Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, studying. What what do we do
around here? Well, state planning, retirement law. You know, that's
really kind of sums it up right. It's retirement law.
It's if you're retired, if you want to be retired,
if you're thinking about being retired, if you know somebody
(00:39):
who's retired, if you ever hope to be retired, good
luck for that one. Huh. Well, there's ways to do it.
There's ways to do it. I'm reliably informed. I've observed
it thousands and thousands of times. There's a way to
do that. And that retirement thang may not be for me,
but you know, whatever to each throwing them all right
(01:01):
anyway six one, six, seven, seven, four, twenty four, twenty four. Yes,
And you know I have to I have to admit
that over the last month we had reruns, reruns, can
you imagine terrible reruns. Oh my goodness, we call them
the best of but you know their reruns what they
are is because you can't call in. But now you
(01:21):
can call in. Six one, six, seven, seven four twenty four,
twenty four. I can't tell you how frustrating it is
to be, you know, like we're out of town a
couple of times there, and it's like, you know, when
I was with the with the boy Scouts, you know,
you can drive to McDonald's and get a Wi Fi
that worked, okay, so I could still do it, even
(01:43):
even during campouts and stuff like that. But here I
am in sort of civilization and you can't. You can't
hook up. Oh my, I can't tell you. Very frustrating.
And I'm sure, I'm sure there's more of a relief
for you than any kind of frustration. But anyway, if
you've been holding on to questions for a little while, here,
(02:04):
now's the time it is. We are live today. Six one, six,
seven seven four twenty four, twenty four. I hate to
skip a weekend, absolutely hate that. And and I did
have my stuff with me, so you know, well, you know, excuses.
Everybody's got two or three of them, and they all
none of them any good. So but that's my excuse,
(02:24):
that's my explanation. If you were wondering, is is this
guy getting lazy? Is he being faithless to us? No? No,
the technology failed me. And of course I could have
you know, I really could have, you know, be clear
about it. I mean I could have done the boy
scout thing. I could have. I could have driven over
to the McDonald's and sat out, sat out in the
(02:45):
truck and poached I've poached a Wi Fi from MCDA. Well, yeah,
I guess it is my fault. Oh well, sorry about that. Anyway,
give us a call sixty one six seven seven four
twenty four twenty four. Not for the guilt if you'd
like to get your question, comment or concern on the air.
Of course we deal with you know, the whole estate
(03:06):
planning thing, will trust probate. How do we make sure
that you don't that you don't wind up in long
term care or if you do. See, here's the here's
the thing with the long term care stuff. Okay, tell everybody.
The deal with long term care for most people is that,
oh I'm not going to go to a long term
(03:26):
care facility. Okay, So you tell me why they're all full.
You tell me why it's hard to get a bed.
You tell me why the rates are going up like crazy, continuing,
you know, just inflation, deflation, whatever. The prices are going
up because the supply is limited and the demand is
going through the roof. Awful lot of folks realized, you know,
(03:49):
the last week, couple of three times, you know, you
have people in the kids are bringing mom or dad in,
and you know, the dementia is pretty obvious, pretty obvious.
And I don't know if we're just in denial about
it or or what. But you know when when mom
(04:12):
or dad can't remember who the kids are, or you know,
repeat themselves stuff like that, it's like, uh, you know,
you're not rushing anything. Oh, we need to think about it,
think about what you know, Well, go ahead and think
about it. You know, I'm all favorite people thinking about
stuff at the same time. You get smacked in the
(04:34):
face with a wet fish. You should know it, you
should recognize that you should do something about it. In
my humble opinion, but it's you know, that's not slowing down.
I guess it's my I guess it's my point. We're
in a you know, you call about talk about the pandemic,
(04:55):
what have you. You know, the baby boomers, you know,
which what is that like? What do they say, it's
like from forty five to sixty five or sixty three
or something like that. I don't know, twenty year period time.
Well even even the you know, the first the first
boomers are in their eighties. Okay, Well when you hit
(05:15):
when you hit your eighties, the you know, the National
Institute of Hell says you got a seventy percent shot
of three years of skill care. Okay, it's not so
much in the sixties. It's it's there in the sixties,
but not so much. It's definitely there in the in
(05:36):
the seventies. And the older you get, the more the
more likely it is that you're going to need the
skill care. I mean, that's just that's just reality. And
what we're seeing now is that the folks have have
hit the age, you know, in those in the eighties
(06:00):
where yeah, it's not just a real thing, it's it's
very you know what I mean, it's reaching those levels
of participation where you can't you can't deny it anymore.
I mean, it's already happening. But the longer we go.
(06:21):
The longer we go, the more obvious it becomes. Put
it that way, the longer we go, the more obviously becomes.
So anyway, give us a shout six one, six, seven, seven,
twenty four, twenty four, just telling you this stuff is real.
It is happening, and it's happen It seems to be
seems to be happening more now than we've seen before.
(06:45):
So if you have a question about that, if you're wondering,
you know, what does this stuff mean? The good news
is the good news is that most of the time,
there's still something we can do. Almost always, there's a
way to preserve life savings. There a way to preserve choice.
You've heard me talk about the PACE program, a program
of all inclusive care for the elderly. You've heard me
(07:08):
talk about that before. It's a big deal, and most
of our clients, I would say, the majority of them
never go to a long term care facility. And the
reason is that when you do it correctly, when you
do this stuff correctly, then you're not going to need it,
(07:33):
simply because you get the help at home right that
you need to stay at home. See most people, you know,
there's no big surprise most people want to stay at home,
and the problem is how can we do that. The
kids have busy lives, the spouses are typically contemporary with
the person who needs the help. So how are we
(07:53):
going to make all of that work? How can you
make all that work together? And the answer is PACE
gives that helping hand. Pace will make it possible for
you to stay in the home. And if you do
need at some point, if you do need the skilled care,
you need residential care at all, which is which is
(08:15):
not usual. I mean generally speaking, if we've got family
members who are able to care for at least provide
some care for the loved one, right for your mom
or dad, for your spouse. What we found is when
we lift the load right through the PACE program, which
is a program you've already paid for, right, I mean,
(08:37):
this is a tax payer supported program. Hey, when people
say government program, as if the government had anything that
it didn't get from the anything it didn't get from you,
Because it doesn't. That's that's really the that's really the thing.
It's a taxpayer supportive program, meaning you've already paid for this,
(08:58):
and now the question is how do we make sure
that you get the advantage from what you've from what
you've already paid for. That's really the in my opinion,
that's the that's the key question. And this is this
is how you do it. You know, there's there's a
way to make it happen. And I'm just urging. And
it was just startling last week how many times we
(09:19):
had folks coming in with the with the parent and
now they're thinking about doing something and you know, well,
when you're in your eighties, you're not rushing it anymore.
That's not that's not what we call that's what we
call rushing things. That's more like, well, you know, let's uh,
you know, let's get her, let's get her done. So
(09:44):
if you have a question, comment, or concern, go to
the website Davidcarrier Law dot com. We've got this for
about a month two months now. We've had this AI
assistant up so that you can actually ask questions and
really fairly substantive questions. I mean, it's not legal advice
by any stretch of the No, it's not legal advice,
but it will kind of steer you in the right direction.
