Life Happens

May 6th, 2023

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Good morning, Welcome to Life Happens. Are you prepared? This is our
weekly radio program for baby boomers andtheir families where we address the challenges we
all face as we age. Wetalk about aging as a lifestyle, the
issues that must be confronted, andthe careful planning that's required to avoid crises
in the future. Life Happens willprovide you with tools to educate and prepare
yourself for events like retirement, protectingyour income and assets, planning to pay

(00:21):
for nursing, home and home care, special needs, wills and trusts,
planning for an untimely death, andrevolving resolving disputes in and out of court.
As the law necessities for planning andcare continue to evolve. Life Happens
will help you and your family makesmart decisions to make sure your goals are
reached and your family needs are met. Good morning everyone. I'm Aaron Connor

(00:41):
from Piero, Connor and Strouss,joined by my frequent radio compadre mister Frank
Hemming. Good morning, Frank,Good morning Aaron. So it's been a
while, Frank, Yeah, Iwas thinking that of I've been on the
show, You've been on the show. It feels like it's been a while
since we've been on the show together, which which is strange. Yeah,

(01:02):
for a long time that very rarelyhappened. We were frequently just paired together.
That's right. I don't know ifthere are anyone out there that doesn't
know. But Frank is our seniorassociate in the Albany office. He has
toiled with the firm for I thinkeight years now, that's my descriptor.
Yes, but I hit my eightyear anniversary in April, so last last

(01:25):
month. Now, so um,you know, just just life to go.
But haven't gotten rid of me yet, No, continue to let me
come on the show, which isI think good? I think so um.
I think finally we're gonna have somedecent weather. This past week has

(01:46):
been rough. I'm tired of rain. I don't know about you. I'm
tired of rain. I'm tired ofsitting outside in forty five or fifty degree
evenings and watching my daughter's play softball. I mean, I love watching them
play, but when I have todo it with a blanket and I'm thinking
about getting some twigs together and startinga fire, it's not particularly pleasant.

(02:09):
Now to say it's it hasn't beenbaseball or softball. Whether I think it
is pretty it's pretty accurate. LikeI know, I know my baseball team,
the Mets have had several rainouts alreadyand now they're they've had to play
double headers now because they've already hadall these rainouts and things and not that
you know, the saying is Aprilshower to bring many flowers were in May,

(02:31):
and I thought the showers were supposedto have stopped, and so far
it's not really happening that way.Yeah, well, I mean, we'll
get off baseball soon, but weare going to have a baseball team show.
But I still don't understand why theyschedule as many games in the Northeast
the opening month of the season.Look, if you want to have Opening
Day at X, Y and Z, sure, but you should be playing

(02:53):
more games and domes or dome stadiumsor you know, Texas, California,
Florida. You know, there arenicer places than than the Northeast at this
time of the year, especially ifthe weather is going to be a little
delayed with the with the nice weatherlike it's been here, that's right,
that's for sure. Yeah, Soa lot of times in the beginning of

(03:14):
the show. We like to talkabout real life situations because I believe,
and we've been doing at this quitea while, um that a lot of
people. Well, the first thingthat strikes me is people come in and
say, if I die, right, that's that's that's that's wrong. I
kind of bad when I correct peoplewith that. But it's kind of like,

(03:35):
it's not really an if, it'sa when and if it truly isn't
if, because if you have figuredit out, that's right, then you
need to let us know, right, okay Jesus right, Well one person
pulled that off. We think,but you're probably going to die. I
think we could say you're going todie, but we'll give you the probably.
So that is always kind of struckme that people like just can't even

(04:00):
admit to the fact of their ownmortality. And I think as soon as
we correct them that you can seethe wheels turn and it's like, oh,
right, yeah, I guess that'sthat's true. That's probably a correct
statement. Yeah. So, butI also think that people don't really they
have a mindset and I it's adefense mechanism of sorts that it's not going

(04:24):
to happen to me. Sure,yeah, I mean I'm sure there are.
I mean, my my very uhin the past psychology degree tells me
like that that's a coping mechanism andthings like that, and I'm sure I
used to know a lot more aboutthat than I currently do now. But
yeah, of course, like wesee it all the time, right,
people don't want to talk about whathappens if the bad stuff happens or what

(04:48):
you know, what what decisions getmade if the bad stuff happens. I
literally had a meeting with a ladythis week and she kind of had a
distribution scheme mapped out when we originallymet, and then she wanted to make
some changes to it where she wantsto do some providing for her grandchildren,
and which is very nice, righteveryone, everyone can certainly do that,
But then I said, unfortunately,when you make a change, that means

(05:11):
I'm most likely you're kind of havemore questions. So my first real question
to her after she said her hernew wishes with her grandkids was well,
what happens if we lose one ofthe grandkids before you, Because if we're
going to be providing for them now, we kind of have to have a
plan that if something bad happens tothem, even though we're not anticipating that,
we have to have a plan.And she said, well, I
hadn't thought of that, And Isaid, I understand that you haven't probably

(05:32):
thought about that. That's not anice thing to think about, right.
But the reason that we're doing thisis because we're trying to make a plan
for you know, I'm not goingto say every conceivable situation, right,
but you know that's not that's nota real big unforeseen event where you might
have a grandchild pass away before youUnfortunately, it's it's terrible, but it's

