff? Uh? Clothing?
I suppose you probably don't want that. If you're talking
about the furniture in the apartment, well, he's gonna say
it is, right. Probably. The question is what kind of
(20:46):
belongings are we talking about? Right? Maybe it's jewelry. But
see then you get into well she said I could
have it, or she gave it to me. She actually
gave it to me before she died. How are you
gonna How are you gonna fight that one? Okay, tough
to do so? Uh? Is her boyfriend allowed to keep her? Well,
(21:06):
the question is whose belongings were they? Were they really hers?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
If they weren't, and it's clear they weren't, then no,
he doesn't get to keep them. But good luck proving it.
You've been listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your retirement law specialist.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
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 (21:45):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Now is the time give us
a call sixty one six seven seven four twenty four
twenty four. That's sixty one six seven seven four four
twenty four. Will get your question, comment or concern on
the air. You know, they were just playing that queen
(22:06):
song another One Bites the Dust. You wonder how old
is that song? Well, in nineteen eighty two, when I
graduated from law school, I was on the student Bar
Association and during finals we would play that song after
the test let out, you know, so people would be
leaving the building and another one Bites the Dust. Now
that passed for humor back in nineteen nineteen eighty two.
(22:29):
So if you wonder how old that song is, do
the math. It's twenty five plus. I don't know what
is it eighteen twenty five plus eighteen. That's an old
song forty three years. There you go anyway, six one
six seven seven four twenty four twenty four. That's six
one six twenty four twenty four, and we'll get your question,
comment or concern on the air. You can interact with
(22:52):
the wit and wisdom of yours truly by going to
the website Davidcarrier Law dot com and the there'll be
a pop up if you have a pop up preventer.
I don't know if I don't know if that stops it.
But anyway, it's a AI assistant. It's not a chatbot.
It's it doesn't ask for your name. Well, you can
(23:14):
put your name in if you want, but you don't
have to. And it will actually answer questions kind of general,
kind of vague answers, not the sharply pointed razor wit
and exact whatever answers, comprehensive answers that you get here,
(23:35):
of course, but it will send you in the right direction,
give you some ideas. Okay, So anyway, that's on the
website Davidcarrier Law dot com. And you don't even have
to you know, you don't even have to give us
all your personal information. You just ask some questions. It's
so much easier than trying to find the answers on
a website. Oh my god, it's unbelievable. Question. How do
(23:57):
I make sure one of our emails here? How do
I make sure my daughter gets everything of mine in
the event something happens to me? Don't you love it
when people say something happens to me? You know, what
do you mean something happens to you? I die well,
why you say in the event I die? Might you
say that because that's what you mean, but we all
say it. I say it too. Or what if something
(24:18):
were to happen to you? You mean, what if I croak? Yeah?
What if you croak? Okay, same thing. Anyway, something happens
to me before I get a will made, I'm on vacation,
recently divorced, and if something happens to me, like a
shark attack or something, I guess, I don't know, I
fall off the boat. I want my daughter to get everything. Okay,
(24:38):
So here's how you here's how you do that. Go
back to your stateroom, hotel room, hotel room, camper right,
and if you're in one of those places where you're
paying a stay, there's probably a pad of paper in
there and a pen there might not be. There might
not be. You might have to ask the stewardess if
(24:59):
you're on the ear. We actually had somebody to do this.
They had a So I've got one thing that we
used for distribution, and it was a tour guide to Cuba.
This guy was heading over to Cuba on vacation and
of course when he got back, did he do anything. No,
So we had to use this Cuban tour guide with
notes in the margin. Okay, dispositive notes in the margin,
(25:25):
but at least he had that and he signed and
dated it. So it's what we call holographic will, meaning
you wrote it in your own blood, in your own
handwriting your own ink. You don't have to use blood.
I was just kidding about that part. But so long
as you write it out yourself rite most every state,
I believe every state accept accept a holographic will. So
(25:47):
you go back to your room and you say, you know,
dear everybody, this is my last will and testament. If
you say stuff like that, if you want, but basically
you say I give everything to my daughter and name her,
that would be a good thing. It's also a good
thing to say, I know about those twenty three other
kids I have, I ain't leaving them nothing. If that's
(26:10):
an issue for you, you know, disinherit the people you
want to you want to disinherit, But you can do that.
Like I say, we have one on a tour guide.
Don't recommend it. Don't recommend that. Go back to the
hotel and get the paper with the hotel name on it,
and then write out your write out your holographic will
(26:32):
before you go swimming in the in the ocean, because
if you wind up you're ready for this. This is
a good one. So if you wind up sleeping with
the fishes, then your daughter will get everything that you have,
all right, So you want to definitely go oh oh oh.
And by the way, don't bring that with you because
(26:52):
with that one, if you're in Davy Jones locker and
that wind's up down there, it's not much good. Leave
it in the hotel room. Mail it to your daughter.
That's not a bad idea either, you know, take some
get some postcards and put them in the envelope with
and send off the send the thing off, but get
it in the mail. Don't don't be carrying around because
if the airplane goes down, right you're carrying it, that's
(27:13):
not much good. Now if the mail sack is in
the airplane and it all goes well, and you can't
account for everything. But what I would do is, like
I said, go back to the hotel room. If it's
if you're in a cheap hotel and they don't have
a no pad and no envelopes, go to the front desk.
They will have envelopes and you can write it out.
They'll even sell you a stamp, I bet you, and
then you can put it in the mail and now
(27:34):
you can go swimming with the sharks or the manta rays.
Isn't that how that one Australian guy died right he
was swimming with manta raised or something. They stabbed him.