(10:05):
It will also make available the workshops that we do.
It will kind of I'll tell you it'll kind of
steer you over there. But it's not one of those
where it's just oh, give us your name and information
and we'll have someone call you. No, there's a lot
of good stuff on there if you'd like to sign
up for a workshop. It keeps getting better and stuff.
(10:29):
So I'm not a big fan of AI replacing human beings. Okay,
I'm not, but there are some things that it does,
and it does well. Give it a try. It doesn't
hurt anything. Davidcarrier Law dot com and at Davidcarrier Law
dot com, the assistant will pop up after a couple
of seconds. You've been listening to the David Carrier Show.
(10:50):
I'm David Carrier, your famili's retirement laws specialist. Welcome back
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your famili's
person an attorney. Now is the time give us a
call six one six seven seven four twenty four twenty four.
That six one six seven seven four twenty four twenty
four will get your question, comment or concern on the air.
(11:12):
You can always go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com.
Don't forget the dot com. I don't know if you
really need to include it. But anyway, uh, David Carrier
Law dot com and on the website, you can either
maneuver in the old fashioned way, you know, go over
and point and click at stuff, or you can just
ask the uh, the super AI assistant. You know, we
(11:35):
are using AI more. I have to tell you it's
it's really not so much to replace things we're already doing,
as to make possible doing things that we weren't able
to do before because it was just too hard, like
analyzing things. It really you know, everybody, I'll tell you
(11:55):
when I was at the you know, in the intro,
were talking about oh, you know, serve the the Pentagon
and all that. Yeah, true enough. But the thing is
what I was doing at the Pentagon was putting together
doing some software stuff. But one of my projects was
to do a WILL package for deployment. You know, so
(12:18):
guys who were deploying, you know, when the soldiers going
overseas a lot of them didn't have their wills and
powers of attorney up to date. Anybody surprised by that, No,
So the idea was that we would we would have
a software. This is when computers were like, you know,
oh look at this. You know, we're still doing the
big floppies, the big floppies, you know, the five hundred
(12:40):
quarter inch ones. Do you remember those anyway, And you
had to then you had to use put the floppies
in the computer first to load the software into the
six hundred and forty k of RAM that you had. Yeah,
that that's when I was doing this. Anyway. The point
is we had we put together a package that was
(13:02):
not a I It wasn't you had to put the information,
put the information in. But at the end of it,
it produced a will and a very detailed will guardians
and you know for the kids, guardians conservatives for the kids,
and specific requests and worked in all fifty states and
all that kind of stuff. We did this back this
(13:24):
was in the eighties, you know, mid eighties, and you
know that's how it that's how it worked. But but nowadays,
you know, oh, it's brand new, like it. And back
then they were talking about attorneys being replaced, which of
course would be wonderful except that just doesn't work like that,
(13:44):
and Michael's going to prove it. Hello, Michael, Welcome to
the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Good morning, good morning. Question for you, I wonder if
your law firm handles cases like this, but it could
be unique. And the problem is as a friend of
(14:09):
the families, we found out was recently placed in a
nursing home. He's ninety eight years old and he's functional
as a sixty year old. About a month ago, he
went bowling in both four games. His memory is about
(14:32):
as good as you could expect, you know, at ninety eight.
I mean, he might have a little dementia, but he
was I guess tested by his doctor and the doctor
said he has some dementia. But his daughter was on
(14:53):
his trust as his poa, and she decided that she
didn't want him living alone and his wife recently passed away,
so she took him out of his home against his will.
He did not want to go there. He told her
he would die if he went there, and he would
(15:14):
give up. He specifically told her, no, I don't want
anything to do with that. They had him over to
dinner and she told him they were going to take
his driver's license and put him in a nursing home.
And he got up and left, and you know, I
don't exactly know what all went on, but it wasn't good. Yeah,
(15:35):
So now he's in the nursing home. We called the
nursing home to just give him some support and tell
him hang in there. We will, you know, try to
see what we can do, if you can, if there's
any way to get you out of here. But I
(15:57):
know he's suffering right now form of this, and what
can a person do. I mean, we've already called the
Adult Protective Services and they're looking into it, but it
sounds like it's going to be a long drawn out process.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah. So here's the here's the thing. If if he
was there against his will, then there must be I
would imagine, I imagine that there's a power of attorney involved,
financial healthcare power of attorney. You can do it immediately
effect Yeah, well ye attorney. Yeah, well, you know, not
(16:34):
all powers of attorney are created equal. Every power of
attorney is different, Okay, depending on how it's written. Now
here's the here's the thing. If the only way that
you get to make that kind of decision, like living
decisions for somebody else, is if you're operating under a
healthcare power of attorney. Okay, if it's a financial power
(16:57):
of attorney, the person can revoke it at any time.
But the person could also make it effective without without
any finding of incapacity. Okay, so he might be capable
and give a financial power of attorney, but you cannot
be capable and give a health care power of attorney, right,
(17:18):
you can't. You can't delegate your authority when you're competent. Right,
It's only if you're incompetent mentally incompetent. So the question
then is how did she get a couple of doctors
to sign off on the health care power of attorney?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Because the suspicion, my suspicion would be that must have
happened in order for the facility to accept him against
his will. You know, she's saying, well, he's you know,
he's got the dementia. Here's the letter from the doctor. Well, listen,
there are a lot of dementia diagnoses which do not
make someone incapacitated. All right. There's a lot of people
(17:59):
out there, you know, who are forgetful, who have impaired cognition,
but not impaired to the to the degree that would warrant,
you know, a finding of incapacity. So that's the that's
the thing, right now. What you got to figure out,
what we got to figure out is how did how
(18:19):
did somebody sign off on this?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Is he really incapacitated? And the way to do that
is to go to the U is to go to
the probate court and seek to set aside that if
that's what's going on now, some it may not even
be what's going on. Maybe they're maybe they're doing it
completely without justification, or maybe he is cowed by his
(18:44):
daughter and signed off and admitted himself. There are lots
of things that could have happened, but what we need
to do now is find out what what actually did happen?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
All right, Well, what I heard happened is that the
grandson called him up and asked him if he'd like
to go out to Brands to lunch. And of course
he likes to go there because he drives himself there
about a couple times a week and anyway, and so
he said, yeah, I'd love to go. And so then
(19:15):
the guy comes and picks him up, and instead of
taking him to Brands, he took him straight to the
nursing home, to the assisted living place and he was
admitted there and now he's locked in there and they
won't even allow him to have any calls if you're
not on the call list because they said.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, that's a healthcare that's a healthcare power of attorney.
