Life Happens 04-05

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to this week's edition of Life Happens Radio.
This is our weekly radio program for individuals and their
families where we address the challenges we all face as
we age. We talk about aging as a lifestyle, the
issues that must be confronted in the careful planning that's
required to avoid crises in the future. Life Happens will
provide you with tools to educate and prepare yourself for

(00:21):
events like preparing for retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning to pay for nursing, home and home care, planning
for special needs, wills and trusts, planning for an untimely death,
and resolving disputes in and out of court. As the
laws and necessities for planning and care continue to evolve,
Life Happens will help you make smart decisions to ensure

(00:42):
that your goals are reached and your needs are met
for both yourself and your family. So again, welcome everybody.
Happy Rady Saturday. I'm Frank Hemming. I'm one of the
partners of Pierre, O'Connor and Strauss. We are a full
service elder law firm located here in Latham, and I
thank you. I'm not sitting alone in studio. I'm joined

(01:03):
by my most frequent radio co host, recently, Miss Patty Whale,
and Hi Patty.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Hi Frank morning.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Are you good? Thank you for taking some time to
spend with me and the listeners today.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Oh of course, it's an honor and a pleasure to
be here with you this morning.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Later already, all.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Right, that's fine. So it's it's a little depressing outside,
but it is getting warmer. The snow has been gone
for a little while, although I did see snow at
least flakes in the forecast for like next week a
little bit. Oh no, but I don't think it's gonna
amount to anything. It seems like it's going to be
too warm to accumulate or at least, let's hope, but
not sure. The bad weather is completely gone, so let's

(01:40):
cross our fingers. But it is a spring So it's
the first spring show since since I've been on, Yeah,
because it was winter last time we were here.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
So we have a few things on the agenda today.
So obviously because it's spring, the topic for the show
that we wanted to put out there was kind of
spring clean. Whether that's you know, updating your plan, making
your plan just cleaning up your plan. But before we
get to that, we've got some other things I wanted
to dive into. So, as usual, I like to start

(02:12):
with either stories or recent current events, that kind of thing. So,
so we've got a new celebrity death to talk about
just a little bit, really we do.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
So.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I guess you either didn't see it or you already
don't remember, which is fine. That's why that's why we're
doing this. So we lost an actor by the name
of Val Kilmer. Oh I didn't know that, okay, I say, so,
so you know.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Who he is. No, I don't know who that is.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, So so let's let's educate Patty a little bit.
So Val Kilmer was a was a very prominent actor
for a while.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
He was only sixty five when he passed away, so
he was I would say, a bit on the younger side.
But he uh he did have some pretty uh serious
health issues the last few years. He had throat cancer.
I don't know if he had some other things going on,
but he had some stuff medically going on. So when
I saw the news, while I was sad, I can't
say that I was shocked, just because again I knew

(03:06):
he hadn't been well, so he's been. His resume here
is pretty pretty substanti, pretty substantial. I can tell you
I'm looking at all of his movies now, I can
tell you without having looked at this list, he's in
probably two of my top ten films of.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
All time, if I had to put them down. Really.
So one is Top Gun. Oh okay, yes, I've heard
of that movie. So he was.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
He was Iceman who was one of the other pilots
in Top Gun. Obviously not Tom Cruise. Okay, he was
one of the other pilots in Top Gun. So he
was in the movie. I wouldn't say his role was
huge in Top Gun, but he was in Top Gun.
And I have seen that movie twenty times. Because it's
I've said this before, I don't mind putting this on
the radio. It's the perfect date movie because it's it's

(03:58):
good for guys because we watch it, every one of
us wants to go be a fighter pilot. It's good
for girls because it's got some romance and it's got
some other things going on. It's got a good story.
So everyone typically, I think, would be happy when you
watch Top Gun.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's true. That's I agree with.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
That, so he and then he was in he had
He did come back for kind of a quick cammeo
in Top Gun Maverick, which was the sequel to Top Gun.
So we'll talk a little bit about that in just
a little bit. The other really famous movie or favorite
movie of mine that that he was in, again without
having looked, is a movie called Heat, which it's it's