That was bad. That kind of thing can happen when
you're on vacation. So do that now. If you're a
Disney World there's no problem because well, I don't know though,
because there was that one kid who got eaten by
(27:56):
an alligator or something.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Go ahead, write it out anyway, put it on the
hotel letterhead, mail it, mail it. Don't carry it with
you just in case. All right, what else we got here?
You'll get some good one. That's a good one. You
gotta admit, that's a good one. Is there a form
that a spouse can put their request for property to
be left to spouse in case of death? Is there
(28:18):
a form? Yeah, there's a form. It's called a You know,
you can do a joint tendency tends by the entirety.
If you're are you asking are there things in your name?
That you want to give to your spouse. Yeah, the
form is called a will or a trust, all right.
A will goes through probate, a trust does not. You
can also do beneficiary designations. That's another bad way to
(28:40):
doing it. But yeah, there's there's different ways of doing
these things. So really, when people say, well, which is
the best way, and the answer is, I don't know.
Depends on your situation. Which is the best way. That's
why you talk to somebody who's been doing it for
a while, no more than six months anyway, and they
(29:01):
can help you decide what is the right way to
do it. Maybe it is joint tendancy, maybe it is
a trust, maybe it is a will. I don't know.
There are different assets and sometimes one set of assets
you do jointly, another set of assets you do in
a trust, another set of assets you do with a
trust created by a will. There's all kinds of different
(29:22):
ways of doing this stuff, all right. And when you
do it correctly with somebody who knows what they're doing,
then you're going to have the absolute minimum of administration
and waste waste. You'll have the minimum of waste, and
that's really important. You know, you work too hard for it.
Why would you waste now? And yet it happens all
(29:44):
time because people would rather find a form google it right,
you know? Oh, that would be a good question for
the AI boy. I'm going to put that on the
AI bod. Is there a form I can used to
leave everything to my spouse? I wonder what it would say.
We'll have to find that. I'll let you know next week.
(30:06):
Let's see, we've got thirty seconds, so that's okay, we'll
get to this. Uh when when we get back from
the break. You're listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm
David Carrier inviting you to go to the website Davidcarrier
Law dot com come to a three secrets workshop. You
will be glad you did. Jerry really matter.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
David's working and working and taking your calls.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
This is the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, and now's the time for you
to go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com sign
up for a three secrets workshop. These are the workshops
we do every single week. The Good Lord brings in
Grand Rapids Norton Shores, Portage and Holland. Yeah, we're doing
(31:22):
them all the time. Easy to find. Go to the website.
Wait till that thing pop up, right, the AI thing.
We've got Jerry on the line with a trust question.
Oh boy, Jerry, let's rock. Get us out of here
on a high note.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
One of your meetings you are, not meetings but radio shows.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
You touched on residents trust.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I was wondering if you could explain how those work
and if you already have a trust, if you could,
would you have to rewrite the whole trust or can
you incorporate some of that into a regular trust you
already have?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, the resident what's your situation? Is it your house
and you're remarried. Is that the idea or is it
one of your kids?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yes, I just you know, have everything in a trust,
and you know right.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I have.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Quite a bit of land, so and I am remarried.
So I was wondering what would be the best way
to set that up, just a regular trust or a
residence trust.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Something piqued my hand.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
Yeah, what I was about it?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Sure? So one of the one of the one of
the conundrums, one of the problems you've got right. So
you've got family. Let's just say you've got land that
you acquired before the marriage, and it's sort of heritage land,
family land, that kind of thing. And now you're remarried,
(33:01):
and you don't want your spouse to be homeless or
anything or be out on our own. At the same time,
you don't want to give the farm, the hunting property,
the cottage, to everything to the spouse. So what you
do is you set up a trust in your trust. Now,
I'm a big fan of restating trusts as opposed to
(33:22):
amending trusts. The problem with amending and existing trust is
everybody gets to see how it was before and how
it is now. When you restate the trust and you
shred the other documents, all you've got. All you can
point to is what you have right now, So you
don't get into arguments about, oh, we didn't understand this
(33:44):
change or that change. And everybody argues about everything. So
the less they have to argue about, the better off
you are. Plus, there are changes in trust law, not major,
you know, change, everything sort of changes, but there are changes,
and so restate the trust enables you to incorporate more
of the administrative stuff and some substantive stuff as well
(34:07):
into the trust, so you have kind of not only
your up to date intent but also your up to
date legal background. Okay, that makes sense. Then what we
do in this trust is you say, hey, if my
wife survives me, right, she can live in the house
and you've got acreage. Right, So we say she can
(34:29):
live in the house and what we call the kurtilage,
which is the garage and the garden attached, basically the
house lot sort of thing. All right, that much she
can live in, okay, But the rest of it. The
kids can hunt, campfish, whatever they're going to do on
that other property, rent it out, whatever it is, and
(34:51):
the wife can live here as long as she actually
does live here. It's your primary residence, as long as
she doesn't have a boyfriend or remarry, as long as
she's not in a long term care facility, as long
as she's actually here, as long as she pays the taxes,
the insurance, the utilities. So there is an ongoing obligation.
