The Laws of your Money with Ann-Margaret Episode 32

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 welcomed to the Laws of your Money. This
is a program dedicated to protecting you from legal and
financial mayhem when it comes to personal finance. What does
it matter how diligently I save and invest if there

(00:48):
is a forty percent chance of being wiped out financially
from a long term illness, an expensive divorce taxes. This
can be capital gains taxes, estate taxes. I think we
all have legal landminds in our lives, whether we're in

(01:10):
a second marriage, worried about blended family warfare. Later, do
we have an elderly relative and we're concerned about them
losing a home to a nursing home because of long
term care expenses. We know we are living in a
very litigious society, but it comes as a surprise that

(01:35):
we are actually more likely to be involved in a
legal dust stop with a former loved one than with
a stranger.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I am asset protection.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
Attorney and former New York State assembly woman and Margaret Carosa,
and I'm joined today by my good friend and litigation
attorney DJ Diliberto. Welcome to the program, DJ.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Thank you, Anna, thank you for having me on the show.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
A pleasure.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
So as a litigation attorney, you are, for the most part,
protecting defendants from lawsuits, right okay, So hopefully we'll get
into a little bit later in the program tips that
you might give the average homeowner for staying safe from

(02:32):
trip and fall claims. Now, longtime listeners of the program
have heard about my grandmother who was a trip and
fall queen, and she had lawsuits against many different establishments

(02:54):
and it was quite the sideline hustle that she had
for many years. So I think that we should give
tips to people to keep them safe from things like that. So,
taking a headline from the news, I don't think there's
anyone out there that hasn't heard about.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
The big engagement.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift are engaged. So the big
question that we get as attorneys is should they do
a prenup? Should they do a prenup? Now they are

(03:41):
both worth a fortune. Yes, there is a seeming financial disparity,
but in this case, the less wealthy partner has close
to one hundred million dollars, so that's not really a
spouse who needs something. They're not going to be relying

(04:02):
on each other financially, but I would still recommend that
they create a prenup. Both parties have many different business interests,
and when we have investors, when we have partners, when
we have employees, we need to hold them harmless from

(04:26):
a devastating breakup where valuations of the businesses need to
be conducted, and we see this with ordinary mortal human beings.
If your partners in a bagel shop with your brother,
and your brother is going through a nasty divorce, you

(04:49):
better expect forensic accountants to be all over your books
and possibly interrupting the business. So my advice to any
one who has a business with other people, you really
want to give some thought to your operating agreement. Whether

(05:10):
you're operating as an S corporation, an LLC and LLP
a C corporation, you want to make sure that those
corporate governance documents require everyone to enter into a prenup
or a post up, as the case may be, to

(05:32):
keep the business interests separate from going through a courtroom
and possibly devastating people, you know, other than the couple
getting divorced. We also want to consider a non disparagement clause,

(05:52):
and that's going to be very, very important for a
high profile couple who have a lot of indorsement deals.
I wouldn't be surprised if contracts, say for Travis Kelcey's
endorsement deals, don't require that he enter into NDAs with

(06:17):
friends coming to his house and a non disparagement clause
within a prenup, because we have seen in the past
that Taylor Swift likes to include.

Speaker 3 (06:33):
Her exes in music, so.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
That might not be the best thing in the world
for Travis Kelcey, So he would be well advised to
require a non disparagement clause. But the engaged state, let's
focus on the positive things now, because I will say
and tell me if you agree with this DJ that

(06:58):
they look like this happiest two people on the planet.
So you know, all of this prenup talk, I do
wish them all of the happiness in the world. But
when we are engaged, I think you could say that

(07:18):
you're never more into the other person than when you're
newly engaged. This is the most important person in your life,
and if the engagement is going to be a long one,
I would recommend that a newly engaged couple update their
advanced directives because if we are engaged and this is

(07:44):
the person that I plan to spend the rest of
my life with and I'm hospitalized, this person has zero
ability to weigh in on medical treatment if I'm unable
to speak for myself. So if you're newly engaged, I

(08:04):
recommend that you jump onto my website, my lawyer and
dot com, and that's and without an e my lawyer
and dot com. Or you can jump onto it through
Instagram at my lawyer and download a healthcare proxy. You
don't need a lawyer to do a healthcare proxy, and

(08:26):
you can name your fiance as your agent to make
healthcare decisions.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
If you know a.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Newly engaged couple, download the healthcare proxy and you can
put it in a nice engagement card and bring it
to the engagement party. Okay, so once the engaged couple
gets married, they need to do some other legal planning.