(04:33):
him and al Pacino, where sorry, it's de Niro and Pacino.
They're the main characters, but val Kilmer is part of
a group of like thieves and things that are in
the movie. So again he doesn't have the biggest role
in it, but he's in that movie. And now that
i'm looking, here's another one of my probably not top ten,
but another movie that I enjoy very much.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
It's a movie called The Ghost in the.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Darkness Okay, which it's from nineteen ninety six, which didn't
realize it was that long ago, so now I feel
extra old, I think. So it's a it's a movie
with Michael Douglas and essentially the premise of the movie
is Val Kilmer. It's in the eighteen hundred sometime, and

(05:16):
he's he goes to Africa because they want to build
this bridge, and so he's the engineer that wants to
build this bridge, and the problem is that they are
having trouble building this bridge because there are these wild
lions that keep like killing people there as they're building
this bridge. And it's he works with then Michael Douglas
to figure out how they're going to solve this this

(05:38):
wild lion problem in Africa. And it's a really, really
good movie. I'm probably not doing the plot justice, but
I really enjoyed that movie when I watched it, so
so and obviously he was in a whole bunch of
other things too, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. I know that
I saw him and liked a lot Deja Vu, which
is a Denzel movie, So clearly I'm going to love

(05:58):
that because Denzil is Mike and then most recently Top
Gun Maverick. So he so he was in again, plenty
of movies. I'm sure plenty of people would either know
who he is or recognize him if you saw him.
So obviously, rest in peace to Val Kilmer. His net worth,
according to the Internet, from what I could tell, was
somewhere between I think ten to twenty five million estimated,

(06:22):
so not talking small amounts of money here. And one
of the things that came up in the news article
that I was reading about him that I would not
have thought of. And honestly, I don't even think I
really even knew, to be honest, is so as I
as I mentioned before, he had throat cancer, so he
had a very difficult time speaking in the later parts

(06:43):
of his life because I think of the treatments and
the cancer and all that kind of stuff. So I
believe in Top Gun Maverick, they actually did some cool
things with AI and technology where they digitally recreated his voice.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Interesting, So I'm not sure that like he and though
he's like looking to speak the actual spoken words in
the movie, I'm not sure that's his voice that actually
you're hearing, and it might be a digital recreation of
his voice.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, at least again that's what I read. So if
I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but that's what I read. But
why I think it's interesting is because now that he's gone,
if there is this digital place for Valcimer's voice to
live and be used, well, then his will, his trust,
his estate planning documents might control like his intellectual property

(07:35):
and the use of like his likeness or his voice,
the likeness of his voice, or his voice in general.
So I don't know whether that was anticipated by him
prior to his passing. I don't think I've ever seen
a document that we've done that specifically talks about like
my ai digitally created voice after my death, but it

(07:57):
might be something we have to think about.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
Yeah, that's really yeah, because like the article was, like,
imagine if you're just sitting on your couch watching TV
and then you see a commercial come on, and you
know the spokesman telling you to use this product was
Val Kilmer's voice.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Because again, if they have this digitally recreation of it,
just because he's gone doesn't mean hypothetically they couldn't use
it for something or try to market things with it.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, so I have to say, so, if Val Kimer
starts telling us to buy stuff, well, no, it's not
really him obviously because he's gone. But it'll be interesting
to see if something like that either comes up with
with either him or his estate or maybe future celebrities
that passed in the future, So who knows. So there's

(08:45):
the celebrity news for him, and then I have a
quick update on somebody else that we spoke about last
time that we were here.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
So last time I think.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right before the last show that we did together, Patty,
I think that's right when we lost Gene Hackman, yes,
and his wife yes. So obviously some some further news
has come out about the whole circumstances around.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
That that we're very odd right, Well, I mean we were.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I don't think we were speculated too much, but I
think we both said seems strange, yeah, right to have
them both pass in the house and that stuff. So
now I think they have a much better idea as
to like the order of events and what happened. So
the reason why I'm bringing it up now is so
there was an Entertainment Weekly article that talked about, you know,

