Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning everyone, and welcome to Life Happens Radio. Are
(00:02):
you prepared? This is our weekly radio program for baby
boomers and their families where we address the challenges we
all face as we age. We talk about aging as
a lifestyle, the issues that must be confronted, and the
careful planning that's required to avoid crises in the future.
Life Happens will provide you with tools to educate and
prepare yourself for events like retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning to pay for nursing, home and home care, special needs,
(00:24):
wills and trusts, and planning for an untimely death. It
will also help you maybe resolve disputes in and out
of court. Good morning everyone, I'm Aaron Connor from Pierre
O'Connor and Strauss. Today we are joined by a radio neophyte,
and that is Samantha Bryant. Good morning, Sam, Good morning Aaron,
and Sam is an attorney in our office here in Albany.
(00:47):
She does a lot of different things, but mostly estate
administration and business succession right and business type work. So
wanting to just give the listeners a little bit of
your background.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks, Erin. I'm Samantha Bryant. And I joined Pierre
connin Stress earlier this year, and I'm very happy to
be part of this firm. I have been practicing in
the trust and the States and Estate Administration realm for
(01:18):
nearly twenty years and i've been here in the Albany
Latham area since two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Very nice. So Sam has come to us and comes
with a wealth of experience, which is very helpful to us. We,
as you may or may not know, have several young lawyers,
so anytime we can get some mentorship and experience passed down.
Because I don't know that the general population knows this,
(01:47):
but really the only way lawyers learn is from other
lawyers or by doing things the wrong way, and we'd
like to avoid as much of the second way as possible.
It basically, a young lawyer prepares something that we ask
them to prepare probably the first time, they don't do
(02:09):
a great job of it right, but not necessarily because
they're not trying. It's just that, certainly, in my experience,
the supervising attorneys that I had early in my career
could have given more clear assignments, right. So that's one
thing you have to work on too. But eventually the
training of a lawyer, right, because it is the practice
(02:29):
of law really evolves over time, and you develop those
skills because you've done things a certain way and then
you do them the right way afterwards.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's correct, and you get to see how other attorneys
practice over your career and learn from them and then
eventually develop your own style.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right. There's always a little bit of let's say borrowing, right,
So you may see someone else's papers and you're like, oh,
I like how you said that this or that, but
you know their language is important, right. We have a
lot of terminology in the legal field. If you don't
talk the terminology correctly, people will know that you don't
really have an understanding of the subject matter area. So
(03:10):
I think that's a way that lawyers distinguish themselves from
non lawyers, as they use terms that the general population
doesn't use. So, you know, we are estate planning lawyers.
We do a state and trust drafting, litigation administration, We
do guardianships, and I think that's actually how I first
(03:32):
met Sam on a guardianship, correct. And we hope that
none of you end up in that area, right. And
if you do the planning that you need to do,
you won't because guardianship isn't good for anybody really other
than lawyers. And you know, just just to I find
that the horror stories usually work better. First, the way
(03:56):
not to end up in a guardianship is to do
a good health care proxy and power of attorney. Now,
ultimately would like you to do more than that, But
if you do those things, you won't have to spend
thousands of dollars or people won't have to spend thousands
of dollars in a guardianship court. And I think, Sam,
you have done work as a court evaluator in that realm, right,
(04:17):
I have. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So, a court evaluator is somebody who gets appointed by
the court to sort of act as the right hand
of the court review documents, make sure that the attorneys
on either side are if there are multiple attorneys assigned
to the file, are doing their due diligence and their
(04:40):
reports that they submit to the court are sufficient, and
that the ward is taking care of properly.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right. And it can be kind of a complicated situation
you might need to get in order to review medical
records because you can't just walk in and say I'm
a court evaluator and give me your records and bank
records sometimes too right, because a lot of these situations
arise because someone thinks there's something fishing going on in
a financial way. Sometimes it's lack of access. Right, there's
(05:10):
all sorts of things that can go wrong, but hopefully
you don't end up in that situation. But they are
also you do guardian at light and work.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I believe right, I do yes, So that's a little
bit different. That's usually in the context of a state
administration doing the guardian of lightem work, where again you're
helping the court evaluate the documentation and the service and
jurisdiction and the documentation regarding the estates such as the
(05:43):
will and ancillary documents, whether those are properly filed, properly executed,
and if there are any other concerns that need to
be addressed, that they're properly properly addressed by the attorneys.
So that's a that's another activity that attorneys sometimes have
(06:09):
to jump in on for the court help them.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So that happens most often when there's a miner in
a state. Right, So a guardian ADLTEM gets appointed when
there is someone who cannot advocate on their own behalf,
whether because they're a minor, right, and we as a
society or a set of laws have said that you
can't really advocate for yourself until you're eighteen, So you
(06:35):
get a guardian ADLIGHTEM in that situation. If you are incapacitated, right,
so someone has been appointed a guardian or you have
someone acting under a power of attorney because you're incapacitated,
we get a guardian d LIGHTEM. And you can even
have a guardian ADLIGHTEM because someone is in prison. That
is also considered a legal disability. Correct.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You can also have it if there's a unknowns right,
and that actually has been coming up quite often for
us lately, especially with beneficiaries and family members moving or
all over the country and residing in other states. That
has come up more often than not.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I do think that there is you know, one
particular file I can think of that there's over twenty
five people who had to be cited for a state right.
And that's kind of a disaster because you have to
create documents to serve on all of those twenty five
people or more, and then you have to serve them.
If they're in state, they get personal service first, right,
(07:41):
if they're out of state. We can do other meaner
means of service. Excuse me, means or manners. I got
to pick one, not merge the two words. But it
still can be expensive because we have to show whether
they were delivered or not. And I think one of
the things that people miss is that legal service is
not really truly about the act if someone actually getting
(08:04):
the documents. It's going through what the statute says to
pretend like they got the documents right they Maybe they
did and maybe they didn't. But ultimately it doesn't really
matter if you follow the rules. But in those cases
there may be unknowns, right. I mean, if you had
twenty five cousins and they had children, you probably didn't
(08:25):
know them all well because you're not all the same
age or something along those lines, and they may have
passed away. You may have no idea where their children are.
So it can be a very complicated situation. Certainly another
reason to use.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
A trust, absolutely, and just another good reason to have
a family tree ready see the attorney when you do
your planning to make sure that they have the information
that's necessary. Even if those people are not to be
part of your will or your trust documentation, we still
need that information, yes, and so it just saves a
(09:01):
lot of time and expense and frustration if that information
is already available.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Especially important where there aren't what we would call downstream beneficiaries. Right,
if you have children, it's pretty straightforward if you have
a spouse and children, pretty straightforward. But if you don't
have any children and you don't have a spouse, right,
and I have this conversation on a regular basis, well
do you have siblings, right, because those would be the
next person. Well, I guess technically parents, but usually when
(09:30):
we're talking to people, they're of an age that their
parents have usually passed on. Right. If your parents are gone,
then your siblings, right, And if you don't have siblings,
then we better come up with them because it's going
to be we don't want anything going to probate that
if we can avoid it. That's true.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And we do have a lot of clients that are
living to some very high ages, almost reaching a hundred
and so in those cases, often everybody else in their
family has may I be already predeceased them. So that's
another great time to just revisit your documentation if you
even if you've already prepared an estate plan to just
(10:13):
make sure that everybody that you've named is still available,
the family trees up to date, and that everything's still current, right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And you know, I guess I'm old now because I
read the obituaries every day and this past week there
was a woman who lived to be one hundred and
nine in the Albany area, which is I mean, it's
pretty living to one hundred is a lot, but I
mean to live nine more years, I mean, that's you
don't see many people getting close to one hundred and ten.
I agree, so kudos to her for doing that. But
(10:48):
she did have living children. It said, but you know,
in a case like that, if you live to be
one hundred and nine, your kids are probably eighty, right,
So I mean, anything can happen. And I did also
see an obituary which I met the same earlier, of
an unfortunately a fifty four year old gentleman who passed away.
In the obituary said he had fifteen children, So I mean,
I hope they had a plan, and I hope the
(11:11):
you know, there was some masurance there obviously too. But
if anything, we're going to probate there, that would be
a nightmare because not clearly not all of those children, meant,
probably most of them are not adults.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
So exactly, it just takes up additional time and expense
if you haven't made appropriate, an appropriate plan to circumvent
that whole issue with the court, which you can easily
with a trust and some other documentation.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yes, so if you plan correctly, you will not have
these problems. That's ultimately the whole go goal of the show.
We're coming up on our first break here we come back.
We're going to talk about some things that may change
later in life that may need you may need to
alter your plan. This is Life Happens Radio on Marion Connor,
pire' connor and Strauss, and we'll be back after this.
(11:59):
Welcome back to Happens Radio. Aaron Connor, Pierre O'Connor and
Strauss joined by Samantha Bryant, an attorney in our office.