I mean there are they might. Hey, that music means
I got to get out. But Mike, if you want
to hang on to the next through the news, that
we can get into this a little bit more. Okay, Okay,
thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Just hang on even listening
to the David Carrier Show on David Carrier, your Family's
Personal attorney.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
David's got the how too. You're looking for a just
call seven seven four twenty four twenty four. This is
the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Hello and welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm
David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. Now's the time for
you to call six one six seven seven four twenty
four twenty four. That's six one six seven seven four
four two four if you have a question, comment or
concern you'd like to get on the air. Now this
(20:27):
is not legal advice, but it's a lively legal discussion. Yeah,
so there you are. We've got Mike on the line,
and Michael's neighbor ninety eight years old with some dementia
but still living on his own driving himself to Brands,
his favorite restaurant. And I can certainly understand that, see
(20:49):
right there, that's a good choice he's making anyway, by
apparently he's given a healthcare power of attorney to his daughter.
Grandson invites him to brands, And who wouldn't get in
the car to go to brands, especially if it's your grandson.
But oh no, we didn't go to brands. We went
to a long term care facility. And that's where he's
(21:12):
stuck now, in Communicado, with no contact with anybody who's
not approved by by the family. And Mike, are you
a next door neighbor, just a friend or church member
of what's the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Friend of the family?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Friend of the family. Okay, and we're we've already contacted
Adult Protective Services. They've got you know who APA deals
with mostly our kids who are stealing money, the kids
on crack, who take the Social Security money, stuff like that.
So you know when I mean, there's no issue of
(21:53):
at least I don't haven't heard any issue of theft
or you know, financial abuse or endangered physical endangerment. I
mean that's not the issue. It's it's more the you know,
how do you. Look, we're all we're all human beings, right,
We're all inalienable rights and stuff, and you don't get
to violate our rights unless unless there's been due process.
(22:15):
I keep hearing about that due process. Okay, how about
a little due process. Well here's the deal. I'm just
going to repeat myself from the last hour. But if
you sign the power of attorney for healthcare, right, you
cannot You cannot sign away your rights to freedom basically.
(22:37):
I mean you can sign away if if you are incapacitated, right,
and you've been found to be incapacitated, well, then yeah,
you need someone to care for you to make those
make those decisions. But you can't do it voluntarily. You
can't just delegate a volunteer. If you're competent, there has
to be a finding that you're not competent, not by
(22:58):
a court necessarily, but by a couple of doctors. Now,
the question is when he went in for his exam
and they said, oh, you got some dementia, Well, to
what extent was the dementia, right, I mean, how bad
was it? And because a facility doesn't like to take
(23:19):
anybody in without having the doctors signed off, and they're
not going to stonewall unless they're pretty confident that they
do have authority to do it, and that's only going
to come when we've got medical people. But based on
what you're telling me, it doesn't sound. It sounds to
me like there might have been some sort of miscommunication
(23:41):
between what the doctors signed off on and what it's
being interpreted to mean. Because certainly, like you know, I
had three folks come in last week, and it's like
it's like you can tell that there's some dementia going on,
but it's not like they didn't recognize who they were,
(24:03):
when they were, what their finances were, all the rest
of this. But you do have to slow down a
little bit, you know, and just talk and under you know,
and listen and make sure that you understand what they're
they're saying, and if there is an inconsistency, kind of
go back to that and re establish. And when you
(24:23):
do it that way, especially time of day really matters
the you know, the later in the day, everybody gets tired,
you know, the people most people are at their best
in the morning, So if you're dealing with people at
four o'clock in the afternoon, you're not seeing them at
their best. And Michael, that's true of you, it's true
of Davy Carrier, it's true of everybody. Okay, So it's
(24:48):
not like you couldn't catch somebody at a period when
they were kind of low and you know, decided that
the dementia was of such a level. The question now
is what do we do about it? And the na.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, excuse me, but I'm thinking they're using his age
is the main reason. Like, Okay, nobody at ninety eight
years old can be alert enough to drive a car
or make their own decisions or do the things that
(25:22):
forty or fifty year olds can do. Therefore, we're going
to put you in a nursing home based on your
age if you're not If you don't have dementia right now,
you're going to have it soon, So we might as
well get you where you need to be, whether you
want to be there or not. And that's that's the
best I can come up with. That the reason they're using.
(25:44):
And they've convinced the doctors that he's got it, and
the doctors were able to maybe ask enough questions like
give you ten numbers and then come back ten minutes
later and say, what are the numbers I gave you,
and you know what order did you give them in?
And most people, whether you're fifty or ninety, you might
(26:04):
miss a few of.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Those, Oh for sure, Yeah, no question about that.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
You know. I just think, you know, if he got
diagnosed by some a few other people, or you went
before a judge and they ask him a bunch of questions,
and he knows what he's talking about, and he knows
who you are, and he knows what he's there for,
and he knows how to get up and make his
own breakfast and make us bed, and get in the
(26:30):
car and drive to the store and buy the things
he needs to use for the day and get out
and write, you know, take a walk around his neighborhood,
and that he isn't incapacitated to the point where he
can't take care of himself, right right?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I mean the question is a danger to himself for others, right,
so real? So getting this into probate court to set
aside the the healthcare power of attorney is would be
the way to go. The judge is going to appoint
what they call it guardian and lightem or visit somebody
to go out and talk with the family members, talk
(27:11):
with him, find out what the heck is what's actually
going on here? Right, exactly right?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
They use him to say that he's he's incompetent. The
difference between having a little dementia and being incompetent is
probably quite a big area. It is.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, yeah, there's no question about it. And you know,
here's here's the thing from the outside looking in, and
this is where you have to be kind of sensitive
or you know, open, I guess, is my point. What
you have to do is you have to hear what
the other side is, because when you're on the outside
looking in, it may look a certain way, it may
(27:55):
actually be different, and we just have to be open
to that. But in this situation where I'm on the
outside looking in and it, boy, it sure doesn't seem
to me like there's any issue here. What are we
going to do next? Well, okay, you already reported to
Adult Protective Services. That was good. I think the next
step is to go to the probate court, file a
(28:16):
petition to determine his competency, get a protective order to
determine competency, and uh and take it from there. That
would be the that would really be the next set
aside the healthcare power of attorney and and move ahead.
That would be the.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, lawyer to do that for you.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You pretty much do. Yeah, you pretty much do. It's
it's like that. So but but that is the that's
the remedy that we've got for it.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
You know, And there's people out here that that feel
the way I do, because there's more than just me.
Other people us know about this too, and they're saying
the same thing, how did this happen? You know, one
day he's a free man, and the next day he
didn't commit any crimes and he's locked up and nobody
can talk to him. It's like you're in solitary confinement
(29:15):
all of a sudden right, right, well.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Question, I guess yeah. I wish it was a better answer,
but we're on this side of the Great Divide. There's
nothing perfect. So thank you, Michael, thank you for coming.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Sure, thanks, thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You're back by now even listening to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. Wellcome back to
the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney.