(35:16):
Generally speaking, Now you don't have to do that. You
could say, all the assets of the trust are going
to support my spouse in this house, pay all the bills,
and she can live there as long as she wishes,
But if she's not using it as a primary residence,
then the trust terminates and I can distribute it to
the kids. So you get to tailor this in how
(35:36):
much of the expenses is she going to bear? Sometimes
what we'll do, Like people with a condo, you might say, Hey,
I want to provide for my sp and maybe you
both contributed to the condo whatever I want to provide
for my spouse, And she may not want to live
in this condo. She might not want to live in
this big house. So the trustee can sell the house
(35:57):
and rent a senior apartment for her or or him,
or by a different condo where you know, there's degrees
of flexibility that you can build into these things dependent
on what it is that you want to what you
want to provide. Okay, so it is a it's a
(36:17):
go ahead.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Would a resident trust basically just be a legal name
or document for what they used to call like a
life lease?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
The problem it's an alternative. Yeah, it's an alternative to
the life lease or the life estate and those were terrible,
hate those. Okay, that's what we call blunt force trauma planning.
That's what I call blunt force planning because it says,
as long as you're breathing, as long as your heart's beating,
(36:56):
you live here. Or I can't sell it all right,
I can't sell the property without paying you off. And
you'd be surprised how much ve So let's say you
give somebody the right to live in a property life
estate or life lease for the rest of their life.
And let's say it's a half a million dollar property, okay,
(37:19):
five hundred thousand dollar property, including the acreage and everything else. Now,
the kids got to wait till you die, till she
dies before they get it, okay. And if it gets
sold in the meantime, right gets she's in a nursing
home now and they want to sell the property. Even
into her their nineties, she still has about a quarter
(37:41):
of the value that life estate is worth, about a
quarter of what the property is worth. So if you
sell it, then she gets one hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars because she had the life estate, whereas she
hasn't used it, she didn't have any investment in it.
Blah blah blah. And if you do it the way
I'm talking about it, you just terminate the life estate,
(38:02):
all the money goes to the kids, right, or she
takes up with somebody else, Right, she moves to Florida,
living in the villages, having a wild time whatever, and
we can't and she has the right to occupy the
Michigan property. And now your kids are paying the taxes.
The thing's going to rack and ruin because what does
she care anymore. There's all kinds of different ways that
(38:24):
this plays out. And what you want is something that's flexible,
something that recognizes reality, and something that isn't going to
hurt any of the people that you care about, any
of the people that you want to provide for. That's
what the Residence Trust enables us to do. It's to
dial it in very particularly.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Yeah, because it sounds like they kind of accomplish the
same thing, but the Residents Trust does it in a
much better way.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Exactly. That's exactly it. Yes, because look, we've had people,
you know, they give them the life lease and then
you got the kids who are suing because they didn't
pay the taxes. And there's no easy way to do it,
there's no you know, you got to you gotta do
a lawsuit. And look, if you want to become unpopular
with somebody, sue them that I guarantee you of destroy
(39:17):
any relationship there is right. Whereas with the trust, it's
much more gentle, it's much you know, it's it's easier
you and you really accomplish what you want to accomplish.
Speaker 5 (39:28):
No all of the legal ways to set up a trust,
because if.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
The lawyer they you work with doesn't suggest some of
these things, basically you did it wrong.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
You just put your finger on My greatest frustration. People
go to lawyers. They don't know what they're talking about,
but it doesn't stop them from talking. It kills you terrible. Well,
that music means I need to get out, Jerry, give
us a shout at the office, if you would please,
Even listening to the day, Carrier sell, I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
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
(40:35):
visit Davidcarrier law dot com.
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 on David Carrier.
Your family's personal attorney. And you have found the place
where we talk about retirement law. That's what it's about.
Retirement law, Yeah, estate planning, will's trust probate. How do
we beat the high cost of long term care? You
already paid for it? Why pay again? Isn't that That's
the truth. That's what elder law's about. It's like, why
(00:57):
pay I paid twice? I don't know, why would you?
It seems insane to me, but people do it. Most
people do it anyway. Also business law and real estate.
So give us a call if you've got a questions
about any of that good stuff. Six one six, seven
seven four twenty four twenty four six one six, seven
(01:17):
seven four twenty four twenty four. Of course we have
to brag on our artificial intelligence infobot or whatever you
want to call it anyway on the website Davidcarrier Law
dot com. That's Davidcarrier Law dot com and get on
over there and get your questions answered. It's not legal advice,
(01:37):
but it's helpful.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's a radio show answer, right, I mean, radio show
answers are not legal advice. So if you call in
and say, oh, what about all this stuff? And I say, well,
I think you ought to do this or that, you
can't suit me for malpractice, okay because I didn't know
all the facts. And I keep saying that, but you
don't get to you don't get to ignore that part.
(01:59):
It's not lead advice. You know. We need to look
at the documents to figure that one out. Same way
with the bot. But it can be it can be
very useful, and it's a lot better than everything else
I've seen, because I've looked at the other law website. Oh,
ask us a question, chat with us now, you know,
and the only thing they want is your you know,
name rank and serial numbers so they can call you back.
(02:20):
And it's like, well, I wasn't very helpful. So to
work the buddy of mine, I'm like, hey, you know,
if it's one of those things. I don't want it.
You know, that's that's not helpful. Oh no, no, no,
it'll be it'll be good. It'll be good. And it's
like people have been trying it and feedback has been
very very has been very positive because it's trained on
our stuff. You know that the problem with the AI
(02:42):
artificial intelligence is that it hallucinates stuff. I don't know
if you've ever tried it. Here's a good test for you.
Putting your own name and ask it for a biography
of you. Okay, you will find out you were the
first man on Mars and invented stuff and all kinds
of stuff that you never did. It will say that
(03:05):
you did. Okay. Lawyers have gotten into big trouble with
this because they've used it to create legal briefs, you know,
submitted those to the court, right, and the AI makes
up cases. It does. It makes them up and not true.