We were just talking about generally some things that come
up in probate practice or lack of planning, and lack
of planning is something that we talk about all the
time because when you don't plan, the people who benefit
(12:22):
from that are us, because we spend a lot more
time and end up costing your family a lot more money. Right,
So despite that, we are advocates for planning because it's
better for people. It is really kind of a satisfying thing,
to be quite honest with you. No, lawyers are not
really known for that, but this area of law you
(12:44):
really can help people out. You can make sure that
people get care towards the end of their life without
spending their life savings. That's I think satisfying. And you know,
we can give people peace of mind when they've lost
a loved one that things are get done, things will
be relatively easy from a administration standpoint, so they can
(13:05):
move on with their life. One thing that people don't
really consider a lot is when they spend a lot
of time in probate or fighting with their siblings in probate,
they don't really grieve, and you really are taking a
huge emotional toll on your life. The planning that we
do can really help. Certainly, something that can be an
emotional issue later in life is that suddenly mom and
(13:27):
dad decide to get divorced. Right, And this is not
really that uncommon. I wouldn't put it like super common, right,
but we see it enough and sometimes I do think
it's still kind of a mentality where they stay together
for their children and then they're like, Okay, now I'm
actually sick of you. One of my favorite stories is
(13:49):
that we had a couple that both needed nursing home care,
and then we're very adamant that they not be in
the same nursing home. So they, I guess, really just
had enough of each other. But they did not get divorced.
Maybe they for religious reasons or whatever. I don't know.
That certainly played a part. And I think in an
(14:11):
older generation as well, But in today's world, Sam, I
think we see sometimes older individuals getting divorced later in life.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Absolutely, it's definitely not as uncommon as it may have
been when you and I were kids. And we have
clients coming in sixty sixty five's, even in their seventies
deciding that they want to get divorced, even though they've
spent most of their lives married to one person and
(14:41):
they have kids and grandchildren and then want to go
ahead and go their separate ways. And that step in
life takes some consideration, obviously, but also for estate planning purposes,
will trigger some events that need to be a aside
(15:02):
from just the divorce.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Portion, right, So New York has what's called equitable division, right,
and we are not matrimonial lawyers, so we're not going
to advise deeply on that, but essentially, what the law
is trying to do is equalize to two parties, especially
if they've been married for a long period of time.
Right there are in New York there's a concept called
(15:27):
separate property. So let's say you owned a house before
the marriage, you don't put your spouse's name on the house.
Generally speaking, that would still be considered separate property, although
there could be some argument made for contribution. Whatever. Inheritance
is always separate property unless you intermingle it or commingle it. Yep.
(15:50):
And ninety times out of one hundred, inheritance once received
gets com mingled. Because I always say that my parents
left me a bunch of money and I put in
an account and just my name. Eventually my wife is
going to get upset about that, right and be like,
why is just that in your name? And for harmony
or peace or whatever you want to say, Right, you're
(16:12):
probably gonna make it marital property. And maybe that works
out for you, but maybe it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Correct Sure, I think I think ninety nine percent of
the time it becomes marital property. Yes, you're either adding
it to a joint account or you're using it for
an asset that you oin jointly own, like it's a
house or maybe a vacation home. Now that you have
the extra money, So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Kids college, right, I mean, there's any number of things
that could go for so, you know, just as an aside,
that's why we use a thing called a beneficiary control trust. Right,
we keep that money that separate property money become from
becoming joint and that way, if something does happen, it
(17:00):
doesn't go to your child's former spouse or spouse. It
goes downstream to your grandchildren or whomever you decide. At
that point, you ultimately control that. You know. The other
unfortunate thing that people don't think about is if you
leave it directly to your child and something happens to them,
ninety nine percent of the time they're not leaving it
(17:21):
to their children. They're leaving it to their spouse and
it goes right out of the bloodline. That way. If
that happens when they are relatively young, again, nine times
out of ten that spouse is going to remarry and
that money is in the wind, correct, So we see
it happen all the time, So please consider that when
(17:42):
you're coming up with a plan, we certainly will raise it.
And that's not the only reason. You know, if your
child is not great when money, if they might have
a debilitating disease, we'd certainly want to protect it. There's
a number of reasons, but those are the main ones
to really think about out So in most of these situations,
(18:05):
one hundred percent of everything is marital property, and so
from an estate standpoint, or you know, an estate planning standpoint,
one thing that can really change is income level, right, yes,
because this happens to people too when their spouse passes away.
Some people have a pop up on their pensions, some
others do not. Either way, you're losing some solid security
(18:28):
money because you don't get the spouses if it was
less than yours, and if it was more than yours,
you lose yours. So you know, if yours was three
thousand and theirs was two thousand, then you lost two
thousand dollars a month in incomes. It's not insignificant, and
generally speaking, your expenses don't go down by a huge
(18:49):
amount of money. Just because there's not another person's correct
living in the house or with you or whatever it
may be. So that's one portion. And that also applies
to wors retirement account. If you both don't have a
retirement account, the spouse with a retirement account is going
to be forking over some of that to the person
they're divorcing, so, you know, and somebody may need to
(19:11):
find a place to live. It's not a pretty situation
late in life.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah. And if you're if you're getting divorced late in
life and you're both now retired, to your point, Aaron,
you have a fixed income, right, you know, it's it's uh.
And so now you're finding yourself making sure that you
can stay within your budget, within your income that has
just been reduced, and can manage to to afford to
(19:39):
maintain your lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Right. And unfortunately this means that some people get a
job again too, right. So it's from that perspective it's
not pretty. I'm sure it's not pretty from an emotional standpoint,
but I'm not really the guy to talk to you
about that, so we'll just put that to aside for now.
But it does have effects on your planet. So from
(20:03):
a legal perspective. If you divorce someone in New York,
any appointment under your documents are revoked right executor, power
of attorney, healthcare proxy, all of those things. It doesn't
revoke the next person in line, though, And I did
have this come up in a rather interesting case where
(20:27):
a gentleman had a power of attorney and he named
his wife and they got divorced, and then he named
his wife's sister as his backup power of attorney, and
so that was not revoked by operation of law, right
the appointment of the successor right, And truly I think
(20:50):
that's actually what he wanted to keep it that way,
because he did not trust his own family. This is
a man of fairly significant means, had some misgivings I
think about what his family would do with the money
if they were in charge, had children that needed to
be taken care of, and felt like that this person
would do a better job. But it did lead to
(21:12):
some litigation because guess what, his family didn't really like that.
So it's important to know that it doesn't revoke the
whole document, only revokes the appointment of the spouse. So
if you and I do see this more often than
I thought, I would. A husband and wife might come
in and they might appoint you know, certainly each other
(21:34):
and then someone on their side, but they don't have
another person on their side, so they appoint their spouse's sibling.
And it's something that needs to be thought about. Maybe
that's still great, but it's probably not in most circumstances,
and you need to revisit those documents.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I mean, the spouse's sibling might not want to
act anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's true too, or they might pull the plug really quick.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Right, are you going to make sure that relationship is
still kept into if you do want them to still
be the agent. They might also assume incorrectly that because
of the divorce, they're no longer the agent, so you
have to revisit that point with them too. But generally,
if you have a big change in your life, like
a divorce, it's definitely important to revisit the documents again.
(22:19):
If you have a plan in place.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, absolutely, you need to look at maybe, right, if
we've done an irrevocable trust for people who are getting divorced,
a lot of times it has to be revoked, and
we can get into that a little more after the
break because we only have about a minute and a
half left. I don't think that's a great it's too
much to get into right this second. But if you've
done planning, we may have to unwind that planning and
(22:44):
you may lose a lot of the protection that you've already.
If you've through your five years, we're going to have
a problem, right unless we have enough assets where we
can divide the trust in half essentially, right, But that
becomes really tricky from logistically because we might be able
to move it from one trust to another trust, but
(23:06):
we might not. Right. So these are all things to
think about because if you're eighty or you're seventy five
and you've made it through or five years and now
you're going to expose your assets again to a medicaid timeline,
we really need to think carefully about that. So in
the second half of the show, we're going to talk
about things that you should do if you're getting married
(23:29):
late in life or if you're getting divorced late later
in life, and things to consider that you may not
be aware of, and what to do, what documents to have.
Aaron Connor, this is Life Happens Radio, and we'll be
right back right after this Welcome Back to Life Happens
(23:52):
Radio Aaron Connor, Piro O'Connor and Strauss joined by Sam Bryant,
an attorney in our office. I just want to let
everyone know out there that we are doing our I
think we do these three times a year now and
Trust Administration Workshop. What we found was that many people
had trusts and then didn't know what to do with
them right not just fund them, because it's very important
(24:14):
to fund your trust correctly. We have a paralegal in
our office dedicated just to that. We're I think fairly
confident that we're the best at making sure that that happens.
But depending on the type of trust, there may be
a tax return that needs to get filed, there may
be questions about when I can move assets in and out,
or how I sell assets from a trust, and these
(24:36):
became kind of common things. So we have been doing
this workshop for a while and this one is on Tuesday,
September thirtieth. It is from twelve to one thirty. It's
at the Capital Region Chamber just off of Wolf Road
on Computer Drive. If you're interested in attending that Trust
Administration Workshop, you can go to Pyrolaw dot com. Slash events.
