The Laws of your Money with Ann-Margaret Episode 11

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The following is a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed. The following program is sponsored by New
York Priority Medical Care. Now it's time for the Laws
of Your Money, a weekly call in show with legal

(00:20):
tips to help you protect your money. Here's your host
and Margaret Caroza.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello, and welcome to the Laws of your Money. This
is a show dedicated to protecting you from legal and
financial mayhem when it comes to personal finance. I think
that there's nothing more important than protecting yourself legally. What

(00:47):
does it matter how diligently I save and how brilliantly
I invest if there's a greater than forty percent chance
of losing assets to a law, long term illness, an
expensive divorce taxes, or ordinary lawsuits. I believe we all

(01:10):
have legal landminds in our lives. Are you concerned about
an elderly relative losing a home to a nursing home.
Are you in a second marriage thinking about the possibility
of blended family warfare later? Do you have a special
needs loved one or someone in your life who is

(01:32):
a financial black hole and they're looking for yet another loan.
I am asset protection attorney and Margaret Carosa, joined today
by my guest co host for today, Paul Sladgis. Welcome
to the program.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Paul, Hi amne.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
Paul is among many other things, and interfaith minister, and
I think as a great grounding in human behavior. So
I rely upon you to give your your common sense
and humanistic insights into all of these issues that we discussed.

(02:15):
Thank you are so last week. Oh before we jump
into last week, please join the conversation. If you have
questions or issues anecdotes about a collision between your finances
and your loved ones, please join us by calling eight

(02:38):
hundred three two one zero seven to ten. So last
week we talked a lot about the importance of saving money,
and we shared I think some good tips about saving money.
And in the past week a lot of you have
given me really super great tips and I was kind

(03:02):
of attempted to revisit that topic today, but there are
other things that I want to talk about. But next week,
for our special Valentine's Day show, we can talk about
saving money. So if any of you have tips for
saving money and giving economical Valentine's Day gifts to your

(03:26):
loved ones. Please reach out to me during the week
at my lawyer ann on Instagram or you can email
me via my website and that's my Asset Protection Attorney
dot com. Okay, so today's topic. We know that we're

(03:47):
living in a very litigious society, right there have never
been more novel theories of legal liability. But my question
for today is, and I'll start with you since you're here, Paul,

(04:08):
I'll ask you the question, do you think that you
should be responsible for other people's actions? So, do you
think you should be legally responsible for something that you
didn't do?

Speaker 3 (04:26):
No?

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Okay, what if you have do you have any pets?
I don't know that I don't you don't have pets? Okay, well, oh, then.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Maybe if I own a pet, I would consider that
as my call it asset or my you know, loved one,
or even my own child. Then if it was my
child did something, then I would consider that part of me.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Okay, So you know the classic answer is I guess
it depends. But if you have a dog, if you
are among the sixty something percent of Americans who have
a dog, and that dog bites someone, are you legally responsible?

Speaker 3 (05:19):
I would think yes, So you.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Know, the answer in most states is it depends did
you have the dog on a leash? Did you have
reason to know that the dog could bite someone? You're
probably probably almost definitely going to be sued if your

(05:42):
dog bites someone. And I read in this morning's paper
there's a lawsuit going on on the Upper east Side
in a very fancy co op where one neighbor's dog
bit a husband and a wife their neighbor and according

(06:02):
to the lawsuit, the plaintiff's allege that the dog was
not on a leash. And this co op permits pets,
but the rule is that the dogs have to be
on a leash. So if you are liable for the
dog bite, does your insurance company have to pay? So,

(06:25):
if you own a dog, it's not a bad idea
to check the limits of your insurance coverage. A lot
of insurers have exclusions for what they deem to be
dangerous breeds. So we know a German shepherd, a pitbull,

(06:46):
certain wolf breeds are deemed to be inherently dangerous, and
we can debate whether that's the case or not, But
in most states, insurance companies can and exclude certain breeds
of dogs. So you definitely want to know about.

Speaker 3 (07:05):
That because this could really affect your assets. They could
wipe you out if.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
You have liabilities and your assets are not protected by
way of a legal structure such as an LLC, an
LLP or a trust, and if your insurance company finds
an out. You know, those of us who have insurance,
I don't think any of us read the policies, myself included.