(05:53):
not unforeseen. Right. So inthe in the scheme that we came up
from ourselves, this is our firstbase if you will having a conversation beginning
to think about what needs to happen, what might happen, and really,
if you want to look at itthe way I would look at it.
So it's a logic table of ifif then statements right, So if P,

(06:15):
then Q. If I go tothe hospital and this happens, then
what or if I need to goor I need care? What by?
Who? How? All those things? It's not as simple as I want
to leave my kids whatever I have, because you may not have it when
you get there, if that's yourplan, or you might not have all

(06:36):
your kids, or maybe circumstances havechanged where maybe you don't want to treat
your kids equally, right, whichwe something so sadly, we deal with
a lot of people who are ofdiminishing capacity. I don't want to say
diminished capacity because I don't think that'saccurate. I mean, we do absolutely

(07:00):
that as part of what we do, but in that sense, we're not
really dealing directly with that person becausethey can't really meaningfully engage with us.
We can help their agents or caregiversor who needs to step in and help
them guide them through a process whichis benefiting that diminished capacity person, but
we're not really engaging directly with thatperson because they can't. So but we

(07:26):
do on a regular basis, probablyon a daily basis, meet with people
who have maybe a diagnosis that theyknow is coming down the pike, or
you know, there's somewhere in thisspectrum where maybe they're not one hundred percent,
but we certainly feel and we've againbeen at this for a long time,
and you know, when it's aclose call. It's going to depend

(07:50):
on the scenario. If it's closeand there's problems, we're not gonna you
know, we're gonna end up doinga guardianship. That's just the way it
has to be. But someone hasenough capacity to make decisions, we're going
to assist them in doing that.But it's a it's tricky once even just
a dementia diagnosis is there, Yeah, I mean it in Aaron, you

(08:11):
can certainly speak to this because justgiven the nature of what you do,
sometimes it's the family thinks there's somethinggoing on, but there hasn't even been
a formal diagnosis. That's you know, that's not uncommon. Especially we have
again all range of people from peoplethat love to see their doctors and go
constantly to people that are either distrustfulof doctors or just don't see the need

(08:35):
for them and they haven't seen adoctor in many, many, many years,
and there's really no way to tellwhat's going on, just because you
can't really establish a baseline, right, So we do kind of have to
just kind of take a situation bysituation. The main issue with a lot
of it is, as you've beenalluding to, is just how confident can
we be that they are truly understandingwhat we're talking about and who they're appointing,

(09:00):
the ramifications of making those appointments,and then coming up with a plan
that if the plan doesn't go asdesigned for whatever reason it is, that
we can then shift to a newa new path to make everything work.
Yeah. And and unfortunately, alot of what we see when people come
to us is this person of diminishingcapacity has already been taken advantage of.

(09:24):
Unfortunately. Yeah, that's that's notand I wish it was much less common
than it than it is, right, And I I struggle to come up
with why other than it's an opportunityfor people, right, And generally it's
it's someone in their own family,which is more despicable. Yeah. Obviously
just doing it to anyone is inmy mind despicable, But in your own

(09:46):
family is particularly despicable. Sure,And probably again, as you it's opportunity,
it's it's ease, it's probably knowingthere's a higher likelihood of just no
one noticing or or no consequence,right, because is your mom or dad
gonna go press charges against you?Maybe? But probably not? Right?
I mean, I say pretty routinelyon the show when it comes up about

(10:09):
family situations. Right, I'm anonly child, Like you know, if
my mom lost her capacity and Iwanted to do something, there's there's really
not many people there that could policeme, right, And really the only
thing in a scenario like that youcould do wrong would be to not leave
your mother with enough assets or incomeand they take care of herself. Then

(10:31):
it starts getting question of where thatmoney went and things like that. Of
course, more normally in our scenarios, there's multiple siblings, right, And
generally it's one sibling not too butit can be depending on how many there
are. One has moved in,they've maybe just become in charge of mom's

(10:54):
bank account. Right. Maybe there'sno POA in today's world. There's a
lot of ways to skirt the PA, online access, online bill pay,
you know, So it could beas easy as just getting on the phone
with the diminished capacity person and havingand feeding them what to say, right,
And it would be very difficult forsomeone to determine that, right.

(11:18):
And I mean we've seen all sortsof things, keeping income, spending assets,
and the way some of these peopleare kept hostage is really sad.
It's they're identifying documentation is taken fromthem. Yeah, And I'm not saying

(11:39):
that I hadn't really thought about it, because that's not inaccurate thing to say,
But I guess I hadn't really consideredwhat that really looks like if that
was happening to somebody, right,right, Like if if you have to
go to the like say and say, as you know, as we kind
of saw with the family that wewere dealing with, Like if we're we're
advising that you need to start settingup new bank accounts for a family member,

(12:03):
Well, that's that's doable, right. You can take them to the
bank and say, this is mymother, this is my father, this
is the person. We need toopen a new checking and savings account for
them. I'm sure the bank wouldbe happy to do that. But then
the bank start going to say,well, who's mom. Well you need
documents to prove that, and whathappens if you didn't have those? Right,
It's very hard to prove who youare without Obviously you're identifying documents,

(12:26):
that's why you have them. Andwe kind of take I think, to
at least a degree if we're grantedthat, what if somebody had those and
they're not giving them to you,right, It makes it very difficult to
change your documents. So that's somethingto think about strongly and where you keep
those and how you might go aboutmaking sure that those are safeguarded from the