(24:59):
That's pi Ero Law dot com or you can give
the office a call at five point eight four five
nine twenty one hundred. So before the break, Sam and
I were talking about things that might happen later in
life that throw a monkey wrench into the plan and
could be divorced, could also be marriage, right, correct. I've
(25:22):
sat with many a child who is bemoaning the fact
that their mom or dad has decided to get married
later in life. And I will say this kind of
what I consider to be an odd fact. I have
had two situations where older individuals have gotten married in
a church but never got a marriage license, so they've
(25:45):
never become legally married in the eyes of the state
of New York. So what does that mean, Well, that
means that they're not husband and wife as far as
the state is concerned, so they don't have rights to
each other's a state. One thing that's very important to
understand is that a spouse in New York is the
only person that cannot be completely disinherited. Right you want
(26:05):
to disinherit your children completely. We have no problem with that.
Other places may feel differently, I know, like in France,
for instance, can't do that. But here, whatever you want
to say, I can't say the line that a lot
of people would say about them kids. But you understand
you can do that if you want, but you can't
(26:27):
cut your spouse out completely correct in the absence of
them acknowledging it right. So there's a couple of ways
that can happen. You can get what's called a waiver
of a right of election, which is a document that
a lawyer can produce and can be signed, and that
has to be signed by the spouse understanding that what's
(26:48):
going on. The more common way of doing things is
a prenuptial agreement right, and this can vary spousal rights,
so it may make them higher, may make them lower,
may remove them all together, and it really depends on
the situation. In New York, spouse is essentially entitled to
(27:08):
a third of everything, and there may be sometimes the
way you can leave it in trust satisfies that share.
Sometimes it does not. So it's not something you can
really handle on your own. It's something you're going to
need to consult a lawyer with. And really in the
(27:28):
prenup arena, you have to disclose what your assets are
for it to be valid. So if you have a
million dollars in gold bullion and you don't say on
the assets sheet in your prenup that you have that,
we have a problem, correct because the person has to
know what they're waving. So what would be like some
of the common provisions of a prenuptial.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Agreement, sam Well, The prenup is really designed to set
forth assets that each party is bringing into the marriage
that they owned prior to the marriage, and then too,
of course a dr whether or not those are to
remain separate assets, or if they're supposed to be considered
marital assets, or maybe after a certain amount of time
they will be considered marital assets. Then the prenup also
(28:11):
addresses the actual marital assets, those that are accumulated and
earned during the marriage, and what happens in the event
of divorce and how they're going to be split in
that case. Sometimes the prenuptials get very detailed and even
address children of a marriage and might really go into
depth and about other possible distributions and other possible avenues
(28:39):
that need to be taken. Often we see one party
might have a be expecting a large inheritance coming from
a family, and so they need to address that and
make sure most of the time that that's being kept separate.
And then the prenuptial, as you mentioned, has a list
of assets for both parties, a very detailed life us,
(29:00):
so that those are all disclosed to each other. Preferably
both parties are represented by their own attorneys. Yes, and
as they negotiate the document.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I think that's a point that gets missed a lot.
People don't want to both pay for a lawyer, but
ultimately it's going to be good money spent because if
you don't have a lawyer, you don't even really know
what you're looking at, and you don't know what you
might be giving up. Right, if you're in a prenup,
you might be giving up something right. More than likely
(29:33):
you are. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing it right. Somebody's
giving up something, whether it's an expectancy to share in
some inheritance that this person comes into, or you know,
assets that they're bringing into the marriage, any number of things.
And they, as Sam said, they can be complex. The
most basic ones really say what's mine is mine and
(29:55):
what's yours is yours as we come into this marriage. Right.
More complicated ones may say you're entitled to support after
ten years of x amount or you know, or they're
often and I was watching Landman recently with Billy Bob Thornton,
(30:15):
pretty good show. But his ex wife they decide to
get back together, and she had already remarried and a
wealthy gentleman and her prenup, anything that she was given
in her prenup was avoided if she committed adultery, right, okay,
And it was pretty open and obvious that she had
been doing that, so it led to a pretty interesting scene.
(30:40):
But then she was like, well what about my Bentley
and the lawyers were like, well, that was a gift,
so that's actually yours okay now, So it's kind of
a strange thing to think about, but gifts are actually
usually a very different story.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
That's true. But even the prenup will address gifts, so
you're right. Sometimes they'll go as far as talking about
not only support, but insurance, health, insurance, all those things.
So you can really get deep into, you know, trying
to predict a future and then trying to predict what
your feelings won't be and what it is that you're
(31:16):
going to want to walk away with.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, Health insurance becomes pretty important later in life, for sure,
and it may not be available to everyone very easily.
You know, some people it's part of their pension, right,
or they're part of their retirement benefit that some are
all of their medical coverage is paid for, so that
may be very difficult for the person on the other
end to match. So there may have to be some
(31:40):
compensation for that or some other provisions. So there's a
lot of things you think about out there. I mean,
we meet with a lot of people who meet later
in life, I would say predominantly, other than maybe the
house they live in, they tend to keep their assets separate.
Now it's not true in every case, I agree, but
(32:00):
there usually are separate bank accounts and a joint bank account.
And you know, that makes it somewhat easier because we
can talk about especially if there are children on both sides,
we can do planning just like their individuals. Essentially, right,
she does her trust to her kids, he does his
trust to his kids. We talk about what comes out when, right,
(32:25):
it may come out on their death, it may not
come out until the spouse is death, and depending on
whose name the house is in. Right, So a lot
of the times I see a woman who owns the
house and I have to say, well, what if you
die first? Does he get to stay in the house.
Does he get to stay in the house for the
rest of his life, Does he get to stay in
(32:46):
the house for a year? Does he have to pay rent? Right?
These are all questions, right, because it can become I
don't know, tens is probably too far, but it can
become certainly an awkward situation where your kids are waiting
for this person to die so they can take this house.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Right, that's correct if somebody has a life estate, for example,
and the right to remain in the home until they
either die or go into a nursing home, or otherwise
to choose not to live there anymore. Yeah, the kids
from previous marriages are waiting sort of in the wings
for to receive the asset. And often I think most
(33:31):
of the tension, probably in second marriages comes from the
children from previous marriages in my experience.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Now, I would agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
With that, and they put pressure on mom and dad,
and they're usually the ones where the parents really need
to make sure they address this openly with the kids
about what the plan is.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and you know, it's not easy. It's and planning
for second marriage just certainly. You know, sometimes the other
spouse doesn't have children and makes it a little cleaner
from our perspective, right because they may say, well, when
I'm gone, it's going to this person's children anyway, you know,
we've been together for a long time, they're kind of
like my children. Whatever. But it's especially hard to make
(34:18):
a plan when there's an age gap in that second marriage,
so agreed traditionally, and I can't think of a situation,
although I'm sure it's walked through the door, if there
is a young and an old it's almost I can't
think of a time it was a woman with a
young man. That doesn't mean I can't happen. Certainly, ladies
go for it if that's what works for you. But
(34:40):
almost every time it's been a man with a younger woman,
and a lot of times the younger woman is pretty
close in age to his children. So it does make
it a difficult planning scenario.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It does, and usually so the gap, the age gap
makes a difference to the to the children for prior marriage.
Usually the younger spouse, at least in our experience, from
our files don't usually have kids from prior marriages often,
so it does make that peace a little bit easier.
(35:13):
But to your point about duration of the marriage, I
think that makes a big difference too, with the planning
and how everybody feels at the end.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Of the day.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
You know, if the marriage was long, usually everybody feels
like family and we don't run into too many hiccups.
But when when we have the opposite, then it can
get to be almost to contested point later on.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Sure, a lot of you know, in the when dad
marries a younger woman, there's a lot of tends to
be hurt feelings right and mostly towards dad, and it
may sometimes unfortunately fracture a family and that may affect
the plan right, may end up not getting what you
(36:01):
thought you were going to get. And at the end
of the day, it's really up to the person. You know,
their assets. As I said, no child is entitled to
anything technically under the law, So that's a tough pill
for people to swallow sometimes too, so.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It definitely is I get a lot of kids from
deceased parents who come in with a sense of entitlement
for sure, thinking that they are the natural individuals to
inherit and then to find out that under the law
in New York that's not necessarily the case and the
parents aren't required to leave it to the children, right.
(36:41):
And then also I think trust planning is a really
great tool in this case in particular, where you can
make sure that assets are left to the surviving spouse,
but then the majority of the assets are preserved to
go to the kids. And when you have those type
of trust plans and make sure that you give the
(37:01):
make the kids involved in the planning and they're aware
that the plan is in place, I find that that
takes away from a lot of the stress and tens absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
So I think that's a good place to take our
last break. We're going to come back. We're going to
talk about a couple of other issues, but mostly solutions
to these problems. And I'm Aaron Connor. This is Life
Happens Radio, and we're back right after this. Welcome back
to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor, per O'Connor and Strauss
joined by Sam Bryant, and we have been talking about
(37:36):
really I guess you'd call it marital planning, but it's
really a state planning for people Later in life, whether
they're unwinding or maybe winding up people in their life
by remarrying. So there's a lot of thought that needs
to go into this because, as I talked about previously,
being a legally married spouse in New York comes with rights,
(37:58):
and chief among them, I would say, is they get
a third of your estate unless you plan otherwise, right,
So that needs to be thought about. I also think
in a lot of these situations, people don't think about
what I consider kind of like a winner take all scenario. Right,
So second marriage, they both have their own kids. Maybe
(38:23):
dad dies first, right, Mom can do whatever she wants,
she can cut out Dad's kids, doesn't matter. And so
in a lot of these scenarios, whoever dies second, those
are the kids that inherit, you know, And that's a
reason maybe to do separate trusts for sure. And it
really again it depends on what the assets are and
(38:45):
what people feel like. But the survivor has a lot
of rights, yes, and they can make changes most of
the time, almost all of the time. So there really
are can be a lot of people with hurt feelings,
a lot of people with empty hands or empty pockets,
and it needs to be thought about carefully.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
So, yeah, we were just talking about the file that
we have right now. Very common situation where you know,
again a husband dies and everything's going to the spouse
and then is supposed to eventually go to the kids,
which is all well and good, but now the children
just need to wait, right, and that often becomes just
(39:27):
a point of tension between the surviving spouse and the children. Yes,
they anticipated to be getting everything sooner and now it's later.