(07:35):
The policies are like two hundred pages, so I don't
think we read them. And you know, when it comes
to insurance heads, they win tails, we lose a lot
of the time. So we just want to have a
heads up. What about an elderly relative using your vehicle

(07:55):
and having an accident?

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Well, here again is I think you're allowed to have
somebody use your vehicle of providing that you have insurance.
I don't know whether elderly or our youngly.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Yeah, yeah, okay, either way, be fair. Right, let's not
just say elderly.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Anybody using your vehicle. I sort of think that you're
you're covered. I forgot exactly how that how that works.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
Well, the each state is different. The legal liability comes
down to do you have reason to know that this
person should not be operating a vehicle. You know, is
it an underage driver or do they have a junior
license and they can't go out operating a vehicle after dark?

(08:48):
And you're too lazy to go on the ice cream
run and you give the keys to the teenager and
they have a fender vender. Uh, there's likely going to
be liability there. Okay, what about another example? Are you
responsible for someone else's mistake? So let me give you

(09:14):
a hypothetical example. Let's say you're on vacation, you're out
of your house, and your neighbor contracts with a roofing
company to have a new roof installed. The contractors accidentally
go to your home and put the new roof on

(09:38):
your home. You come back from your camping trip and
you discover that there's a new roof. The contractor realizes
the mistake, and they bill you for the new roof.
Do you think you should be on the hook for it?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
No?

Speaker 2 (10:00):
And of course that is the answer. If you had
no knowledge of the mistake, you are not responsible for it.
But what if instead of being on your annual camping trip,
you're at the breakfast table with your wife, and you
see the truck pull up to your home, and you

(10:23):
see them unloading the shingles and the ladder, and they
start work, and you and your wife wink at each
other saying, oh, dear, they have the wrong house and
they give you a new roof. Are you then liable
for it?

Speaker 3 (10:41):
I would still think no.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Well, here, the difference is you will probably be liable
for it in this example because you had the opportunity
to save this contractor from their fool's errand. And you

(11:04):
know in this case it was nonfeasance on your part.
You didn't step in and correct the situation, so you
will likely be on the hook for the value of
the benefit to your home. It makes sense, okay. Next question,

(11:25):
do you think that you should be or that you
are responsible for a relative's nursing home bills?

Speaker 3 (11:38):
No?

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Okay, And the answer in all fifty states of the
United States is that you are absolutely one hundred percent
responsible for a spouses nursing home bills.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Oh, your spouse, your spouse? Okay, a spouse, I would say, yes.

Speaker 2 (12:02):
Okay, relatives or I already told you the answer.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh, but it was a spouse thing a relative. I'm
thinking relative Okay, yeah, a spouse, but my first cousin, Vinny,
your first.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
Cousin Vinny, Well, okay, you know it could depend. But
the laws of all fifty states say that we are
one hundred percent responsible for our spouse's nursing home bills.
In the state of New York, where I practice, we
do have the ability to declare spousal refusal under certain

(12:41):
limited circumstances. So keep that in the back of your mind.
So when your Medicare and your Medicare supplement cong out,
which is going to be no longer than one hundred
days after we enter a nursing home, you definitely we
want to have a game plan in place.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
I have a question about that, and it's the long
term care insurance. Maybe later moment.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
That's a full kettle of fish. We'll get to it
if we have time. Later, we're still in the nursing
home world. None of us want to be in a
nursing home, and there are ways that we can avoid
that that we'll talk about later. So nursing home bills
were on the hook if it's a spouse, what about

(13:30):
a parent? Are you on the hook for your parents'
nursing home bills?

Speaker 3 (13:38):
I really don't know these, Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Well, it's a very interesting answer. In thirteen states we
have laws on the books holding a child responsible for
their parents' nursing home bills. And there was a case
a couple of years ago in Pennsylvania where an adult

(14:04):
child never met his father. The father abandoned the family
when he was an infant, and somehow the nursing home
tracked down this adult son and he was on the
hook for nursing home bills. Now, in New York State,

(14:25):
we do not have laws on the books holding a
child responsible for parents nursing home bills. However, it is very,
very common, and one of the best pieces of advice
I can give to anyone is that if you're in

