The Laws of your Money with Ann-Margaret Episode 39

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 program dedicated to protecting you from legal and
financial mayhem. I believe that legal protections are the most
important part of personal finance, because what does it matter

(00:47):
how diligently I save or how brilliantly I invest if
there's a greater than forty percent chance of losing assets
to a long term illness and expensive breakup taxes. This
can be capital gains taxes, estate taxes, not to mention

(01:09):
ordinary lawsuits. We are living in the most litigious society
that the world has ever known, and you need legal
protections to keep other people's hands out of your pockets. Today,
I am thrilled to have joining the program again my

(01:32):
esteemed co host Ann Woolsey In, renowned journalist and founder.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Of Maverick River Media.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Welcome back to the program, and you am Margaret, and
we have back joining us Billy Duke, a recent graduate
of the New York Film Academy, and here too, let
us know what gen Z thinks about all of these topics.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Welcome back to the program, Billy, thank you for having me.
And I want.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
To give a special welcome to our new listeners in
New York's Capital District region, where I spent a great
deal of my life. I went to Sunny Albany undergrad
for four years, and then I served in the New

(02:24):
York State Legislature for fourteen years and really just fell
in love with the Capital District. And I have an
office there. Any of you who want to come meet
me there. It's at three eleven State Street in downtown Albany.
I do have parking. And I think we do not

(02:47):
get political on this show. I have hung up my
political cleats and I don't get into political back and forth.
But it is a reality, no matter where you stand
on the political spectrum, it is a reality that after

(03:07):
the recent New York City mayoral election, people are.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Moving out of New York City.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Really, it's a reality, and one of the places that
they're going is the Capital District. So you know, to
my friends in the Capital District, you're going to have
some new neighbors and people. I have clients asking me
about the rules for living in a different state to

(03:37):
avoid New York State and New York City income taxes,
which combined are the highest in the United States. It's
an extra fifteen percent for high income earners, and our
soon to be new mayor has indicated that he would

(04:00):
like that tax rate.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
To go up.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
So you know, understandably people are exploring options for residency
in another state.

Speaker 3 (04:11):
But my advice to folks who.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Are thinking about doing that is it has to be
legit because the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance,
I think they have six thousand dedicated people looking into this.
So you need to stay there in that other state

(04:33):
for six months and one day at least, and they
will look at your credit card statements, your easy pass,
where is your gym membership? You have a dog, where
does that dog get veterinary checkups? They are all over this.

(04:55):
And there was a case this week of someone who
quote unquote moved to Florida and filled out an application
for a New York state fishing license.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Oh and to save five dollars, checked the box that
he was a New York State residence.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
No good message, I got him.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Yeah, So in his audit, the auditor asked, were you
lying then or are you lying now? So he ended
up having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in
back taxes. So if you're going to move, folks, you
really do need to.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
Move so I won't be able to pull one over
on them.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, I think this involves people who have jobs.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
There you go, Billy walked into that one.

Speaker 4 (05:47):
Okay, I have a question. Yes, that makes sense as
to why they're leaving New York City, But in like
an anecdotal sense, in your experience in Albany, why why
do you think they're going to Albany? Is it a
nice place?

Speaker 3 (05:59):
For it? Is Albany a nice place?

Speaker 2 (06:02):
Albany is the best so as everyone knows. It's the
capital of New York State, and there's just a ton
of cultural events, concerts, ballet parks, Washington Park is right

(06:22):
outside of my office.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
There, it's beautiful, it's wonderful.

Speaker 4 (06:27):
We're gonna have to pay a visit. I went when
I was like seven, and I remember having very good
buffalo wings.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
There you go. Billy spent some time on the floor
of the New York State Assembly, that's for sure.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
The first story I want to get into today was
an article in this week's Post about a Massachusetts woman
who discovered that she had a half sibling because she
took that ancestry DNA test and they developed.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
A little rapport.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
They met for coffee, and it was all fun and
games until the father died and the newly unearthed half
sibling put in acclaim against the estate. And you know,
it really underscores the importance of thinking through what your

(07:30):
particular family situation is and if you have any complexity
within your family, if you're in a blended family, you're
in a second marriage, or you're in a first marriage,
but you may have had a very active dating life
back in the day before you got married. As we're

(07:52):
heading into the holiday season, people are gifting these DNA
kits and you may not take the test, but if
your first cousin takes the test, you can really expect
new relatives and some of them may well make a
claim against your parents' estate.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
Wow, I we found a secret cousin last year really yeah,
and luckily everything was very beautiful and the sister's matter,
the father had no idea. But this comes when you
least expect it, and you're so right that if there's
money involved.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Absolutely, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
So a relative, a genetic relative, is an air at
law under New York State's intest state laws.