(09:30):
updates on on Gene Hackman's case and things, and the
headline is Gene Hackman's three children not named as successors
in eighty million dollar will what. But so I'm gonna
be very just want to I want to be careful
about how I how I explained this. I'm not sure
it's as bad as that headline makes it seem, right

(09:50):
because I've read this a few times and it's possible
maybe I'm either under or overthinking it, or maybe the
article is a little you know, under underdeveloped here, or
maybe the journalist who wrote it isn't going to pick
up on the same things that I would, given that
there they write news articles and things that I do
state planning. But according to this, Gene Hackman and his

(10:13):
will named his wife as the sole beneficiaria of his
estate with no backups, right, which isn't great. She or
he named her as the personal representative of his estate first,
so obviously we know that's.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
Not going to happen.

Speaker 1 (10:29):
And then where here's why I think it may not
be as bad as it sounds. So it says he
also named her the successor trustee of the Gene Hackman
Living Trust. Now why that would be in a will,
Not really sure of that. That's not really where you'd
normally put that, but at least it sounds like there's
a trust. Yeah, So again just kind of nitpicking here.

(10:53):
So if we did a trust for Gene Hackman, typically
we would do it where he would have a trust
or or several trusts, depending on kind of what we
were looking to do. And then in his will, typically
the first things in his will would be poor over provisions, right,
which just says, if there's anything that winds up in
my estate, we're going to move it over into the
name of my trust or trusts or however, again, the

(11:15):
plan's supposed to kind of distribute from trusts. So if
his will actually is a poorover will which tried to
essentially give everything to either his wife and if not
his wife, then his trust, as long as the trust
is then set up to go to his children or
you know, whatever he wanted to have happen, then I'm

(11:36):
not sure that him just not naming them directly in
the will is as bad as it sounds, because again
it sounds like there is some other there are documents
that play here that maybe we don't have all the
information about.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, what resident do you know? Like where did he die?

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Would state New Mexico?

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Okay, Well, what I was thinking of is that in
some states they have, you know, that rule where you
can incorporate by reference, like I think.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Florida has that. That's a really good point.

Speaker 2 (11:59):
So you know, in New York you can't just say,
you know, in your will, hey look at my trust
for the terms and you know the provisions, like you
have to actually list everything out again, yeah, but in
states like Florida you can just incorporate by reference where
you can just you know, direct the judge to, you know,
look at the other document. So I don't know what
the laws in New Mexico are, but perhaps you know

(12:22):
that could be.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yes, it's entirely possible, and I don't know. And just
in Patty, that's a really good point that I didn't
even think of, so kudos to you.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
But the other thing I will say is I don't think.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
That his stuff was updated very or very close to
the time of his death because the person he named
after his wife as his executor was his former attorney,
who had died in twenty nineteen. Oh wow, so so
so then we were two executors down. Luckily, the third
person named was also an attorney. She is still living,

(12:56):
so she was the one that actually started filing papers
with the core and things. And the wife's will did
the exact same thing with the name of executors. She
named her husband than this first attorney who had passed,
and then the second attorney who's now alive. So so

(13:16):
whether they I don't you know. The wills were dated
June seventh of two thousand and five.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
You know, so they're around twenty years old, so I
don't know if they resided in New Mexico when they
wrote them, right, right, because that's all that would also
be important because they could have been in a corporation
by reference state when they wrote them, and if New
Mexico isn't, then they don't quite work or vice versa. Yeah,
so who knows. I think obviously more things will come

(13:43):
out as time goes on, but I just wanted to
kind of give the update on this that we are
starting to get some information about this, but it does
sound like there were some documents in place. The other
thing that comes up with this story, and we did
talk about this on the last show, is the survivorship
of the spouses from one another right, and trying to

(14:05):
order and trying to figure out order of death and
how that all goes because the wife's plan does go
a little differently depending about order of death. It sounds
like so she left everything to her husband if he
survived her, which he did, but we don't think it
was for very long. And again according to the news article,
it looks like he had to survive her for ninety

(14:25):
days to be deemed to have survived her under the
terms of her will, we know that didn't happen. So
if he didn't survive her, then I believe her estate,
if there's anything, then goes to a charitable trust that
was then going to either be in creation or would
be created for, you know, charitable purposes, for whatever she