Speaker 3 (08:57):
When we have.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
A couple who is married and they have no will,
it's going to be your state of residence that has
a will prepared for you, and you may or may
not like it. It's called intestate distribution. And this is

(09:21):
one of the things that I used to work on
with my former colleagues in the legislature, coming up with
laws to cover people who have not done their own planning.
So a married person without a will, under the laws

(09:42):
of all fifty states, the estate will go to the
surviving spouse. Well, in the case of Taylor Swift and
Travis Kelsey, would they not want some part of their
significant assets going to their parents and siblings. And we

(10:03):
look at the twenty twenty very untimely death of Chadwick Boseman.
He was newly married, his career had really taken off
in the years right before his death, and he died
without a will. So his widow received the entire estate

(10:26):
and I'm told she ended up being a lovely person
and she did share the estate with Chadwick Boseman's family,
which is terrific. But you can't count on people to
stand up and do the right thing.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
So if you.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Are a self made successful person, and you want to
make sure that your parents and brothers and sisters are
taken care of, then you definitely want to do a
will that includes them. Better to do a trust of course,
so that they don't have to go through probate to

(11:05):
receive the assets. Next topic I want to get into
today also comes from the headlines, and that is a
recent experience study reveals that four out of five people
out there in the dating world view good credit as

(11:27):
a very attractive quality. So I'm going to ask you, DJ,
do you feel that it's very important for a possible
significant other to have good credit?

Speaker 3 (11:45):
I do.

Speaker 4 (11:45):
I think that it shows a lot about the person,
whether they're trustworthy, they have a stable lifestyle, and people
want to be in relationships where they're compatible, and so
it's it's important to have dialogue with someone about these
types of things, just like your medical conditions and everything else,
if you're considering a long term relationship with them.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Absolutely, And we know that credit scores, for better or worse,
they determine so much about our lives. We can't get
a good mortgage rate, we can't get a car loan
without good credit, and it goes beyond that. Prospective employers

(12:34):
are checking our credit scores, and it's difficult to rent
an apartment without a.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
Good credit score.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
So I definitely think we all need to focus on
this a little bit. And DJ, you and I are
both parents of gen Z people, and they say that
gen Z is super focused on credit score, so maybe
that's a good thing. I know gen Z sometimes gets

(13:08):
a bad rap, and two weeks ago on the show,
there was a headline that I wanted to dig into
about gen Z people being lazy. So I invited my son,
Billy Duke to be on the program to defend gen
Z and he was all prepared to do that until

(13:28):
I woke him up to drive into the studio and
he was a little too tired to make it in
that day. So when we have how do we bring
the topic up about a credit score? And I think
my advice to people is that it's part of a

(13:52):
broader discussion, and it's super important whether you think that
this relationship is going going to go the distance or not.
We can't run away from financial topics on the first date,
for example, who's going to pay for that date? What

(14:13):
do the dates look like? Are they always at some
fancy restaurant. Do we have to go see a Broadway
play that costs hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So I
think these discussions are important, and I encourage people to
bring the topic up, maybe with some kind of self

(14:34):
deprecating revelation. You know, I'm super I'm a big nerd,
and I'm really into improving my credit score. I'm so
proud that I was able to increase it by fifty
points over the past year because I used to be
and in my case, it's very true.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
I used to be a.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Financial train wreck and it takes some work to climb
out of that situation. And I think the credit score
is reflective of where you happen to be at this
point in time. A terrible credit score can signify a

(15:21):
mountain of debt, and don't you want to know about
that debt ahead of time? Because the married state brings
with it more than one thousand legal rights and responsibilities,
and one of these responsibilities is for each other's debt.

(15:44):
So before I buy the farm and marry this person,
I feel I have a right to know what the
financial situation is, how much debt they have, and look
the credit score. I think of it like the headline
doesn't necessarily tell the whole story because there are often errors.