(12:48):
wrong people. So we're going totake our first break. I want to
thank everybody for listening to Life HappensRadio Aaron Kunnor from piero connor s Trouse,
and we'll be right back after this. Welcome back to Life, Bethsdia

(13:11):
on your encounter from Pierre O'Connor andStrauss. Thank you for joining us this
morning. Still here, mister FrankHemming, senior associate in our office,
Still here, the medicaid man,if you will, that's you've called me
way worse. That's fine, that'sperfectly fine. That's that's an accurate state.
That's perfectly fine. So we wereworking off kind of a baseball theme

(13:35):
and we were, you know,moving through the basis. If you will,
you you're at the plate, whatdo you do? Well? The
first thing you do is you goto first base and you talk about things
which really should not be something Ithink that we have to spend a lot
of time on. But it's reallyit really is. It's it's I still
find it incredible of how many peopleeither come in and say, it's taken

(13:58):
us so long to get here,or we've been talking about this for so
long, or unfortunately it's the otherfamily members saying, you know, mom
and dad always talked about doing thisor trying to set something up or trying
to get things in order and theyjust didn't get here, or you know,
is it too late to do things, or I wish we'd done this

(14:20):
X number of years ago. It'sit's still just shocking to me to a
degree of how many people are onkind of both sides of that equation,
on that spectrum. So many peoplewant to get out in front of it,
do the right thing, get theirstuff in order, make sure things
go as they want, make surethe right people are in place, and
then there are just so many otherpeople who either they don't care, they

(14:45):
don't know it's important. They theythey they they just to convince themselves they're
going to get to it at adifferent time. But it's just when when
we were kind of kicking around ideasfor the show and baseball came up,
just because at the time of theyear, and Aaron and I are big
baseball fans. We originally we're goingto start with with maybe what we've now
kind of put over more on tothe next base here. But you don't

(15:09):
even get onto the bass pats ifyou don't if you're not even willing to
have the conversation, And it didn'tseem like it was a good thing to
not talk about. Could could notagree more. Um, it's really strange
to me. Some people think,well, it'll just go to my kids,
which it might, but there maybe some hurdles to that. Well,

(15:31):
so can I Yeah, I know, I know. We like talking
about client stories, right. Soyou and I met with a lady this
week, very nice lady. Shedoesn't have a relationship with her family,
right she she's not married, shedoesn't have any children. She lives it
seems like just her simple life inher house and she does her things and
she does what she likes. Seemedpretty happy. Does It does not seem

(15:52):
like a bad way to go,you know, if you're in her shoes,
it seems like she's doing her thingand it's working for her great.
And one of the things that yousaid that I thought was so important and
I think kind of drove home toher the importance of just doing something was
if she does nothing, weirdly enough, the things she doesn't want to have

(16:14):
happen, which does everything go toher family? Right, is exactly what
would happen. Right. We sayit all the time. The state has
a plan for you if you don'tmake one for yourself, and in many
instances, the state's plan might actuallycome close to what you want, or
at least you know, get inthe ballpark, right. But for this
particular person, she doesn't want thingsgoing to her family because she doesn't have

(16:37):
a relationship with them. But ifshe doesn't do anything, that's exactly where
everything's going to go. And justto flesh that out a little bit,
the way the law works in theabsence of a will, Okay, if
you're married, in the absence ofa will, not everything goes to your
spouse. Okay, They get certainexempt things, an exempt amount of money,

(16:57):
and then half of what's left andyour kids get the other half,
which can be an absolute disaster ifyou have young kids, if you have
a special needs person, where youhave a kid that you didn't want to
get that one, right, oryou just have a kid you don't really
like or want to provide for.Of course. Yeah, But if all
you have is a spouse, underthe law, everything goes to a spouse

(17:18):
now, but you're still in acourt process, you're still waiting, you're
still taking a long time. Ifyou have children and you're no spouse,
then it goes downward, right,and continues to go downward until it can
right. So if you had achild that predeceased you, it would go
to their kids, if there wereany. If you don't have children and
you don't have a spouse, havea plan because, as I like to

(17:41):
say, you're probably gonna live foreverbecause you don't have a lot of stressors.
That's what I'm doing wrong, whatI'm doing wrong. It would then
go to your parents, if they'restill alive, their siblings, and then
to cousins. And we've had conversationswhere I think I probably said this before,

(18:04):
but my nuclear family that I comefrom, right, is just me
and my brother. But my dadis one of five, right. My
grandparents were one of seven and oneof I think seven ish also, So
I mean there are a lot ofpeople on my dad's side, on my
mom's side, there are a fairamount of people too, So I didn't

(18:27):
grow up in one of these scenarioswhere you know, there was a question
about having relatives for things to goto. Right, but someone like Frank
for instance, Right, yeah,only I'm an only child, I'm married
to an only child. I havejust one child myself. So like recently,

(18:49):
this is going to sound depressing,right, But my mom and I
were talking over the over last weekendand I mentioned that, you know,
it'll be interesting to see where lifewill take my wife and I as my
daughter gets older, because when mymom is gone, since my dad has
already gone, so when my momis gone and my in laws are gone,
we either are likely to stay wherewe are if my daughter wants to