This is where we deal with retirement law, including a
state planning, elder law, real estate and business law. Give
us a call. Why don't you just six one six
(29:54):
seven seven four twenty four twenty four. That's six one
six seven seven four for twenty four. You know, when
you do with state planning documents, what we're doing most
of the time usually is expressing what it is that
you want. That's the whole point of it, to make
(30:15):
sure that what you want is what actually happens. And
we just had a caller where they used the power
of attorney that somebody had signed, that the gentleman had signed,
and they're saying, oh, okay, you've got the dementia now, right,
and so now you have to be in a long
term care facility. See here's the other side of that,
(30:38):
because we're talking about somebody on the first side is
that we've got somebody who's not actually suffering from significant dementia.
He's still able to live on his own, drive his car,
you know, et cetera, cetera, no indications at this point
(30:58):
of being the danger to himself for others. Okay, and
so the ideas, well, then we better lock him up
before he becomes a danger to himself for others because
he's old.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Recently there was a political candidate and I don't know
if you heard of this guy. I forget his name,
but anyway, he had dementia so bad they had to
like put fluorescent tape down so he could follow it,
you know, because he didn't really know where he was
going and stuff like that. And still a whole bunch
of people, a lot of people thought that he should
retain political office apparently, and they covered it up and
(31:32):
stuff like that. Anyway, that happened. So why the double standard, right,
why if you're able to do all And the problem
with that guy is they kept saying it was his age,
it was his age. Listen, We've got folks in their
fifties and sixties with the early onset dementia. You know,
(31:52):
it's not an age thing. Okay, I guess this is
my point. It's not an age thing. Don't call it age, right,
It's like, oh, well, he's so old, you know, Oh,
we're all concerned about his age. We're not concerned about
his age. We're concerned about the fact that you have
to put down fluorescent tape because he doesn't know where
he's going. We're concerned about the words that are coming
out of somebody's mouth. And if you've got somebody, I
(32:15):
don't care if there are a hundred and eight ninety eight,
one hundred and eight, whatever his age is. I mean,
what the hell, as America. You get to live your
life the way you want to live your life, okay,
and do gooding kids. You know, now, as I say,
there may be two sides of this story. It may
turn out that, you know, there's all kinds of behavior
(32:36):
that was not obvious to the to the friends of
the family, to the neighbors that was going on. That
could be the case. All right, well let's find out, okay,
because the fact that someone has a dementia diagnosis, I'll
tell you, for an awful lot of folks, it's that
diagnosis that finally gets them to do a little bit
(32:57):
of planning. Seriously, an awful lot of folks. A dementia
diagnosis does not mean that you can't care for yourself,
that you can't live in the community, et cetera, cetera.
Doesn't mean that, Okay. What it means is that your
brain is starting to leak neurons or whatever the heck
it does, right, and you're starting to have memory issues,
(33:19):
cognition issues. Yeah, guess what. A lot of people have
had them their whole life. Right. It doesn't mean we
put them in facility what have you, especially if they're
not a danger to themselves or others. So in a
situation like this where you do a power of attorney
and part of the routine, right, part of what you
(33:39):
know is coming for an awful lot of folks is
that they will have debilitating dementia. They'll have dementia that
prevents them from making good decisions and leads them to
making bad decisions. That happens, okay, and we have to
be we have to be ready for that, you know.
We don't want to be in denial about the bad
(34:00):
things that happen. On the other hand, this should not
be used as an excuse or as a means of
taking away the rights of somebody to do what they
want to do, when they want to do it how
they I mean, it sounds like he sounds like a
lot of frankly and awful lot of older guys that
I know. You know, the fact that he makes his
bed every morning makes you wonder. You know, we got
(34:24):
a lot, we got a lot of veterans, you know,
what I mean, that's part of what they do. Boy.
I mean, they could stand inspection any day of the week.
You know, they get up, they make their coffee, They
get up, they make their bed first, then they get
the coffee, and then they do you know, they go
about their day.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
My dad was this. He was ninety six years old,
and he was driving himself to church, you know, up
until the last month or so. And we didn't like
the idea that he was in the car. We didn't
like that, okay, but he was competent. It wasn't like
he never forgot anything. But he always I've got some stuff,
you know, I mean as long as I know it.
(35:02):
I mean, we couldn't come up with my name on
the first try. Well that's what you get for how
to need kids, I suppose. But the point is that
there's an awful lot of folks out there who and
this was my point in the first segment, there's an
awful lot of folks out there who do just fine
if they get a little hope to stay at home.
(35:24):
Can you get a diagnosis of dementia on them? Yeah
you could, Yeah you could. And do they have a
bit of dementia? Yeah, they do, Yeah, they do, all right.
But in order to be qualified for the PACE program
program of all inclusive care for the elderly, all you
have to show, or what you have to show, is moderately,
(35:46):
not severely, but moderately impaired cognition. That doesn't mean you
can't think things through. It means that if it's moderately
impaired and you have some memory problems, what level of
memory problems? No, right, it doesn't matter. The point is
if you've got some memory issues, and who doesn't, and
you've got some moderately impaired cognition, then the PACE program
(36:10):
is designed intended to keep you at home. If you
are safe at home. The question is not do you
have dementia? That's not the question, question is are you
safe at home? Those are different questions. And since nineteen
sixty nine, so that's what now, fifty five years, fifty
six years? Am I doing the math right? Seventy?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, it's thirty years plus twenty five years? Yeah, and
see not sharp as attack, but I never was. The
point is, and for fifty five years now, the PACE
program has been keeping people such as Mike's friend at
home because you don't have to put them in a
residential care environment. You don't have to put them necessarily
(36:54):
in that kind of thing. They can stay at home
if several days a week, one day a week, five,
five days a week, three days a week, whatever makes
sense for them, right, If they come out to the house,
they go to the senior center, double check, make sure
everything's okay, do the personal hygiene, all the rest of it.
And if you do it early on, if you get
(37:15):
involved in the PACE early on, then if you ever
actually need a residential care facility, that's already that's already
taken care of nationally. If you go to the National
PACE Organization website, as they say, ninety five percent of
PACE recipients are at home, only five percent actually need
(37:37):
residential care. Okay, so why why are we doing it?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Well, and then you get to ask yourself, well, what
the hell's going on here? Really? And the answer is,
there's a lot of a lot of kids would like
to and it comes from a genuine concern, it comes
from real love for the parent. They're not trying to
exploit anybody, right, but they're worried and they're concerned and
all the rest of it. And they think, well, this
is the answer, right, And you know we're going to
(38:06):
have Tommy. Yeah, oh well tell me he's going he's
going to lunch and you know, away we go and
you know like that, Well that's terrible, but that's what happened.
It doesn't have to happen. Okay, that's my point. And
the facts of this case may turn out different than
what we understand them to be right now. You always
(38:28):
have to be open to that. But is it You
always wonder in a case like this, is it because
they didn't know that there were alternatives? That's what we're
trying to talk about. What are the alternatives. Let's take
advantage of those to maximize freedom, personal autonomy. Even listening
to the David Carrier Show, I'm David Carrier, your family's
(38:50):
personal attorney.
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 (00:18):
Hello, and welcome to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney, studying. What what do we do
around here? Well, state planning, retirement law. You know, that's
really kind of sums it up right. It's retirement law.