(14:47):
and Jeane wanted to put it towards. It doesn't give
a lot of information about that, so essentially, just to
kind of flesh that out just a little bit before
our break, if Jeane had survived her, everything was supposed
to go into this Gene Hackman Living Trust, where then
it would likely filter to his beneficiaries. And I'm assuming
that that was all discussed with them when they did

(15:08):
all this, and I'm assuming she was pretty much fine
with that. But because he didn't survive her by ninety days,
he's then treated as if he did not survive her,
and then everything wouldn't go into this trust. It would
then go according to the other provisions of her will,
and it sounds like it's going to go to charitable
bequests of some kind or a charitable trust of some kind.
So again, order of death matters doesn't always matter in

(15:32):
this case. It matters, So Jean's kids might wind up
getting just stuff from his side rather than both sides.
But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
So why don't we take our first break. I've been
talking a lot, so let's give the listeners a break too.
So we'll take a break and then we'll come back
right after this. Got to take a drink, got to
give the voice a little rest there. But I hope

(15:54):
that was interesting for everybody to kind of get some
celebrity news. I think it's always interesting to see how
the other the other half lives, or at least set
up things to go is that when they pass. So
so I've got some client stories. So, Patty, we were
talking before the show that you didn't think you had any,
So any come to mind, just because I don't want
to step on you if you did.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Not yet, but I'll keep thinking.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Okay, sounds good, all right. So I had I had
some consultations recently that I think brought up some interesting
things that I wanted to discuss on the radio. One
goes right in line with the theme of the show,
so I think I'll save that one until we get
into the kind of the topic for today. So the
first so the other one is kind of a it's kind.

Speaker 3 (16:36):
Of a.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
Case study of maybe what not to do, or at
least you know, some things you may not want to
do or want to consider a little earlier. So had
I had a meeting with a son this week and
he wanted to talk about his mom and trying to
get some care for her. So mom is I believe
ninety five, ninety five or ninety six she is.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
She's getting up.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
There, yeah, living with him because she has dementia and
Alzheimer's going on. I don't think I think she's got
some other age related health issues going on too, where
she just can't really take care of her herself. At
this point, she like can't make her meals. She needs

(17:18):
assistance getting to the bathroom. You know, she needs a
lot of help. And essentially they've got an aid with
her just about twenty four hours a day, or the
or the sun helps, so there's always somebody with her,
whether it's a paid aid or the family. And she
doesn't have much left in terms of finances and things,
which is why they wanted to talk to us, because
he wanted to see if we could do some medicaid

(17:40):
things for her, and unfortunately, there are some other hurdles
here that just don't have easy solutions unfortunately. So, for one,
her main asset that she still has is her house.
So her house is sitting vacant at the moment. And
because there wasn't a lot of money or or you know,

(18:03):
liquid funds available to mom, the family's already taken her
reverse mortgage against the property, so they've already used a
lot of the equity in it. So I think there's
about one hundred and twenty five or so equity left.
They can't draw on the reverse mortgage anymore. Either the
draw period's over or they've maxed it out. Either way,
it doesn't really matter. But so house is kind of

(18:24):
tapped for what it could be. For now, she's about
one hundred and twenty five left inequity. She's got about
two thousand dollars or so in the bank, and she
brings in about two thousand dollars a month in social
Security and that's about it. So when we talk medicaid,
we have to talk about eligibility financially medically. So medically

(18:45):
here we're not concerned about. She clearly needs some help,
so that's not a concern, but we wanted to talk
financial about finances here, and that's where some of the
issues start coming in. So so this house, you know,
I'm very used to saying, well, your house doesn't count
for medicaid purposes. Well, your house doesn't count as long
as you live in your house, and she doesn't live

(19:06):
in her house. She lives in the son's house, so
the house actually counts as an asset if she were
to apply for medicaid. So we couldn't apply for medicaid
for her with that house and her name. So that's
one problem. We typically like to solve that problem by
moving it to a trust. And now here's where the
second problems. Then, well, her son has a power of attorney,

