Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning everyone. Welcome to Life Happens Radio. I'm a Loupiro,
your host for this morning from the firm of Pierre
O'Connor and Strauss, and Life Happens tries to prepare you
for the things that are going to come your way
and what's happening in your life. Think about all the
things that are going on your family, your friends, what's
going on in the world around you, what's going on
(00:22):
with you and your health, your career. Life throws you curveballs.
Are you ready to swing at that curveball? And can
you hit it for a base hit or a home run.
We're going to talk about how to plan what are
the things that you should be thinking about as you
go through life. And this is everything from when you're
going to college and education and how to make sure
(00:44):
that the right educational opportunities are available that's now controversial.
It's going to talk about how when you have your
first child and you're holding that baby in your arms
and you think to yourself, I know I did, Oh
my goodness, I am now respond for another human being
and how do you fulfill those responsibilities? What should you
(01:05):
be thinking in terms of planning for education, but also
planning for those life events. What if you have a
disabling event and you can't work, What if you get
an accident, you die prematurely. How do your children survive?
How do they get the people they need, get a
(01:25):
guardian appointed in a will? How do they have enough money?
And life insurance very often comes into the plan. How
do you create a trust for those children to make
sure the money is managed properly for them and used
properly for them. So all away from those early events,
right on through your working years, your career, you start
(01:46):
planning for retirement, making sure your IRA four o one
k is growing nicely, make sure that you have sufficient
income in retirement to satisfy your needs. All of these
are things we're going to kind of tie together today
through today's topic, and certainly as you get through your
retirement and into the years, those golden years, we want
(02:09):
to make sure that those golden years don't get tarnished.
How can you protect yourself and make sure that you
have a plan in place so that retirement becomes the
thing you want it to be. You want to be
able to live your life. You want to be able
to do the things, travel, see your family, support your family,
help out the grandkids. How do you make sure that
(02:29):
all of those things happen in a legal world, in
legal planning, there is one word that kind of threads
through all of those life stages and life events, and
that is trusts. Many of you have heard of trusts.
Many of you may have a trust, but what do
trusts really do? How do they fit into an estate plan?
(02:52):
And how do they work at every stage of life,
whether you're planning for a newborn or you're planning for
your later years when you get into your eighties and nineties,
hundreds to make sure that you have sufficient money and
a protection of those assets that you've worked a lifetime for.
To help me through this discussion today, and I'm going
to open up the phone lines right away in a moment,
(03:14):
but to help me through this discussion is someone who
has experienced it all of the things that we're talking about,
and that is my partner, Peter Strauss.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Good morning, Peter, Good morning, Lou, Good morning everyone listening
this morning, and Peter's.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Joining us from New York City and I'm here in
the studio at WGY looking out the window at a
very bright, brisk March day and the old adage March
comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamp.
We'll see. But still chillier this weekend than we've had.
But Peter, how are things down in the city.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Looking out my window, it's a little cloudy and quite warm,
the first time we've had a warm day. And I'm
looking forward to the buds in Central Park, which is
white nearby, and after the show, I'll be taking my
dog Nelly for a walk.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Beautiful, beautiful. So I said, I'm going to open the
phone lines and I'm going to be an honest man.
So if you have questions on estate planning, law, anything
you want to ask us, and you want to make comments,
we welcome your calls. It's a better show when it
includes you, So give us a call. Eight hundred eight
two five five nine four nine. That's eight hundred talk
(04:27):
wg Y again. Eight hundred eight two five five nine
four nine, And Peter, I kind of went through the
whole litany of different life stages, and I think the
first time that people really think about this topic. Most
most people in their twenties, unless they have families, aren't
(04:47):
thinking about it. But as soon as you have that
first child, to me life changes and you have to
be prepared. So let's let's talk about it. Let's talk
about what people should be thinking about when they have
a young family, and what are the considerations for planning
as we grow that family, we go through our careers,
we make sure that we have all of the bases covered.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Well.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I think that there are various stages. As you pointed out,
you need to plan for yourself and what happens if
you were to become incapacitated. Who is going to take
care of your needs, your financial affairs. If you have
a good marriage and you're close to your spouse, of
course that's the first choice, but the selection of that
(05:36):
person who could implement the plan is very very important.
And the other thing listening to you just now, it
occurred to me we need to point out to our
audience when we get finished telling them how to do
a plan and what might be in it, you have
to remember too that that plan may need to be modified,
So don't forget the step that might necessary if part
(06:02):
of your plan doesn't work out. I just have been
working with a woman who's ninety eight retired psychiatrist, her
plan to care for her two children. One of whom
has schizophrenia, was all set and then her daughter, who
was her primary caregiver, who was sixty, fell on the
ice last winter, hit her head on the ground and died.
(06:25):
So that whole plan needs to be revisited. Unfortunately, the
elder mother is still capable of doing that, but we
can't forget that second step. But today we're going to
talk about the plan and.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Trusts and how trusts fit in. So when you have newborns,
the question becomes do you need a will? And the
answer is absolutely so. With a young family, a will
is one of the central documents because if you have
that accident and folks, all you have to do is
think about the paper every day, the news every day,
your neighbors, friends. These events happen all around us on
(07:04):
a daily basis. For those people that are prepared, it
is not the end of the world. It is a
change in circumstances that is accommodated by a well drafted plan,
and a will for a young couple is where we start.
But the will also includes peter a trust because if
(07:25):
that husband and wife, the mother and father of those
children are no longer available and they have exited this life,
the children need to have funds available to fund education, housing, healthcare,
all the things that they will need as they grow.
And whether you do this in a will or in
(07:46):
a living trust, and we're going to talk about the differences.
You want to make sure that you have a plan
in place that creates a trust for those miners and
has it protected with, as you said, the right people
managing the tr trust for them and making sure that
their needs are met. So for young couples, wills are
very often the first planning that they do. Make sure
(08:09):
that you get it done with a qualified attorney, whether
it's our firm or another firm. Don't don't do it
on the internet, don't use legal zoom. Talk to someone
who does this every day because and I find this
with clients as we go through the interview process, Peter,
you don't know what you don't know. And when you're
(08:30):
doing it yourself, there are a lot of considerations that
we put on the table for clients that they've never
had before. They've never thought about things. So when you're
creating a trust for a child, you want it to
put in there, what types of distributions you want? When
do you want those distributions? Who is going to manage
the trust for those children, and at what point does
(08:51):
that trust end or does it end? And we're crafting
a trust for our kids that may end at twenty five,
thirty thirty five, but we also use trusts that continue
on for the children's lifetimes. And so we're going to
start kind of at the end here. We're going to
start talking about trusts for the next generation and trusts
(09:13):
for your children. This is done again in a will
or a living trust, and we'll get to that. But
these trusts we call either beneficiary control trusts if the
children have all of the opportunities available to them at
some point to manage it themselves, or if they don't.
And we have how many children now peter around the
(09:34):
spectrum that are diagnosed on the spectrum where we want
to have a trust that maybe has some more protections
and it may go over to something called a special
needs trust. So these trust peter very much depend upon
the needs and aptitudes of the beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Absolutely. And the other most critical point that issue that
I think has to be said at this time time
is that the choice of who it is going to
be that will make the decisions that the trust allows
them to make the trustee. That person has got a
(10:15):
major role and picking that person who is the one
that you have to decide on the future without knowing,
certainly when you're talking about a new baby, but even
for the first ten years or so, you may not
know what the problems are going to be. And therefore
(10:36):
the selection of your trustee in a sense the guardian,
and you can appoint that person as guardian also, but
the critical issue is the selection.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Absolutely who's the best. This gets into a discussion of
who's available, and if it's mother, father and neither is available,
is it Uncle John? Is it Aunt Susie? Is it
a bank trust company? These are the kinds of considerations
that people have and things that people should be thinking about.
(11:08):
And again, I'm gonna throw the phone number out there
one more time. Pick up the phone, give us a call.
Eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. It's
eight hundred talk wgy Zach is ready to answer. The
phone lines are open. Selection of a trustee is going
to thread through everything we talk about this morning, because
having the right people with the right powers in the
(11:30):
right place is vital to your success when you are
no longer the one making decisions and that success or trustee,
the person who's going to step in and manage, has
a tremendous amount of responsibility. If it's your children who
are in their you know, early stages four, five, six, thirteen, fourteen,
(11:52):
fifteen on into their twenties, these things change and your
ideas change as children. And I know in my own case,
my children are now twenty six, twenty nine thirty, and
they're all working. They all have lives, married, engaged, maybe
to be engaged, and so their lives have more often
(12:16):
changed in my viewpoint on them has changed to the
point now I feel like any one of them could
handle being their own trustee. And there's a point, a
pivot point, Peter, when the beneficiary can actually become their
own trustee in a trust. And that's something that people don't.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Really gas and you and our listeners should know that.
We'll talk about the difference between irrevigable or an irrevocable trust.
With arevocable trust, you can amend it to change the trustees.