It's if you're retired, if you want to be retired,
if you're thinking about being retired, if you know somebody
(00:39):
who's retired, if you ever hope to be retired, good
luck for that one. Huh. Well, there's ways to do it.
There's ways to do it. I'm reliably informed. I've observed
it thousands and thousands of times. There's a way to
do that. And that retirement thang may not be for me,
but you know, whatever to each throwing them all right
(01:01):
anyway six one, six, seven, seven, four, twenty four, twenty four. Yes,
And you know I have to I have to admit
that over the last month we had reruns, reruns, can
you imagine terrible reruns. Oh my goodness, we call them
the best of but you know their reruns what they
are is because you can't call in. But now you
(01:21):
can call in. Six one, six, seven, seven four twenty four,
twenty four. I can't tell you how frustrating it is
to be, you know, like we're out of town a
couple of times there, and it's like, you know, when
I was with the with the boy Scouts, you know,
you can drive to McDonald's and get a Wi Fi
that worked, okay, so I could still do it, even
(01:43):
even during campouts and stuff like that. But here I
am in sort of civilization and you can't. You can't
hook up. Oh my, I can't tell you. Very frustrating.
And I'm sure, I'm sure there's more of a relief
for you than any kind of frustration. But anyway, if
you've been holding on to questions for a little while, here,
(02:04):
now's the time it is. We are live today. Six one, six,
seven seven four twenty four, twenty four. I hate to
skip a weekend, absolutely hate that. And and I did
have my stuff with me, so you know, well, you know, excuses.
Everybody's got two or three of them, and they all
none of them any good. So but that's my excuse,
(02:24):
that's my explanation. If you were wondering, is is this
guy getting lazy? Is he being faithless to us? No? No,
the technology failed me. And of course I could have
you know, I really could have, you know, be clear
about it. I mean I could have done the boy
scout thing. I could have. I could have driven over
to the McDonald's and sat out, sat out in the
(02:45):
truck and poached I've poached a Wi Fi from MCDA. Well, yeah,
I guess it is my fault. Oh well, sorry about that. Anyway,
give us a call sixty one six seven seven four
twenty four twenty four. Not for the guilt if you'd
like to get your question, comment or concern on the air.
Of course we deal with you know, the whole estate
(03:06):
planning thing, will trust probate. How do we make sure
that you don't that you don't wind up in long
term care or if you do. See, here's the here's
the thing with the long term care stuff. Okay, tell everybody.
The deal with long term care for most people is that,
oh I'm not going to go to a long term
(03:26):
care facility. Okay, So you tell me why they're all full.
You tell me why it's hard to get a bed.
You tell me why the rates are going up like crazy, continuing,
you know, just inflation, deflation, whatever. The prices are going
up because the supply is limited and the demand is
going through the roof. Awful lot of folks realized, you know,
(03:49):
the last week, couple of three times, you know, you
have people in the kids are bringing mom or dad in,
and you know, the dementia is pretty obvious, pretty obvious.
And I don't know if we're just in denial about
it or or what. But you know when when mom
(04:12):
or dad can't remember who the kids are, or you know,
repeat themselves stuff like that, it's like, uh, you know,
you're not rushing anything. Oh, we need to think about it,
think about what you know, Well, go ahead and think
about it. You know, I'm all favorite people thinking about
stuff at the same time. You get smacked in the
(04:34):
face with a wet fish. You should know it, you
should recognize that you should do something about it. In
my humble opinion, but it's you know, that's not slowing down.
I guess it's my I guess it's my point. We're
in a you know, you call about talk about the pandemic,
(04:55):
what have you. You know, the baby boomers, you know,
which what is that like? What do they say, it's
like from forty five to sixty five or sixty three
or something like that. I don't know, twenty year period time.
Well even even the you know, the first the first
boomers are in their eighties. Okay, Well when you hit
(05:15):
when you hit your eighties, the you know, the National
Institute of Hell says you got a seventy percent shot
of three years of skill care. Okay, it's not so
much in the sixties. It's it's there in the sixties,
but not so much. It's definitely there in the in
(05:36):
the seventies. And the older you get, the more the
more likely it is that you're going to need the
skill care. I mean, that's just that's just reality. And
what we're seeing now is that the folks have have
hit the age, you know, in those in the eighties
(06:00):
where yeah, it's not just a real thing, it's it's
very you know what I mean, it's reaching those levels
of participation where you can't you can't deny it anymore.
I mean, it's already happening. But the longer we go.
(06:21):
The longer we go, the more obvious it becomes. Put
it that way, the longer we go, the more obviously becomes.
So anyway, give us a shout six one, six, seven, seven,
twenty four, twenty four, just telling you this stuff is real.
It is happening, and it's happen It seems to be
seems to be happening more now than we've seen before.
(06:45):
So if you have a question about that, if you're wondering,
you know, what does this stuff mean? The good news
is the good news is that most of the time,
there's still something we can do. Almost always, there's a
way to preserve life savings. There a way to preserve choice.
You've heard me talk about the PACE program, a program
of all inclusive care for the elderly. You've heard me
(07:08):
talk about that before. It's a big deal, and most
of our clients, I would say, the majority of them
never go to a long term care facility. And the
reason is that when you do it correctly, when you
do this stuff correctly, then you're not going to need it,
(07:33):
simply because you get the help at home right that
you need to stay at home. See most people, you know,
there's no big surprise most people want to stay at home,
and the problem is how can we do that. The
kids have busy lives, the spouses are typically contemporary with
the person who needs the help. So how are we
(07:53):
going to make all of that work? How can you
make all that work together? And the answer is PACE
gives that helping hand. Pace will make it possible for
you to stay in the home. And if you do
need at some point, if you do need the skilled care,
you need residential care at all, which is which is
(08:15):
not usual. I mean generally speaking, if we've got family
members who are able to care for at least provide
some care for the loved one, right for your mom
or dad, for your spouse. What we found is when
we lift the load right through the PACE program, which
is a program you've already paid for, right, I mean,
(08:37):
this is a tax payer supported program. Hey, when people
say government program, as if the government had anything that
it didn't get from the anything it didn't get from you,
Because it doesn't. That's that's really the that's really the thing.
It's a taxpayer supportive program, meaning you've already paid for this,
(08:58):
and now the question is how do we make sure
that you get the advantage from what you've from what
you've already paid for. That's really the in my opinion,
that's the that's the key question. And this is this
is how you do it. You know, there's there's a
way to make it happen. And I'm just urging. And
it was just startling last week how many times we
(09:19):
had folks coming in with the with the parent and
now they're thinking about doing something and you know, well,
when you're in your eighties, you're not rushing it anymore.
That's not that's not what we call that's what we
call rushing things. That's more like, well, you know, let's uh,
you know, let's get her, let's get her done. So
(09:44):
if you have a question, comment, or concern, go to
the website Davidcarrier Law dot com. We've got this for
about a month two months now. We've had this AI
assistant up so that you can actually ask questions and
really fairly substantive questions. I mean, it's not legal advice
by any stretch of the No, it's not legal advice,
but it will kind of steer you in the right direction.