Speaker 3 (08:44):
So it's very important.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
If you don't want my former colleagues in the legislature
to determine who gets your stuff when you die, you
need to, you know, take it upon yourself to make
sure you have some good planning in place.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
So is there a way with a state planning to
sort of prevent that option some relatives, some cousin that
comes out of the woodwork.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
To Yeah, So listen, it's not only the DNA relatives
that we may never have met. Plenty of us have
relatives that we do know that h true that we
would like to keep very far away from our estates.
And that's why I think most of us need to
consider doing a trust. You know, a question that I

(09:34):
get on Instagram a lot is how do I know
if I need a trust? I think the real question
is what type of trust do you need? Because a trust,
unlike a will does not go through the probate process,
and probate requires the executor to notify all.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Relatives who are out there.

Speaker 2 (10:02):
So if you have reason to know that there is
a half sibling out there, which under New York state
law is treated as a whole sibling, they would have
inheritance rights. So you want to do a trust to
totally avoid probate. And I think on this show we

(10:23):
need to start delving into celebrity estate plans. Some of
them are great and some of them are total disasters.
And I'm going to bring up a name. I don't
know if you're even old enough and to know this name, Billy,
you definitely would not know this name.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Charles Kalt. Dees our producer knows. Bruce knows Charles Karalt.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
So you've never heard Charles Karalt, Billy, Okay, you have
just been outed for not having read my.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
First book, Oh to Do List. That Charles Carlt Okay,
of course.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
So he was, you know, everyone's beloved avuncular journalist traveling
the country with feel good interest stories fly fishing, and
during one of these trips, decades before his death, he

(11:24):
met a woman who was not his wife, and they
set up a household in Montana, and he bought a
ninety acre ranch and they lived there for many happy
years when he was not in New York with his
other family, with whom he lived happily.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Oh my god, and he died.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
And all that the woman in Montana could produce to
lay claim to this ninety acre ranch was a letter
that Charles Carralt wrote her saying I want you to
have the ranch. And this was in court for years
as to whether that was a valid testamentary substitute.

Speaker 4 (12:12):
So his wife in New York was trying to say
also that she had claim to this ranch in Montana.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Well, the wife and the kids in New York thought
that the ninety acre ranch in Montana should be part
of his estate, right that they would have gotten it.
And this played out for several years, and it was
a Montana court who ultimately sided with the Montana resident.

(12:42):
But the real kicker was that his boiler plate will.
I don't know whether a lawyer did the will or
he did it on his own, but the will had
a throwaway statement saying that all all estate taxes were

(13:02):
to be paid as an administrative expense. And what that
means is the woman in Montana got the ninety acre
ranch with zero taxes do and the wife and kids
ultimately had.

Speaker 3 (13:16):
To pay the estate taxes. So you know, it's just
really foolish.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
If you have any complexity in your life, if any
of your beneficiaries have a problem, a special needs problem,
they spend money like a drunken sailor. You need to
do something more than a plane vanilla.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Will you know?

Speaker 4 (13:41):
Yeah? Actually, I look at your Instagram a lot, and
one of the comments I see most often is people
in anytime you post something that has to do with
the trust, people talking about oh I wish I had
done a trust talking about how their relative's estate was
tied up in probate for years.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
No one hundred percent.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
And I encourage folks follow me on Instagram. I give
regular tips for keeping other people's hands out of your pockets.
And Instagram is at my lawyer and I want to
switch gears for a moment and remind folks that my

(14:22):
upcoming book, The Smart Woman's Guide to Building and Protecting Wealth,
is available for pre order on Amazon. And if you
want to give this book as a holiday gift to
someone in your life who is looking to reach the

(14:43):
next level, of wealth, reach out to me on Instagram
and I will give you a little gift card to
present to them if you pre order the book now.
And that is The Smart Woman's Guide to Building and
Protecting Wealth, the roadmap that I wish I had many

(15:06):
many years ago when I was an absolute financial train wreck.

