(2025) 5-11 David Carrier Hour 1

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You know I was actually there, but you know, the
whole labor thing, that's what I'm driving at. See, this
is a labor of love. All right, can you hear me?
All Right? There you go, Thank you, John, thank you.
And I'm making an analogy here, right, analogy. Remember, analogies
are not arguments. It doesn't mean they're true, but they

(00:22):
give us a way of thinking about things. And so
if you think about a radio show, it's sort of like,
you know, a show is giving birth right, which is
not exactly right. But it is Mother's Day and so
I'm reaching here, I'm reaching give me, give me a break.
So you know, sometimes it takes a labor to produce
a wonderful thing. Now I'm not saying the show is

(00:42):
a wonderful thing, but you are listening to it, and
I'm grateful for that. So welcome to the Mother's Day
edition of the David Carrier Show. If you are a mother,
have a mother, wish you were a mother, or know
anybody who does have a mother, All your calls today
are free, So give us a call. I don't just
six one, six seven seven twenty four twenty four. That's
six one, six seven seven four twenty four twenty four

(01:06):
will get your question, comment or concern on the air,
even if it's not about your mom. But you know,
one of the speaking of moms, one of the very
oldest examples we have of a will is from this
Egyptian woman who was the you know, she was related
somehow to some official. Anyway, the point is that even

(01:28):
back in ancient Egypt, you know, with the pyramids and
the pharaohs and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, back
in the day, women still had control over a significant
amount of property. And I guess her husband had already died.
But what she her kids? Get this, See, there's nothing
new under the sun. So she was upset with a

(01:49):
couple of her kids, I guess, and disinherited them in
favor of the kid who paid attention to dear old
mom she was, and apparently in the will, like I
don't read hieroglyphics, so I'm not telling you I learned
hieroglyphics so I could read this thing. But apparently she
went on and on about how the couple of the
kids had like abandoned her and were neglectful and everything else.

(02:13):
So she was going to give their share to the
third one. I think that was the story, or maybe
the charity or something, but anyway, it was a It
was one of those things that's a cautionary tale. Take
care of your mom or you'll get or you'll get disinherited.
Don't You don't want to be You don't want to
be neglectful of mom, not on Mother's Day or or frankly,

(02:36):
any other any other day of any other day of
the year. She was there for you when it was
most important. And while while you may have had your
disagreements over the years, don't we all remember she was
there for you when when it really counted. And that's true,
no matter what else you want to say. So welcome

(02:58):
to the Mother's Day edition of the show. One of
the things we have been I've been over the years,
absolutely well, you know, I'm pressed blown away. What have
you has been the way that kids do step up?
It's not you know, it's gonna be Father's Day too,
I suppose, but it's not just it seems like mostly

(03:22):
for moms that the that the kids have stepped up.
You know, there used to be this thing called the
called the Sandwich generation. And in the Sandwich generation, people
were caring for their parents and for their and for
their kids as well. You don't see quite so much
of that anymore, but you know, some of the stories

(03:43):
do stick out. Like we had these three you know,
my three sons, right, they had three boys, and what
they did they each worked a different shift, right, and
for ten years, oh it was going on ten years
when I finally met him and they came in and
we were able to get them some help. But they

(04:05):
had spent about ten years in eight hour shifts. Can
you imagine that, you know, one one after the other,
to be with with mom, who had who had the dementia?
That's you know, that's what you call payback. I guess
that's what you call love. That's what you call a concern.
That's that's my favorite favorite Mother's Day story, frankly, is

(04:26):
the dedication of these three sons to their mom to
make sure that she and and it was her home,
she was living independently. It was just a matter of
every day. Can you imagine that every single day you took,
you took an eight hour shift with mom. Thank goodness,
there weren't two of them be twelve hour shift, but
too bad they weren't. Four and then six hour shift.