And sometimes the children are named as the trustee right
of this trust so they do still need to which
is good and bad for them. You know. On one hand,
(39:48):
they still have some fiduciary obligation.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And they know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
But they get to know what's going on and still
have some control over it, which is good. But that's
not always the case.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Right well, and in that scenario, they may not give
distributions that they're supposed to give right That can lead
to a litigation type scenario. I get a lot of
calls related to I have a trustee who's not doing
what they're supposed to be doing, maybe doling out money
to me when I ask for it. Yes, Now, usually
there's a standard set forth, so you can't just be like, well,
(40:21):
I want a ferrari, give me some money. Right. Usually,
I often, if we're trying to provide income, I like
to use a unit trust because it takes a lot
of the discretion away from the trustee. So five percent
comes out, let's say every year. If you need more
than that, there's a mechanism to get more. But then
we're not going back and forth about whether you're entitled
(40:43):
to X, y or z. Here's some money coming out
on an annual basis, and just about every year other
than a crash year, the market will do better than
five percent, so you will never lose value. So it
really sets up the remainder people well as well. So
it's a way to get around that. You know, a
(41:05):
lot of times the surviving spouse is a co trustee,
and if the people don't get along, we're in the
same kind of type problem. So you know, it really
depends on the personalities of the people and their relationship.
And you know, when there becomes a new boyfriend or
girlfriend in the in the mix, things may really go south.
(41:27):
So I mean, we can draft remarriage provisions into the trust, yes, right,
we don't necessarily do that in every trust. We do
talk about it, and some people actually bring it up
when they come in and they've talked about it, and
they say, well, if this, if either of us remarries
after the other one's gone, we're shutting off the rights
right right, And they've had a conversation about it. I
(41:48):
don't know how that conversation goes. I wouldn't want to
have that conversation, but they've done it and they've come
to an agreement, so it's good from a planning perspective.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, And I think the the nice if I may say, well,
the nice thing about remarriage. If you're older and this
is your second rodeo, so to speak, you I think
you're just you're wise to the world a little bit
more than when you were younger. And I think a
lot of our clients do have a good, honest conversation
with each other. They may not include the kids, which
(42:21):
sometimes can cause a lot of the issue, and we
do usually try to recommend that, you know, we keep
as transparent as possible to avoid any issues. But I
think they are very good about having a discussion and
that's usually what leads them to come see our office, right,
you know, And seek out the help of an attorney
(42:43):
because they do know something needs to happen. They may
not quite be sure what, but something needs to be
addressed to take care of that.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I say all the time, we get very few easy files. Right,
here's mom and dad with two kids who get along
and they just want it fifty to fifty and everything
will be easy, right, right. There's some of those, but
they're not the rule. I don't think. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Few often we're told by the parents that everybody's getting along,
and then it turns out that usually once mom passes away, yes,
things aren't going so smoothly, and people don't quite get
along as well.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I have certainly seen that in the way, once the
referee is gone, people are free to be the bad
actor they always want it to be, or whatever you
want to put however you want to say it. And
things do change. And you know, when you know, Johnny
got a bike when he was eight and you didn't
get it, People like hold on to things like that, right, yep.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, we have those secret ledger people. I call them,
you know, and they pull that out at at that
time and then usually everybody's surprised about those things. But
now is there time to finally collect and.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
So never a good look. But it's never a good
look if you're that person, I strongly suggest you don't
do that.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah. But yeah, so to avoid those basic issues, you know,
transparency is key. But two also to make sure that
you know you have you come in, you see an
attorney about the planning. In general, if this is your
second marriage, think about a prenuptial agreement then too, make
sure that you're addressing the assets and then that your
(44:28):
plan either the existing plan matches with the prenup or
revisit the plan, do a new one, make sure everything
works out.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, and we do have people who come in and
had a prenup and say they don't want to follow it. Right, Yes,
it happens. We have to know that, and we have
to kind of acknowledge it. Right, you do have the
right to do that as long as you're both making
that decision. If somebody's already passed away, you can't be like, well,
I'm not going to do that. But it does happen.
And you know, they had a prenup from when they
(44:58):
were thirty and now they're seventy, and you know they
predominantly spent their life together and they're not worried about
the terms of the pre nomine, and that does happen.
You know, most times it's easier to keep planning separate.
As we talked about mom's money here, dad's money there.
Sometimes that's not possible, and that's when it gets I
(45:18):
guess trickier. In a lot of those situations, we have
people appointing one kid from their side and one kid
from the other side right to try to work that out.
And I will say, do they get along? Sometimes they
know each other, Sometimes they don't really know each other. Right,
If they grew up together, they're more likely to treat
(45:40):
each other like siblings. If they did not grow up together,
then it can be a bad situation. And now, not
every one of these situations turns out badly, let's just
be clear about that. But there's a propensity for it.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yes, I mean, we don't want to be in the
doom and gloom folks, but we're just realistic, yes, and
we obviously see the cases where there are more concerns
than not. So the silver lining is that you can
do something about it, right, So.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yes, it's not that it's certainly not a scenario where
doing nothing is going to make anything better, right, And
then you may end up in a winter take all
type scenario where you know, the man dies first, because
that's ninety percent of the time what happens, and the
woman inherits everything and then her children inherit and the
(46:32):
man's children don't inherit at all, right, And that's usually
not the intent. And I've seen some very weird scenarios
where people's heirlooms are ending up with other people, right,
and they're just asking for their heirlooms and they won't
be given to them too, which is pretty sad, but
it does happen.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
It happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Tangible personal property is a tricky one that's probably the
most difficult to keep track of. And Country roll that.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
And we do when we do trust planning, we do
have a document that is a tangible person property memo,
which are these types of snares could be good. Right,
So if you know you want your grandmother's coffee table
to go to your daughter, you can put that in
there right, right. You can't use it for a car
because the car has a title, but anything that doesn't
have a title, it's a tangible item. Can't use it
(47:23):
for real property. Okay, so let's let's just be clear
about that. But if you have collectibles, if you have
you know, anything that's in heirloom or family bible, we see,
I don't know. I can't think of or even photographs
could be art photographs too, you know, whatever, it may
be artwork. I see.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
A lot of the furniture. Furniture is in high demand.
Apparently there's just people.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Think their furniture is in high demand. I have to
say that there is a lot of the older generation
thinking that the younger generation wants a lot of their stuff,
and then nine times out of ten, the younger generation
is like, yeah, don't I don't want that.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
That's true, that's true. I don't want your twenty year
old couch mom. But but yeah, nevertheless, we do, we
do and can make you know, provisions for that. Typically
the couch doesn't go missing. It's usually the jewelry and
the watches and so those type of things. If you're
not already gifting them prior to your death to somebody,
(48:22):
you have the opportunity to put them on the memorandum
and make sure they get to the right person.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, and that is certainly something you can give away
ahead of time. Sometimes people do that. Sometimes they want
to use it right, or they want to look at it,
or whatever it may be. You know, maybe when you downsize,
that's a good time to do those things. So a
lot of what we do is not necessarily legal advice.
It's just advice over what we've seen go wrong and
(48:48):
how we might help somebody get to the right place.
So we're coming to the end of the show. I
just want to remind people again that we have a
Trust Administration workshop. So you have a trust and now
what do you do? How do you how do you
use it? You can get those questions answered on Tuesday,
September thirtieth at the Capital Region Chamber. That's at five
(49:08):
Computer Drive and al Money And if you want to register,
you can go to Purolaw dot com, slash Events, p
I E R R O Law dot com, or give
the office a call at five point eight four. You
can also call that number if anything we've talked about
today has given you an idea that you might need
to command and speak to an attorney and have a consultation.
The consultation is free. We will go through your situation.
(49:31):
We'll think about it and come up with a plant
and then tell you how much that plan is and
then we'll be on you to decide whether you want
to move forward with that. So I hope everyone's having
a great weekend. We are on our way out Aaron Connor,
Puroconnoran Strauss and have a great weekend everybody. Thank you,
Good morning everyone, and welcome to Life Happens Radio. Are
(00:02):
you prepared? This is our weekly radio program for baby
boomers and their families where we address the challenges we
all face as we age. We talk about aging as
a lifestyle, the issues that must be confronted, and the
careful planning that's required to avoid crises in the future.