Speaker 4 (15:11):
I have a question, why do you call it the
Smart Woman's Guide? Is it specifically tailored towards women? Is it?

Speaker 3 (15:18):
It is not? So that's a good question.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
The financial advice, the tax advice, estate taxes, that's not
a woman's issue, right How to build wealth, that's not
a woman's.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Issue per se. But I do believe that.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Women have unique financial challenges. Every study tells us that
women suffer from higher levels of financial stress. And when
we have financial stress, we're not sleeping at night, we're
not eating properly, and in that sleep deprived state, we're

(16:00):
certainly not crushing it within our careers to help get
to the next level of wealth. So financial stress for
women comes from wanting to be everything to everyone, not
wanting to disappoint. You know, my twenty three year old
son who wants a B and C, and I don't

(16:20):
want to say no.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Or worrying about our.

Speaker 2 (16:27):
Long term care, you know, fear of aging, and as women,
this is the number to fear out there, what will
my senior years look like? If you are a woman,
you have an eighty percent chance of surviving your spouse.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
And you know, all of this.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Estate planning and advance directives is so I can control
what my future look like to the greatest extent possible.

Speaker 5 (17:03):
And that was that was It's so true because as
a woman, you worry about that. And I'm older than you, Billy,
so I'm a little more worried as you realizer. But
you know, Anne also in the book, because there's so
much beautiful advice, but you also talk a little bit
about your history and what led you to write this

(17:25):
second book and why is it so important to you
because there's so much in there that's so amazing. Thank you,
who was your you know, your impetus for writing it.

Speaker 2 (17:33):
It's actually funny. So the first book, Love and Money
was about asset protection, exclusively protecting yourself from angry ex's,
wacky relatives, con artists, and inner demons. This book, the
genesis for it was about ten years ago. Anyone who

(17:55):
knows me, Billy, I think you can attest to this.
I am a frust straighted teacher at heart. And if
you invite me to go talk to a group of
five retirees on the eastern end of Long Island, I
am jumping in my car and I'm going to talk
to you all about, you know, protecting your assets from taxes,

(18:19):
on and on and on.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
And you'll bring me along to pass out granola barbe
I will.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yes, you were child labor back in the day. I
think you consume me. So someone.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
In my office scheduled a speaking engagement and it turned
out the speaking engagement was at a soup kitchen run
out of a church, and the people who were there,
you know, couldn't afford their food, which is why they
were having their meal at the soup kitchen. I guess

(18:54):
I was like a guest speaker as their entertainment. And
before they introduced me, I'm looking at the crowd and
I'm not being facetious, but there wasn't one person there
with a full set of teeth. And I'm thinking my
normal presentation about estate taxes and all of this elegant

(19:20):
planning and you know, family business succession planning. This was
not really going to go, well, so I'm trying to
brainstorm about what can I possibly talk about? And then
I was introduced and the confusion was quickly cleared up
about why they thought I was there. And the person

(19:43):
introducing me said, we have with us and Margaret Carosa.
Who's going to tell us how to get some assets? Okay,
so I thought I'm talking about asset protection. They thought,
you know, I'm going to teach them how to get
some assets. And that moment, Anne, something flipped in my

(20:04):
mind and I said, you know what, I can tell
them how to get some assets because back in the
day in the book, I tell the story about being
the family that got the basket of food from the church.
You know, we were that family, and I looked back

(20:26):
over the years and how did I get from there
to having some assets? And it's very easy to say
you develop wealth by investing an asset, and you invest
it properly and over the long term it grows. But
what about someone who literally has absolutely nothing? What can

(20:52):
that person do? And in the book, I have a
lot of creative ideas, and they're not all line their
businesses that started with a creative little idea and they
surrounded themselves with the right people. And when I say

(21:14):
with the right people, I don't mean smart, rich, successful people,
I mean positive people, not the poison pills in our lives.
Who are you know, taking energy from us and you know,
making us feel unhappy. Remember Maya Angelou said, people are

(21:36):
not going to remember what you said, but they are
going to remember how you made them feel. So my
number one tip for everyone is to just banish those
energy vampires from your lives. Surround yourself with positive people

(21:58):
who are focused on achieving the next level of wealth.
Not having the newest handbag I would. I don't know
where my handbag is, but it's fourteen years old, right.
I am just not about getting a bunch of new stuff.
I am about what am I doing with my assets