(19:14):
stay where we are, or ifshe leaves, we probably will follow her.
Right, Well, she should makethat choice carefully. Maybe she shouldn't
tell you where she's gonna ry.Maybe that's what it Maybe that's what happens,
right, But I mean I havea po box dad, good luck,
right, because at that point therewill be no one left. It
would literally be the three of us, and splitting up doesn't seem like that

(19:36):
makes a lot of sense, No, especially it's a huge mistake as you
get older. If that's the scenario, right, she lives somewhere else and
you were the survivor of you andAmy were one place, right, I
mean, at least if you weretogether, you have each other. But
um it, it's a very badsituation when things go wrong. Yeah,

(19:57):
I mean, we we are we'rewe are so very lucky that we live
close to to all the people thatwe have, even though we don't have
many, they are all here.So our life is very well self contained
currently, right, and the ideaof kind of taking that away as we
get older just doesn't seem like agood move for us. No, I

(20:17):
agree, and I have seen similarscenarios, not directly in my family,
but I do know people who haveone child and you know, they're retiring
and they're gonna go probably wherever heis, which makes a lot of sense.
I just had I just had aclient pass um. You know,
I don't know a lot of specificsabout the other family members obviously, but
it was husband wife that were herelocally. They have one daughter and she

(20:42):
is married, so like you know, their documents were husband and wife were
agents for each other than the daughter, than the son. In law because
limited choices, right, Right,Mom and dad were here, only daughter
lives in California, right, AndDad's had some health issues and things,
and he just recently passed. Sodaughter's doing her best to help mom,

(21:03):
right. And it's not that she'snot supportive and she doesn't want to be
helpful, but to a degree,it's difficult to do from California with some
things. So she had to comein and spend some time here to come
help, right. And that leadsto the question of where where is mom
going to be long term? Right? So, yeah, I mean I
think you know before I mean withwith husband having health issues, I think

(21:26):
the idea is for him to behere if that's where he wanted to be,
keep him comfortable, keep him aroundthe things that he knows, the
people he knows. Now that he'spassed. Yeah, Mom has a decision.
Does she want to move out tobe closer with daughter. Does she
want to stay here where maybe herlife is you know, she the good
thing is she she has the abilitiesto make all those decisions. But right,

(21:48):
but things, things can change,I agree, And but it's just
got to be part of the thoughtprocess, right, because if you're isolated
essentially on an island. Now,maybe you have maybe she has siblings that
are still alive, right or youknow, nay, close friends, right,
But I can just say, asmy parents have gotten older, some
of their friends have moved to wheretheir friends are or where their kids are.

(22:12):
Right. My parents only spend roughlyhalf the year here, so um,
but as they get older and unfortunatelyother friends will pass away. Yeah,
right, and say, your parentsare kind of in that nice place
like where their health is good andthey're kind of just able to do what

(22:32):
they want. So they want tobe here half the time and not here
half the time, like that worksfor them. But if the health issues
start coming, yes, other thingsmay be changing with their or living arrangements
exactly. But you know, allof this is to say, I think
people come in and they think thatwe have this cookie cutter program that we're
going to put them on. Ifonly right, But I mean I think

(22:56):
people think that. Now, thatdoesn't mean that plans can't be similar,
but we need to get in andkind of ferret out all the issues,
whether people get along, whether there'sa special need or a potential special need
or so again another client story,right, you and I met with some
people, not this week, butweek before. They have two daughters,

(23:18):
They like both daughters, they wantto provide for both daughters. They daughters
don't get along right at all.Now we don't know what the circumstances of
that falling out was, but momand Dad made it very clear that there's
no real relationship there and the likelihoodof that repairing is probably unlikely. Right.
So the first things that we didwas we reviewed some of their prior

(23:41):
documents, and wouldn't you know,on one of the old healthcare documents,
the daughters are listed as coagents,which you know in New York you can't
do. And it wasn't a NewYork document. So I'm not going to
say that it was done in properlybecause where it was done that entirely could
be okay. But forced people thatdon't like each other to work together is

(24:03):
just not a good idea. Yeah, it reminds me of an old Saturday
at Live Skite called bad idea jeans, And that's that's really what you would
have on if you were doing that. And you know, people don't get
along just because you ask them too. You have to be realistic. It
also is surprising to me how manypeople come in and they just they have
their rose colored glasses on and they'renot seeing the reality of it. And

(24:27):
part of our job, and Ithink Frank will tell you that I give
people reality checks pretty on a prettyregular basis. It's part of your job.
Yeah, and you really have toplay it out. And some people
will just come in and they'll say, well, I don't care, right,

(24:47):
which I don't think is a reallygood approach because setting the whole purpose
of the plan is to make thingsbe easier, and if you're setting people
up to be adversarials, then that'son you. Yeah, that doesn't help
us do our job. And ifyou didn't care at all, then like
why are you doing this? Yeah? And the other thing I think to
think about there is, you knowwho's going to win in those scenarios,

(25:10):
us and some other lawyer, becausethey're going to spend a lot of money
fighting over this, and is thatreally what you want? I love telling
they are making comments like that whenwe do seminars and education, because like,
there are consequences to not having theconversations and not ultimately following through and
and a lot of scenarios we win. That's the legal profession, not just

(25:33):
us specifically, but the legal professionwins because you either need us to help
set you know, ferret out theissues or you know. That's how it
goes, all right. So we'recoming up on another break Aaron Connor this
Life Happens Radio. We'll be rightback. Welcome back to Life Happens Radio.