(14:46):
a nursing home, which starts off as a rehab stay,
if you're in a rehab or nursing home situation with
a relative, and that could be your cousin, Vinnie, it
could be a parent, and the lovely admissions people give
you a bunch of papers to fill out. You have

(15:09):
to be very careful and you have to be prepared
for this interaction because when we're in this setting with
a loved one who has issues, sometimes our brains are
not working properly. So I've had clients come to me

(15:30):
after the fact and they said, well, you know, we
signed some paperwork, and one of them was for his grandmother.
This lovely guy signed a third party guarantee where he
promised to pay the nursing home bills for his grandmother

(15:54):
when her private moneis ran out. So the idea was
they had no advance planning. You know, under federal law
there is a five year lookback period as it relates
to state funding for nursing home care, So you must
have protected the home and other assets, preferably with a trust,

(16:19):
five years in advance of that nursing home stay. This
family did no such planning. The grandmother was allergic to
the planning, okay, So everyone was perfectly willing for the
nursing home to exhaust the assets and then they were
going to put her on the state medicaid program to

(16:40):
pay for the bills. Well, someone screwed up in the
billing office at the nursing home and that medicaid application
was never filed. So after the grandmother exhausted her assets,
she was living there another two years before she died,
at which time the nursing home was on the hook

(17:04):
because the medicaid application was not timely filed. They went
through the file and found this poor grandson's third party guarantee.
They sued him. Long story short, they won, and this
guy had to sell his home and he ended up

(17:25):
getting divorced, and you know, it was really a horrible tragedy.
So the advice is, if you're in this situation and
they give you a bunch of paperwork to sign, you
would be your gracious self, Paul, and you would say,
I'm a little overwhelmed right now. I'm going to take
it home over a cup of tea tonight and look

(17:48):
at it all. And the advice is, if you sign anything,
it should not be in your name individually. You should
sign it as power of attorney for the other person. Now,
with those magic words, you have saved yourself from personal liability.

(18:14):
We have to be very, very careful.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
I'd say, the smartest thing to do. And I'd say
I'm smart because I have an I've had Anne help me, okay,
and I will right here right now be honored to say.
And for a long time Anne and I know each other,
like twenty or so years along, you know, what you know.

(18:38):
And you might be a carpenter, you might be a salesperson,
and you know a lot about how to deal with that.
This is serious stuff. I mean, what Anne is talking
about is your your life and your children's life. I mean,
if you're I don't know these things, I would go

(18:58):
and hire Ann and ask and help me because I'm
really not this is my mother or this is my relative,
and you know, I could really mess myself up easily
because I don't know the answers. Well, no, I have
to say that.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Well, you know, anyone with just a simple question, you're
welcome to email me. You can go through the website
and that's my Asset Protection Attorney dot com. Okay, so
we just talked about spousal responsibility for each other's long

(19:35):
term care claims, and let's pivot to another marital issue.
And this is an interesting statistic. And I'm going to
throw you a question that I've not prepared you for, Paul.
Which state in the United States has the biggest percentage

(19:57):
of unmarried people?

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (20:02):
My god, it's New York. New York is the right answer.
And New York. This week I read a statistic thirty
eight point six percent of New Yorkers have never been married.
Does that surprise you.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
No, because a lot of people watch Seinfeld and those
bachelor and bachelorette.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
A lifestyle the highest in the United States. And we
have a related statistic from the US Census Bureau that
the percentage of single person households has tripled in recent years.
So in the United States, twenty seven percent of all

(20:55):
households are a single person. So when we are living
alone or when we think we may be likely to
live alone at some point, and here I'm speaking to
women out there, we if we're married now, we have

(21:15):
an eighty percent chance of being the surviving spouse and
living alone. So for those single person households, I strongly
encourage you to put some thoughts and plans in place

(21:36):
in writing to ensure that your later years look the
way that you want them to look. We should do
a healthcare proxy, naming someone to make medical decisions if
we can't speak for ourselves later. Otherwise it's going to
be a court naming someone in the form of a

(22:01):
guardianship or a conservatorship making those decisions. We don't want that.
This is a free document. You don't need a lawyer
to do it. Go on my website my Asset Protection
Attorney dot com download a healthcare proxy. You can do
this on your own. We also want to have a