Speaker 3 (16:07):
In the credit score.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
So don't you want to know that all three major
credit bureaus give us a free credit score every year,
So definitely reach out get your credit score, bring it
up to a significant other, and say, look, this is
where I am now. It's not reflective of where I

(16:30):
think I'm going to be in the next three years.
I am actively saving, I'm paying down my past debt,
I have a side hustle, and I want to get
to the next level financially. Do you agree DJ that
these are healthy discussions to have.

Speaker 4 (16:50):
Absolutely, And I think it's really good that young people
learn this and take more responsibility. And I'm happy that
the gen ze is like my son and daughter are
aware of this. And you know one way that you
can increase your credit score, which I found out with
my son when he told me what his credit score
was and showed me. I was shocked. I was like,

(17:10):
that's exactly the same as my credit score. How could
you have such a great credit score when you're twenty
four years old? And it was because I put him
on my American Express card and he his credit score
increased because of that.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
Well, DJ, I'm glad you had a good experience putting
gen Z on your credit card.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
I have mixed results.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
And I don't know why someone would need three separate
ubers in one day. But that's a discussion for another day,
when Billy's able to get up early and come in
and defend himself. Speaking of children and money, what can

(17:51):
we as parents of adult children do if we think
the child is dating a finance train wreck. And I
think the short answer is we can't do anything to
control our adult children's behavior.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
I've learned that the hard way. But what I can do.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Is enact some safeguards to keep my money from potentially
getting into the hands of this financial train wreck that
one of my children is dating. And I do that
within my will or within my trust. When I say
that the assets go upon my death to Mary, Susie

(18:41):
and Johnny, I can go one step further and I
can say it goes to them quote as their separate property,
not to be co mingled with a spouse or partner
for the ultimate benefit of my lineal descis. And what

(19:01):
I've done with that language is I take the onus
off of my child to have a backbone, and he
can simply point to this language and say, you know,
my crazy old dead mother put that in there.

Speaker 3 (19:17):
Sorry about it, but I have to keep the assets separate.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Whatever it takes to ensure that the assets are not dissipated.
Your opportunity to do that is within a thoughtfully constructed
estate plan. And I've said before I view good estate
planning as.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
Our last act as a.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Parent, and don't we want to do a little bit
more then simply say everything goes to Mary, Susie and Johnny.
Good luck, mom. You want to have a little bit
more nuance in there and take their failure shortcomings, squabbles

(20:06):
between siblings who want to take all of these things
into account to ensure that they will have as smooth
a transition as possible.

Speaker 3 (20:18):
Next topic. Also from today's news, the New York State.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
Lottery has announced that the powerball jackpot is over one
billion dollars. That's not the record payout, but it's getting
up there. The drawing is this coming Monday.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Have you ever played lotto DJ?

Speaker 4 (20:44):
I have mostly sometimes my kids and I have gotten
them when it's their birthdays. Yea very few times. But
I know a lot of people that are religiously.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
I know, and I think it's.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, it's sad when you're in the candy store and
you see someone like spending two hundred dollars on these tickets.
You know, but it's fun two bucks here and there.
But did you know that you are more likely to
lose it all than not. This is a real thing,

(21:19):
and they call it the lotto curse, and people say,
how is it possible?

Speaker 3 (21:25):
And I think I've.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
Had three winners in my office, not all lotto winners.
One was an Atlantic City slot machine winner, and it
was a sad story. She went with her church on
a bus. She was a senior citizen and won a big,
big slot machine payout and the crush and the excitement

(21:51):
of the people who poured in after the win, she
had a massive heart attack and died. So I dealt
with the family and the estate. I also had an
adult son of two clients of mine win three million
dollars on New York Lotto.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
And what did he do?

Speaker 2 (22:16):
He promptly divorced his wife of twenty five years. He
suddenly thought he needed to date a twenty four year
old okay, But because the divorce was after the win,
they ended up splitting the win. And what did the
ex wife do with her part? She bought a brownstone

(22:38):
multifamily in Brooklyn?

Speaker 3 (22:41):
What did he do? Wine? Women and song?