(25:57):
Aaron Connor from Pierre O'Connor and Strauss, joined by Frank Hamming. Good
morning. We have been talking aboutthings that you need to do, and
I know people don't like to betold what to do. I guess what
you need to do this, sojust deal with it. We have talked
about what you need to talk about, and you know, kind of moving

(26:22):
in that direction. I just wantto mention that we do have some things
coming up where we are going toget in depth more on some of these
topics. We have a Medicaid Monday, which is a half hour webinar at
lunchtime Navigating Nursing Home. That's Monday, May eighth, twelve to twelve thirty.

(26:44):
The following Medicaid Monday is on Junetwelfth, again twelve to twelve thirty,
and that really has more about fairhearings, which are things that we
get into when applications are denied,which thankfully does not happen very often,
and if it does, we generallyknow that it's going to happen because we've
advised the client about what the issuesare. It's usually not a surprise.

(27:07):
Yeah, it's the more likely scenariowith fair hearing, and I just had
one within this last few weeks.Is over our determinations, that's right.
Just not dealing with a medicaid denialof the application. It's more of a
client has now been awarded insufficient servicesand we're not in agreement with the determination
for the amount of help that they'regoing to get. That's right. So

(27:29):
you can sign up for either ofthose our website pre law dot com,
pie r o law dot com.We also have our big Elder Law forum
coming up this week, which isreally not for consumers. It's a policy.
It's for social workers, it's forpeople who work in the long term

(27:49):
care space. We also have JohnMcDonald and Jake Ashby and Dan McCoy talking
about it from there, and it'sa very very robust, frankly, if
I do say so myself, impressiveevent that we put on. So it
I've I've gone to everyone but onein my time, and I'm always amazed

(28:12):
at how much we can pack into, you know, a day, and
how many different perspectives we can have, and that just the quality of speakers
we get in education we're able toprovide it. It's going to be a
good event obviously, if it's somethingthat you think that you'd benefit from,
if you are more in the professionalside of things, by all means,
check out the website. Yeah,it's and it's one of the few times

(28:34):
a year I serve as a moderatorof anything. Yeah. So I was
thinking, as you're listening off allthese things, the Medicaid Monday, I'm
doing I'm on a panel at theother law forum. I'm doing all these
things, right, and I'm themoderator, So I may say, shut
up, Frank, at any pointin time, it's I think that's happened
at the at the event in thepast, and if it hasn't, it

(28:55):
doesn't mean it won't start. That'sright. This could be the year.
Yeah, that's you might not wantto miss it. So um, and
yes, we do try to keepa sense of humor about this kind of
thing. Right, I think that'scritically important as well. Yeah, I
I personally don't think that I wouldbe as good at kind of guiding people

(29:15):
through if if we didn't. That'sjust me, right, that's a that's
kind of a personal decision on mypart or on any of the attorney's parts.
But we know you don't want tonecessarily think about these things or talk
about these things like no one does. It's just as important as we've been
talking about. Well, it's reallyalso a way of making people relax when
they're talking about it, right.I mean again, I grew up in

(29:38):
a big family where everyone just madefun of each other, but it was
also a teaching device because what theymight be making fun of you for might
have been a way to remediate doingthat in the future, or making a
better decision. Who are potentially losingsome weight, you know, that kind
of thing. But you know,and anything and probably in between there.

(30:03):
So we do we keep our senseof Number one, I think to keep
us saying because we see a lotof things on a daily basis that is
not lovely or wonderful. No,I mean having to hear about people getting
sick or taking advantage of their familymembers or going to a nursing home,
or I mean, we had awe had a recent consult with a lady

(30:25):
who you know, I don't knowhow many times she said, you know,
my husband and I were just wewere talking about coming to do this
and then everything kind of went bad, right, And that's just that's hard
to hear, it is. Andwaiting. I think in a lot of
ways, the state planning is likefruit. The longer you wait, it
doesn't get better, right, Sodo it when it's ripe, when you're

(30:47):
ready. But don't don't think thatyou can continually put it off because there
are less tools in the toolbox thelonger you wait, and it really can
be a financial disaster for your particularunit, family unit, or you yourself,
whatever that may be, if youwait too long. Yeah, that
that five year clock doesn't start tickingif you want to preserve your assets until

(31:10):
you get it done, that's right. I mean, Aaron, you you
like saying in the office, youknow, we had a lady that took
three years to hign or trust Andthat's true, and it wasn't because we
weren't, you know, trying tomove the process so long. Yeah,
and she was not seven, youknow, seventeen years old or forty years
old. She was eighty, right, So so I mean essentially by doing

(31:30):
that, she has an eight yearlookback from when from and the process started
to when it was when it willbe completed with the actual five years running,
it'll be more like an eight yearlookback, which she's been. She's
gotten a decent way through it atthis point, so right, you know.
So, we did have a meetingthis week with a mother and a
child and she said during the meeting, well, can I pay for my

(31:52):
child to have these documents done?Yes? She did, and that I
thought, obviously we like that,right, because yes, of course you
can, and we'll be happy todo that. But it really showed that
what we were telling her and hithome. Yea, she realized that she
should have had this done sooner,and she wanted to put her child in