(04:46):
But anyway, the concept is that they were there when
mom needed them, and that's one of my that's one
of my favorite favorite examples of the dedication of kids
to the mom. And that's why we're doing the Mother's
Day edition of the show. So if you have a question,
to comment or concern, give us a call. Six one

(05:07):
six seven seven four twenty four twenty four. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Welcome back to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. Now's the time
to give us a call. Six one six seven seven
four twenty four twenty four. That's six one, six seven
seven four twenty four to twenty four. Will get your question,

(05:30):
comment or concern on the air. We've got Dean on
the line. Hello Dean, Happy Mother's Day.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Thank you, Happy mother's debut.

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Well, thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
I got a relative that the and in law that
was on pace okay because in a wheelchair and I
couldn't take care of herself. And she'd been that way
for about ten ten years. Yeah, and her husband died

(06:01):
and they pay ahead or signed papers so that she
it was going that they they weren't the pace was
taken care of the bill. Yeah, yeah, because as soon
as her husband died and she got money coming in

(06:21):
pashead or signed papers that she now gets care, but
she has to pay six thousand dollars a month for
the care she gets. And it seems to me it's
eaten up or whatever money that she was she had,
and they said she had to pay everything down to

(06:42):
where she's only got a house and two thousand dollars
before it goes back on no pay right? Is there
some way that keep that money that comes from her
former husband on the company where he worked and started

(07:04):
to retire, keep that money from coming in and going directly?
I can't do her a bank account pace. Can she
get back on the pace that she had before and
let that money build up for something to help pay her,
you know, up keep the like the loans and the

(07:29):
house and any repairs he needs and things like that
right right there? So I'm sorry to go ahead.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Well, is there anything we can do about that? Is
that the question? Okay? So there are really two answers
to that question. There is the here's what you should
have could have would have done? Right, yeah, And here's
the what do we got to do? Now, so those
are the those are the two questions. It is not
at all unusual for or this caregiver's spouse to die first.

(08:03):
That's about anywhere from forty to fifty percent of the
time it's the caregiver who dies first. Sometimes it's the guy,
sometimes it's the woman, but forty to fifty percent of
the time the caregiver dies first. And typically people are
not thinking about that because it's like, Hey, I'm the
one with the dementia, with the disability, what have you.

(08:24):
Of course I'm the one who's gonna you know, kick
it first. Well, no, that it usually happens that way,
but but not, you know, not even usually you know,
it's about a fifty to fifty little a little bit
less than fifty to fifty.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Anyway, the point is that when you have a loved
and remember PACE is a medicaid program. PACE is a
government medicaid program. Okay, so you have to be qualified
for Medicaid in order to receive PACE benefits. That's the
way it works. And the private pay rate for PACE
is right around it's close to six times, a little

(09:02):
bit less than six, but it's right around there. Now,
the value of that let me just sidetrack a little bit.
The value of that is the government gives the PACE organization. Right,
the way PACE works is the organization gets about eleven
thousand dollars per enroll lead. So if everyone who enrolls

(09:23):
in PACE, whether it's being paid for by the Medicaid
or by private pay, the government the organization, which are
typically a nonprofit, sometimes there for a profit. We've got
one the one in Newego and up north that's a
that's a for profit organization, but it participates in PACE
and the government pays them around eleven thousand dollars per

(09:47):
person who's enrolled. However, they got qualified for it, whether
they're qualified for the Medicaid or they're doing the private pay.
So the idea is I'm paying six but I could
get much more value in services. Okay, so it's not
a bad deal to be paying for it. But that's
not the answer to your question because you're saying, hey,

(10:08):
spouse died, I got a bunch of money. What do
I do now?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Well, yeah, she's qualified for a PACE for several years. Yeah,
well the husband was working.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
Well that's because the husband, that's because the money is
in the husband's name. See when the money went from
the husband to the wife. Right, that's when she got
disqualified because now it's her money. See that's the problem.
So the question now is we've got two questions. Number one,
what could have What could we have done before the

(10:48):
husband died? And I will tell you that every time
we do a medicaid case, right, every time we do
a medicaid case, if there's a spouse and the spouse
is competent and agrees to it, of course it's up
to them, but we do this thing called a poorback
because your spouse cannot leave you the you're an example.