So when your kids get to be fifteen or sixteen,
you may decide that the people you chose aren't going
(12:56):
to be a good fit going forward, so you can
amend trust change the trustees. You can also have different persons,
one for the trusteeship to make personal decisions almost as
if they were a guardian as to where what educational facilities,
and then the other trustee can handle the financial affairs
(13:20):
depending on how you evaluate your choices within the family
or friends.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, when you have little kids, it isn't always the
person that can manage money that you want to manage
your children. So the role of guardian for a young
couple is absolutely critical. You're going to choose a guardian
and you're going to think about these things like where
will my children live, will they keep the house we
have now and the guardian moves in with them? Will
(13:49):
they move in with the guardian, the whole host of
issues that go along with the selection of guardian. This
is part of the planning process for young children. And
then who is going to manage the money? And that's
the trustee side of things. If your children have special needs,
you may need a special trustee and there are companies
that specialize and we were just talking about this before
(14:12):
the show, Peter companies, bank trust companies that specialize in
managing trusts for children who cannot manage for themselves, so
we have different levels of trust for kids who are
completely capable and independent all the way through to kids
who need a trustee and in many cases a bank trustee.
The trustee has some serious work to do, and we're
(14:33):
going to talk about that. What is the trustee's role,
what are their duties, what are their functions? And a
trust because today's show is all about trust and trusts,
and we're going to come back right after this short break.
And together Peter and I have over one hundred years
of legal experience, so we've been doing this a while
and I won't say who's got more, but it's not me.
(14:55):
And Peter has a great perspective on the practice of
law because he has I've seen it and he has
done it for many, many years. I'm Lupiro, your host
for this morning. We're talking about trusts. I'm going to
give the phone number out there give us a call
if you have questions on trusts. We're going to talk
about living trusts right now. We started with something called
the testamentary trust and how do you choose a trustee,
(15:17):
how do you structure it for beneficiaries, and what are
the advantages of revocable and irrevocable trusts. You're going to
get all of that. Call us at eight hundred eighty
two five five nine four nine, eight hundred talk Wgy
again eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine
and Peter, that selection of trustee is so critical. I
(15:39):
started with young couples and young children and the trusts
that we structure for them. We want to put flexibility
into those trusts. So we have we drafted very carefully
to be able to modify the trust as the needs
of the child change, and a lot of documents don't
do that. So when you're creating a trust for a
beneficiar and you're choosing your trust, d choose carefully. Is
(16:02):
it an individual, is it a combination of individuals, Do
you have co trustees or is it a trust company?
All possibilities in your trust. But once the trustee takes office,
they have powers that you drift in and benefits that
the beneficiaries are eligible for. And it's your trustee who's
going to interpret the document that you create. So in
(16:25):
this we're talking about creating it through a will, having
a guardian, an executor, a trust and a trustee and
all of that can be accomplished in the will. If
you're a young couple and you don't have a lot
of assets built up yet, you want to buy that
term insurance policy and make sure that you have enough
money flowing in to satisfy the needs of those beneficiaries.
(16:45):
But that is a testamentary trust. We're going to flip
it over to living trusts as soon as we take
the first call and we have Mike and Troy. Good morning, Mike,
Welcome to Life Happens.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, this is a great episode for me, my mother
in law in this moment because she just fell and
broke our head. She has a will and she has
my wife the power attorney, but she does not have
a trust and now she just got admitted to a rehab.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Is there any way.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
We still can set up the trust or everything is
settled now it would take another five to seven years
to have everything organized. We were told we can't set
up a trust.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Now, yeah, that's a great question. So you can absolutely
set up a trust, and you have to look at
it in terms of what are the goals of the trust.
And this is going to lead us right into our
conversation that we were going to start anyway. So it's
perfect call. A revocable trust can be done. It avoids probate,
it manages assets. But the situation that you're in right now,
(17:45):
where you have a fractured hip, this is life happening
right and you have the need for potentially ongoing long
term care. And when we have this conversation, one of
the critical questions we ask is what was her ability
to function before the broken him? Was she independent?
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Okay. So the rehabilitation for someone like that, the goal
is to bring them back up to the level they
were at before the broken hip, and that takes work.
She's going to have to work her hips off to
get back to that point because it's there's pain involved,
there is work involved. And if she can get back
(18:31):
to the point that she was before, you've got time
on your side. If she can't, right, if she needs
to stay in that nursing home because she can't go
home and she needs care more than can be provided
to her in her home, then you have a five
year look back. But that is not the end of
(18:51):
the story. Even with that five year look back, there
is planning that can be done and an ability even
at the eleventh hour, Mike, you can save about half
of your assets, so she can absolutely do a trust.
The worst case scenario, she saves about half of what
she has, and then you would look at the rest.
But if she has the ability to get back home
(19:14):
medicate home care, and this is the thing that a
lot of people don't know, Medicaid home care does not
have that five year look back. So if we can
get her back home, even with some you know, eight
hours a day of home health aids to help her
out in home, Medicaid will pay for that, and you
don't have that five year waiting period. So you can
(19:34):
create a trust today, qualify for Medicaid home care, and
get that process started immediately. So she has a lot
more options than you may have been told.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Okay, so I'd like to add on to what Luz
just said for two things. First of all, your story
tells us that people need to get advice from people
who know what they're recommending. You don't want to get
this online, you don't want to get documents online. You
(20:08):
don't really want to get advice online, and that's really critical.
The other thing is in choosing whether you're going to
have a revocable trust, which your mother in law could
amend make changes or an irrevocable trust that you will
need to set the assets into a place where it
(20:30):
won't be counted for Medicaid eligibility. And that illustrates whether
your trust might be revocable and amendable or not. So,
and then you have to figure out which we could
help you with, how you can amend an irrevocable.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Trust, and there are ways to do that too. So Mike,
you were asking a question.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Yes, So, like I said, the lawyer told us that
we want the trust is too late now and all that,
and we're just trying to save the house and the
little money she has for her two daughters.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
But if and now you're telling me, if Medicare and
home care will pay for I could we want to
have to wait for the five years.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
So there's a chance if we do a trust right
away here we could save the.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
House and stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, you may want to get a
second opinion on that. We have some educational videos if
you want to go on our website at puro law
dot com. We do something called medicaid. Mondays. We've been
doing it for a couple of years now, So there's
a whole library of videos, and we have one on
nursing home eligibility thirty minute video. We have a thirty
(21:47):
minute video on home care eligibility and how the Medicaid
Trust plays into both. So we'd be happy to sit
down with you. The one thing you need to do
is really and you might have done this already, gather
up all of the information, all of her assets, titled
to the assets, how it's structured, What legal documents does
she have in place? Does the power of Attorney have
(22:08):
a gifting power? That's an important feature, So can a
gifting power. So the Power Attorney has various different powers
that can be put in. One of the things you
want to make sure is that there is a gifting
power in there so that if the need arises to
shift the house transfer title to the house, that power
is conveyed in the power of Attorney. So what we
(22:31):
would do is, in a consultation, go over all of
the information, all the documents, look at what and this
is going to be a kind of a day to day,
week to week thing as to how her rehab progresses.
But you want to start preparing for the transition home. Today.
They're gonna give you a notice and it hits real quick.
It's a forty eight hour notice where her rehab is done.
(22:54):
And they may have told you, you may have thought
that she has one hundred days of rehab. They can
terminate that rehab at any point in.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Time, so they're hoping for two week three have ands
she'll be back home.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Okay, Then you want to get a plan in place
and start looking at how do you find the aids?
How do you get the aids in We actually have
a seminar coming up that is going to talk about
exactly this. It's your home or the nursing home, and
it's going to have myself, my partner, Frank Hemming, and
a geriatric care manager Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who helps coordinate
(23:26):
that home care plan. And that seminar is April seventeenth
at one pm at the Colony Town Library. I'll give
more information on it, but that's also on our website. Thursday,
April seventeenth, one pm. Your home or the nursing Home.
We're going to talk about all the issues you just
brought up, Mike, And this is it's a critical time period,
so act fast, get something in place and have options
(23:50):
you want to explore those options today because when it's
time for her to come home, you need a plan,
you need a home care plan, and you need a
legal plan. We have some other callers on the line,
and stay with us because I have to take a
break for the news. Bad timing, but we do, so
stay with us. We'll be right back. We're going to
take a break for the news. Peter Strauss, Lupiro from
Pierre Connor and Strauss. Have a great morning, and stay
(24:12):
with us for the second half of the show. We'll
be right back from Pierre Connoran Strauss. We have a
caller James on the line, and if you want to
call us you have questions about planning, trusts, the things
that we're talking about today. Eight hundred talk WGY. That's
eight hundred eight two five, five, nine, four nine and
good morning, James, Welcome to Life Happens.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Hey, good morning. I would recommend you guys are a
law firm that specializes in some of this uh preparation
for getting older and maybe guiding some of these I
just listened to the caller you were talking to, guiding
them through some of the challenges they're about to face
(24:55):
with their mother. That's now had a broken hip. There's
an entire opportunity out there in this world for a
company to embrace the challenges of this part of life. Literally,
we just went through this over five years in my
family with my mom and she recently passed, you know,
(25:16):
lover to pieces and we dealt with it right straight
through COVID. She broke her hip, just like this lady
that you just were talking about. She went into a
rehab facility that was during COVID. She was in rehab
for sixteen months. I couldn't see her. I couldn't none
(25:36):
of our siblings could go see her or visit her.