(32:14):
a better position than she was currentlyin. And that's just another reason to
do this. Right at the endof the day, In a lot of
respects, what a lot of peopleare actually trying to do isn't always just
under the lens of trying to makeit better for them. It's that they're
just they're doing good things for thepeople they're going to ultimately leave behind,

(32:35):
assuming that everything goes as we want, whether that's a spouse, children,
grandchildren, the other other family memberswhomever, well and in a way that
can be taking care of grandchildren ifthere are some right as well, make
sure some of it is also maintainbloodline. Right now, that may or
may not be a concern. That'sthat's totally up to you. I talk
to people, and I think onecouple said, well, I think they

(33:00):
were pretty much locked in with thespouses we have at this point in structures.
I don't know, I don't knowif that's really a thing or not,
but you know, so some peopledon't mind the idea. Although the
law never directly gives money to anin law, never correct that a lot
of people are very worried about that. Right. That's one of the more

(33:22):
common issues in questions we have toaddress is what happens if X person dies?
Does it go to their spouse?Right? Never directly gives money.
Now, if your son or daughtersurvives you but then dies and they haven't
done some kind of planning and it'snot in a bloodline type trust, then

(33:45):
it goes to their spouse. Yeah, under most circumstances, if you leave
someone money, if they have aspouse, they most likely are going to
leave it all or at least asubstantial portion of it to their spouse,
because that's just typically what married peopledo. And if they have what are
essentially called I love you wills,which to say everything to you, right,
so that needs to be thought out. So really, second base if

(34:10):
you will is basic documents, whichwe've talked about some already, but that
means a power of attorney, healthcareproxy, and a will. Now,
certainly a will is better than theabsence of a will, but it is
by no means a complete plan.No, unfortunately not. So it can

(34:30):
be incomplete really for a number ofreasons, whether there's a minor, whether
there's a special needs person. Nowyou can have a minor or a supplemental
needs trust in your will, whichis better than not having one by far,
but it comes with a lot ofcourt oversight and what I mean by
that is lawyer time and cost.So certainly will plans make a lot of

(34:57):
sense for people that a lot ofassets. Younger people, yep, because
you want to have a guardian,we want to have a miner's trust.
Okay, But other than that,we don't want to focus on will,
on a will as your ultimate despositoryinstrument, because there are better ways to

(35:21):
do it. Yeah, under many, many, many circumstances, there's just
going to be a better, abetter way to do it. Right.
And that big shock, I'm suremeans that we would want to do a
trust. Now. It can bea revocable trust or an irrevocable trust.
Some people get uncomfortable and comfortable Iguess, you know gibberish. Yeah,

(35:44):
give me, give me an examafter here we'll see how I'm doing.
Um are uncomfortable with irrevocable trust,which, as we say, there are
a lot of powers retained by thegrand tour. Now, just to speak
English for a second, the grandtour is the person who establishes the trust.

(36:05):
There can be more than one grandtour. Okay, you can have
you know, Mom and Dad canbe grand tours, or I mean,
frankly, it could be a groupof siblings establishing a supplemental needs trust for
somebody. They could all be grandtours of a trust. We've we have
done that before, so who thatperson is doesn't really matter. But a
Grand Tour or Grand Tours are thepeople establishing and generally putting funds or assets

(36:30):
of some sort into a trust inan irrevocable trust. Frank, what types
of controls can someone hang on to? So, first one, if we're
talking to irrevocable trust is we haveto name a trust the other than the
Grand Tour or Grand Tours, right, Because the reason why this is such
a powerful tools we want to makeit look like you've given those assets away

(36:54):
for Medicaid planning purposes, so ifyou do need long term care, those
assets are encountered again to you whenwe look at whether you're eligible for Medicare
or not. So by appointing atrustee other than you or your spouse,
right, we have to give upsome control. But one of the biggest
leavers that we leave with the GrandTour or Grand Tours is the ability to
change their trustee at any time forany reason. So typically we would put

(37:17):
children in the role of trustee.Doesn't always have to be children. That's
another why. That's another reason whywhy we have these conversations, and we
don't just have a cookie cutter planfor people, because there are plenty of
clients that love their kids and wantto provide for their kids, but may
not want their kids to be incharge of things. Or maybe it's just

(37:37):
an instance of they think that theywill eventually be ready to be in charge
of something, but they're not quitethere yet, right right. That's not
an uncommon thing either. So thebig one first off with just who's managing
your trust is do you pick somebody? But you can change it? And
then I think the larger surprise,the more surprising power that people have is

(37:59):
not only do you have the abilityto change the trustee, but you have
to change you also have the abilityto change your beneficiaries. And that one,
I think is the much more generallypowerful power that they have because if
you think about it, you seteverything up with your documents to be as
you want at the time that youset it up. But typically people are
not going to then just immediately passaway once all that stuff is done,

(38:22):
although people think that they will,right, it's not saying that that hasn't
happened. But again, if you'regetting out in front of this, the
idea then is the plan is therejust for when things start happening, and
that isn't going to be anytime soon. The problem is that the documents don't
just change because your wishes may change. So unfortunately, you may have something