They don't exist anywhere, but the AI puts things together
(03:26):
in a certain way and it makes it up. So
if you're going to have any usefulness to this stuff,
you got to restrict what it looks at, right, You
got to train it on certain things and only those things.
So that's what that's what we've done with this AI.
It's primarily put it that way, primarily because you can't
(03:48):
really control it. But primarily it's focused trained on our
own stuff. So what you're going to get is going
to be things that are somewhat useful. Put it that way.
I wouldn't want to say reliable. Let's say useful. Anyway,
Let's get to some questions here, shall we. How does
the power of attorney help me? I have power of
(04:09):
attorney for my elderly grandmother. Specifically states that if Grandma's
unable to care for herself, I have full rights to
make healthcare decisions and full access to bank account to
do with you know, as I please, including purchases, deposits,
what have you. Well, it turns out that grandma's in
a nursing home. But the previous nursing home never took payment.
I guess it was a charity thing maybe or maybe
(04:31):
she was on Medicare. I don't know. Doesn't say. This
is why it's not legal advice, Okay, because you need
more details, but you get the picture. Anyway, did use
her account for other things since the nursing home didn't
take payment, He used Grandma's account. Now what did he
use Graham's account for? Well, maybe he used it to,
(04:55):
you know, take care of her house. Maybe he used
it for her groceries, maybe used it for additional items.
Who knows. He just says other things. If it was
the casit and then it says they called adult Protective services, whoopsies. Yeah, Well,
if Grahama's money is missing, then adult Protective services is
who you call. Now if grandson here or grandson here,
(05:21):
and I'm assuming it's grandson supposed to be grand granddaughter,
but we all know it's grandson anyway. Well that's not
really true though. Some of the most horrific cases you've
seen have been women taking advantage of their elderly grandparents.
I mean, I mean awful, awful stuff, awful stuff. So
(05:42):
I just assume it's a grandson from the writing, but
it could be granddaughter who knows anyway, moved her to
new location. They're pulling her social security directly. Okay, so
the social security is now going direct deposit to the
nursing home. They must be what we call the representative payee. Okay,
the previous home called APS. And now I'm being investigated.
(06:04):
They call today APS, I guess call today to discuss
the bank account transactions? Do I comply with the questioning
what can happen to me? Well, depending on what you
spend the money on, you're in deep doodo or clean
and green. Either way. Either way, you don't talk to
police without representation because you will say things. You will
(06:28):
say things that you think are innocent. It may very
well be innocent. In your innocence, you will think they're
on your side, in your in your naivete, you will
assume that you know everything's going to be. Everything's a okay, right,
(06:48):
that is your naivete, that is your whatever. But and
sometimes I would say usually with APS, I don't protective services.
My experience has been your typical a PS agent, and
they are police agents. Okay, APS is police. It's not
social workers. They're cops. They're police, right, that's what they are.
(07:09):
They're there to stop waste, for an abuse, et cetera,
you know, exploitation in the elderly, et cetera, cetera. They
take their job seriously. They're very good. Okay, but that's
that's that's who you're dealing with. You're not dealing with
your grandma now, you're dealing with the police who are
making sure that your grandma didn't get ripped off. And
because they see so many people ripping off their grandparents
(07:30):
that they're ready to come down with hobnail boots on
whoever they can catch doing it. Now, that doesn't mean
that they're not familiar with cases like yours, perhaps where
you were spending it on grandma's house and stuff. Still
in all, Still in all, it's a good idea to
be represented. It's a good idea to go see call
(07:52):
an attorney and say, hey, you know, here's what's going on.
APS is looking into this now. If they have been,
if the attorney has been doing this stuff before, they
will say, well you better come in and bring your
records and day dad did. They will probably have a
history with APS, probably most of us do, and they
(08:13):
will be the APS agent will say oh, yeah, yeah,
well you know what's going on, and you will have
hopefully the attorney that you talk with, we'll have some
credibility with the APS agent, and the attorney can say
here's what's going on. Did hear the records and presented
in a way an accurate way, a correct way, a
(08:33):
true way that it is exonerating of you. Okay, but
if you don't do that, if you just kind of
go in with the mess of paperwork that you've got
because you weren't keeping very good records and whatnot, and
then you're not clear about what actually happened, Well, there's
(08:54):
two reasons people aren't clear about what actually happened. The
first reason they're not clear is because people are a
mess anyway, records are a mess. They got shopping bags
full of stuff, blah blah blah. Okay, that's just natural.
But the second reason people are a mess, and sometimes
it's difficult to tell, is because they're stealing. All right,
guess which one of the APS thinks you're doing at
(09:16):
the very start. Okay, let me give you a hint.
It's the stealing one. That is your hint. They think
you're stealing. So what you want to do? But if
your records are all square, because that happens so infrequently, right,
you go to your attorney and attorney, okay, let's look
at this. Let's sort it all out. H blah blah
(09:37):
blah blah, and now you can demonstrate to the APS
person right exactly what happened, how it happened, what your
authority was, et cetera, et cetera. A power of attorney
is not a license to go buy a boat. It's
not a license to go fly first class. It's not
a license for you just to take grandma's money and
do whatever you want with it. It may be very
(09:57):
clear about that. You are held to a very high standard.
Use grandma's money for grandma, and if you did that,
then showing that you did that is very important. But
because if you can't show that you did it, they're
going to assume that you didn't. They're going to assume
that you spent it at the casino. And now you're
(10:17):
off to the races. Maybe they can prove it beyond
a reasonable doubt. Maybe they can't. But now you're in
the mangle. Right now, you're in the blender, and they're
about to hit frop a. Okay, it's bad, it's bad. Okay.