(11:08):
This is an example of what happens when the spouse
just leaves money to the surviving spouse. Okay, boom, they're
off the Medicaid until the money's all gone and then
they can get back on the Medicaid. That's not true either,
but that's what people think. But the point is that
husband could have And this is what we do routinely
everything the time we do a Medicaid application, or we've

(11:31):
got people who might need the long term care, you know,
just looking ahead. So it's not exclusive to people who
are already receiving Medicaid. But when we've got an issue
of you know, physical, mental, what have you issue. What
we do is what's called we call it the poorback. See,

(11:51):
it's not enough. If you have money, you cannot create
a trust that says, hold this money for my spouse
at the discretion of the trustee. Don't give the spouse
the money, but the spouse can be a beneficiary of
the money. If you do it like that, which I
have seen routinely from other law firms. It drives you

(12:13):
crazy because they set up this trust. They say, oh,
it's an asset protection trust, and if it were for
a child or other relative or other person, it would
work fine. But the medicaid rules are different when you
have a spouse. Okay, So when you have a spouse,
you cannot create simply create a trust that would protect

(12:37):
the assets for your spouse. Instead, it's the same kind
of trust, but it has to be what they call
established by will. In other words, it has to be
part of the will. Now, we don't have to go
through probate. We don't have to go all the assets
through probate, but we do have to use probate to
establish this trust. It's written in the will. Okay, it's

(13:01):
a special kind of trust for the benefit of the
surviving spouse. Okay, so that's what should have happened. Whoever
helped them with the megican and looks and nobody understands
the stuff. I get it. And if she was receiving
help from the pace people, they're not lawyers. And even
the lawyers who do this don't get that you're supposed to.

(13:22):
I saw the top three law firm, the biggest law firms,
three biggest law firms this last summer, summer before and
in the course of a week, I saw three of
these exact situations, and only two of the law firms.
One got it correct, the other two got it wrong.
So and these were people, These were big firms, you know,
lots of lawyers, and you know, you think, oh they

(13:44):
have a big glass tower, they must know what they're doing.
Two of them got it wrong, one got it right,
and them was very good. But two of them didn't
see the issue. And you know, the people got screwed
as there it is as a consequence. So you don't
let that happened. So the first thing to be done
is when you have a spouse on medicaid, you need

(14:05):
to revise your estate plan so that if you die first,
and there's a very good chance of that happening, very
good chance, then your spouse is protected. When we get
back from the break, all right, them, When we get
back from the break, I'll tell you what can be
done right now, because we're not we don't have to
spend down all the way. I will tell you what
we need to do next. Sure enough, okay, all right,

(14:28):
you've been listening to the David Carrier Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Welcome back to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier, your family's personal attorney. We're talking with Dean.
Dean's got a friend who is on the PACE program,
which of course is a medicaid program, like Social Security,

(14:49):
like Medicare. Medicaid is a program that you, the American taxpayer,
have paid for. Unlike Social Security and Medicare, However, they
will strip you naked before they give you a whiff
of the benefits. Imagine that they did that, they made
you spend down into broke them before you would qualify
for Social Security or Medicare. You would be up in arms.

(15:11):
But people don't do that when it comes to the
Medicaid because why because.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
They're not thinking about it anyway. Long story short, husband dies,
wife now gets a chunk of money. Not unusual situation.
Wife gets a chunk of money. Now she's off the Medicaid,
she's off the PACE program, right until the money's all gone. Now,
the good thing about PACE. The good thing about PACE
is there's a private pay option that costs you less

(15:41):
than the amount of benefits that you receive. It's about
it's a little bit less, call it six thousand dollars.
Close enough, six thousand dollars. You get about double the benefits. Okay,
that's the amount of money that goes in. The amount
of benefits you receive is going to be determined by
your need. So you have a very low need, maybe
your pants six thousand for not very much. If you

(16:03):
have a high degree of need, maybe your pants six
thousand for twenty thousand dollars worth of services. That's kind
of how PACE works. Now, the terrible thing that happened
here was that nobody actually was I don't I don't
know exactly how it happened, but the point is that

(16:24):
nobody who understood how this whole thing works was involved
here in the family because because a husband, a spouse
can set up a trust for another spouse that will
not count against the other spouse for medicaid. It is
possible to do that, but the way you have to

(16:47):
do it is screwy. But you can't complain. See here's
the thing with medicaid, right, you can't complain. It's screwy.
You can't complain. Well, why would I have to do that?
Doesn't make any sense. There's nothing about it that makes sense. Okay,
it's just the rules. You follow the rules and you're okay.