(38:43):
in your life good or bad.I guess there's you know, I'd like
to look at it where you mightwant to change how things go. The
nice thing is that we have theflexibility built into the document where you can
actually do that. Right. Youcan add people, you can delete people,
you can change percentages, you canadd a charity. You adopted the
pool boy and now you want themto be a taker, yeah, whatever

(39:04):
anything. Yeah, I mean hewas really good at cleaning the pool.
Yeah, but you know, Igot to be a reward for a good
job. But the nice thing islike again, that just builds in flexibility
to the plan, right, becauseyou're not locked in. And I think
the other one, this is thisis less important than I think the first
two that I've mentioned. But Ijust think another common misconception that people have
is if the if the house thatyou have, because most people do own

(39:28):
their house and that's some big reasonwhy they want to do that trust that's
right, is if they have thehouse and they put the house in the
trust, that they can't sell thehouse, right, And it's not untrue.
It's not you selling your house.With an instance, it would be
your trust selling the house. Butthere's no reason the trust can't do everything
that you would do if you hadnever done the trust in the first place.
That's right. So the trust hesigns the listing agreement, they signed

(39:51):
the closing documents, the check iscut to the trusty. If you want
to go buy another house with thosefunds, you can then do that trust
can go buy you your new house. Right. Um, So you know
I always say this, The biggerstick obviously is changing your beneficiaries. Right,
somebody goes off the rails. Beingfired as trustee is not really maybe

(40:15):
it it it doesn't look good,maybe it doesn't feel good. But at
the end of the day, allyou don't have now is responsibility. And
that's always and that's very fact specifictoo. I mean, you've been very
open with I think on the showand with clients that like, you've been
your parents trustee for a long time, but all they have is real property

(40:36):
and they're not looking to do anythingwith it other than living it. Right,
So do you have a big lifton your shoulders. That's that's done,
absolutely zero. Now if you're ifyou had to constantly be calling the
broker to make stock trades and things, right, that would be a lot
more on your plate. But thatdoesn't adequately show like where your parents situation
is. Right. So, yes, my dad thinks that I will leave

(41:00):
you property, but I'm willing tospend all my money, which also as
a theory has not worked once yetthat I've seen people say, oh,
I'm going to spend all this Well, I think I said, I don't
know if you were in the consult, that the leopard doesn't change their spots,
right, Yeah, Savers don't suddenlybecome spenders, right right, typically
not so unless they're forced. Iguess the only caveat I would put that

(41:22):
is, I guess you could gethypothetically thrown into a situation where you had
to become a spender because of likelong term care processes and things like where
you depleted your assets, not becauselike you wanted to do it. It's
like you were just forced into ascenario where you had to That's right,
all right, So we're going totake our last break this is Life Happens
Radio, and we'll be back afterthis. Welcome back to pirod Connorance Trous

(41:58):
joined by Frank mister medicaid. Thankyou, sir. We have been talking
about things that you need to doin a baseball strategy. So the single
starting the conversation, the double gettinggetting the basic stuff done, the triple

(42:20):
moving on to trust planning, whichis probably really where we're at still well,
talk a little bit in our remainingtime about what the home run is.
You cannot touch on the home runif you're going to make talk about
baseball, that's right, that's right, And that really is downstream planning,
as I like to call it,which is protecting things or ensuring things are

(42:44):
going where your bloodline or whoever youhave set them up to go to.
A lot of people feel very goodabout that. But before we touch on
that, I just want to goback. We also do, in terms
of trust planning, revocable trusts.Okay, we do revocable trust for younger
people maybe that have assets that wantto make sure that they're lined up.

(43:07):
We do revocable trust for wealthy people. Now, wealthy means different things to
different people. Say, there's nodefinition for that. It could be millions
of dollars, it could be acouple million dollars. I mean really,
depending on what the income situation is. Once you get to about a million

(43:29):
and a half or two million,unless you've done a lot of planning ahead
of time, it becomes really difficultto access medicaid usually. Yeah, I
think I would agree with that,just because if you generally have that amount
of assets, the amount of justassets you have available to pay for stuff
isn't worth the rigor role you'd haveto to kind of make it all disappear.
And then the other piece of thatis, depending on the nature of

(43:52):
the assets, the income picture isprobably going to be in a good enough
place where even if you did hadto privately pay for care, the overall
hit that you would take if youfactor in just your income coming to you
just by the nature of you living, is not enough again to go through
the issues that would then have tobe taken to become eligible for medicaid.

(44:13):
Right If your assets, if youhave a million and a half and it's
all real property, then that's adifferent story, right, right, Or
it's mostly real property in a retirementaccount, different story, right. But
we see a lot more in thosecases that it's a combination of property and
investable assets. Usually yeah, ifyou're if you're bringing in good social security.