We ended up pulling her out, bringing her home. She's
got a seventeen room Victorian house, and that one part
of that house was prepared to have her living there
as a person with severe disability. So we had to
go through the construction phases of remodeling the home, and
(25:57):
then we had to get caregivers care how much money
you have, you can have all the money in the world,
but to get real, good quality caregivers that can help
you twenty four to seven, it's almost impossible. So the
challenges involved in this are absolutely off the charge. There
are programs out there that the state and federal will
(26:20):
help you with. But the hoops that you got to
go through and the waiting periods you got to go through,
you're at the mercy of the system. I'm telling you,
it is the most unreal thing you'll ever go through.
You could be a young couple gonna have a baby, okay,
and you've been senting you you've had no children for
the first three years of your marriage, and now you've
(26:41):
got a serious, a serious change of time in your
lives as having your first child. When your parents get
old and they are no longer able to be on
their own. It's just like having kids coming into the family.
Even worse though, because the challenges that are involved in
the all of the healthcare visits and everything that they
(27:03):
can be having. And then they go through phases because
they've been very independent all their lives, they go through
phases of depression and all kinds of issues of their
own that are overwhelming. They I'm not saying they're looking
to commit suicide, but they can be very difficult to
deal with. They don't want to eat, they don't want
to eat certain foods, they don't want to go to
(27:23):
the bathroom when they need to. I could go on
and on and on of five years of living with this,
and I'm telling you, somebody needs to start a company
that can understand every aspect of this. I'm talking about
lining up contractors to be able to do work. I'm
talking about every phase of taking care of elderly at home,
(27:47):
because ultimately that's where it needs to be is in
your house. That's where they're the most happy, is when
they're in their own space. Very few, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Could not agree with you more. And anyone who has
been a caregiver like you have for five years and
you have the role reversal of a parent who had
took care of you and wiped your snotty nose when
you were a kid, and now all of a sudden
they're in need of hands on care and they're not
the same person that they were when they were nurturing
(28:17):
you as your parent. Now you have to nurture them
as your parent, and the child becomes the caregiver. So
there's a tremendous role reversal, a lot of psychological issues.
And fortunately there actually is a company that I started
that does this, and we're gonna have them on next
(28:38):
week and the company is called Ever Home Care Advisors.
And no, I didn't set James up for this call,
but the litany of issues that you just outlined is
what every caregiver goes through when you have this situation.
And there is no manual out there, there is no
training out there to be a caregiver. But Her Home
(29:00):
Care Advisors has social workers, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists.
They come into the home, they do a full analysis
of the home and they give you a written care
plan that outlines all the things that need to be done.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
The time to do this, James, is not when your
parent has broken the hip and is in the hospital.
You got a week to get it done. The time
to do this is in advance. And that's you hit
it so squarely on the head. Ever Home Care Advisors
located right here in Albany. Diane Miklgottabiowski is going to
(29:39):
be on with us next week. She's the director of
that company, and this is exactly what they do. And
not only that, but they have developed technology to assist
you as the caregiver in managing what's going on in
the home and some really great ideas and things that
need to be brought in because and I'm sure you've
told you haven't really touched on this, but how has
your experience been with your mom and healthcare system?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
It was very difficult. I mean, my sister think. I
mean I always questioned my sister why she retired at
fifty eight, But my gosh, am I glad she did
because she had the time to be able to focus
and really really get involved in the part you're about
to talk about. My sister took that thing, you know,
and ran with it, and she really really helped my
(30:23):
mom process with the medical side of it, with the
legal side of it, with every side of it. Laura
jumped right in there and really did an amazing job.
But that's the point I want to make, is that,
and you just said it, all the preparation that you
can do, you can't do enough. You can start this
(30:43):
at thirty, and I guarantee you when you're eighty and
you got these issues, you haven't done enough yet. There's
so much involved. So to have an asset of this
operation that you're about to start, this company that has
all of the resources, all of the people, with the
intelligence and the understanding of every hoop and every step.
(31:05):
I mean, it needs to be an a to Z system.
And even with a to Z, I guarantee you there's
gonna be letters that no one even knew about it
in alphabet that are going to pop up in the middle.
So it is unbelievable. It is unbelievable the challenges that
come with what's go about to happen to a lot
of folks.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I hope you can join us on April seventeenth at
one o'clock. I'm gonna let you make the speech to
the audience because you just covered not many of the
issues that we face. It's one pm, April seventeenth at
the Colony Town Library. Your home are the nursing home?
Are you prepared? Are you ready to hunker down at
home and bring in services if and when that becomes necessary.
(31:43):
So many people don't think about that.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I'd like to just supplement what Lou said. You're absolutely right,
starting early is the key to it. But I have
to caution you that there are many not for profit
organizations who do provide a great deal of these services,
but with what's going on with the federal budget, many
(32:07):
of them are going to have to cut back their services.
So the private market will have to step up and
provide the services that are necessary, but that may also
be difficult. So for the next year or so, we
have to see how this is going to settle down.
But the not for profits who or the hospitals or
(32:29):
social service agencies are going to be very badly hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Absolutely. So the trust that we're talking about is something
that aids in this and when you create it properly,
it has enough flexibility. Medicaid becomes the payment source at
some point because the care is so expensive, and when
you have Medicaid you have to know how to get
(32:57):
financially qualified. We will cover on April seventeenth, and you
have to know how to access the care. And as
you said, the unicorn out there is that caregiver. They're
hard to find, hard to keep. So having a professional
who has all of the resources available to them, working
with agencies like the New York State Office for Aging
(33:19):
and your County Office for Aging, working with a managed
long term care company, working with independent providers. There are
people out there in the marketplace who are in home caregivers.
How do you organize that, how you bring them in,
how do you find them? All of that is essential,
and trust me, no one I couldn't when my mom
(33:40):
had Alzheimer's and I was the caregiver. I had to
hire a professional care manager to do these things because
it was just not within my scope. And there are
professionals out there. If you want to look it up,
it's ever Homecareadvisors dot com. You can take a look.
Diane and Nina Cressanda, one of their social workers, will
(34:00):
be on with us next week at nine am, so
you can listen then, and I hope you can all
join us on April seventeenth. These are the issues that
we're going to dig into in today's world. How do
you plan and prepare and if you're in crisis, how
do you deal with it? Because James, these issues are
top of mind for people like you. You dealt with
it with your mom. Other people have to think about
(34:22):
it in advance to have that plan in place. And
James has left the building. James, thank you for that call.
That was absolutely on target. And Peter, let's talk about
the trust that we're on now. We talked about wills
and trusts for kids. Let's talk a little bit about
this irrevocable trust that maybe isn't so irrevocable, and we
(34:47):
call it a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, and the Medicaid
Asset Protection Trust on its face, it says all over
the document that it's irrevocable. There are certain parameters that
you have to have. You do not act as your
own trustee. So in this case, you're gonna choose your children,
or you're gonna choose another third party to be your trustee.
(35:11):
And you're gonna have assets like your home, your stocks,
bank accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, real estate, rental properties,
all of those things go into this trust. And James
and the prior caller might point it up that everybody
here's a five year wait. Oh, I have the wait
five years for nursing home. But most people don't want
(35:36):
to be in the nursing home. So when you use
this trust, Medicaid is available to you the next month.
Right away, you get the plan done, you can apply
for Medicaid the following month. Then you're working with people
like ever home care advisors to find the care, put
the plan in place, help to manage the care, bring
(35:57):
in things like sensors, cameras, apps that can govern medication management,
and visits and transportation. All of those things are available
if you know where to find them. And the Medicaid
Asset Protection Trust unlocks that Medicaid door, so you can
use assets to private pay and you can use assets
(36:22):
in the trust to access Medicaid because they are protected
within that trust envelope. And Peter, there are kind of
two classes of assets that we deal with. One is houses,
real estate, bank accounts, and the other now is retirement accounts.
And I'm sure in your career you've seen this. I
know in my forty one years of practice, the type
(36:43):
of assets that clients have today is vastly different than
what they had forty years ago or sixty years ago.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Well, that's absolutely correct, and there are some disadvantages to
the app. You give up control, of course, but your
trustees are people you trust, have confidence and take in
and you can get all of the income from the
assets that are placed in that trust. And then of
(37:15):
course that where there are complicated rules about the amount
of income you can keep in how you protect anything
beyond that, which is a discussion for our Medicaid Monday programs.
But you can't have direct payments to yourself of the
principle of the trust. But those distributions if the income
(37:36):
isn't enough to maintain your standard of living and pay
for your needs, plus you get your Social Security, then
you can make distributions to other people who just happily
may wish to assist you by making payment of some
of your expenses. I do have to say that while
(38:01):
lou was absolutely correct at the present time funding putting
your assets into this Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, there's no
waiting period. But just before COVID, New York passed the
rule that would have imposed a two and a half
year lookback period, in other words, a waiting period that
(38:23):
you might have to have imposed upon you. That law
would not created. A two and a half year lookback
period was suspended at the time COVID when it happened,
and it's still unsuspense and for a bunch of complicated reasons.