(17:08):
You don't follow the rules and you're not okay. You
wind up spending six thousand dollars a month till you're broke.
And your spouse who could supplement? Who could supplement? Right,
because he had his retirement and what have you. He's
not around anymore. What does that mean? What that means
is that the savings, the retirement, the cushion, the safe

(17:31):
deposit box, whatever you know, the buried treasure, whatever it
was that was with the spouse, when it's yours. Now
they want it. Okay. Now, there is a way, as
I said before, there is a way to anticipate that
to do that up front, and most people get it wrong.
And by people I mean lawyers who do this kind

(17:51):
of stuff. I've seen the work. And they will set
up in the trust a trust in a living trust. Right,
they will set up a trust for the benefit of
the surviving spouse. Okay, it doesn't work. All the money
in that trust, it doesn't matter what you say in
the trust. All the money in that trust created by

(18:11):
a trust by the deceased spouse is going to count
against the medicaid recipient. It just doesn't work. The only
way to make it work and as I said, so
one big glove firm get it right to get it wrong.
This is a probably about two years ago, and it
was funny because it all came in in the same week,
you know what I mean. I saw all three of
them in the same week. It was like, this is terrible. Anyway,

(18:35):
The point is, there is a way to do it.
It wasn't done here. And now your friend has a
bunch of money, and we got and she's on the
medicaid and we got to wonder, how are we going
to get rid of it? Now we going to get
rid of the money. Now, what they're telling you is
that she's got to spend it down to two thousand dollars.
In January of this year, Michigan went from two thousand

(18:59):
to not thousand dollars and change. Uh, so she can
actually keep like nine thousand dollars. Okay, So that's a
good thing. But Dean, do you have any idea exactly
how much? Well? Number one? Am I getting it right
so far?

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Yes, he's getting it right on it right so far?

Speaker 1 (19:16):
Okay. And then the question is how much money? How
much money does does your friend have?

Speaker 2 (19:22):
How much money is she got coming in? Yeah, I
don't know.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Okay, it's a.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
It's pretty nervous. She's you're pretty nervous about talking about it.
She wants she says, it turns off by saying, Oh,
all these guys at PACES looked at over and they
got it right. They got it right. And so she's
she's trussed in PACE to take care of all her
all the questions.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
Well, she's not wrong, she's and Pace is not wrong
in saying that if she spends the money until the
money's all gone, then she'll to qualify again for PACE.
That is correct. The question is is that the best
way to do it? My suggestion would be. It is

(20:09):
not the best way to do it because what we
would what I would do, what I have done, you know,
because these cases come up all time. What we have
done in a situation like this. Let's say let's say
that there's one hundred thousand dollars okay, and it's like, okay,
so you're gonna be paying six thousand the next year
and a half, you know, till the money's all gone.

(20:32):
Let's just say what we would do is and with PACE,
it's tricky because with with PACE, there's an income limit.
You can only have twenty nine and twenty nine hundred
and one dollar of income. And if you're over the
twenty nine hundred, all right, you're going to you're going

(20:53):
to be disqualified for PACE altogether. So so you got
to stay qualified Medicaid eligible for PACE, Okay, So you
got to do that. You got to keep the income
under the twenty nine hundred. But here's what we would do.
We would give away. We would give away the one

(21:15):
hundred thousand. When I give away the hundred thousand, When
I give away the hundred thousand, right, I said, give
it away. You can do this in a trust or
you can actually give it to somebody, and usually what
we do is we give it to one of the
kids and then the kid puts it in a trust.
But anyway, either way, you give away the one hundred

(21:36):
thousand that creates that creates a nine month penalty period.
For nine months, Medicaid won't pay. And you say, but
wait a second, they're already not paying. I say, I know,
I know, but there's this penalty period. Now. The reason
they're not paying now is because she's got too much money.