(44:36):
We have many many people obviously Iworked for New York State, so
they have decent pensions, decent irasthat throw off required distributions, a stock
portfolio with interest of an ends,and then you know, sometimes we have
people to have rental properties or otherbusiness ventures or wherever where they're getting there's
just essentially either income or passive incomecoming in. And when you put it

(44:58):
all together, well, if you'reincome, picture can cover most of the
cost of your care and then youdon't need Medicaid because you can just pay
for it, right, So that'san instance we use a revocable trust.
We use revocable trust when people havelong term care insurance. Yeah. Sometimes
people it's not that they don't careabout the long the issue or the concern

(45:21):
that comes with paying for long termcareages that they've insured against it, or
they've just taken another approach to kindof insulate themselves from the costs and that's
just getting insurance. We just unfortunatelydo not see many people that either have
the insurance, can qualify for theinsurance, or could afford the insurance right
and the other scenario that comes tomind is sometimes people just say I don't

(45:44):
care, right, I would saythese are more likely not one hundred percent.
Clearly, these are more likely tobe people that do not have either
children nor people that they want toone hundred percent provide for. Right,
They're going to provide for somebody ifthere's something left exactly, so you know,
the prototypical situation might be husband andwife, no kids, where they

(46:05):
have good relationships with siblings, niece's, nephews, parents, whomever, where
they wouldn't be unhappy if their stuffwound up going to these people. But
on the other hand, if theyliterally spent every dollar they had on their
own care or their own life anddidn't have anything to leave behind, they're
also okay with that, right,absolutely okay at the end of the day.
And I say this a lot,it's your money, right you did

(46:29):
you earned it or you know,acquired it, maybe you inherited it.
A lot most of the time it'sa combination of all those things, so
it's your decision, I would say. The other one, not that it
goes against anything that you just said, but the other one where I know,
I personally just try to have inmy mind that a revocable trust would
work is if you have people thatown property in different states or more than

(46:52):
one state. Yes, because asif you think probating a will, which
we have talked about early, doesn'tsound like fun, it's really not fun
when you have to do it inmultiple places, which is what would happen
if you own real property in twostates and then die with property in two
states, and you have to paylawyers in two states. Yeah, why
pay? Why pay people like usonce for any more than you have to

(47:15):
let alone to So in either document, though, we can do what we
call a BCT, your beneficiary controlledtrust. Most of the time that's a
bloodline type trust. Yeah, Iat least fifty fifty, if not more
so, Frank, what is aBCT. So essentially, the idea behind

(47:37):
the BCT is not only do wewant to talk about how we set your
plan up, but we want totalk about what happens when your beneficiaries inherit
from you. So the BCT essentiallyis a trust that is created within your
documents, within your will, withinyour revocable trust, within your your evocabal
trust that says when your kids oryour other beneficiaries inherit they're going to get
a trust for their peace, fortheir inheritance. But the you do the

(48:00):
trust that you leave them is thenthey have control of those assets. They
can do with it whatever they want. They can use it for whatever they
want, but it's immediately protected fromall the bad things that can happen to
them, like medicaid, divorce,bankruptcy, they get sued, anything that
really bad happens to them. Theonly caveat that comes with this is well,

(48:21):
as good as these are, asmuch as we like them, your
beneficiary cannot put their own assets inthis type of trust. So if you
have a son or daughter that youwant to provide for you, whatever you
leave to them can be protected.But if they have their own house,
their own bank accounts, their ownbrokerage accounts, whatever it is, they
cannot put those things in these trusts. It's just merely a vehicle to help

(48:42):
shelter their inheritance. Absolutely. Soit's a third party trust, right.
Yes, people come in and they'relike, and this is possible in some
states, but not in New Yorkto set up a first party trust for
asset protection purpose. Yeah, can'tdo that here. What does that lawyer
speak mean? That means that Itake my assets and I put them into

(49:05):
a trust and say, oh,you can't get them now, na,
Nana. Essentially, you can't dothat in New York, and you can
do it in some states, butyou can't do it knowing that you have
a claim. Yeah, that's That'susually the thing that defeats a lot of
the conversations that I have been apart of when it comes to this kind
of talk is it's usually that's thepeople that know that they have the claim

(49:30):
that now want to do all thisright, and then it's too late.
Yeah, you can't do it.That right technically would be exempt from for
future claims, but you're current potentialcreditors. You can't can't do that.
And I mean, frankly, ifyou could, why wouldn't everybody? Yeah,
that's and that's that's kind of whatI tell people. It's like,
if you really, if you reallycould do that, wouldn't everyone do that?

(49:52):
And then there's no teeth to anypotential litigation or recapture or could be
at that point. Yeah. Sothe BCT is very powerful. It gives
our clients peace of mind, whichis a big part of what we do
every day. Giving people peace ofmind. It lets them know that if

(50:15):
something happens to their child, generallythe money is going to be forced down
to their grandkids and not out tosomebody else. But that's also another decision
that can be made by the GrandTour because absolutely we do give your beneficiary
the ability to say where it goesif that's something that you're comfortable with that
but that is that is the GrandTour's decision. That's right the person establishing

(50:37):
a trust. So let's just saymom or dad in this case yes,
to make it easy. So again, we have some seminars coming up.
We have our Medicaid Monday, soif you haven't heard enough of Frank Bless
your heart, or you'll be nextto you can be logged into these Medicaid
Mondays either May eighth or June twelfth, from noon to twelve thirty. We'll

(50:59):
be talking about nursing home Medicaid orfair hearings when applications are denied or services
are not given. So those thingsare there. If you have a question
or you'd like to talk with usfor a consultation, you can always give
us a call at the office atfive point eight four or five nine twenty
one hundred, or go to pyrolawdot com and take a look at our

(51:22):
questionnaire and book an appointment. I'dlike to thank everybody from listening this week
on behalf of Frank. I'm MarionConnor. Thanks for listening to Right Life
Happens Radio, and we'll see younext week