(22:22):
power of attorney in place, someone who can transact financial
matters for us in the event that we're unable to
do so. But when we are living alone or likely
to be living alone at some point, we need to
think about protecting ourselves from fraud, okay, because we are

(22:49):
a target to evil people out there. And the story
that really illustrates this, and naturally I'm giving you a
made up name here. The woman's name was Katherine McCarthy,
living alone in her childhood home. She was in her

(23:13):
late eighties when she reached out to me. She couldn't
leave the house to do her will, so I came
to the home. We did a will. She was a
daily communicant at her local church, and the disposition in
the will that she wanted to make with me was

(23:34):
that upon her death all of her assets would go
to the church. And she had significant assets without a
spouse and pesky children spending her money for all of
those decades. So we did the will and I don't
hear from her again for a couple of years, and

(23:56):
now I get a call from this young guy named
Peter who calls my office quote unquote on her behalf
telling me that she wants to change her will. So
I apologized to him and said, well, I need to
speak with my client directly. He offered to put her

(24:18):
on the phone. I said, I need to meet with
her in person. So I don't know if he just
bodily threw her into the back of his car, because
they appeared at my office a half hour later, and
the two of them come into my conference room. I
apologized to him and said I need to speak with
her alone. Put him in the waiting room, and I

(24:41):
asked her who is this guy? And she had deteriorated
a little bit in the intervening years, and you know
what she said to me, She said, I don't really know,
but he told me that if I leave him my
house in my will, that he will take care of
my dog upon my death. And I was heartbroken for

(25:06):
her and wanted to give him a piece of my mind,
but I knew if I did, he would simply go
to another law firm, and god knows what would happen.
So I said to her, tell him, you know, whatever
you want to tell him to make him happy that
you made the changes that he suggested you made. But

(25:28):
I kept the original will. So out they go, and
I don't hear another word for about a year, and
then I get an anonymous call from another law firm.
A secretary there said, your former client, Catherine McCarthy was
here and she gave her house to this young guy

(25:52):
who she felt didn't have the woman's best interests at heart.
Long story short. I contacted the District Attorney's office, and
the late Great Richard Brown, the District Attorney of Queen's County, intervened,
and this person went through the criminal justice system, and

(26:17):
they did impose a guardianship where Catherine McCarthy had someone
appointed by the court to safeguard her interests. And I
share this story for several reasons. A guardianship is not
always a terrible thing. The law exists to protect people

(26:39):
from evil doers, and in this case, because there was
a guardianship in place, there was a court who was
able to reverse the deed transfer from Peter and put
the home back in Catherine's name, where she lived out
the rest of her day in her lovely home. Now

(27:03):
in this case, the guardianship was better than her being
subject to you know, this criminal. But it would have
been better still if she had a power of attorney
in place, you know, back when she had the requisite
mental capacity to appoint someone who could act for her

(27:26):
in the event that she couldn't act for herself. And
you know, who knows, maybe she could have appointed her
parish priest to be her agent under the power of attorney,
a friend from the Rosary Society, you know, any number
of people would have been better than leaving her alone

(27:49):
and vulnerable. When we are living alone, it's very important
to have a plan in place because a significant portion
of us will develop some cognitive impairment later in life.
That might be a dementia related illness. But we definitely

(28:09):
want to have some advance directives in place. If I
can't act for myself, I appoint you, Paul, you know,
someone who is trustworthy to deal with my finances and
make sure that I'm not vulnerable, I'm not taken advantage of.

(28:30):
And within these advanced directives, I can and should manifest
my intention to remain in my own home in the
event that care is needed in the future. And we
can do this within a living will, and you're welcome

(28:51):
to go onto my website download my living will. It's
in word format. You can take my name out, put
your name in there. But that document says, in the
event that I require long term care, I wish for
my care to be provided in my own home. You

(29:13):
put these documents in place, you can breathe a sigh
of relief. You're not going to be at someone else's mercy.
Does that make sense?

Speaker 3 (29:22):
Yeah, does no doubt about it.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Health these things, but we should. And with that, I
welcome all of you to join us next week for
our special Valentine stage show, Take Care everyone, Thanks for joining.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
The preceding program was sponsored by New York Priority Medical Care.
The proceeding was a paid podcast. iHeartRadio's hosting of this
podcast constitutes neither an endorsement of the products offered or
the ideas expressed.