Life Happens will provide you with tools to educate and
prepare yourself for events like retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning to pay for nursing, home and home care, special needs,
(00:24):
wills and trusts, and planning for an untimely death. It
will also help you maybe resolve disputes in and out
of court. Good morning everyone, I'm Aaron Connor from Pierre
O'Connor and Strauss. Today we are joined by a radio neophyte,
and that is Samantha Bryant. Good morning, Sam, Good morning Aaron,
and Sam is an attorney in our office here in Albany.
(00:47):
She does a lot of different things, but mostly estate
administration and business succession right and business type work. So
wanting to just give the listeners a little bit of
your background.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
Yeah, thanks, Erin. I'm Samantha Bryant. And I joined Pierre
connin Stress earlier this year, and I'm very happy to
be part of this firm. I have been practicing in
the trust and the States and Estate Administration realm for
(01:18):
nearly twenty years and i've been here in the Albany
Latham area since two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Very nice. So Sam has come to us and comes
with a wealth of experience, which is very helpful to us. We,
as you may or may not know, have several young lawyers,
so anytime we can get some mentorship and experience passed down.
Because I don't know that the general population knows this,
(01:47):
but really the only way lawyers learn is from other
lawyers or by doing things the wrong way, and we'd
like to avoid as much of the second way as possible.
It basically, a young lawyer prepares something that we ask
them to prepare probably the first time, they don't do
(02:09):
a great job of it right, but not necessarily because
they're not trying. It's just that, certainly, in my experience,
the supervising attorneys that I had early in my career
could have given more clear assignments, right. So that's one
thing you have to work on too. But eventually the
training of a lawyer, right, because it is the practice
(02:29):
of law really evolves over time, and you develop those
skills because you've done things a certain way and then
you do them the right way afterwards.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's correct, and you get to see how other attorneys
practice over your career and learn from them and then
eventually develop your own style.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
Right. There's always a little bit of let's say borrowing, right,
So you may see someone else's papers and you're like, oh,
I like how you said that this or that, but
you know their language is important, right. We have a
lot of terminology in the legal field. If you don't
talk the terminology correctly, people will know that you don't
really have an understanding of the subject matter area. So
(03:10):
I think that's a way that lawyers distinguish themselves from
non lawyers, as they use terms that the general population
doesn't use. So, you know, we are estate planning lawyers.
We do a state and trust drafting, litigation administration, We
do guardianships, and I think that's actually how I first
(03:32):
met Sam on a guardianship, correct. And we hope that
none of you end up in that area, right. And
if you do the planning that you need to do,
you won't because guardianship isn't good for anybody really other
than lawyers. And you know, just just to I find
that the horror stories usually work better. First, the way
(03:56):
not to end up in a guardianship is to do
a good health care proxy and power of attorney. Now,
ultimately would like you to do more than that, But
if you do those things, you won't have to spend
thousands of dollars or people won't have to spend thousands
of dollars in a guardianship court. And I think, Sam,
you have done work as a court evaluator in that realm, right,
(04:17):
I have. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
So, a court evaluator is somebody who gets appointed by
the court to sort of act as the right hand
of the court review documents, make sure that the attorneys
on either side are if there are multiple attorneys assigned
to the file, are doing their due diligence and their
(04:40):
reports that they submit to the court are sufficient, and
that the ward is taking care of properly.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Right. And it can be kind of a complicated situation
you might need to get in order to review medical
records because you can't just walk in and say I'm
a court evaluator and give me your records and bank
records sometimes too right, because a lot of these situations
arise because someone thinks there's something fishing going on in
a financial way. Sometimes it's lack of access. Right, there's
(05:10):
all sorts of things that can go wrong, but hopefully
you don't end up in that situation. But they are
also you do guardian at light and work.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
I believe right, I do yes, So that's a little
bit different. That's usually in the context of a state
administration doing the guardian of lightem work, where again you're
helping the court evaluate the documentation and the service and
jurisdiction and the documentation regarding the estates such as the
(05:43):
will and ancillary documents, whether those are properly filed, properly executed,
and if there are any other concerns that need to
be addressed, that they're properly properly addressed by the attorneys.
So that's a that's another activity that attorneys sometimes have
(06:09):
to jump in on for the court help them.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So that happens most often when there's a miner in
a state. Right, So a guardian ADLTEM gets appointed when
there is someone who cannot advocate on their own behalf,
whether because they're a minor, right, and we as a
society or a set of laws have said that you
can't really advocate for yourself until you're eighteen, So you
(06:35):
get a guardian ADLIGHTEM in that situation. If you are incapacitated, right,
so someone has been appointed a guardian or you have
someone acting under a power of attorney because you're incapacitated,
we get a guardian d LIGHTEM. And you can even
have a guardian ADLIGHTEM because someone is in prison. That
is also considered a legal disability. Correct.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
You can also have it if there's a unknowns right,
and that actually has been coming up quite often for
us lately, especially with beneficiaries and family members moving or
all over the country and residing in other states. That
has come up more often than not.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
Yeah, I do think that there is you know, one
particular file I can think of that there's over twenty
five people who had to be cited for a state right.
And that's kind of a disaster because you have to
create documents to serve on all of those twenty five
people or more, and then you have to serve them.
If they're in state, they get personal service first, right,
(07:41):
if they're out of state. We can do other meaner
means of service. Excuse me, means or manners. I got
to pick one, not merge the two words. But it
still can be expensive because we have to show whether
they were delivered or not. And I think one of
the things that people miss is that legal service is
not really truly about the act if someone actually getting
(08:04):
the documents. It's going through what the statute says to
pretend like they got the documents right they Maybe they
did and maybe they didn't. But ultimately it doesn't really
matter if you follow the rules. But in those cases
there may be unknowns, right. I mean, if you had
twenty five cousins and they had children, you probably didn't
(08:25):
know them all well because you're not all the same
age or something along those lines, and they may have
passed away. You may have no idea where their children are.
So it can be a very complicated situation. Certainly another
reason to use.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
A trust, absolutely, and just another good reason to have
a family tree ready see the attorney when you do
your planning to make sure that they have the information
that's necessary. Even if those people are not to be
part of your will or your trust documentation, we still
need that information, yes, and so it just saves a
(09:01):
lot of time and expense and frustration if that information
is already available.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Especially important where there aren't what we would call downstream beneficiaries. Right,
if you have children, it's pretty straightforward if you have
a spouse and children, pretty straightforward. But if you don't
have any children and you don't have a spouse, right,
and I have this conversation on a regular basis, well
do you have siblings, right, because those would be the
next person. Well, I guess technically parents, but usually when
(09:30):
we're talking to people, they're of an age that their
parents have usually passed on. Right. If your parents are gone,
then your siblings, right, And if you don't have siblings,
then we better come up with them because it's going
to be we don't want anything going to probate that
if we can avoid it. That's true.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
And we do have a lot of clients that are
living to some very high ages, almost reaching a hundred
and so in those cases, often everybody else in their
family has may I be already predeceased them. So that's
another great time to just revisit your documentation if you
even if you've already prepared an estate plan to just
(10:13):
make sure that everybody that you've named is still available,
the family trees up to date, and that everything's still current, right.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
And you know, I guess I'm old now because I
read the obituaries every day and this past week there
was a woman who lived to be one hundred and
nine in the Albany area, which is I mean, it's
pretty living to one hundred is a lot, but I
mean to live nine more years, I mean, that's you
don't see many people getting close to one hundred and ten.
I agree, so kudos to her for doing that. But
(10:48):
she did have living children. It said, but you know,
in a case like that, if you live to be
one hundred and nine, your kids are probably eighty, right,
So I mean, anything can happen. And I did also
see an obituary which I met the same earlier, of
an unfortunately a fifty four year old gentleman who passed away.
In the obituary said he had fifteen children, So I mean,
I hope they had a plan, and I hope the
(11:11):
you know, there was some masurance there obviously too. But
if anything, we're going to probate there, that would be
a nightmare because not clearly not all of those children, meant,
probably most of them are not adults.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
So exactly, it just takes up additional time and expense
if you haven't made appropriate, an appropriate plan to circumvent
that whole issue with the court, which you can easily
with a trust and some other documentation.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yes, so if you plan correctly, you will not have
these problems. That's ultimately the whole go goal of the show.
We're coming up on our first break here we come back.
We're going to talk about some things that may change
later in life that may need you may need to
alter your plan. This is Life Happens Radio on Marion Connor,
pire' connor and Strauss, and we'll be back after this.
(11:59):
Welcome back to Happens Radio. Aaron Connor, Pierre O'Connor and
Strauss joined by Samantha Bryant, an attorney in our office.