(10:05):
It will also make available the workshops that we do.
It will kind of I'll tell you it'll kind of
steer you over there. But it's not one of those
where it's just oh, give us your name and information
and we'll have someone call you. No, there's a lot
of good stuff on there if you'd like to sign
up for a workshop. It keeps getting better and stuff.
(10:29):
So I'm not a big fan of AI replacing human beings. Okay,
I'm not, but there are some things that it does,
and it does well. Give it a try. It doesn't
hurt anything. Davidcarrier Law dot com and at Davidcarrier Law
dot com, the assistant will pop up after a couple
of seconds. You've been listening to the David Carrier Show.
(10:50):
I'm David Carrier, your famili's retirement laws specialist. Welcome back
to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your famili's
person an attorney. Now is the time give us a
call six one six seven seven four twenty four twenty four.
That six one six seven seven four twenty four twenty
four will get your question, comment or concern on the air.
(11:12):
You can always go to the website Davidcarrier Law dot com.
Don't forget the dot com. I don't know if you
really need to include it. But anyway, uh, David Carrier
Law dot com and on the website, you can either
maneuver in the old fashioned way, you know, go over
and point and click at stuff, or you can just
ask the uh, the super AI assistant. You know, we
(11:35):
are using AI more. I have to tell you it's
it's really not so much to replace things we're already doing,
as to make possible doing things that we weren't able
to do before because it was just too hard, like
analyzing things. It really you know, everybody, I'll tell you
(11:55):
when I was at the you know, in the intro,
were talking about oh, you know, serve the the Pentagon
and all that. Yeah, true enough. But the thing is
what I was doing at the Pentagon was putting together
doing some software stuff. But one of my projects was
to do a WILL package for deployment. You know, so
(12:18):
guys who were deploying, you know, when the soldiers going
overseas a lot of them didn't have their wills and
powers of attorney up to date. Anybody surprised by that, No,
So the idea was that we would we would have
a software. This is when computers were like, you know,
oh look at this. You know, we're still doing the
big floppies, the big floppies, you know, the five hundred
(12:40):
quarter inch ones. Do you remember those anyway, And you
had to then you had to use put the floppies
in the computer first to load the software into the
six hundred and forty k of RAM that you had. Yeah,
that that's when I was doing this. Anyway. The point
is we had we put together a package that was
(13:02):
not a I It wasn't you had to put the information,
put the information in. But at the end of it,
it produced a will and a very detailed will guardians
and you know for the kids, guardians conservatives for the kids,
and specific requests and worked in all fifty states and
all that kind of stuff. We did this back this
(13:24):
was in the eighties, you know, mid eighties, and you
know that's how it that's how it worked. But but nowadays,
you know, oh, it's brand new, like it. And back
then they were talking about attorneys being replaced, which of
course would be wonderful except that just doesn't work like that,
(13:44):
and Michael's going to prove it. Hello, Michael, Welcome to
the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Good morning, good morning. Question for you, I wonder if
your law firm handles cases like this, but it could
be unique. And the problem is as a friend of
(14:09):
the families, we found out was recently placed in a
nursing home. He's ninety eight years old and he's functional
as a sixty year old. About a month ago, he
went bowling in both four games. His memory is about
(14:32):
as good as you could expect, you know, at ninety eight.
I mean, he might have a little dementia, but he
was I guess tested by his doctor and the doctor
said he has some dementia. But his daughter was on
(14:53):
his trust as his poa, and she decided that she
didn't want him living alone and his wife recently passed away,
so she took him out of his home against his will.
He did not want to go there. He told her
he would die if he went there, and he would
(15:14):
give up. He specifically told her, no, I don't want
anything to do with that. They had him over to
dinner and she told him they were going to take
his driver's license and put him in a nursing home.
And he got up and left, and you know, I
don't exactly know what all went on, but it wasn't good. Yeah,
(15:35):
So now he's in the nursing home. We called the
nursing home to just give him some support and tell
him hang in there. We will, you know, try to
see what we can do, if you can, if there's
any way to get you out of here. But I
(15:57):
know he's suffering right now form of this, and what
can a person do. I mean, we've already called the
Adult Protective Services and they're looking into it, but it
sounds like it's going to be a long drawn out process.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Yeah. So here's the here's the thing. If if he
was there against his will, then there must be I
would imagine, I imagine that there's a power of attorney involved,
financial healthcare power of attorney. You can do it immediately
effect Yeah, well ye attorney. Yeah, well, you know, not
(16:34):
all powers of attorney are created equal. Every power of
attorney is different, Okay, depending on how it's written. Now
here's the here's the thing. If the only way that
you get to make that kind of decision, like living
decisions for somebody else, is if you're operating under a
healthcare power of attorney. Okay, if it's a financial power
(16:57):
of attorney, the person can revoke it at any time.
But the person could also make it effective without without
any finding of incapacity. Okay, so he might be capable
and give a financial power of attorney, but you cannot
be capable and give a health care power of attorney, right,
(17:18):
you can't. You can't delegate your authority when you're competent. Right,
It's only if you're incompetent mentally incompetent. So the question
then is how did she get a couple of doctors
to sign off on the health care power of attorney?
Speaker 3 (17:36):
Right?
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Because the suspicion, my suspicion would be that must have
happened in order for the facility to accept him against
his will. You know, she's saying, well, he's you know,
he's got the dementia. Here's the letter from the doctor. Well, listen,
there are a lot of dementia diagnoses which do not
make someone incapacitated. All right. There's a lot of people
(17:59):
out there, you know, who are forgetful, who have impaired cognition,
but not impaired to the to the degree that would warrant,
you know, a finding of incapacity. So that's the that's
the thing, right now. What you got to figure out,
what we got to figure out is how did how
(18:19):
did somebody sign off on this?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (18:22):
Is he really incapacitated? And the way to do that
is to go to the U is to go to
the probate court and seek to set aside that if
that's what's going on now, some it may not even
be what's going on. Maybe they're maybe they're doing it
completely without justification, or maybe he is cowed by his
(18:44):
daughter and signed off and admitted himself. There are lots
of things that could have happened, but what we need
to do now is find out what what actually did happen?
Speaker 3 (18:54):
All right, Well, what I heard happened is that the
grandson called him up and asked him if he'd like
to go out to Brands to lunch. And of course
he likes to go there because he drives himself there
about a couple times a week and anyway, and so
he said, yeah, I'd love to go. And so then
(19:15):
the guy comes and picks him up, and instead of
taking him to Brands, he took him straight to the
nursing home, to the assisted living place and he was
admitted there and now he's locked in there and they
won't even allow him to have any calls if you're
not on the call list because they said.
Speaker 2 (19:36):
Yeah, that's a healthcare that's a healthcare power of attorney.