(19:32):
doesn't have gifting powers on Oh, another another problem. There's
a second power of attorney because there have been some
family issues with some of the other siblings, other some
of the other children. So there's one version where it's
son and daughter. There's another version that just has son

(19:54):
on it. So you know, there's kind of some inconsistencies there,
which is that's fine. You know you can update your things,
but you want to maybe revoke your preer, your prior
documents when you.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Do it or you know that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
I don't think either of them specifically said that they
revoked any past ones, just based on my remembrance. So
they both could be technically active. So when you have
multiple active documents that that aren't doing the same things
or at least using the same people, that that can
present issues for obvious reasons. And the second power attorney

(20:30):
that has two people on it rather than one also
doesn't have gifting powers. Oh so we don't have any
gifting authorities. And Mom has had a dementia diagnosis for.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
Five or six years. If I had to take a guess,
it's a long time. It's not. It's not recent unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
So so we have a we have a likely a
capacity problem here where Mom doesn't sound like she has
the capacity to to do planning at this point. And unfortunately,
you know, and we try to we try to flesh
this out, I think pretty well when we talk about
it to either our clients here on the radio seminars.

(21:09):
But like, capacity is not cut and dry, it's a
sliding scale, if you will. Someone can have capacity and
then lose it that day, that week, that month, right,
Like it's not it's it's very hard to judge, you know,
at different times. The only way to really know whether
somebody has capacity really is for someone to be sitting

(21:31):
with them, meeting with them, and spending some time with
them and making their own determination on that. Doesn't sound
like mom has capacity most of the time based on
the suns you know telling me about her. And what
this gets harder is because if we don't think she
has capacity, then like we probably don't even really want
to get involved to try to update our stuff if

(21:54):
capacity is in question, if there's family quarreling going on,
that makes sense, right, because if a power of attorney
is done and she did not have capacity, it could
be challenged and it could be found to be invalid,
and then the transactions that it acted upon then could
be invalidated and just a mess, right, it could be

(22:15):
a mess. If everyone's on the same page, then we
still have to determine capacity. We still have to make
sure that that person has it. But obviously if everyone's
on the same page, planning is a little easier, yes, yeah,
but as soon as things aren't lining up, as soon
as people aren't on the same page, again red flags.
So so in this instance, I told him that I

(22:38):
thought the best avenue for him to help Mom would
be potentially to talk or think about whether he really
wants to potentially go and do a guardianship for her,
because the guardian could do all the medicaid planning that
we'd want them to do. A guardian could be given
the powers to create a trust. The guardian could be

(22:58):
given the power to make gift on her behalf, do
a Medicaid application on her behalf, you know, do all
the things that we would want to typically do to
set somebody up for getting care and getting Medicaid to
pay for it. But the unfortunate part with guardianship is
again it's public and it's litigation, and if there are

(23:18):
issues with the family, if he files for guardianship, nothing
is going to stop his other family members from potentially
challenging his appointment as guardian. So then if they start fighting,
then it gets messy and expensive and time consuming. And
Mom doesn't have a lot of money right The money
she really has is tied up in that house that

(23:39):
isn't liquid at the moment, So it's not really a
great situation. And unfortunately a lot of it could have
been planned for if they just had a better power
of attorney. So there's the quick story on how you
want to make sure your documents are they're good, that
they're in place, and that they do the actual thing

(24:00):
that he needed to do because he thought he was
fine and unfortunately I had some not great news to
talk to tell him.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
So with that said, we're coming up to.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
The news, So thank you for sticking with us through
the first half of the show. Patty and I are
going to talk about spring cleaning and cleaning up your
plan in the second half, so come on back right
after the news. And I'm Frank Hemming, one of the partners,
and I'm joined in studio with miss Patty Wheeland, one
of our associates. So before we jump into the topic,
I feel like I should do some advertising for us.