So why do you want to go see an attorney
when you get accused of this kind of thing, even
though you're pure as the driven snow. The answer is
(10:38):
because you're a mess. Your records are a mess. They're
going to look suspicious as hell to the aps person
you want somebody who knows how to present evidence to
sort through that stuff or help you sort through it right,
so you can demonstrate easily that you didn't do anything wrong,
everything was fine, okay, and if it wasn't fine, then
(11:01):
they can talk about how minimizing your penalty, which is
also a good thing to do. I've been listening to
the David Carrier Show on David Carrier your family's personal attorney.
(11:24):
Take me tonight beside.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
This hour of the David Carrier Show is pro bono,
so call in now at seven seven twenty four twenty four.
This is the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show, where fat bottomed
attorneys make the world go at least one of them. Uh,
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. That's
the number to call. If you have a question, comment
(12:04):
or a concern, you can always head over to the
website David Carrier Law all squish it all together David
Carrier Law dot com and on the website. Now is
the new AI Artificial Intelligence Genuine Insight Ooh, that's a
good slogan, huh. Anyway, it's a you can actually ask
(12:28):
it questions like free form questions. Give it a try.
It's crazy, it doesn't catch anything, and it will be
I promise you it will be useful. Davidcarrier Law dot com.
Just give it a try. Now, you got to wait
a little bit before it pops up. And it was
having trouble with the Firefox browser. So if you're using Mozilla,
(12:48):
you know, but on the Google, on the Chrome and
on the other thing it was is working just fine,
but they were supposedly fixing it. But anyway, give it
a yeah, give it a try. It will kind of
pop up there and just click on it and you
can there are some preloaded questions. You can click on
those if you want, and it'll give you a whole Exejesus,
(13:10):
or you can just type in your own. And really
the hardest thing to do with it is you tend
not to ask it the questions you really want to ask.
You tend to be a little more formulaic, right, and
it will take, but it will take you know, real
free form questions. You just ask it something and you
(13:30):
can there's a little microphone there, so you can click
on the microphone and you don't even have to type.
You can just ask it the question and then but
there's the little paper airplane thing there. You have to
click on the paper airplane otherwise it doesn't know you're
done talking. So there you go. Give it a try.
Davidcarrier Law dot Com doesn't cost it nothing. Let's get
back to some more of our questions. Should I place
(13:52):
a new car that will be financed into my living trust? Well,
you're not gonna be able to. But I'm seventy three
years old and need a reliable new car. I'm creating
a living trust. Should I put the car into the trust,
you won't be able to because it'll be secured on
the title. It'll show the car company or the bank
or whoever it is loaning you the money to buy
(14:13):
the car. We'll be on the title and you won't
be able to clear transfer title to the You won't
be able to transfer title to the trust. My main
concerns I don't want my children to be burdened with
an auto loan, auto loan that may outlive me. Well, yeah,
if the if the auto loans upside down, then they
may very well come against your estate to collect that,
(14:35):
you know, collect the difference. But generally speaking, that's not
what happens. Generally speaking, auto loans are pretty near. You
send them, you drop the car off, you know, and
you're pretty much done with it. Not necessarily, not necessarily,
but pretty much that's what usually happens. Here's another thing.
We get a lot of folks who want to put
(14:56):
automobiles in trust, right because they wanted to go to
particular kid. The good news is, and we give you
this as part of your part of the package. You
can fill it in and explain it to you. But
you can if you identify the vehicle and identify the
beneficiary that you wanted to go to. So let's say
you have a few kids and you want to give
(15:17):
the you want to give the green Volkswagen bug to
one of them. Well you can, you know, get the
vehicle identification number. You put that on this form. You
know that we generate for you, uh, and then the
vehicle and the kid vehicle and the kid. You know,
if you if you've got that many vehicles, you want
to spread them out or and this this happens a
(15:37):
lot where you have a paidoff vehicle, right that's very reliable,
and you want it to go to the kids who's
not doing so well or at least to have a car,
right in addition to whatever else they're getting, So you
can you can use this form to do that. There's
no probate involved, you don't have to account for it
as part of the trust. You don't have to change
(15:58):
the title. It's after you die. They bring this thing
to the Secretary of State and then get retitled in
their own name. It's so much easier than what we
used to have to do. It's just great. So that's
the deal with vehicles. Putting it into the trust is
not going to relieve the debt that's secured by the vehicle, right,
(16:22):
you can't really do that. So there you go. Um
bum bum boom. My kids are nineteen and twenty. Their
father just recently passed away. He was not in their lives.
Are they entitled to anything? Yes, intestate share. He did remarry.
Whoopsie's kids are asking if they're entitled to anything. Stayed
(16:45):
half his ashes to bury with Grandma passed six months ago.
We just don't know what they're entitled to being blood related. Well,
here's the thing. People who own stuff, get to decide
where the stuff goes. Okay, they get to design. So
if they if dad here did a who's not in
their lives, if dad did a will or a trust
(17:07):
or something, says hey, I'm giving it all to my
now spouse, my current spouse, well, the current spouse is
gonna is going to get it, although if it does
go through probate, there may be some allowances that the
kids will get. But in any event, in any event,
this really kicks in if it's intestate, if there is
(17:28):
no if there is no will, the current spouse, whoever
you're married to right now, when you die, they get
a certain amount. And if you had kids who were
not kids of your current spouse right then your current
spouse gets x amount of dollars. I think it's like
one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars the first hundred
(17:51):
seventy five thousand, and then you split everything that's above that.