(22:21):
to get to the next level. So again, I highly
recommend the book The Smart Woman's Guide to Building and
Protecting Wealth. It is not like other personal finance books
out there because someone with nothing can benefit from this
book and can get to the next level of wealth

(22:43):
by the same token someone who has a lot of wealth.
You have a family business and you're wondering how to
transmit that to the next generation. What if the family
business is eighty percent of your network and you have
three children. How are you going to do this? Well,

(23:05):
most people do nothing, and that is why seventy percent
of family businesses do not survive into the next generation.
You know what can be done about that? Any number
of things. Within a good estate plan. You can say
I leave the business equally three ways, but Harold will

(23:31):
be the managing member, and he is required to distribute
net income equally. And we make sure that the business
is owned by a limited liability entity. This can be
an s corporation, a limited liability partnership, a limited liability company.

(23:52):
And you want to give Harold the only one maybe
who has been involved in the business, thirty four percent,
give the other two thirty three percent, and say if
they want to sell their interests, they have to give
Harold the write of first refusal.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
And he would have the option to buy.

Speaker 2 (24:15):
Them out with a paper promisory note over the course
of let's say one.

Speaker 3 (24:21):
Hundred and eighty months.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
So you need to think about your specific situation to
avoid losing the business that you have spent decades creating. Okay,
we are headed into end of year holidays and end

(24:45):
of your financial and tax planning. And for many of us,
that means we want to share what we are blessed with,
and we're all thinking, I hope about charit artable giving
to share what we have with those who could use

(25:06):
a little boost. And on the show before, I've talked
about the importance of getting involved with a grass roots organization.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
These mom and.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Pop charities often originated from a family tragedy. And one
grassroots organization that I became involved with a few years ago,
and you're familiar with it, Billy, it's Penny's Flight Foundation,
started by Kate and Chad Durgey after they lost their

(25:44):
sixteen year old daughter to a condition that I had
never heard of before, neurofibromytosis, and they are out there
raising money, raising awareness, and I think just as important,
they have brought together a group of positive people who

(26:08):
want to get together and do what they can to
make the world a better place and to ease suffering.
I've never been to a Pennies Flight event and not
met wonderful people, and I know friendships are forged, and
I really encourage everyone to check out the very important

(26:31):
work of this organization, and you can do that by
visiting Pennies Flight dot org. You want to get those
contributions done by the end of the year for an
income tax deduction. And for those of you who are
so inclined to check out Penny's Flight and consider including

(26:55):
a gift to Pennies Flight within your will, provided that
the gift is at least five hundred dollars. I will
do your will for free. So you can reach out
to me to schedule an estate planning appointment, and you
can jump on the website and that is my lawyer

(27:18):
and dot com. Visit me on Instagram at my lawyer,
and and I have a message on Instagram from a
friend of mine who's a teacher who wants me to
share a public service message, and that is this could
be a little dicey. The teachers do not want cookies

(27:45):
as a holiday gift. They don't want cake, they don't
want cookies, they don't want muffins. They would actually prefer
a five dollars gift card to you know, a local
coffee place. And maybe you want to be that parent
who organizes the other parents, but do it in a

(28:06):
nice way, not like a dictator, and maybe collect one
dollar from every family. And now you can give the
teacher twenty five dollars gift cards somewhere, so they want
that more than the edible treats.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:23):
So, Ann, how can people reach out to you? You
have a lot going on and you help people do
podcasts and promote their businesses. How do people reach out.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
To you like you?

Speaker 5 (28:39):
I'm using Instagram a lot, Anni News NYC very easy
or LinkedIn, Anna Wolsey mccarton. But and I want to
go back to what you said about the giving. My
sister's a teacher and they also spend a lot of
that money. If you get them a Target gift card,
they're going to spend it on the kids too, and
their coffee. But that give back is so much good energy.

(29:00):
So that's such a wonderful point.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, absolutely, No, it's huge and giving. I have a
whole chapter about generosity. Giving is a gift for the giver,
you know, and just super important to get into the
holiday spirit, help other people out.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
And I encourage all of you reach.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Out to me to schedule an appointment, leave me a
comment at my lawyer and Instagram or my lawyeran dot
com the website. Thank you so much for being with us,
Billy Duke and Anne Woolsey, Have a great day everyone.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
The proceeding 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 product offered or
the ideas expressed