It could go into effect either at the end of
(38:44):
twenty twenty five or possibly at the end of twenty
twenty six. So if people need to do this kind
of planning, they need to call firms like ours and
do the planning sooner than later, because otherwise they may
be a wait rather than just doing it now when
there would be no waiting period.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. When people come into us and sit down, they've
heard a lot of things. There are a lot of
myths out there about medicaid and trusts and oh, my
kids are going to control my life and I'm going
to have to run to them for money. That is
not how this works. So when you create the trust,
and what we do is when we sit down, we
have an advance who your family is, who you, who
(39:29):
your people are that are going to be your trustees,
what your assets are, and we put it all into
a flow chart for our clients. And most people are visuals.
I don't know about you, but when I hear things
and you're trying to put it's like the bubbles over
someone's heading a cartoon, all of these different ideas and
you're trying to assimilate them into your own situation. When
(39:50):
you see it on paper and you see, okay, I
have an IRA or a four oh one K or
four h three B in New York State, a lot
of people don't know that those assets are exempt for
medicaid purposes. So we put them in their own place
on the float chart, and those stay in your name.
(40:10):
So if you have a five hundred thousand dollars IRA
one hundred thousand dollars IRA. That is your asset, and
you don't have to give it up. You keep it
right where it is, and that's part of the plan,
so you can access that IRA at any time. You're
also going to have a certain amount of cash in
your name. For a single individual, you can keep thirty
(40:30):
two thousand dollars and still qualify for Medicaid. So we
have in the middle of the float chart you with
maybe fifty thousand or sixty thousand, whatever the cash is
that you want in your checking account, and you have
all of your income sources flowing into that checking account,
and that's your money. So you've got the IRA, that's
(40:50):
your money. You've got the checking account, savings account, that's
your money. And then you deal with the Medicaid Asset
Protection Trust with those other assets that you want to protect.
So when you put your home into this trust, you
virtually own the home. You own the equitable interest in
the home because you have the right to live there
for the rest of your life. So you're not giving
up your home. Your trust has your home and you
(41:13):
are the beneficiary of the trust. It keeps all your
same tax benefits. So if you have a star exemption
or a veterans exemption, it gets a step up in
basis you can sell it and get your capital gains exclusion.
So the home is one of the first assets that
we put into the trust, and then we look at
what the other assets are. Do you have a brokerage account, Well,
you keep the income from that, but the investments keep
(41:34):
growing inside the trust. Do you have life insurance that
has cash value that goes into the trust? Do you
have other financial accounts CDs things like that, those go
into the trust. Do you have deferred annuities not tax
qualified but to standard deferred annuities? They can go into
the trust and the trust you appoint a trustee, but
(41:55):
you have the string to pull. If something happens and
that trustee isn't performing to your liking, you fire them.
You have the absolute discretion over who your trustee is
going to be at any moment in time. More importantly,
you get to choose the beneficiaries and you can change
them at any time, so you have control over the
(42:16):
trustee control over the beneficiaries. Peter mentioned earlier that you
can actually get principle out to those beneficiaries who you're
selecting as you go, and they could then use the
money for anything, including to buy you a car. So
the money stays available to your kids and they can
then use it for your benefit. And you control trustees
(42:38):
and you control beneficiaries and Peter, the last feature of
the trust that I want to just highlight is that
when you're controlling the beneficiaries and you have a statute
in New York that says I can actually revoke an
irrevocable trust with the consent of the beneficiaries. Now you
(42:58):
have a very very flexible structure.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
One other, very very important benefit of this Medicaid asset
protection trust is there's no claim against the assets in
that trust at the time the Medicaid recipient dies, because
Medicaid's claims are only against probate assets. So another advantage
of avoiding probate. By having all your assets in the trust,
(43:27):
you don't have to worry about the county coming after
your house, so it doesn't pass on to your spouse
or children.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So you win the game, the short term game, and
then the long term game. We talked about this early
in the show is creating trusts for your kids. So
the assets are protected for them and they flow right
out of your Medicaid Asset Protection Trust. We have a caller,
Tom and Gilderlin. Good morning Tom, Yes, good morning Love.
Speaker 6 (43:55):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (43:56):
How you doing doing pretty good? Thanks? I just tuned in,
So I apologize if this has already been covered this morning,
but I did have a question on on the Medicaid
Trust that we have irrevocable trust. And of course, as
you know, it's got the five year lookback period.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And the best question is we did discuss that it
absolutely has a five year look back for nursing home care,
yet there is no look back for Medicaid home care,
which is where most people start. You want to be
at home, right, medicaids available at home. There is no
waiting period for Medicaid at home.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Correct.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
So with that said, my question then would be what
what is available after the five year period? Can that
money now he starts to be withdrawn and give given
to the kids with no penalties? What happens after the
five year period? Yeah, and we're still around, you know,
we're still living, We're still at home or fine?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, and that the intent is that the money stays
in the trust, and it's available for you long term
through the kids. That's kind of the essence of the plan.
But there is no reason. Let's say you have a
grandchild going to college. You want to contribute twenty thousand
dollars to their college education. The trust will be able
to accommodate that. If you want to benefit your kids
(45:16):
during your lifetime. The transfer right when when the trust
gets funded, when the assets go in, that's when the
five year clock starts. When the assets go out of
the trust, there is no additional penalty for them because
it's already been penalized when it goes in.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
So, for example, then after let's say five to five
years goes by, and I want to withdraw the money
equally to I have three children, so withdraw that. So
let's say, for example, I'd like them to put a
down payment on a house. Can that be done absolutely?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
As you just say, really absolutely?
Speaker 6 (45:54):
And then let's say a year later one of us
ends up in a nursing home. They can not go
back say hey, wait a minute, you know you distribute
that money. We need that money back now.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Once it's in the trust, it's outside of your your
reach for medicaid purposes. And there's no additional penalty for
transfers out of the trust.
Speaker 6 (46:12):
So that five year peer that's the magic number. Then
the five year we're golden. After that we can distribute
that money absolutely.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
And again we have to keep it clear for nursing
home purposes.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Not for homecare. Right.
Speaker 6 (46:24):
Oh, that's wonderful. Okay, that's perfect. Well then you answer
my question, Lou. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
All right, Tom, thanks for the call. We do have
to take one more quick short break and we'll come
back to wrap it up with Peter Strauss. Lupiro, thanks
for listening. We'll be right back a few minutes left.
And I want to kind of pull all of this
together in terms of trust planning, certainly getting trusts in
place for children who are minors, getting trust in place
for yourself, getting trust in place for the future, for
(46:51):
long term care purposes, and getting that five year clock
for nursing homes started. There are so many options that
people have that they don't know about. They call it
third tier knowledge. We don't know what we don't know.
A good consultation will walk you through all of your options,
everything that's available to you under the law. And these
(47:12):
are things that need to be done in advance the
revocable trust. We didn't spend a lot of time on Peter.
But for those people that don't really have the need
for long term care planning, they have sufficient income to
pay that bill. The nursing homes now are running around
two hundred thousand dollars a year, or maybe you've been
smart enough to buy a long term care insurance policy
(47:35):
or a life insurance policy that will cover your long
term care needs. The revocable trust for people that don't
have the long term care need is a tremendous vehicle.
And just talk a little bit about the probate process
and what it means for families to have a private,
secure administration of an estate as opposed to the public
(47:59):
fiasco that probate sometimes becomes.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Peter, are you there, No, I lost you for a minute, Louke,
could you repeat it?
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Oh, just talk the advantage of the revocable trust. We
go through this with families all the time, and they'll
come in and they say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm still
administering Mom's of state. It's been four years now and
we don't have any end of the tunnel in sight.
We have assets that are complicated. We have all of
these issues in probate. The advantage of having a private
(48:28):
administration where you control it through your trustees in a
revocable living.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Trust, well, the benefits are area. I mean, it's a
smooth assisted it's a legal assistance to your life because
if you become incapacitated, you don't have to struggle with banks,
or insurance companies or or brokers, because it's easier to
(49:02):
act and deal with these entities as a trustee than
under a power of attorney. Banks don't like powers of attorney.
They're so disruptive of your life. When you're trying to
help out a person who's been ill for a while,
they keep refusing. In the legislature a number of years
(49:22):
ago had to pass a bill saying it's it's illegal
to refuse to honor a power of attorney and these
for that. They do it anyway, but they don't do
it with trusts. Because most banks are used to being trustees.
They have corporate trust departments, so life becomes smoother, and
(49:46):
at the time of your death it's even more smooth
because you don't have to deal with the surrogates court,
which is under budgeted and understaffed and possibly in some
cases under educated.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
We will go there, but I'm going to let that
Peter be the last word. We got about thirty seconds left.
Thank you Peter Strauss for joining me today. Thank you
for the calls, they've been wonderful. Remember April seventeenth at
one pm Colonytown Library, your home or the nursing home.
We have other educational opportunities, a trust administration workshop that
(50:20):
really digs into the trusts that's coming up on June third.
Always check our website at pierolaw dot com. Thank you
for joining us this morning. We had a great show.
We hope you can join us again next week. Whenever
Homecare Advisors joins us here
Good morning everyone. Welcome to Life Happens Radio. I'm a Loupiro,
your host for this morning from the firm of Pierre
O'Connor and Strauss, and Life Happens tries to prepare you
for the things that are going to come your way
and what's happening in your life. Think about all the
things that are going on your family, your friends, what's
going on in the world around you, what's going on
(00:22):
with you and your health, your career. Life throws you curveballs.