We were just talking about generally some things that come
up in probate practice or lack of planning, and lack
of planning is something that we talk about all the
time because when you don't plan, the people who benefit
(12:22):
from that are us, because we spend a lot more
time and end up costing your family a lot more money. Right,
So despite that, we are advocates for planning because it's
better for people. It is really kind of a satisfying thing,
to be quite honest with you. No, lawyers are not
really known for that, but this area of law you
(12:44):
really can help people out. You can make sure that
people get care towards the end of their life without
spending their life savings. That's I think satisfying. And you know,
we can give people peace of mind when they've lost
a loved one that things are get done, things will
be relatively easy from a administration standpoint, so they can
(13:05):
move on with their life. One thing that people don't
really consider a lot is when they spend a lot
of time in probate or fighting with their siblings in probate,
they don't really grieve, and you really are taking a
huge emotional toll on your life. The planning that we
do can really help. Certainly, something that can be an
emotional issue later in life is that suddenly mom and
(13:27):
dad decide to get divorced. Right, And this is not
really that uncommon. I wouldn't put it like super common, right,
but we see it enough and sometimes I do think
it's still kind of a mentality where they stay together
for their children and then they're like, Okay, now I'm
actually sick of you. One of my favorite stories is
(13:49):
that we had a couple that both needed nursing home care,
and then we're very adamant that they not be in
the same nursing home. So they, I guess, really just
had enough of each other. But they did not get divorced.
Maybe they for religious reasons or whatever. I don't know.
That certainly played a part. And I think in an
(14:11):
older generation as well, But in today's world, Sam, I
think we see sometimes older individuals getting divorced later in life.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Absolutely, it's definitely not as uncommon as it may have
been when you and I were kids. And we have
clients coming in sixty sixty five's, even in their seventies
deciding that they want to get divorced, even though they've
spent most of their lives married to one person and
(14:41):
they have kids and grandchildren and then want to go
ahead and go their separate ways. And that step in
life takes some consideration, obviously, but also for estate planning purposes,
will trigger some events that need to be a aside
(15:02):
from just the divorce.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Portion, right, So New York has what's called equitable division, right,
and we are not matrimonial lawyers, so we're not going
to advise deeply on that, but essentially, what the law
is trying to do is equalize to two parties, especially
if they've been married for a long period of time.
Right there are in New York there's a concept called
(15:27):
separate property. So let's say you owned a house before
the marriage, you don't put your spouse's name on the house.
Generally speaking, that would still be considered separate property, although
there could be some argument made for contribution. Whatever. Inheritance
is always separate property unless you intermingle it or commingle it. Yep.
(15:50):
And ninety times out of one hundred, inheritance once received
gets com mingled. Because I always say that my parents
left me a bunch of money and I put in
an account and just my name. Eventually my wife is
going to get upset about that, right and be like,
why is just that in your name? And for harmony
or peace or whatever you want to say, Right, you're
(16:12):
probably gonna make it marital property. And maybe that works
out for you, but maybe it doesn't.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Correct Sure, I think I think ninety nine percent of
the time it becomes marital property. Yes, you're either adding
it to a joint account or you're using it for
an asset that you oin jointly own, like it's a
house or maybe a vacation home. Now that you have
the extra money, So yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Kids college, right, I mean, there's any number of things
that could go for so, you know, just as an aside,
that's why we use a thing called a beneficiary control trust. Right,
we keep that money that separate property money become from
becoming joint and that way, if something does happen, it
(17:00):
doesn't go to your child's former spouse or spouse. It
goes downstream to your grandchildren or whomever you decide. At
that point, you ultimately control that. You know. The other
unfortunate thing that people don't think about is if you
leave it directly to your child and something happens to them,
ninety nine percent of the time they're not leaving it
(17:21):
to their children. They're leaving it to their spouse and
it goes right out of the bloodline. That way. If
that happens when they are relatively young, again, nine times
out of ten that spouse is going to remarry and
that money is in the wind, correct, So we see
it happen all the time, So please consider that when
(17:42):
you're coming up with a plan, we certainly will raise it.
And that's not the only reason. You know, if your
child is not great when money, if they might have
a debilitating disease, we'd certainly want to protect it. There's
a number of reasons, but those are the main ones
to really think about out So in most of these situations,
(18:05):
one hundred percent of everything is marital property, and so
from an estate standpoint, or you know, an estate planning standpoint,
one thing that can really change is income level, right, yes,
because this happens to people too when their spouse passes away.
Some people have a pop up on their pensions, some
others do not. Either way, you're losing some solid security
(18:28):
money because you don't get the spouses if it was
less than yours, and if it was more than yours,
you lose yours. So you know, if yours was three
thousand and theirs was two thousand, then you lost two
thousand dollars a month in incomes. It's not insignificant, and
generally speaking, your expenses don't go down by a huge
(18:49):
amount of money. Just because there's not another person's correct
living in the house or with you or whatever it
may be. So that's one portion. And that also applies
to wors retirement account. If you both don't have a
retirement account, the spouse with a retirement account is going
to be forking over some of that to the person
they're divorcing, so, you know, and somebody may need to
(19:11):
find a place to live. It's not a pretty situation
late in life.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah. And if you're if you're getting divorced late in
life and you're both now retired, to your point, Aaron,
you have a fixed income, right, you know, it's it's uh.
And so now you're finding yourself making sure that you
can stay within your budget, within your income that has
just been reduced, and can manage to to afford to
(19:39):
maintain your lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Right. And unfortunately this means that some people get a
job again too, right. So it's from that perspective it's
not pretty. I'm sure it's not pretty from an emotional standpoint,
but I'm not really the guy to talk to you
about that, so we'll just put that to aside for now.
But it does have effects on your planet. So from
(20:03):
a legal perspective. If you divorce someone in New York,
any appointment under your documents are revoked right executor, power
of attorney, healthcare proxy, all of those things. It doesn't
revoke the next person in line, though, And I did
have this come up in a rather interesting case where
(20:27):
a gentleman had a power of attorney and he named
his wife and they got divorced, and then he named
his wife's sister as his backup power of attorney, and
so that was not revoked by operation of law, right
the appointment of the successor right, And truly I think
(20:50):
that's actually what he wanted to keep it that way,
because he did not trust his own family. This is
a man of fairly significant means, had some misgivings I
think about what his family would do with the money
if they were in charge, had children that needed to
be taken care of, and felt like that this person
would do a better job. But it did lead to
(21:12):
some litigation because guess what, his family didn't really like that.
So it's important to know that it doesn't revoke the
whole document, only revokes the appointment of the spouse. So
if you and I do see this more often than
I thought, I would. A husband and wife might come
in and they might appoint you know, certainly each other
(21:34):
and then someone on their side, but they don't have
another person on their side, so they appoint their spouse's sibling.
And it's something that needs to be thought about. Maybe
that's still great, but it's probably not in most circumstances,
and you need to revisit those documents.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Yeah, I mean, the spouse's sibling might not want to
act anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's true too, or they might pull the plug really quick.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
Right, are you going to make sure that relationship is
still kept into if you do want them to still
be the agent. They might also assume incorrectly that because
of the divorce, they're no longer the agent, so you
have to revisit that point with them too. But generally,
if you have a big change in your life, like
a divorce, it's definitely important to revisit the documents again.
(22:19):
If you have a plan in place.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, absolutely, you need to look at maybe, right, if
we've done an irrevocable trust for people who are getting divorced,
a lot of times it has to be revoked, and
we can get into that a little more after the
break because we only have about a minute and a
half left. I don't think that's a great it's too
much to get into right this second. But if you've
done planning, we may have to unwind that planning and
(22:44):
you may lose a lot of the protection that you've already.
If you've through your five years, we're going to have
a problem, right unless we have enough assets where we
can divide the trust in half essentially, right, But that
becomes really tricky from logistically because we might be able
to move it from one trust to another trust, but
(23:06):
we might not. Right. So these are all things to
think about because if you're eighty or you're seventy five
and you've made it through or five years and now
you're going to expose your assets again to a medicaid timeline,
we really need to think carefully about that. So in
the second half of the show, we're going to talk
about things that you should do if you're getting married
(23:29):
late in life or if you're getting divorced late later
in life, and things to consider that you may not
be aware of, and what to do, what documents to have.
Aaron Connor, this is Life Happens Radio, and we'll be
right back right after this Welcome Back to Life Happens
(23:52):
Radio Aaron Connor, Piro O'Connor and Strauss joined by Sam Bryant,
an attorney in our office. I just want to let
everyone know out there that we are doing our I
think we do these three times a year now and
Trust Administration Workshop. What we found was that many people
had trusts and then didn't know what to do with
them right not just fund them, because it's very important
(24:14):
to fund your trust correctly. We have a paralegal in
our office dedicated just to that. We're I think fairly
confident that we're the best at making sure that that happens.
But depending on the type of trust, there may be
a tax return that needs to get filed, there may
be questions about when I can move assets in and out,
or how I sell assets from a trust, and these
(24:36):
became kind of common things. So we have been doing
this workshop for a while and this one is on Tuesday,
September thirtieth. It is from twelve to one thirty. It's
at the Capital Region Chamber just off of Wolf Road
on Computer Drive. If you're interested in attending that Trust
Administration Workshop, you can go to Pyrolaw dot com. Slash events.