So if you know, if he's a millionaire, let's say
he's got one point two million, we'll figure two hundred
thousand goes to the spouse and then the rest gets
split with the kids. Okay, so it might be worth
looking into. But this is only for probate assets, right,
(18:12):
And if he was joined down on everything with this spouse,
well there's no probate assets. If if he did a
trust or a will, let's say, give it all to
the current spouse, then the current spouse is gonna take Okay,
so there you go. But but you know, most people
are very surprised. And it's works with parents too. If
(18:33):
you're in testine, right, your spouse doesn't automatically get everything.
You got to split it with the other kids. You
got to split it with the parents. How about that.
And if it's your kids, then again you get more.
The spouse surviving spouse gets more, but you still have
to split with your own kids. How about that? Nuts,
Where does it go when the owner dies? His lawyer said,
(18:56):
there's no such thing as a will and a power
of attorney. The lawyer is correct, there's no such thing
as a will and a power of attorney. That's not
what it's for. But and this is something we always do,
which I see very rarely done, but should be done
in my opinion, is we give the person with the
power of attorney the ability to do a trust. Now,
(19:17):
if you give that person with the power of attorney
the ability to do a trust. That's even better than
doing a will, right, because now you're gonna not only
will I have the distribution plan in it, you're also
going to avoid probate and you can put a you
can't put a trust in there. What you do is
what you do is you put the ability, the ability
(19:38):
to make a trust in the power of attorney. Okay,
now you got to use the power of attorney before
somebody dies, so you can't like wait until after they're
dead and say, oh, I have a power of attorney,
let's make a trust. Doesn't work like that. But while
they're alive. While they're alive, then you can give them
the you can give them create a trust using the
(20:01):
power of attorney, which will avoid the need for probate
or will whatever later on. That's why this stuff is
so darn confusing, right, because there's all kinds of different
ways to do things. That's why you go see a lawyer.
What we've been doing for a while just saying if
my mother died, is her boyfriend allowed to keep her belongings?
(20:23):
If they wasn't married, my mom dies, as her boyfriend
allowed to keep her stuff? If I'm next to kin. Well,
the question is, how do you know it's her stuff? Uh? Clothing?
I suppose you probably don't want that. If you're talking
about the furniture in the apartment, well, he's gonna say
it is, right. Probably. The question is what kind of
(20:46):
belongings are we talking about? Right? Maybe it's jewelry. But
see then you get into well she said I could
have it, or she gave it to me. She actually
gave it to me before she died. How are you
gonna How are you gonna fight that one? Okay, tough
to do so? Uh? Is her boyfriend allowed to keep her? Well,
(21:06):
the question is whose belongings were they? Were they really hers?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
You know?
Speaker 2 (21:11):
If they weren't, and it's clear they weren't, then no,
he doesn't get to keep them. But good luck proving it.
You've been listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your retirement law specialist.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
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 (21:45):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Now is the time give us
a call sixty one six seven seven four twenty four
twenty four. That's sixty one six seven seven four four
twenty four. Will get your question, comment or concern on
the air. You know, they were just playing that queen
(22:06):
song another One Bites the Dust. You wonder how old
is that song? Well, in nineteen eighty two, when I
graduated from law school, I was on the student Bar
Association and during finals we would play that song after
the test let out, you know, so people would be
leaving the building and another one Bites the Dust. Now
that passed for humor back in nineteen nineteen eighty two.
(22:29):
So if you wonder how old that song is, do
the math. It's twenty five plus. I don't know what
is it eighteen twenty five plus eighteen. That's an old
song forty three years. There you go anyway, six one
six seven seven four twenty four twenty four. That's six
one six twenty four twenty four, and we'll get your question,
comment or concern on the air. You can interact with
(22:52):
the wit and wisdom of yours truly by going to
the website Davidcarrier Law dot com and the there'll be
a pop up if you have a pop up preventer.
I don't know if I don't know if that stops it.
But anyway, it's a AI assistant. It's not a chatbot.
It's it doesn't ask for your name. Well, you can
(23:14):
put your name in if you want, but you don't
have to. And it will actually answer questions kind of general,
kind of vague answers, not the sharply pointed razor wit
and exact whatever answers, comprehensive answers that you get here,
(23:35):
of course, but it will send you in the right direction,
give you some ideas. Okay, So anyway, that's on the
website Davidcarrier Law dot com. And you don't even have
to you know, you don't even have to give us
all your personal information. You just ask some questions. It's
so much easier than trying to find the answers on
a website. Oh my god, it's unbelievable. Question. How do
(23:57):
I make sure one of our emails here? How do
I make sure my daughter gets everything of mine in
the event something happens to me? Don't you love it
when people say something happens to me? You know, what
do you mean something happens to you? I die well,
why you say in the event I die? Might you
say that because that's what you mean, but we all
say it. I say it too. Or what if something
(24:18):
were to happen to you? You mean, what if I croak? Yeah?
What if you croak? Okay, same thing. Anyway, something happens
to me before I get a will made, I'm on vacation,
recently divorced, and if something happens to me, like a
shark attack or something, I guess, I don't know, I
fall off the boat. I want my daughter to get everything. Okay,
(24:38):
So here's how you here's how you do that. Go
back to your stateroom, hotel room, hotel room, camper right,
and if you're in one of those places where you're
paying a stay, there's probably a pad of paper in
there and a pen there might not be. There might
not be. You might have to ask the stewardess if
(24:59):
you're on the ear. We actually had somebody to do this.
They had a So I've got one thing that we
used for distribution, and it was a tour guide to Cuba.