(21:57):
The reason they're not going to pay after I give
the money a way, Now, this is screwy. I'm not
saying this is common sense. Okay, this is screwed. You
get that, you give the money away. Now for nine months,
you pay this six thousand a month out of the
money that was given away. You have the kid give
the money back basically a month at a time. Okay,

(22:19):
so the kid pays. Now, what's nine times six fifty four? Right,
what's what's one hundred minus fifty four forty six? So
at the end of the nine month period, you qualify
again because we ran through the penalty period. But you
still have forty thousand dollars that you didn't spend down

(22:43):
the kid or the friend or the trust or however,
we do it, all right, I still have around forty
thousand dollars or so that that is in addition to
the money. And now we qualify for PACE again because
I gave the money away. I served my penalty period, right,

(23:05):
and now I qualify for PACE again. So it's it's
don't try this at home, all right, But there's a
way my point, there's a way to do this. Okay,
there is a way to do that. We do it,
you know, it's what we do all day. But there
is a way to do it. But the real key

(23:26):
is if you've got a spouse who's disabled or already
on the Medicaid, you got to fix that or you'll
wind up like Dean's friend here.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Okay, yeah, is there some way that U from giving
the money away?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. To hang on through the break,
and we'll wrap this up in the last segment. How
about that, Dean. Okay, Okay, thank you. Happy Mother's Day.
You've been listening to the David Carriers Show. I'm David Carrier,
your family's personal attorney. Welcome back to the David Carrier Show.
I'm David Carrier. Your family's personal attorney. We've been talking

(24:11):
with Dean this hour. Dean has a friend who's who,
who is on the PACE program program of all inclusive
care for the elderly. You may have heard me mention
this about every five seconds, because I think it's a
really wonderful program, and especially great if you want to
stay at home most people, I think most folks who

(24:34):
wind up in a long term care facility could actually
stay at home if they received some help doing so.
And that is the story with Dean's friend. The problem
is that in order to qualify for the Medicaid, and
this is very common, the spouse had a significant amount
of assets, whether it was IRA four one K, CDs,

(24:56):
mutu funds, whatever, those were in the spouse's name, and
unfortunately they did not do a pre plan and that
plan ahead for what if husband dies first? What if
spouse dies first? Spouse with the money dies first, also
known as the community spouse. See whenever you talk of medicaid,

(25:16):
you've got the institutionalized spouse and you have the community spouse.
The community spouse can have a significant amount of assets
and income, in fact, an unlimited amount of income that
is not available to the institutionalized spouse. They say, wait
a second, she's not in an institution, she's living at

(25:38):
home on pace. Yeah, yeah, I get it. But one
more example of how this stuff is not as obvious
as it might as it might be. But anyway, so
the community spouse dies, leaves the money to the institutionalized spouse,
and now she's running through it and she's paying now
doing the private pay for pace, which, as I've said,

(25:58):
is a good deal. That's a good deal. The private
pay rate for pace is a good deal. But the
end of the road here is friend community spouse is
now broke, broke. And before while spouse was alive, she
had the cushion of his retirement savings, earnings, what have you.

(26:21):
And now she's not going to have any of that.
We were told. And this just tells you that this
happened last year, because in January of this year in Michigan,
you can be on Medicaid and have around nine thousand
dollars and they were saying two thousand. Well it's been
upped now to nine thousand, so that's better. Still, not

(26:43):
any kind of security, but it's better. The question now
is how can we hang on to as much as
possible of what the spouse built up. And the answer is,
there is a way to do that that works well
for pace. You have to thread the needle to do it,
and I can go over it again, but there is

(27:03):
a way to accelerate the qualification and retain a cushion.
And you say, well, that's all mumbo jumbo and stuff.
I know, it's mumbo jumbo. All of this stuff is
mumbo jumbo. It's like taxes, it's like anything else. You
can't figure out why in the world anyone would design
the system that way. And the only conclusion you can

(27:25):
come to is nobody designed the system. It just kind
of grew and here it is. Okay, But this is
not the time to give up. This is could you
have saved all of it? One hundred percent of it? Yes,
the spouse, if they have pre planned one hundred percent
could be saved. Well, that didn't happen. So is there
a way to save the rest of it? Yes, about half?