Are you ready to swing at that curveball? And can
you hit it for a base hit or a home run.
We're going to talk about how to plan what are
the things that you should be thinking about as you
go through life. And this is everything from when you're
going to college and education and how to make sure
(00:44):
that the right educational opportunities are available that's now controversial.
It's going to talk about how when you have your
first child and you're holding that baby in your arms
and you think to yourself, I know I did, Oh
my goodness, I am now respond for another human being
and how do you fulfill those responsibilities? What should you
(01:05):
be thinking in terms of planning for education, but also
planning for those life events. What if you have a
disabling event and you can't work, What if you get
an accident, you die prematurely. How do your children survive?
How do they get the people they need, get a
(01:25):
guardian appointed in a will? How do they have enough money?
And life insurance very often comes into the plan. How
do you create a trust for those children to make
sure the money is managed properly for them and used
properly for them. So all away from those early events,
right on through your working years, your career, you start
(01:46):
planning for retirement, making sure your IRA four o one
k is growing nicely, make sure that you have sufficient
income in retirement to satisfy your needs. All of these
are things we're going to kind of tie together today
through today's topic, and certainly as you get through your
retirement and into the years, those golden years, we want
(02:09):
to make sure that those golden years don't get tarnished.
How can you protect yourself and make sure that you
have a plan in place so that retirement becomes the
thing you want it to be. You want to be
able to live your life. You want to be able
to do the things, travel, see your family, support your family,
help out the grandkids. How do you make sure that
(02:29):
all of those things happen in a legal world, in
legal planning, there is one word that kind of threads
through all of those life stages and life events, and
that is trusts. Many of you have heard of trusts.
Many of you may have a trust, but what do
trusts really do? How do they fit into an estate plan?
(02:52):
And how do they work at every stage of life,
whether you're planning for a newborn or you're planning for
your later years when you get into your eighties and nineties,
hundreds to make sure that you have sufficient money and
a protection of those assets that you've worked a lifetime for.
To help me through this discussion today, and I'm going
to open up the phone lines right away in a moment,
(03:14):
but to help me through this discussion is someone who
has experienced it all of the things that we're talking about,
and that is my partner, Peter Strauss.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Good morning, Peter, Good morning, Lou, Good morning everyone listening
this morning, and Peter's.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Joining us from New York City and I'm here in
the studio at WGY looking out the window at a
very bright, brisk March day and the old adage March
comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamp.
We'll see. But still chillier this weekend than we've had.
But Peter, how are things down in the city.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Looking out my window, it's a little cloudy and quite warm,
the first time we've had a warm day. And I'm
looking forward to the buds in Central Park, which is
white nearby, and after the show, I'll be taking my
dog Nelly for a walk.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
Beautiful, beautiful. So I said, I'm going to open the
phone lines and I'm going to be an honest man.
So if you have questions on estate planning, law, anything
you want to ask us, and you want to make comments,
we welcome your calls. It's a better show when it
includes you, So give us a call. Eight hundred eight
two five five nine four nine. That's eight hundred talk
(04:27):
wg Y again. Eight hundred eight two five five nine
four nine, And Peter, I kind of went through the
whole litany of different life stages, and I think the
first time that people really think about this topic. Most
most people in their twenties, unless they have families, aren't
(04:47):
thinking about it. But as soon as you have that
first child, to me life changes and you have to
be prepared. So let's let's talk about it. Let's talk
about what people should be thinking about when they have
a young family, and what are the considerations for planning
as we grow that family, we go through our careers,
we make sure that we have all of the bases covered.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Well.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
I think that there are various stages. As you pointed out,
you need to plan for yourself and what happens if
you were to become incapacitated. Who is going to take
care of your needs, your financial affairs. If you have
a good marriage and you're close to your spouse, of
course that's the first choice, but the selection of that
(05:36):
person who could implement the plan is very very important.
And the other thing listening to you just now, it
occurred to me we need to point out to our
audience when we get finished telling them how to do
a plan and what might be in it, you have
to remember too that that plan may need to be modified,
So don't forget the step that might necessary if part
(06:02):
of your plan doesn't work out. I just have been
working with a woman who's ninety eight retired psychiatrist, her
plan to care for her two children. One of whom
has schizophrenia, was all set and then her daughter, who
was her primary caregiver, who was sixty, fell on the
ice last winter, hit her head on the ground and died.
(06:25):
So that whole plan needs to be revisited. Unfortunately, the
elder mother is still capable of doing that, but we
can't forget that second step. But today we're going to
talk about the plan and.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Trusts and how trusts fit in. So when you have newborns,
the question becomes do you need a will? And the
answer is absolutely so. With a young family, a will
is one of the central documents because if you have
that accident and folks, all you have to do is
think about the paper every day, the news every day,
your neighbors, friends. These events happen all around us on
(07:04):
a daily basis. For those people that are prepared, it
is not the end of the world. It is a
change in circumstances that is accommodated by a well drafted plan,
and a will for a young couple is where we start.
But the will also includes peter a trust because if
(07:25):
that husband and wife, the mother and father of those
children are no longer available and they have exited this life,
the children need to have funds available to fund education, housing, healthcare,
all the things that they will need as they grow.
And whether you do this in a will or in
(07:46):
a living trust, and we're going to talk about the differences.
You want to make sure that you have a plan
in place that creates a trust for those miners and
has it protected with, as you said, the right people
managing the tr trust for them and making sure that
their needs are met. So for young couples, wills are
very often the first planning that they do. Make sure
(08:09):
that you get it done with a qualified attorney, whether
it's our firm or another firm. Don't don't do it
on the internet, don't use legal zoom. Talk to someone
who does this every day because and I find this
with clients as we go through the interview process, Peter,
you don't know what you don't know. And when you're
(08:30):
doing it yourself, there are a lot of considerations that
we put on the table for clients that they've never
had before. They've never thought about things. So when you're
creating a trust for a child, you want it to
put in there, what types of distributions you want? When
do you want those distributions? Who is going to manage
the trust for those children, and at what point does
(08:51):
that trust end or does it end? And we're crafting
a trust for our kids that may end at twenty five,
thirty thirty five, but we also use trusts that continue
on for the children's lifetimes. And so we're going to
start kind of at the end here. We're going to
start talking about trusts for the next generation and trusts
(09:13):
for your children. This is done again in a will
or a living trust, and we'll get to that. But
these trusts we call either beneficiary control trusts if the
children have all of the opportunities available to them at
some point to manage it themselves, or if they don't.
And we have how many children now peter around the
(09:34):
spectrum that are diagnosed on the spectrum where we want
to have a trust that maybe has some more protections
and it may go over to something called a special
needs trust. So these trust peter very much depend upon
the needs and aptitudes of the beneficiary.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Absolutely. And the other most critical point that issue that
I think has to be said at this time time
is that the choice of who it is going to
be that will make the decisions that the trust allows
them to make the trustee. That person has got a
(10:15):
major role and picking that person who is the one
that you have to decide on the future without knowing,
certainly when you're talking about a new baby, but even
for the first ten years or so, you may not
know what the problems are going to be. And therefore
(10:36):
the selection of your trustee in a sense the guardian,
and you can appoint that person as guardian also, but
the critical issue is the selection.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
Absolutely who's the best. This gets into a discussion of
who's available, and if it's mother, father and neither is available,
is it Uncle John? Is it Aunt Susie? Is it
a bank trust company? These are the kinds of considerations
that people have and things that people should be thinking about.
(11:08):
And again, I'm gonna throw the phone number out there
one more time. Pick up the phone, give us a call.
Eight hundred eight two five five nine four nine. It's
eight hundred talk wgy Zach is ready to answer. The
phone lines are open. Selection of a trustee is going
to thread through everything we talk about this morning, because
having the right people with the right powers in the
(11:30):
right place is vital to your success when you are
no longer the one making decisions and that success or trustee,
the person who's going to step in and manage, has
a tremendous amount of responsibility. If it's your children who
are in their you know, early stages four, five, six, thirteen, fourteen,
(11:52):
fifteen on into their twenties, these things change and your
ideas change as children. And I know in my own case,
my children are now twenty six, twenty nine thirty, and
they're all working. They all have lives, married, engaged, maybe
to be engaged, and so their lives have more often
(12:16):
changed in my viewpoint on them has changed to the
point now I feel like any one of them could
handle being their own trustee. And there's a point, a
pivot point, Peter, when the beneficiary can actually become their
own trustee in a trust. And that's something that people don't.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
Really gas and you and our listeners should know that.
We'll talk about the difference between irrevigable or an irrevocable trust.
With arevocable trust, you can amend it to change the trustees.