This guy was heading over to Cuba on vacation and
of course when he got back, did he do anything. No,
So we had to use this Cuban tour guide with
notes in the margin. Okay, dispositive notes in the margin,
(25:25):
but at least he had that and he signed and
dated it. So it's what we call holographic will, meaning
you wrote it in your own blood, in your own
handwriting your own ink. You don't have to use blood.
I was just kidding about that part. But so long
as you write it out yourself rite most every state,
I believe every state accept accept a holographic will. So
(25:47):
you go back to your room and you say, you know,
dear everybody, this is my last will and testament. If
you say stuff like that, if you want, but basically
you say I give everything to my daughter and name her,
that would be a good thing. It's also a good
thing to say, I know about those twenty three other
kids I have, I ain't leaving them nothing. If that's
(26:10):
an issue for you, you know, disinherit the people you
want to you want to disinherit, But you can do that.
Like I say, we have one on a tour guide.
Don't recommend it. Don't recommend that. Go back to the
hotel and get the paper with the hotel name on it,
and then write out your write out your holographic will
(26:32):
before you go swimming in the in the ocean, because
if you wind up you're ready for this. This is
a good one. So if you wind up sleeping with
the fishes, then your daughter will get everything that you have,
all right, So you want to definitely go oh oh oh.
And by the way, don't bring that with you because
(26:52):
with that one, if you're in Davy Jones locker and
that wind's up down there, it's not much good. Leave
it in the hotel room. Mail it to your daughter.
That's not a bad idea either, you know, take some
get some postcards and put them in the envelope with
and send off the send the thing off, but get
it in the mail. Don't don't be carrying around because
if the airplane goes down, right you're carrying it, that's
(27:13):
not much good. Now if the mail sack is in
the airplane and it all goes well, and you can't
account for everything. But what I would do is, like
I said, go back to the hotel room. If it's
if you're in a cheap hotel and they don't have
a no pad and no envelopes, go to the front desk.
They will have envelopes and you can write it out.
They'll even sell you a stamp, I bet you, and
then you can put it in the mail and now
(27:34):
you can go swimming with the sharks or the manta rays.
Isn't that how that one Australian guy died right he
was swimming with manta raised or something. They stabbed him.
That was bad. That kind of thing can happen when
you're on vacation. So do that now. If you're a
Disney World there's no problem because well, I don't know though,
because there was that one kid who got eaten by
(27:56):
an alligator or something.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
That.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Go ahead, write it out anyway, put it on the
hotel letterhead, mail it, mail it. Don't carry it with
you just in case. All right, what else we got here?
You'll get some good one. That's a good one. You
gotta admit, that's a good one. Is there a form
that a spouse can put their request for property to
be left to spouse in case of death? Is there
(28:18):
a form? Yeah, there's a form. It's called a You know,
you can do a joint tendency tends by the entirety.
If you're are you asking are there things in your name?
That you want to give to your spouse. Yeah, the
form is called a will or a trust, all right.
A will goes through probate, a trust does not. You
can also do beneficiary designations. That's another bad way to
(28:40):
doing it. But yeah, there's there's different ways of doing
these things. So really, when people say, well, which is
the best way, and the answer is, I don't know.
Depends on your situation. Which is the best way. That's
why you talk to somebody who's been doing it for
a while, no more than six months anyway, and they
(29:01):
can help you decide what is the right way to
do it. Maybe it is joint tendancy, maybe it is
a trust, maybe it is a will. I don't know.
There are different assets and sometimes one set of assets
you do jointly, another set of assets you do in
a trust, another set of assets you do with a
trust created by a will. There's all kinds of different
(29:22):
ways of doing this stuff, all right. And when you
do it correctly with somebody who knows what they're doing,
then you're going to have the absolute minimum of administration
and waste waste. You'll have the minimum of waste, and
that's really important. You know, you work too hard for it.
Why would you waste now? And yet it happens all
(29:44):
time because people would rather find a form google it right,
you know? Oh, that would be a good question for
the AI boy. I'm going to put that on the
AI bod. Is there a form I can used to
leave everything to my spouse? I wonder what it would say.
We'll have to find that. I'll let you know next week.
(30:06):
Let's see, we've got thirty seconds, so that's okay, we'll
get to this. Uh when when we get back from
the break. You're listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm
David Carrier inviting you to go to the website Davidcarrier
Law dot com come to a three secrets workshop. You
will be glad you did. Jerry really matter.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
David's working and working and taking your calls.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Now.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
This is the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, and now's the time for you
to go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com sign
up for a three secrets workshop. These are the workshops
we do every single week. The Good Lord brings in
Grand Rapids Norton Shores, Portage and Holland. Yeah, we're doing
(31:22):
them all the time. Easy to find. Go to the website.
Wait till that thing pop up, right, the AI thing.
We've got Jerry on the line with a trust question.
Oh boy, Jerry, let's rock. Get us out of here
on a high note.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
One of your meetings you are, not meetings but radio shows.
Speaker 4 (31:41):
You touched on residents trust.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
I was wondering if you could explain how those work
and if you already have a trust, if you could,
would you have to rewrite the whole trust or can
you incorporate some of that into a regular trust you
already have?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah, the resident what's your situation? Is it your house
and you're remarried. Is that the idea or is it
one of your kids?
Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yes, I just you know, have everything in a trust,
and you know right.
Speaker 5 (32:20):
I have.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
Quite a bit of land, so and I am remarried.
So I was wondering what would be the best way
to set that up, just a regular trust or a
residence trust.
Speaker 4 (32:36):
Something piqued my hand.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
Yeah, what I was about it?