(27:49):
You know, but you know, would you rather have half
a low for none? Well that's kind of a question.
So dean, my uh any questions that you.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Might have, well, how do they go about doing? Uh? That?
So it's set aside and not absorbed by PACE before
she runs out of money.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Right, So you know, here's a here's a unashamed plug
for us. I mean, this is what we do all day.
If they if they're see my concern is that they're
not working with nursing homes do medicaid, assisted living facilities

(28:34):
do medicaid. Pace does medicate. Everybody and their brother sister
does medicate. Okay, the question is with what with what goal? Now? Now,
if you're working with somebody who's working at PACE, I'm
telling you that what they said will work, it will work.

(28:54):
Will she be back on PACE when she's broke? Yeah?
The question is do you want to wait till you're
broke to be back on Pace or would you rather
have a cushion? If you'd rather have the cushion, if
you'd rather hang on to some of the savings that
you and your spouse built up over the years, because

(29:15):
you know, put a little money away for the rainy day,
you know, if you'd like to do that, well, give
us a call six one six three six one eighty
four hundred sixty one six three six eighty four hundred.
We can at least lay out your options if you
want to use us, that's fine. If you don't, that's fine.

(29:35):
So I don't want to be soliciting here. But I mean,
but the fact of the matter is there are ways
to do this which most people. Most people don't do
because nobody knows about it. And the question is, well,
why don't you know about it? And I think you

(29:56):
should not you personally. I mean, I mean, if you
go to a law who said, yeah, I'm an old
law attorney, you know, they really ought to know this stuff.
But but it can't be you know that we're the
only because whenever we do because we do these routinely
down in probate Core, and it's like we're the only
ones doing it. I mean, that's what the clerks say.

(30:18):
I mean, who the hell knows. There's no way to
do an accurate statistical stuff that I know of, to
do a statistical study of exactly who's doing it. But
but these are you know, the feedback we've gotten over
the years is, you know, is more along the lines
of what the hell are you guys doing, as opposed
to yeah, of course everybody does this, but you know,

(30:39):
with the trust saving every one spouse to the other.
But that's just a that's just the way it is.
But I mean that's my impression of it. Could I
be wrong. I can always be wrong, but I don't
think some way, well, not anymore. You can't do that.
That was the pre play. That was the save. Right now,

(31:03):
we're not going anywhere near probate court. We don't have to.
What we're going to do is divest, gift whatever you
want to say, transfer the cash. Right So if there's
one hundred thousand, I'm going to give one hundred thousand
dollars away. I'm going to create a penalty period, and
then I'm going to spend the money through the penalty

(31:25):
period so that there will be something left at the
end of the day. We can do this with We
can do this with what do you call with skilled
nursing as well. The technique is a little bit different,
but it's it's pretty close to the idea. The idea
is you generally don't want do not want a penalty period.

(31:47):
But sometimes if you haven't laid this stuff into if
you haven't planned ahead, I'm just saying it, you haven't
planned ahead, it's going to cost you a big time.
I mean, you know, and people say, oh, you're so expensive. Oh,
I'm like japers. You know, if you would just do this, Okay,
when the time comes, you're gonna save this in two weeks.

(32:09):
But you know it's because there is there's real work
that needs to get done. You have to do it.
If you don't do it, then when the time comes, Oh,
that time will never come. Okay, who might you know? Okay, fine,
it will never happen.

Speaker 2 (32:27):
Time the money coming in on if he retired, the
guy retired and then died, but in three weeks. So
it's a pension type thing, I think, I.

Speaker 1 (32:40):
Think yeah, but we see I don't think so. I
don't think so, because if it was a pension, it
was a straight up pension that she's never gonna qualify.
And they're talking about a spend down the way they're
talking about this is a spend down. So there's gonna
be and there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Okay,

(33:02):
but until we know the facts. We don't know the facts.
But if you ever give us a call, it won't
cost anything just to find out and then we can
know really really Okay, all right, thank you Dean, Thanks
for calling you, Betcha, you've been listening to the David
Carriers Show. I'm David Carrier, your family's personal retirement law specialist,