Speaker 2 (22:45):
And I told his parents, you need to get him
in here into my office. Do a trust lock half
of it up, please from yourself, because you are not
thinking clearly right away. And the typical storyline with the

(23:05):
lottery winner is they're buying themselves all manner of crazy things,
but they can't really enjoy it if they're not also
buying these things for their friends and their neighbors and
their cousins. And the bottom line is it is never enough.
These people are never going to be happy, and they're

(23:29):
going to keep coming back and asking for more until
it is all gone. So I encourage people to put
some legal guardrails in place. You know, if you can't
manage one thousand dollars, you will be equally unable to

(23:49):
manage one billion dollars.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
So put some aside for.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Taxes, put some into savings and investment, and donate some
of it.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
To reputable charities.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
If all you're focused on is yourself and new clothes
and experiences and fancy cars, you're gonna be absolutely miserable
if you're not sharing what you have with less fortunate people.
So that's my advice for the lucky winner of Monday's

(24:27):
power Ball.

Speaker 3 (24:28):
I think we should buy a ticket DJ.

Speaker 4 (24:30):
I think so, let's plait absolutely, stay anonymous.

Speaker 3 (24:33):
Stay anonymous. I don't think we're allowed to do that.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
In New York super quickly you help people stay safe
from slip and fall.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Claims, from bodily injury claims.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
And in New York State we have a new area
of expanded liability for homeowners and that involves dog bites.
For decades, in order to sue the owner of a
dog for a bite, you had to be able to

(25:12):
demonstrate that the animal had vicious propensities and he had
he or she had bitten someone before. So we called
that the one bite rule. The dog can bite someone
basically without liability one time. That has gone away. The

(25:35):
New York State Court of Appeals in the spring of
this year says that a homeowner can be sued under
general negligence principles if they didn't take proper safeguards to
prevent the bite. And you know, I think that's like

(25:56):
a logical loop. If there was a bite. I think
we can say by definition now they didn't take adequate safeguards,
so I think we're going to see an uptick in
these cases. I would encourage folks to contact your insurance

(26:17):
company let them know you have a dog. Some insurance
policies have what they call dangerous breed exclusions. Shouldn't you
know about that on the front end? And DJ, do
you have any general advice for a homeowner looking to

(26:37):
avoid trip and fall liability other than not inviting my grandmother.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
To a party.

Speaker 4 (26:45):
I think you know you should inspect your property regularly
and make sure there are no hazardous conditions around. Make
sure you have enough insurance on your property to protect
yourself in case of.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Absolute Really, you know, I am all about saving money,
but there are some areas where it's in the pennywise
pound foolish category. And this is true with insurance coverage.
You need to be an open book with your insurance

(27:24):
advisor because to try and save a few dollars it
is not worth it because the insurance company can get
out of paying acclaim. And I see this as an
estate attorney, when the estate has to go through probate

(27:46):
and in New York that has to be open for
a minimum statutory period of seven months. The house is
often empty and the family doesn't want to tell the
insurance company because yes, the premiums will go up significantly.
But if there is a loss in the vacant premises

(28:08):
and you did not do your job and notify the
insurance company, they would be within their rights to deny
the claim. So before we say goodbye, DJ, I want
to know how can people get in.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Touch with you.

Speaker 4 (28:24):
I work for a firm called Miranda, Sloan, Scloren and
Vervinatis and we're in Westchester, Long Island and Manhattan, and
the phone numbers five one six seven four to one
seven six seven six and we do a lot of
different insurance defense, personal injury, bodily injury, property damage, employment law,

(28:46):
civil rights law, and it's about nineteen attorneys and it's
a really great place to work, and I do mostly
bodily injury because I will.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Okay, if you are out there and someone is is
suing you, you definitely want to call DJ Dilberto. If
you're driving and you weren't able to take down the
phone number, please reach out to me and I can
connect you and I encourage you to keep in touch
with me. During the week. If you have a question

(29:18):
for next week show, please reach out to me on
Instagram at my lawyer Ann and the website for the
free forms.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Is my lawyeran dot com.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
I hope you join me next week here on WOR
seven ten ten thirty every Sunday morning. Hope you all
have a great day, and DJ thank you so much
for joining the program today.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
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.