(24:59):
That's pi Ero Law dot com or you can give
the office a call at five point eight four five
nine twenty one hundred. So before the break, Sam and
I were talking about things that might happen later in
life that throw a monkey wrench into the plan and
could be divorced, could also be marriage, right, correct. I've
(25:22):
sat with many a child who is bemoaning the fact
that their mom or dad has decided to get married
later in life. And I will say this kind of
what I consider to be an odd fact. I have
had two situations where older individuals have gotten married in
a church but never got a marriage license, so they've
(25:45):
never become legally married in the eyes of the state
of New York. So what does that mean, Well, that
means that they're not husband and wife as far as
the state is concerned, so they don't have rights to
each other's a state. One thing that's very important to
understand is that a spouse in New York is the
only person that cannot be completely disinherited. Right you want
(26:05):
to disinherit your children completely. We have no problem with that.
Other places may feel differently, I know, like in France,
for instance, can't do that. But here, whatever you want
to say, I can't say the line that a lot
of people would say about them kids. But you understand
you can do that if you want, but you can't
(26:27):
cut your spouse out completely correct in the absence of
them acknowledging it right. So there's a couple of ways
that can happen. You can get what's called a waiver
of a right of election, which is a document that
a lawyer can produce and can be signed, and that
has to be signed by the spouse understanding that what's
(26:48):
going on. The more common way of doing things is
a prenuptial agreement right, and this can vary spousal rights,
so it may make them higher, may make them lower,
may remove them all together, and it really depends on
the situation. In New York, spouse is essentially entitled to
(27:08):
a third of everything, and there may be sometimes the
way you can leave it in trust satisfies that share.
Sometimes it does not. So it's not something you can
really handle on your own. It's something you're going to
need to consult a lawyer with. And really in the
(27:28):
prenup arena, you have to disclose what your assets are
for it to be valid. So if you have a
million dollars in gold bullion and you don't say on
the assets sheet in your prenup that you have that,
we have a problem, correct because the person has to
know what they're waving. So what would be like some
of the common provisions of a prenuptial.
Speaker 2 (27:48):
Agreement, sam Well, The prenup is really designed to set
forth assets that each party is bringing into the marriage
that they owned prior to the marriage, and then too,
of course a dr whether or not those are to
remain separate assets, or if they're supposed to be considered
marital assets, or maybe after a certain amount of time
they will be considered marital assets. Then the prenup also
(28:11):
addresses the actual marital assets, those that are accumulated and
earned during the marriage, and what happens in the event
of divorce and how they're going to be split in
that case. Sometimes the prenuptials get very detailed and even
address children of a marriage and might really go into
depth and about other possible distributions and other possible avenues
(28:39):
that need to be taken. Often we see one party
might have a be expecting a large inheritance coming from
a family, and so they need to address that and
make sure most of the time that that's being kept separate.
And then the prenuptial, as you mentioned, has a list
of assets for both parties, a very detailed life us,
(29:00):
so that those are all disclosed to each other. Preferably
both parties are represented by their own attorneys. Yes, and
as they negotiate the document.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, I think that's a point that gets missed a lot.
People don't want to both pay for a lawyer, but
ultimately it's going to be good money spent because if
you don't have a lawyer, you don't even really know
what you're looking at, and you don't know what you
might be giving up. Right, if you're in a prenup,
you might be giving up something right. More than likely
(29:33):
you are. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing it right. Somebody's
giving up something, whether it's an expectancy to share in
some inheritance that this person comes into, or you know,
assets that they're bringing into the marriage, any number of things.
And they, as Sam said, they can be complex. The
most basic ones really say what's mine is mine and
(29:55):
what's yours is yours as we come into this marriage. Right.
More complicated ones may say you're entitled to support after
ten years of x amount or you know, or they're
often and I was watching Landman recently with Billy Bob Thornton,
(30:15):
pretty good show. But his ex wife they decide to
get back together, and she had already remarried and a
wealthy gentleman and her prenup, anything that she was given
in her prenup was avoided if she committed adultery, right, okay,
And it was pretty open and obvious that she had
been doing that, so it led to a pretty interesting scene.
(30:40):
But then she was like, well what about my Bentley
and the lawyers were like, well, that was a gift,
so that's actually yours okay now, So it's kind of
a strange thing to think about, but gifts are actually
usually a very different story.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
That's true. But even the prenup will address gifts, so
you're right. Sometimes they'll go as far as talking about
not only support, but insurance, health, insurance, all those things.
So you can really get deep into, you know, trying
to predict a future and then trying to predict what
your feelings won't be and what it is that you're
(31:16):
going to want to walk away with.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, Health insurance becomes pretty important later in life, for sure,
and it may not be available to everyone very easily.
You know, some people it's part of their pension, right,
or they're part of their retirement benefit that some are
all of their medical coverage is paid for, so that
may be very difficult for the person on the other
end to match. So there may have to be some
(31:40):
compensation for that or some other provisions. So there's a
lot of things you think about out there. I mean,
we meet with a lot of people who meet later
in life, I would say predominantly, other than maybe the
house they live in, they tend to keep their assets separate.
Now it's not true in every case, I agree, but
(32:00):
there usually are separate bank accounts and a joint bank account.
And you know, that makes it somewhat easier because we
can talk about especially if there are children on both sides,
we can do planning just like their individuals. Essentially, right,
she does her trust to her kids, he does his
trust to his kids. We talk about what comes out when, right,
(32:25):
it may come out on their death, it may not
come out until the spouse is death, and depending on
whose name the house is in. Right, So a lot
of the times I see a woman who owns the
house and I have to say, well, what if you
die first? Does he get to stay in the house.
Does he get to stay in the house for the
rest of his life, Does he get to stay in
(32:46):
the house for a year? Does he have to pay rent? Right?
These are all questions, right, because it can become I
don't know, tens is probably too far, but it can
become certainly an awkward situation where your kids are waiting
for this person to die so they can take this house.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Right, that's correct if somebody has a life estate, for example,
and the right to remain in the home until they
either die or go into a nursing home, or otherwise
to choose not to live there anymore. Yeah, the kids
from previous marriages are waiting sort of in the wings
for to receive the asset. And often I think most
(33:31):
of the tension, probably in second marriages comes from the
children from previous marriages in my experience.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Now, I would agree one hundred percent.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
With that, and they put pressure on mom and dad,
and they're usually the ones where the parents really need
to make sure they address this openly with the kids
about what the plan is.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and you know, it's not easy. It's and planning
for second marriage just certainly. You know, sometimes the other
spouse doesn't have children and makes it a little cleaner
from our perspective, right because they may say, well, when
I'm gone, it's going to this person's children anyway, you know,
we've been together for a long time, they're kind of
like my children. Whatever. But it's especially hard to make
(34:18):
a plan when there's an age gap in that second marriage,
so agreed traditionally, and I can't think of a situation,
although I'm sure it's walked through the door, if there
is a young and an old it's almost I can't
think of a time it was a woman with a
young man. That doesn't mean I can't happen. Certainly, ladies
go for it if that's what works for you. But
(34:40):
almost every time it's been a man with a younger woman,
and a lot of times the younger woman is pretty
close in age to his children. So it does make
it a difficult planning scenario.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
It does, and usually so the gap, the age gap
makes a difference to the to the children for prior marriage.
Usually the younger spouse, at least in our experience, from
our files don't usually have kids from prior marriages often,
so it does make that peace a little bit easier.
(35:13):
But to your point about duration of the marriage, I
think that makes a big difference too, with the planning
and how everybody feels at the end.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Of the day.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
You know, if the marriage was long, usually everybody feels
like family and we don't run into too many hiccups.
But when when we have the opposite, then it can
get to be almost to contested point later on.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Sure, a lot of you know, in the when dad
marries a younger woman, there's a lot of tends to
be hurt feelings right and mostly towards dad, and it
may sometimes unfortunately fracture a family and that may affect
the plan right, may end up not getting what you
(36:01):
thought you were going to get. And at the end
of the day, it's really up to the person. You know,
their assets. As I said, no child is entitled to
anything technically under the law, So that's a tough pill
for people to swallow sometimes too, so.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
It definitely is I get a lot of kids from
deceased parents who come in with a sense of entitlement
for sure, thinking that they are the natural individuals to
inherit and then to find out that under the law
in New York that's not necessarily the case and the
parents aren't required to leave it to the children, right.
(36:41):
And then also I think trust planning is a really
great tool in this case in particular, where you can
make sure that assets are left to the surviving spouse,
but then the majority of the assets are preserved to
go to the kids. And when you have those type
of trust plans and make sure that you give the
(37:01):
make the kids involved in the planning and they're aware
that the plan is in place, I find that that
takes away from a lot of the stress and tens absolutely.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
So I think that's a good place to take our
last break. We're going to come back. We're going to
talk about a couple of other issues, but mostly solutions
to these problems. And I'm Aaron Connor. This is Life
Happens Radio, and we're back right after this. Welcome back
to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor, per O'Connor and Strauss
joined by Sam Bryant, and we have been talking about
(37:36):
really I guess you'd call it marital planning, but it's
really a state planning for people Later in life, whether
they're unwinding or maybe winding up people in their life
by remarrying. So there's a lot of thought that needs
to go into this because, as I talked about previously,
being a legally married spouse in New York comes with rights,
(37:58):
and chief among them, I would say, is they get
a third of your estate unless you plan otherwise, right,
So that needs to be thought about. I also think
in a lot of these situations, people don't think about
what I consider kind of like a winner take all scenario. Right,
So second marriage, they both have their own kids. Maybe
(38:23):
dad dies first, right, Mom can do whatever she wants,
she can cut out Dad's kids, doesn't matter. And so
in a lot of these scenarios, whoever dies second, those
are the kids that inherit, you know, And that's a
reason maybe to do separate trusts for sure. And it
really again it depends on what the assets are and
(38:45):
what people feel like. But the survivor has a lot
of rights, yes, and they can make changes most of
the time, almost all of the time. So there really
are can be a lot of people with hurt feelings,
a lot of people with empty hands or empty pockets,
and it needs to be thought about carefully.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
So, yeah, we were just talking about the file that
we have right now. Very common situation where you know,
again a husband dies and everything's going to the spouse
and then is supposed to eventually go to the kids,
which is all well and good, but now the children
just need to wait, right, and that often becomes just
(39:27):
a point of tension between the surviving spouse and the children. Yes,
they anticipated to be getting everything sooner and now it's later.