I mean there are they might. Hey, that music means
I got to get out. But Mike, if you want
to hang on to the next through the news, that
we can get into this a little bit more. Okay, Okay,
thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Just hang on even listening
to the David Carrier Show on David Carrier, your Family's
Personal attorney.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
David's got the how too. You're looking for a just
call seven seven four twenty four twenty four. This is
the David Carrier Show.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Hello and welcome back to the David Carrier Show. I'm
David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. Now's the time for
you to call six one six seven seven four twenty
four twenty four. That's six one six seven seven four
four two four if you have a question, comment or
concern you'd like to get on the air. Now this
(20:27):
is not legal advice, but it's a lively legal discussion. Yeah,
so there you are. We've got Mike on the line,
and Michael's neighbor ninety eight years old with some dementia
but still living on his own driving himself to Brands,
his favorite restaurant. And I can certainly understand that, see
(20:49):
right there, that's a good choice he's making anyway, by
apparently he's given a healthcare power of attorney to his daughter.
Grandson invites him to brands, And who wouldn't get in
the car to go to brands, especially if it's your grandson.
But oh no, we didn't go to brands. We went
to a long term care facility. And that's where he's
(21:12):
stuck now, in Communicado, with no contact with anybody who's
not approved by by the family. And Mike, are you
a next door neighbor, just a friend or church member
of what's the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Friend of the family?
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Friend of the family. Okay, and we're we've already contacted
Adult Protective Services. They've got you know who APA deals
with mostly our kids who are stealing money, the kids
on crack, who take the Social Security money, stuff like that.
So you know when I mean, there's no issue of
(21:53):
at least I don't haven't heard any issue of theft
or you know, financial abuse or endangered physical endangerment. I
mean that's not the issue. It's it's more the you know,
how do you. Look, we're all we're all human beings, right,
We're all inalienable rights and stuff, and you don't get
to violate our rights unless unless there's been due process.
(22:15):
I keep hearing about that due process. Okay, how about
a little due process. Well here's the deal. I'm just
going to repeat myself from the last hour. But if
you sign the power of attorney for healthcare, right, you
cannot You cannot sign away your rights to freedom basically.
(22:37):
I mean you can sign away if if you are incapacitated, right,
and you've been found to be incapacitated, well, then yeah,
you need someone to care for you to make those
make those decisions. But you can't do it voluntarily. You
can't just delegate a volunteer. If you're competent, there has
to be a finding that you're not competent, not by
(22:58):
a court necessarily, but by a couple of doctors. Now,
the question is when he went in for his exam
and they said, oh, you got some dementia, Well, to
what extent was the dementia, right, I mean, how bad
was it? And because a facility doesn't like to take
(23:19):
anybody in without having the doctors signed off, and they're
not going to stonewall unless they're pretty confident that they
do have authority to do it, and that's only going
to come when we've got medical people. But based on
what you're telling me, it doesn't sound. It sounds to
me like there might have been some sort of miscommunication
(23:41):
between what the doctors signed off on and what it's
being interpreted to mean. Because certainly, like you know, I
had three folks come in last week, and it's like
it's like you can tell that there's some dementia going on,
but it's not like they didn't recognize who they were,
(24:03):
when they were, what their finances were, all the rest
of this. But you do have to slow down a
little bit, you know, and just talk and under you know,
and listen and make sure that you understand what they're
they're saying, and if there is an inconsistency, kind of
go back to that and re establish. And when you
(24:23):
do it that way, especially time of day really matters
the you know, the later in the day, everybody gets tired,
you know, the people most people are at their best
in the morning, So if you're dealing with people at
four o'clock in the afternoon, you're not seeing them at
their best. And Michael, that's true of you, it's true
of Davy Carrier, it's true of everybody. Okay, So it's
(24:48):
not like you couldn't catch somebody at a period when
they were kind of low and you know, decided that
the dementia was of such a level. The question now
is what do we do about it? And the na.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, excuse me, but I'm thinking they're using his age
is the main reason. Like, Okay, nobody at ninety eight
years old can be alert enough to drive a car
or make their own decisions or do the things that
(25:22):
forty or fifty year olds can do. Therefore, we're going
to put you in a nursing home based on your
age if you're not If you don't have dementia right now,
you're going to have it soon, So we might as
well get you where you need to be, whether you
want to be there or not. And that's that's the
best I can come up with. That the reason they're using.
(25:44):
And they've convinced the doctors that he's got it, and
the doctors were able to maybe ask enough questions like
give you ten numbers and then come back ten minutes
later and say, what are the numbers I gave you,
and you know what order did you give them in?
And most people, whether you're fifty or ninety, you might
(26:04):
miss a few of.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Those, Oh for sure, Yeah, no question about that.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
You know. I just think, you know, if he got
diagnosed by some a few other people, or you went
before a judge and they ask him a bunch of questions,
and he knows what he's talking about, and he knows
who you are, and he knows what he's there for,
and he knows how to get up and make his
own breakfast and make us bed, and get in the
(26:30):
car and drive to the store and buy the things
he needs to use for the day and get out
and write, you know, take a walk around his neighborhood,
and that he isn't incapacitated to the point where he
can't take care of himself, right right?
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I mean the question is a danger to himself for others, right,
so real? So getting this into probate court to set
aside the the healthcare power of attorney is would be
the way to go. The judge is going to appoint
what they call it guardian and lightem or visit somebody
to go out and talk with the family members, talk
(27:11):
with him, find out what the heck is what's actually
going on here? Right, exactly right?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
They use him to say that he's he's incompetent. The
difference between having a little dementia and being incompetent is
probably quite a big area. It is.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah, yeah, there's no question about it. And you know,
here's here's the thing from the outside looking in, and
this is where you have to be kind of sensitive
or you know, open, I guess, is my point. What
you have to do is you have to hear what
the other side is, because when you're on the outside
looking in, it may look a certain way, it may
(27:55):
actually be different, and we just have to be open
to that. But in this situation where I'm on the
outside looking in and it, boy, it sure doesn't seem
to me like there's any issue here. What are we
going to do next? Well, okay, you already reported to
Adult Protective Services. That was good. I think the next
step is to go to the probate court, file a
(28:16):
petition to determine his competency, get a protective order to
determine competency, and uh and take it from there. That
would be the that would really be the next set
aside the healthcare power of attorney and and move ahead.
That would be the.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Yeah, lawyer to do that for you.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
You pretty much do. Yeah, you pretty much do. It's
it's like that. So but but that is the that's
the remedy that we've got for it.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
You know, And there's people out here that that feel
the way I do, because there's more than just me.
Other people us know about this too, and they're saying
the same thing, how did this happen? You know, one
day he's a free man, and the next day he
didn't commit any crimes and he's locked up and nobody
can talk to him. It's like you're in solitary confinement
(29:15):
all of a sudden right, right, well.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Question, I guess yeah. I wish it was a better answer,
but we're on this side of the Great Divide. There's
nothing perfect. So thank you, Michael, thank you for coming.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
Sure, thanks, thank you.
Speaker 2 (29:32):
You're back by now even listening to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. Wellcome back to
the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney.