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Sure? So one of the one of the one of
the conundrums, one of the problems you've got right. So
you've got family. Let's just say you've got land that
you acquired before the marriage, and it's sort of heritage land,
family land, that kind of thing. And now you're remarried,
(33:01):
and you don't want your spouse to be homeless or
anything or be out on our own. At the same time,
you don't want to give the farm, the hunting property,
the cottage, to everything to the spouse. So what you
do is you set up a trust in your trust. Now,
I'm a big fan of restating trusts as opposed to
(33:22):
amending trusts. The problem with amending and existing trust is
everybody gets to see how it was before and how
it is now. When you restate the trust and you
shred the other documents, all you've got. All you can
point to is what you have right now, So you
don't get into arguments about, oh, we didn't understand this
(33:44):
change or that change. And everybody argues about everything. So
the less they have to argue about, the better off
you are. Plus, there are changes in trust law, not major,
you know, change, everything sort of changes, but there are changes,
and so restate the trust enables you to incorporate more
of the administrative stuff and some substantive stuff as well
(34:07):
into the trust, so you have kind of not only
your up to date intent but also your up to
date legal background. Okay, that makes sense. Then what we
do in this trust is you say, hey, if my
wife survives me, right, she can live in the house
and you've got acreage. Right, So we say she can
(34:29):
live in the house and what we call the kurtilage,
which is the garage and the garden attached, basically the
house lot sort of thing. All right, that much she
can live in, okay, But the rest of it. The
kids can hunt, campfish, whatever they're going to do on
that other property, rent it out, whatever it is, and
(34:51):
the wife can live here as long as she actually
does live here. It's your primary residence, as long as
she doesn't have a boyfriend or remarry, as long as
she's not in a long term care facility, as long
as she's actually here, as long as she pays the taxes,
the insurance, the utilities. So there is an ongoing obligation.
(35:16):
Generally speaking, Now you don't have to do that. You
could say, all the assets of the trust are going
to support my spouse in this house, pay all the bills,
and she can live there as long as she wishes,
But if she's not using it as a primary residence,
then the trust terminates and I can distribute it to
the kids. So you get to tailor this in how
(35:36):
much of the expenses is she going to bear? Sometimes
what we'll do, Like people with a condo, you might say, Hey,
I want to provide for my sp and maybe you
both contributed to the condo whatever I want to provide
for my spouse, And she may not want to live
in this condo. She might not want to live in
this big house. So the trustee can sell the house
(35:57):
and rent a senior apartment for her or or him,
or by a different condo where you know, there's degrees
of flexibility that you can build into these things dependent
on what it is that you want to what you
want to provide. Okay, so it is a it's a
(36:17):
go ahead.
Speaker 5 (36:20):
Would a resident trust basically just be a legal name
or document for what they used to call like a
life lease?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
The problem it's an alternative. Yeah, it's an alternative to
the life lease or the life estate and those were terrible,
hate those. Okay, that's what we call blunt force trauma planning.
That's what I call blunt force planning because it says,
as long as you're breathing, as long as your heart's beating,
(36:56):
you live here. Or I can't sell it all right,
I can't sell the property without paying you off. And
you'd be surprised how much ve So let's say you
give somebody the right to live in a property life
estate or life lease for the rest of their life.
And let's say it's a half a million dollar property, okay,
(37:19):
five hundred thousand dollar property, including the acreage and everything else. Now,
the kids got to wait till you die, till she
dies before they get it, okay. And if it gets
sold in the meantime, right gets she's in a nursing
home now and they want to sell the property. Even
into her their nineties, she still has about a quarter
(37:41):
of the value that life estate is worth, about a
quarter of what the property is worth. So if you
sell it, then she gets one hundred and twenty five
thousand dollars because she had the life estate, whereas she
hasn't used it, she didn't have any investment in it.
Blah blah blah. And if you do it the way
I'm talking about it, you just terminate the life estate,
(38:02):
all the money goes to the kids, right, or she
takes up with somebody else, Right, she moves to Florida,
living in the villages, having a wild time whatever, and
we can't and she has the right to occupy the
Michigan property. And now your kids are paying the taxes.
The thing's going to rack and ruin because what does
she care anymore. There's all kinds of different ways that
(38:24):
this plays out. And what you want is something that's flexible,
something that recognizes reality, and something that isn't going to
hurt any of the people that you care about, any
of the people that you want to provide for. That's
what the Residence Trust enables us to do. It's to
dial it in very particularly.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Yeah, because it sounds like they kind of accomplish the
same thing, but the Residents Trust does it in a
much better way.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
Exactly. That's exactly it. Yes, because look, we've had people,
you know, they give them the life lease and then
you got the kids who are suing because they didn't
pay the taxes. And there's no easy way to do it,
there's no you know, you got to you gotta do
a lawsuit. And look, if you want to become unpopular
with somebody, sue them that I guarantee you of destroy
(39:17):
any relationship there is right. Whereas with the trust, it's
much more gentle, it's much you know, it's it's easier
you and you really accomplish what you want to accomplish.
Speaker 5 (39:28):
No all of the legal ways to set up a trust,
because if.
Speaker 4 (39:37):
The lawyer they you work with doesn't suggest some of
these things, basically you did it wrong.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
You just put your finger on My greatest frustration. People
go to lawyers. They don't know what they're talking about,
but it doesn't stop them from talking. It kills you terrible. Well,
that music means I need to get out, Jerry, give
us a shout at the office, if you would please,
Even listening to the day, Carrier sell, I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
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
(40:35):
visit Davidcarrier law dot com.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com