And sometimes the children are named as the trustee right
of this trust so they do still need to which
is good and bad for them. You know. On one hand,
(39:48):
they still have some fiduciary obligation.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
And they know what's going on.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
But they get to know what's going on and still
have some control over it, which is good. But that's
not always the case.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Right well, and in that scenario, they may not give
distributions that they're supposed to give right That can lead
to a litigation type scenario. I get a lot of
calls related to I have a trustee who's not doing
what they're supposed to be doing, maybe doling out money
to me when I ask for it. Yes, Now, usually
there's a standard set forth, so you can't just be like, well,
(40:21):
I want a ferrari, give me some money. Right. Usually,
I often, if we're trying to provide income, I like
to use a unit trust because it takes a lot
of the discretion away from the trustee. So five percent
comes out, let's say every year. If you need more
than that, there's a mechanism to get more. But then
we're not going back and forth about whether you're entitled
(40:43):
to X, y or z. Here's some money coming out
on an annual basis, and just about every year other
than a crash year, the market will do better than
five percent, so you will never lose value. So it
really sets up the remainder people well as well. So
it's a way to get around that. You know, a
(41:05):
lot of times the surviving spouse is a co trustee,
and if the people don't get along, we're in the
same kind of type problem. So you know, it really
depends on the personalities of the people and their relationship.
And you know, when there becomes a new boyfriend or
girlfriend in the in the mix, things may really go south.
(41:27):
So I mean, we can draft remarriage provisions into the trust, yes, right,
we don't necessarily do that in every trust. We do
talk about it, and some people actually bring it up
when they come in and they've talked about it, and
they say, well, if this, if either of us remarries
after the other one's gone, we're shutting off the rights
right right, And they've had a conversation about it. I
(41:48):
don't know how that conversation goes. I wouldn't want to
have that conversation, but they've done it and they've come
to an agreement, so it's good from a planning perspective.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Yeah, And I think the the nice if I may say, well,
the nice thing about remarriage. If you're older and this
is your second rodeo, so to speak, you I think
you're just you're wise to the world a little bit
more than when you were younger. And I think a
lot of our clients do have a good, honest conversation
with each other. They may not include the kids, which
(42:21):
sometimes can cause a lot of the issue, and we
do usually try to recommend that, you know, we keep
as transparent as possible to avoid any issues. But I
think they are very good about having a discussion and
that's usually what leads them to come see our office, right,
you know, And seek out the help of an attorney
(42:43):
because they do know something needs to happen. They may
not quite be sure what, but something needs to be
addressed to take care of that.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I say all the time, we get very few easy files. Right,
here's mom and dad with two kids who get along
and they just want it fifty to fifty and everything
will be easy, right, right. There's some of those, but
they're not the rule. I don't think. You know.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Few often we're told by the parents that everybody's getting along,
and then it turns out that usually once mom passes away, yes,
things aren't going so smoothly, and people don't quite get
along as well.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
I have certainly seen that in the way, once the
referee is gone, people are free to be the bad
actor they always want it to be, or whatever you
want to put however you want to say it. And
things do change. And you know, when you know, Johnny
got a bike when he was eight and you didn't
get it, People like hold on to things like that, right, yep.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, we have those secret ledger people. I call them,
you know, and they pull that out at at that
time and then usually everybody's surprised about those things. But
now is there time to finally collect and.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
So never a good look. But it's never a good
look if you're that person, I strongly suggest you don't
do that.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Yeah. But yeah, so to avoid those basic issues, you know,
transparency is key. But two also to make sure that
you know you have you come in, you see an
attorney about the planning. In general, if this is your
second marriage, think about a prenuptial agreement then too, make
sure that you're addressing the assets and then that your
(44:28):
plan either the existing plan matches with the prenup or
revisit the plan, do a new one, make sure everything
works out.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, and we do have people who come in and
had a prenup and say they don't want to follow it. Right, Yes,
it happens. We have to know that, and we have
to kind of acknowledge it. Right, you do have the
right to do that as long as you're both making
that decision. If somebody's already passed away, you can't be like, well,
I'm not going to do that. But it does happen.
And you know, they had a prenup from when they
(44:58):
were thirty and now they're seventy, and you know they
predominantly spent their life together and they're not worried about
the terms of the pre nomine, and that does happen.
You know, most times it's easier to keep planning separate.
As we talked about mom's money here, dad's money there.
Sometimes that's not possible, and that's when it gets I
(45:18):
guess trickier. In a lot of those situations, we have
people appointing one kid from their side and one kid
from the other side right to try to work that out.
And I will say, do they get along? Sometimes they
know each other, Sometimes they don't really know each other. Right,
If they grew up together, they're more likely to treat
(45:40):
each other like siblings. If they did not grow up together,
then it can be a bad situation. And now, not
every one of these situations turns out badly, let's just
be clear about that. But there's a propensity for it.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Yes, I mean, we don't want to be in the
doom and gloom folks, but we're just realistic, yes, and
we obviously see the cases where there are more concerns
than not. So the silver lining is that you can
do something about it, right, So.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Yes, it's not that it's certainly not a scenario where
doing nothing is going to make anything better, right, And
then you may end up in a winter take all
type scenario where you know, the man dies first, because
that's ninety percent of the time what happens, and the
woman inherits everything and then her children inherit and the
(46:32):
man's children don't inherit at all, right, And that's usually
not the intent. And I've seen some very weird scenarios
where people's heirlooms are ending up with other people, right,
and they're just asking for their heirlooms and they won't
be given to them too, which is pretty sad, but
it does happen.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
It happens all the time.
Speaker 1 (46:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Tangible personal property is a tricky one that's probably the
most difficult to keep track of. And Country roll that.
Speaker 1 (47:01):
And we do when we do trust planning, we do
have a document that is a tangible person property memo,
which are these types of snares could be good. Right,
So if you know you want your grandmother's coffee table
to go to your daughter, you can put that in
there right, right. You can't use it for a car
because the car has a title, but anything that doesn't
have a title, it's a tangible item. Can't use it
(47:23):
for real property. Okay, so let's let's just be clear
about that. But if you have collectibles, if you have
you know, anything that's in heirloom or family bible, we see,
I don't know. I can't think of or even photographs
could be art photographs too, you know, whatever, it may
be artwork. I see.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
A lot of the furniture. Furniture is in high demand.
Apparently there's just people.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
Think their furniture is in high demand. I have to
say that there is a lot of the older generation
thinking that the younger generation wants a lot of their stuff,
and then nine times out of ten, the younger generation
is like, yeah, don't I don't want that.
Speaker 2 (48:00):
That's true, that's true. I don't want your twenty year
old couch mom. But but yeah, nevertheless, we do, we
do and can make you know, provisions for that. Typically
the couch doesn't go missing. It's usually the jewelry and
the watches and so those type of things. If you're
not already gifting them prior to your death to somebody,
(48:22):
you have the opportunity to put them on the memorandum
and make sure they get to the right person.
Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yeah, and that is certainly something you can give away
ahead of time. Sometimes people do that. Sometimes they want
to use it right, or they want to look at it,
or whatever it may be. You know, maybe when you downsize,
that's a good time to do those things. So a
lot of what we do is not necessarily legal advice.
It's just advice over what we've seen go wrong and
(48:48):
how we might help somebody get to the right place.
So we're coming to the end of the show. I
just want to remind people again that we have a
Trust Administration workshop. So you have a trust and now
what do you do? How do you how do you
use it? You can get those questions answered on Tuesday,
September thirtieth at the Capital Region Chamber. That's at five
(49:08):
Computer Drive and al Money And if you want to register,
you can go to Purolaw dot com, slash Events, p
I E R R O Law dot com, or give
the office a call at five point eight four. You
can also call that number if anything we've talked about
today has given you an idea that you might need
to command and speak to an attorney and have a consultation.
The consultation is free. We will go through your situation.
(49:31):
We'll think about it and come up with a plant
and then tell you how much that plan is and
then we'll be on you to decide whether you want
to move forward with that. So I hope everyone's having
a great weekend. We are on our way out Aaron Connor,
Puroconnoran Strauss and have a great weekend everybody. Thank you,
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