So when your kids get to be fifteen or sixteen,
you may decide that the people you chose aren't going
(12:56):
to be a good fit going forward, so you can
amend trust change the trustees. You can also have different persons,
one for the trusteeship to make personal decisions almost as
if they were a guardian as to where what educational facilities,
and then the other trustee can handle the financial affairs
(13:20):
depending on how you evaluate your choices within the family
or friends.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Yeah, when you have little kids, it isn't always the
person that can manage money that you want to manage
your children. So the role of guardian for a young
couple is absolutely critical. You're going to choose a guardian
and you're going to think about these things like where
will my children live, will they keep the house we
have now and the guardian moves in with them? Will
(13:49):
they move in with the guardian, the whole host of
issues that go along with the selection of guardian. This
is part of the planning process for young children. And
then who is going to manage the money? And that's
the trustee side of things. If your children have special needs,
you may need a special trustee and there are companies
that specialize and we were just talking about this before
(14:12):
the show, Peter companies, bank trust companies that specialize in
managing trusts for children who cannot manage for themselves, so
we have different levels of trust for kids who are
completely capable and independent all the way through to kids
who need a trustee and in many cases a bank trustee.
The trustee has some serious work to do, and we're
(14:33):
going to talk about that. What is the trustee's role,
what are their duties, what are their functions? And a
trust because today's show is all about trust and trusts,
and we're going to come back right after this short break.
And together Peter and I have over one hundred years
of legal experience, so we've been doing this a while
and I won't say who's got more, but it's not me.
(14:55):
And Peter has a great perspective on the practice of
law because he has I've seen it and he has
done it for many, many years. I'm Lupiro, your host
for this morning. We're talking about trusts. I'm going to
give the phone number out there give us a call
if you have questions on trusts. We're going to talk
about living trusts right now. We started with something called
the testamentary trust and how do you choose a trustee,
(15:17):
how do you structure it for beneficiaries, and what are
the advantages of revocable and irrevocable trusts. You're going to
get all of that. Call us at eight hundred eighty
two five five nine four nine, eight hundred talk Wgy
again eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine
and Peter, that selection of trustee is so critical. I
(15:39):
started with young couples and young children and the trusts
that we structure for them. We want to put flexibility
into those trusts. So we have we drafted very carefully
to be able to modify the trust as the needs
of the child change, and a lot of documents don't
do that. So when you're creating a trust for a
beneficiar and you're choosing your trust, d choose carefully. Is
(16:02):
it an individual, is it a combination of individuals, Do
you have co trustees or is it a trust company?
All possibilities in your trust. But once the trustee takes office,
they have powers that you drift in and benefits that
the beneficiaries are eligible for. And it's your trustee who's
going to interpret the document that you create. So in
(16:25):
this we're talking about creating it through a will, having
a guardian, an executor, a trust and a trustee and
all of that can be accomplished in the will. If
you're a young couple and you don't have a lot
of assets built up yet, you want to buy that
term insurance policy and make sure that you have enough
money flowing in to satisfy the needs of those beneficiaries.
(16:45):
But that is a testamentary trust. We're going to flip
it over to living trusts as soon as we take
the first call and we have Mike and Troy. Good morning, Mike,
Welcome to Life Happens.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
Yeah, this is a great episode for me, my mother
in law in this moment because she just fell and
broke our head. She has a will and she has
my wife the power attorney, but she does not have
a trust and now she just got admitted to a rehab.
Speaker 5 (17:11):
Is there any way.
Speaker 4 (17:12):
We still can set up the trust or everything is
settled now it would take another five to seven years
to have everything organized. We were told we can't set
up a trust.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Now, yeah, that's a great question. So you can absolutely
set up a trust, and you have to look at
it in terms of what are the goals of the trust.
And this is going to lead us right into our
conversation that we were going to start anyway. So it's
perfect call. A revocable trust can be done. It avoids probate,
it manages assets. But the situation that you're in right now,
(17:45):
where you have a fractured hip, this is life happening
right and you have the need for potentially ongoing long
term care. And when we have this conversation, one of
the critical questions we ask is what was her ability
to function before the broken him? Was she independent?
Speaker 5 (18:07):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Okay. So the rehabilitation for someone like that, the goal
is to bring them back up to the level they
were at before the broken hip, and that takes work.
She's going to have to work her hips off to
get back to that point because it's there's pain involved,
there is work involved. And if she can get back
(18:31):
to the point that she was before, you've got time
on your side. If she can't, right, if she needs
to stay in that nursing home because she can't go
home and she needs care more than can be provided
to her in her home, then you have a five
year look back. But that is not the end of
(18:51):
the story. Even with that five year look back, there
is planning that can be done and an ability even
at the eleventh hour, Mike, you can save about half
of your assets, so she can absolutely do a trust.
The worst case scenario, she saves about half of what
she has, and then you would look at the rest.
But if she has the ability to get back home
(19:14):
medicate home care, and this is the thing that a
lot of people don't know, Medicaid home care does not
have that five year look back. So if we can
get her back home, even with some you know, eight
hours a day of home health aids to help her
out in home, Medicaid will pay for that, and you
don't have that five year waiting period. So you can
(19:34):
create a trust today, qualify for Medicaid home care, and
get that process started immediately. So she has a lot
more options than you may have been told.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
Okay, so I'd like to add on to what Luz
just said for two things. First of all, your story
tells us that people need to get advice from people
who know what they're recommending. You don't want to get
this online, you don't want to get documents online. You
(20:08):
don't really want to get advice online, and that's really critical.
The other thing is in choosing whether you're going to
have a revocable trust, which your mother in law could
amend make changes or an irrevocable trust that you will
need to set the assets into a place where it
(20:30):
won't be counted for Medicaid eligibility. And that illustrates whether
your trust might be revocable and amendable or not. So,
and then you have to figure out which we could
help you with, how you can amend an irrevocable.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Trust, and there are ways to do that too. So Mike,
you were asking a question.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Yes, So, like I said, the lawyer told us that
we want the trust is too late now and all that,
and we're just trying to save the house and the
little money she has for her two daughters.
Speaker 3 (21:08):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
But if and now you're telling me, if Medicare and
home care will pay for I could we want to
have to wait for the five years.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
So there's a chance if we do a trust right
away here we could save the.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
House and stuff.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, you may want to get a
second opinion on that. We have some educational videos if
you want to go on our website at puro law
dot com. We do something called medicaid. Mondays. We've been
doing it for a couple of years now, So there's
a whole library of videos, and we have one on
nursing home eligibility thirty minute video. We have a thirty
(21:47):
minute video on home care eligibility and how the Medicaid
Trust plays into both. So we'd be happy to sit
down with you. The one thing you need to do
is really and you might have done this already, gather
up all of the information, all of her assets, titled
to the assets, how it's structured, What legal documents does
she have in place? Does the power of Attorney have
(22:08):
a gifting power? That's an important feature, So can a
gifting power. So the Power Attorney has various different powers
that can be put in. One of the things you
want to make sure is that there is a gifting
power in there so that if the need arises to
shift the house transfer title to the house, that power
is conveyed in the power of Attorney. So what we
(22:31):
would do is, in a consultation, go over all of
the information, all the documents, look at what and this
is going to be a kind of a day to day,
week to week thing as to how her rehab progresses.
But you want to start preparing for the transition home. Today.
They're gonna give you a notice and it hits real quick.
It's a forty eight hour notice where her rehab is done.
(22:54):
And they may have told you, you may have thought
that she has one hundred days of rehab. They can
terminate that rehab at any point in.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Time, so they're hoping for two week three have ands
she'll be back home.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Okay, Then you want to get a plan in place
and start looking at how do you find the aids?
How do you get the aids in We actually have
a seminar coming up that is going to talk about
exactly this. It's your home or the nursing home, and
it's going to have myself, my partner, Frank Hemming, and
a geriatric care manager Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who helps coordinate
(23:26):
that home care plan. And that seminar is April seventeenth
at one pm at the Colony Town Library. I'll give
more information on it, but that's also on our website. Thursday,
April seventeenth, one pm. Your home or the nursing Home.
We're going to talk about all the issues you just
brought up, Mike, And this is it's a critical time period,
so act fast, get something in place and have options
(23:50):
you want to explore those options today because when it's
time for her to come home, you need a plan,
you need a home care plan, and you need a
legal plan. We have some other callers on the line,
and stay with us because I have to take a
break for the news. Bad timing, but we do, so
stay with us. We'll be right back. We're going to
take a break for the news. Peter Strauss, Lupiro from
Pierre Connor and Strauss. Have a great morning, and stay
(24:12):
with us for the second half of the show. We'll
be right back from Pierre Connoran Strauss. We have a
caller James on the line, and if you want to
call us you have questions about planning, trusts, the things
that we're talking about today. Eight hundred talk WGY. That's
eight hundred eight two five, five, nine, four nine and
good morning, James, Welcome to Life Happens.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Hey, good morning. I would recommend you guys are a
law firm that specializes in some of this uh preparation
for getting older and maybe guiding some of these I
just listened to the caller you were talking to, guiding
them through some of the challenges they're about to face
(24:55):
with their mother. That's now had a broken hip. There's
an entire opportunity out there in this world for a
company to embrace the challenges of this part of life. Literally,
we just went through this over five years in my
family with my mom and she recently passed, you know,
(25:16):
lover to pieces and we dealt with it right straight
through COVID. She broke her hip, just like this lady
that you just were talking about. She went into a
rehab facility that was during COVID. She was in rehab
for sixteen months. I couldn't see her. I couldn't none
(25:36):
of our siblings could go see her or visit her.