This is where we deal with retirement law, including a
state planning, elder law, real estate and business law. Give
us a call. Why don't you just six one six
(29:54):
seven seven four twenty four twenty four. That's six one
six seven seven four for twenty four. You know, when
you do with state planning documents, what we're doing most
of the time usually is expressing what it is that
you want. That's the whole point of it, to make
(30:15):
sure that what you want is what actually happens. And
we just had a caller where they used the power
of attorney that somebody had signed, that the gentleman had signed,
and they're saying, oh, okay, you've got the dementia now, right,
and so now you have to be in a long
term care facility. See here's the other side of that,
(30:38):
because we're talking about somebody on the first side is
that we've got somebody who's not actually suffering from significant dementia.
He's still able to live on his own, drive his car,
you know, et cetera, cetera, no indications at this point
(30:58):
of being the danger to himself for others. Okay, and
so the ideas, well, then we better lock him up
before he becomes a danger to himself for others because
he's old.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
You know.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Recently there was a political candidate and I don't know
if you heard of this guy. I forget his name,
but anyway, he had dementia so bad they had to
like put fluorescent tape down so he could follow it,
you know, because he didn't really know where he was
going and stuff like that. And still a whole bunch
of people, a lot of people thought that he should
retain political office apparently, and they covered it up and
(31:32):
stuff like that. Anyway, that happened. So why the double standard, right,
why if you're able to do all And the problem
with that guy is they kept saying it was his age,
it was his age. Listen, We've got folks in their
fifties and sixties with the early onset dementia. You know,
(31:52):
it's not an age thing. Okay, I guess this is
my point. It's not an age thing. Don't call it age, right,
It's like, oh, well, he's so old, you know, Oh,
we're all concerned about his age. We're not concerned about
his age. We're concerned about the fact that you have
to put down fluorescent tape because he doesn't know where
he's going. We're concerned about the words that are coming
out of somebody's mouth. And if you've got somebody, I
(32:15):
don't care if there are a hundred and eight ninety eight,
one hundred and eight, whatever his age is. I mean,
what the hell, as America. You get to live your
life the way you want to live your life, okay,
and do gooding kids. You know, now, as I say,
there may be two sides of this story. It may
turn out that, you know, there's all kinds of behavior
(32:36):
that was not obvious to the to the friends of
the family, to the neighbors that was going on. That
could be the case. All right, well let's find out, okay,
because the fact that someone has a dementia diagnosis, I'll
tell you, for an awful lot of folks, it's that
diagnosis that finally gets them to do a little bit
(32:57):
of planning. Seriously, an awful lot of folks. A dementia
diagnosis does not mean that you can't care for yourself,
that you can't live in the community, et cetera, cetera.
Doesn't mean that, Okay. What it means is that your
brain is starting to leak neurons or whatever the heck
it does, right, and you're starting to have memory issues,
(33:19):
cognition issues. Yeah, guess what. A lot of people have
had them their whole life. Right. It doesn't mean we
put them in facility what have you, especially if they're
not a danger to themselves or others. So in a
situation like this where you do a power of attorney
and part of the routine, right, part of what you
(33:39):
know is coming for an awful lot of folks is
that they will have debilitating dementia. They'll have dementia that
prevents them from making good decisions and leads them to
making bad decisions. That happens, okay, and we have to
be we have to be ready for that, you know.
We don't want to be in denial about the bad
(34:00):
things that happen. On the other hand, this should not
be used as an excuse or as a means of
taking away the rights of somebody to do what they
want to do, when they want to do it how
they I mean, it sounds like he sounds like a
lot of frankly and awful lot of older guys that
I know. You know, the fact that he makes his
bed every morning makes you wonder. You know, we got
(34:24):
a lot, we got a lot of veterans, you know,
what I mean, that's part of what they do. Boy.
I mean, they could stand inspection any day of the week.
You know, they get up, they make their coffee, They
get up, they make their bed first, then they get
the coffee, and then they do you know, they go
about their day.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
My dad was this. He was ninety six years old,
and he was driving himself to church, you know, up
until the last month or so. And we didn't like
the idea that he was in the car. We didn't
like that, okay, but he was competent. It wasn't like
he never forgot anything. But he always I've got some stuff,
you know, I mean as long as I know it.
(35:02):
I mean, we couldn't come up with my name on
the first try. Well that's what you get for how
to need kids, I suppose. But the point is that
there's an awful lot of folks out there who and
this was my point in the first segment, there's an
awful lot of folks out there who do just fine
if they get a little hope to stay at home.
(35:24):
Can you get a diagnosis of dementia on them? Yeah
you could, Yeah you could. And do they have a
bit of dementia? Yeah, they do, Yeah, they do, all right.
But in order to be qualified for the PACE program
program of all inclusive care for the elderly, all you
have to show, or what you have to show, is moderately,
(35:46):
not severely, but moderately impaired cognition. That doesn't mean you
can't think things through. It means that if it's moderately
impaired and you have some memory problems, what level of
memory problems? No, right, it doesn't matter. The point is
if you've got some memory issues, and who doesn't, and
you've got some moderately impaired cognition, then the PACE program
(36:10):
is designed intended to keep you at home. If you
are safe at home. The question is not do you
have dementia? That's not the question, question is are you
safe at home? Those are different questions. And since nineteen
sixty nine, so that's what now, fifty five years, fifty
six years? Am I doing the math right? Seventy?
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Yeah, it's thirty years plus twenty five years? Yeah, and
see not sharp as attack, but I never was. The
point is, and for fifty five years now, the PACE
program has been keeping people such as Mike's friend at
home because you don't have to put them in a
residential care environment. You don't have to put them necessarily
(36:54):
in that kind of thing. They can stay at home
if several days a week, one day a week, five,
five days a week, three days a week, whatever makes
sense for them, right, If they come out to the house,
they go to the senior center, double check, make sure
everything's okay, do the personal hygiene, all the rest of it.
And if you do it early on, if you get
(37:15):
involved in the PACE early on, then if you ever
actually need a residential care facility, that's already that's already
taken care of nationally. If you go to the National
PACE Organization website, as they say, ninety five percent of
PACE recipients are at home, only five percent actually need
(37:37):
residential care. Okay, so why why are we doing it?
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Like?
Speaker 2 (37:43):
Well, and then you get to ask yourself, well, what
the hell's going on here? Really? And the answer is,
there's a lot of a lot of kids would like
to and it comes from a genuine concern, it comes
from real love for the parent. They're not trying to
exploit anybody, right, but they're worried and they're concerned and
all the rest of it. And they think, well, this
is the answer, right, And you know we're going to
(38:06):
have Tommy. Yeah, oh well tell me he's going he's
going to lunch and you know, away we go and
you know like that, Well that's terrible, but that's what happened.
It doesn't have to happen. Okay, that's my point. And
the facts of this case may turn out different than
what we understand them to be right now. You always
(38:28):
have to be open to that. But is it You
always wonder in a case like this, is it because
they didn't know that there were alternatives? That's what we're
trying to talk about. What are the alternatives. Let's take
advantage of those to maximize freedom, personal autonomy. Even listening
to the David Carrier Show, I'm David Carrier, your family's
(38:50):
personal attorney.
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!
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
Ridiculous History
History is beautiful, brutal and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.