We ended up pulling her out, bringing her home. She's
got a seventeen room Victorian house, and that one part
of that house was prepared to have her living there
as a person with severe disability. So we had to
go through the construction phases of remodeling the home, and
(25:57):
then we had to get caregivers care how much money
you have, you can have all the money in the world,
but to get real, good quality caregivers that can help
you twenty four to seven, it's almost impossible. So the
challenges involved in this are absolutely off the charge. There
are programs out there that the state and federal will
(26:20):
help you with. But the hoops that you got to
go through and the waiting periods you got to go through,
you're at the mercy of the system. I'm telling you,
it is the most unreal thing you'll ever go through.
You could be a young couple gonna have a baby, okay,
and you've been senting you you've had no children for
the first three years of your marriage, and now you've
(26:41):
got a serious, a serious change of time in your
lives as having your first child. When your parents get
old and they are no longer able to be on
their own. It's just like having kids coming into the family.
Even worse though, because the challenges that are involved in
the all of the healthcare visits and everything that they
(27:03):
can be having. And then they go through phases because
they've been very independent all their lives, they go through
phases of depression and all kinds of issues of their
own that are overwhelming. They I'm not saying they're looking
to commit suicide, but they can be very difficult to
deal with. They don't want to eat, they don't want
to eat certain foods, they don't want to go to
(27:23):
the bathroom when they need to. I could go on
and on and on of five years of living with this,
and I'm telling you, somebody needs to start a company
that can understand every aspect of this. I'm talking about
lining up contractors to be able to do work. I'm
talking about every phase of taking care of elderly at home,
(27:47):
because ultimately that's where it needs to be is in
your house. That's where they're the most happy, is when
they're in their own space. Very few, yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Could not agree with you more. And anyone who has
been a caregiver like you have for five years and
you have the role reversal of a parent who had
took care of you and wiped your snotty nose when
you were a kid, and now all of a sudden
they're in need of hands on care and they're not
the same person that they were when they were nurturing
(28:17):
you as your parent. Now you have to nurture them
as your parent, and the child becomes the caregiver. So
there's a tremendous role reversal, a lot of psychological issues.
And fortunately there actually is a company that I started
that does this, and we're gonna have them on next
(28:38):
week and the company is called Ever Home Care Advisors.
And no, I didn't set James up for this call,
but the litany of issues that you just outlined is
what every caregiver goes through when you have this situation.
And there is no manual out there, there is no
training out there to be a caregiver. But Her Home
(29:00):
Care Advisors has social workers, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists.
They come into the home, they do a full analysis
of the home and they give you a written care
plan that outlines all the things that need to be done.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
Now.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
The time to do this, James, is not when your
parent has broken the hip and is in the hospital.
You got a week to get it done. The time
to do this is in advance. And that's you hit
it so squarely on the head. Ever Home Care Advisors
located right here in Albany. Diane Miklgottabiowski is going to
(29:39):
be on with us next week. She's the director of
that company, and this is exactly what they do. And
not only that, but they have developed technology to assist
you as the caregiver in managing what's going on in
the home and some really great ideas and things that
need to be brought in because and I'm sure you've
told you haven't really touched on this, but how has
your experience been with your mom and healthcare system?
Speaker 3 (30:02):
It was very difficult. I mean, my sister think. I
mean I always questioned my sister why she retired at
fifty eight, But my gosh, am I glad she did
because she had the time to be able to focus
and really really get involved in the part you're about
to talk about. My sister took that thing, you know,
and ran with it, and she really really helped my
(30:23):
mom process with the medical side of it, with the
legal side of it, with every side of it. Laura
jumped right in there and really did an amazing job.
But that's the point I want to make, is that,
and you just said it, all the preparation that you
can do, you can't do enough. You can start this
(30:43):
at thirty, and I guarantee you when you're eighty and
you got these issues, you haven't done enough yet. There's
so much involved. So to have an asset of this
operation that you're about to start, this company that has
all of the resources, all of the people, with the
intelligence and the understanding of every hoop and every step.
(31:05):
I mean, it needs to be an a to Z system.
And even with a to Z, I guarantee you there's
gonna be letters that no one even knew about it
in alphabet that are going to pop up in the middle.
So it is unbelievable. It is unbelievable the challenges that
come with what's go about to happen to a lot
of folks.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
I hope you can join us on April seventeenth at
one o'clock. I'm gonna let you make the speech to
the audience because you just covered not many of the
issues that we face. It's one pm, April seventeenth at
the Colony Town Library. Your home are the nursing home?
Are you prepared? Are you ready to hunker down at
home and bring in services if and when that becomes necessary.
(31:43):
So many people don't think about that.
Speaker 2 (31:46):
I'd like to just supplement what Lou said. You're absolutely right,
starting early is the key to it. But I have
to caution you that there are many not for profit
organizations who do provide a great deal of these services,
but with what's going on with the federal budget, many
(32:07):
of them are going to have to cut back their services.
So the private market will have to step up and
provide the services that are necessary, but that may also
be difficult. So for the next year or so, we
have to see how this is going to settle down.
But the not for profits who or the hospitals or
(32:29):
social service agencies are going to be very badly hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:35):
Absolutely. So the trust that we're talking about is something
that aids in this and when you create it properly,
it has enough flexibility. Medicaid becomes the payment source at
some point because the care is so expensive, and when
you have Medicaid you have to know how to get
(32:57):
financially qualified. We will cover on April seventeenth, and you
have to know how to access the care. And as
you said, the unicorn out there is that caregiver. They're
hard to find, hard to keep. So having a professional
who has all of the resources available to them, working
with agencies like the New York State Office for Aging
(33:19):
and your County Office for Aging, working with a managed
long term care company, working with independent providers. There are
people out there in the marketplace who are in home caregivers.
How do you organize that, how you bring them in,
how do you find them? All of that is essential,
and trust me, no one I couldn't when my mom
(33:40):
had Alzheimer's and I was the caregiver. I had to
hire a professional care manager to do these things because
it was just not within my scope. And there are
professionals out there. If you want to look it up,
it's ever Homecareadvisors dot com. You can take a look.
Diane and Nina Cressanda, one of their social workers, will
(34:00):
be on with us next week at nine am, so
you can listen then, and I hope you can all
join us on April seventeenth. These are the issues that
we're going to dig into in today's world. How do
you plan and prepare and if you're in crisis, how
do you deal with it? Because James, these issues are
top of mind for people like you. You dealt with
it with your mom. Other people have to think about
(34:22):
it in advance to have that plan in place. And
James has left the building. James, thank you for that call.
That was absolutely on target. And Peter, let's talk about
the trust that we're on now. We talked about wills
and trusts for kids. Let's talk a little bit about
this irrevocable trust that maybe isn't so irrevocable, and we
(34:47):
call it a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, and the Medicaid
Asset Protection Trust on its face, it says all over
the document that it's irrevocable. There are certain parameters that
you have to have. You do not act as your
own trustee. So in this case, you're gonna choose your children,
or you're gonna choose another third party to be your trustee.
(35:11):
And you're gonna have assets like your home, your stocks,
bank accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, real estate, rental properties,
all of those things go into this trust. And James
and the prior caller might point it up that everybody
here's a five year wait. Oh, I have the wait
five years for nursing home. But most people don't want
(35:36):
to be in the nursing home. So when you use
this trust, Medicaid is available to you the next month.
Right away, you get the plan done, you can apply
for Medicaid the following month. Then you're working with people
like ever home care advisors to find the care, put
the plan in place, help to manage the care, bring
(35:57):
in things like sensors, cameras, apps that can govern medication management,
and visits and transportation. All of those things are available
if you know where to find them. And the Medicaid
Asset Protection Trust unlocks that Medicaid door, so you can
use assets to private pay and you can use assets
(36:22):
in the trust to access Medicaid because they are protected
within that trust envelope. And Peter, there are kind of
two classes of assets that we deal with. One is houses,
real estate, bank accounts, and the other now is retirement accounts.
And I'm sure in your career you've seen this. I
know in my forty one years of practice, the type
(36:43):
of assets that clients have today is vastly different than
what they had forty years ago or sixty years ago.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
Well, that's absolutely correct, and there are some disadvantages to
the app. You give up control, of course, but your
trustees are people you trust, have confidence and take in
and you can get all of the income from the
assets that are placed in that trust. And then of
(37:15):
course that where there are complicated rules about the amount
of income you can keep in how you protect anything
beyond that, which is a discussion for our Medicaid Monday programs.
But you can't have direct payments to yourself of the
principle of the trust. But those distributions if the income
(37:36):
isn't enough to maintain your standard of living and pay
for your needs, plus you get your Social Security, then
you can make distributions to other people who just happily
may wish to assist you by making payment of some
of your expenses. I do have to say that while
(38:01):
lou was absolutely correct at the present time funding putting
your assets into this Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, there's no
waiting period. But just before COVID, New York passed the
rule that would have imposed a two and a half
year lookback period, in other words, a waiting period that
(38:23):
you might have to have imposed upon you. That law
would not created. A two and a half year lookback
period was suspended at the time COVID when it happened,
and it's still unsuspense and for a bunch of complicated reasons.
It could go into effect either at the end of
(38:44):
twenty twenty five or possibly at the end of twenty
twenty six. So if people need to do this kind
of planning, they need to call firms like ours and
do the planning sooner than later, because otherwise they may
be a wait rather than just doing it now when
there would be no waiting period.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. When people come into us and sit down, they've
heard a lot of things. There are a lot of
myths out there about medicaid and trusts and oh, my
kids are going to control my life and I'm going
to have to run to them for money. That is
not how this works. So when you create the trust,
and what we do is when we sit down, we
have an advance who your family is, who you, who
(39:29):
your people are that are going to be your trustees,
what your assets are, and we put it all into
a flow chart for our clients. And most people are visuals.
I don't know about you, but when I hear things
and you're trying to put it's like the bubbles over
someone's heading a cartoon, all of these different ideas and
you're trying to assimilate them into your own situation. When
(39:50):
you see it on paper and you see, okay, I
have an IRA or a four oh one K or
four h three B in New York State, a lot
of people don't know that those assets are exempt for
medicaid purposes. So we put them in their own place
on the float chart, and those stay in your name.
(40:10):
So if you have a five hundred thousand dollars IRA
one hundred thousand dollars IRA. That is your asset, and
you don't have to give it up. You keep it
right where it is, and that's part of the plan,
so you can access that IRA at any time. You're
also going to have a certain amount of cash in
your name. For a single individual, you can keep thirty
(40:30):
two thousand dollars and still qualify for Medicaid. So we
have in the middle of the float chart you with
maybe fifty thousand or sixty thousand, whatever the cash is
that you want in your checking account, and you have
all of your income sources flowing into that checking account,
and that's your money. So you've got the IRA, that's
(40:50):
your money. You've got the checking account, savings account, that's
your money. And then you deal with the Medicaid Asset
Protection Trust with those other assets that you want to protect.
So when you put your home into this trust, you
virtually own the home. You own the equitable interest in
the home because you have the right to live there
for the rest of your life. So you're not giving
up your home. Your trust has your home and you
(41:13):
are the beneficiary of the trust. It keeps all your
same tax benefits. So if you have a star exemption
or a veterans exemption, it gets a step up in
basis you can sell it and get your capital gains exclusion.
So the home is one of the first assets that
we put into the trust, and then we look at
what the other assets are. Do you have a brokerage account, Well,
you keep the income from that, but the investments keep
(41:34):
growing inside the trust. Do you have life insurance that
has cash value that goes into the trust? Do you
have other financial accounts CDs things like that, those go
into the trust. Do you have deferred annuities not tax
qualified but to standard deferred annuities? They can go into
the trust and the trust you appoint a trustee, but
(41:55):
you have the string to pull. If something happens and
that trustee isn't performing to your liking, you fire them.
You have the absolute discretion over who your trustee is
going to be at any moment in time. More importantly,
you get to choose the beneficiaries and you can change
them at any time, so you have control over the
(42:16):
trustee control over the beneficiaries. Peter mentioned earlier that you
can actually get principle out to those beneficiaries who you're
selecting as you go, and they could then use the
money for anything, including to buy you a car. So
the money stays available to your kids and they can
then use it for your benefit. And you control trustees
(42:38):
and you control beneficiaries and Peter, the last feature of
the trust that I want to just highlight is that
when you're controlling the beneficiaries and you have a statute
in New York that says I can actually revoke an
irrevocable trust with the consent of the beneficiaries. Now you
(42:58):
have a very very flexible structure.
Speaker 2 (43:02):
One other, very very important benefit of this Medicaid asset
protection trust is there's no claim against the assets in
that trust at the time the Medicaid recipient dies, because
Medicaid's claims are only against probate assets. So another advantage
of avoiding probate. By having all your assets in the trust,
(43:27):
you don't have to worry about the county coming after
your house, so it doesn't pass on to your spouse
or children.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
So you win the game, the short term game, and
then the long term game. We talked about this early
in the show is creating trusts for your kids. So
the assets are protected for them and they flow right
out of your Medicaid Asset Protection Trust. We have a caller,
Tom and Gilderlin. Good morning Tom, Yes, good morning Love.
Speaker 6 (43:55):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I'm good?
Speaker 6 (43:56):
How you doing doing pretty good? Thanks? I just tuned in,
So I apologize if this has already been covered this morning,
but I did have a question on on the Medicaid
Trust that we have irrevocable trust. And of course, as
you know, it's got the five year lookback period.
Speaker 1 (44:14):
And the best question is we did discuss that it
absolutely has a five year look back for nursing home care,
yet there is no look back for Medicaid home care,
which is where most people start. You want to be
at home, right, medicaids available at home. There is no
waiting period for Medicaid at home.
Speaker 2 (44:32):
Correct.
Speaker 6 (44:33):
So with that said, my question then would be what
what is available after the five year period? Can that
money now he starts to be withdrawn and give given
to the kids with no penalties? What happens after the
five year period? Yeah, and we're still around, you know,
we're still living, We're still at home or fine?
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Yeah, and that the intent is that the money stays
in the trust, and it's available for you long term
through the kids. That's kind of the essence of the plan.
But there is no reason. Let's say you have a
grandchild going to college. You want to contribute twenty thousand
dollars to their college education. The trust will be able
to accommodate that. If you want to benefit your kids
(45:16):
during your lifetime. The transfer right when when the trust
gets funded, when the assets go in, that's when the
five year clock starts. When the assets go out of
the trust, there is no additional penalty for them because
it's already been penalized when it goes in.
Speaker 6 (45:32):
So, for example, then after let's say five to five
years goes by, and I want to withdraw the money
equally to I have three children, so withdraw that. So
let's say, for example, I'd like them to put a
down payment on a house. Can that be done absolutely?
Speaker 2 (45:51):
As you just say, really absolutely?
Speaker 6 (45:54):
And then let's say a year later one of us
ends up in a nursing home. They can not go
back say hey, wait a minute, you know you distribute
that money. We need that money back now.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Once it's in the trust, it's outside of your your
reach for medicaid purposes. And there's no additional penalty for
transfers out of the trust.
Speaker 6 (46:12):
So that five year peer that's the magic number. Then
the five year we're golden. After that we can distribute
that money absolutely.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
And again we have to keep it clear for nursing
home purposes.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Not for homecare. Right.
Speaker 6 (46:24):
Oh, that's wonderful. Okay, that's perfect. Well then you answer
my question, Lou. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (46:29):
All right, Tom, thanks for the call. We do have
to take one more quick short break and we'll come
back to wrap it up with Peter Strauss. Lupiro, thanks
for listening. We'll be right back a few minutes left.
And I want to kind of pull all of this
together in terms of trust planning, certainly getting trusts in
place for children who are minors, getting trust in place
for yourself, getting trust in place for the future, for
(46:51):
long term care purposes, and getting that five year clock
for nursing homes started. There are so many options that
people have that they don't know about. They call it
third tier knowledge. We don't know what we don't know.
A good consultation will walk you through all of your options,
everything that's available to you under the law. And these
(47:12):
are things that need to be done in advance the
revocable trust. We didn't spend a lot of time on Peter.
But for those people that don't really have the need
for long term care planning, they have sufficient income to
pay that bill. The nursing homes now are running around
two hundred thousand dollars a year, or maybe you've been
smart enough to buy a long term care insurance policy
(47:35):
or a life insurance policy that will cover your long
term care needs. The revocable trust for people that don't
have the long term care need is a tremendous vehicle.
And just talk a little bit about the probate process
and what it means for families to have a private,
secure administration of an estate as opposed to the public
(47:59):
fiasco that probate sometimes becomes.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
Peter, are you there, No, I lost you for a minute, Louke,
could you repeat it?
Speaker 1 (48:06):
Oh, just talk the advantage of the revocable trust. We
go through this with families all the time, and they'll
come in and they say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm still
administering Mom's of state. It's been four years now and
we don't have any end of the tunnel in sight.
We have assets that are complicated. We have all of
these issues in probate. The advantage of having a private
(48:28):
administration where you control it through your trustees in a
revocable living.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
Trust, well, the benefits are area. I mean, it's a
smooth assisted it's a legal assistance to your life because
if you become incapacitated, you don't have to struggle with banks,
or insurance companies or or brokers, because it's easier to
(49:02):
act and deal with these entities as a trustee than
under a power of attorney. Banks don't like powers of attorney.
They're so disruptive of your life. When you're trying to
help out a person who's been ill for a while,
they keep refusing. In the legislature a number of years
(49:22):
ago had to pass a bill saying it's it's illegal
to refuse to honor a power of attorney and these
for that. They do it anyway, but they don't do
it with trusts. Because most banks are used to being trustees.
They have corporate trust departments, so life becomes smoother, and
(49:46):
at the time of your death it's even more smooth
because you don't have to deal with the surrogates court,
which is under budgeted and understaffed and possibly in some
cases under educated.
Speaker 1 (50:00):
We will go there, but I'm going to let that
Peter be the last word. We got about thirty seconds left.
Thank you Peter Strauss for joining me today. Thank you
for the calls, they've been wonderful. Remember April seventeenth at
one pm Colonytown Library, your home or the nursing home.
We have other educational opportunities, a trust administration workshop that
(50:20):
really digs into the trusts that's coming up on June third.
Always check our website at pierolaw dot com. Thank you
for joining us this morning. We had a great show.
We hope you can join us again next week. Whenever
Homecare Advisors joins us here
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.