(24:29):
So we're going to do a seminar because we love seminars.
So we're going to do a seminar on Thursday, April seventeenth,
and it's going to be at the Colony Town Library
and the title of the program is Your Home or
the Nursing Home question mark, So essentially we're asking where
would you want to be your house or the nursing
home and I'd think I know how most people are

(24:52):
going to answer that question, but you never know. And
speaking at this event, it's going to be myself and
are Found partner, mister Lupieriro, and then our friends from
ever Home Care Advisors are also going to be joining
us too, So we're going to have some attorneys, we're
gonna have some care managers. So if you want to
come out to the library to come see us again,

(25:13):
Colonytown Library, it's from one one pm to two pm
on Thursday, April seventeenth. So if you want to come
and spend some time with us, you can register at
our website which is www dot pro law dot com
slash events, or you can give us just have a

(25:34):
just give our office a call, which number for the
office is five point eight four and we can sign
you up that way too. So we're hoping to see
a lot of people to come see us. All right,
spring cleaning, Patty, have you done any spring cleaning?

Speaker 2 (25:51):
I did, Actually it's a lot of cleaning. Yesterday I
had to go through some old clothes that I have,
some old clothes from honestly maybe embarrassing, but from like
college they still have I.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Mean, you're not going to put those put those on
on a weekend or something.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
No, I mean they're you know, they were like trendy pieces,
so they're not really in style anymore. You know, some
of them all better a little bit too small, like
you know, gotcha. So I did do some spring cleaning
last night.

Speaker 3 (26:17):
Actually that's great.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
I uh, I actually did some myself, I feel like,
and I didn't really plan on doing it. It was
more just we had some things going on in the
house and my wife constantly is is saying, I need
to like get some things in order. So I tried
to clean out some of my closet and stuff with
stuff I know I will not wear anymore either. It's
doesn't fit. It's been ten years since I wore it

(26:39):
last Like, am I going to miss it?

Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yep?

Speaker 1 (26:40):
So there was a bit Marie Condo vibes going on.
But so I did. I did get rid of some
stuff myself. So spring is a time of kind of
rebirth and and you know, reviewing things. So we thought
it would be a great time to talk about reviewing
your plan. And and we have an article here that
I have that I'm going to rely on if we

(27:01):
need more things to talk about but I had a really,
really good client meeting that goes right hand in hand
with this, So rather than talk about an article, I'd
rather talk a little bit about the people I met
with and kind of go from there. So I had
this nice couple come in. Now I'd met with them previously,
but it was because husband's sister has some needs going on.

(27:23):
We did some medicaid consultation work for her and things,
so he had come in first to really talk about her,
and his wife had come with him. Just because a
lot of this is confusing, a lot of people tend
to get a little either confused or overwhelmed, or they're
afraid they're going to be so they like to have
that second pair of hands and ears and things like that.
So I'd met this couple before, but they weren't coming

(27:45):
in for the sister this time. They were coming in
to talk about themselves, so it was nice to see
them again. So it was very nice. They came in
and came back, and we usually ask our prospective clients
to do some homework for us before they're come into
the office, so we asked them to complete a questionnaire
so that way we have some idea of like who
you are, who your family is, and some financial information,

(28:06):
just because again, if we're gonna try to give you
an idea of what we think is most appropriate, we
kind of need to know who you are and what
you're bringing to the table. So I'm looking at their
questionnaire and their stuff before I go into the meeting,
and says that they've done some planning but already, but
they want to take a look. They want it reviewed
and you know, maybe update some things and talk about
if they're s anything else that they should do because
they're getting older and they want to make sure things

(28:27):
are in place for them if something were to happen.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
So perfect great.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
So I sit down with them and they had a
trust not from us, but from another area firm who
does what we do. And while I'm not going to
say who it was, I will say it was a
very well done trust. It really did not have many
issues with it. It was one little nitpicky thing that
I didn't love, just because we just do it a
little differently, but perfectly fine. And they're past their five years,

(28:54):
so because their past five years, the issue that I
had really isn't going to come up at this point
because there's really no going to be a reason to
nitpick with that trust. At this point, it's past the
five years, so their house is in this trust, and
I think it was done in roughly twenty thirteen or so,
so about twelve is years ago if I'm remembering correctly.
So house is already off the table no matter what
happens to either one of them. So great, we're off

(29:16):
to a great start. They also had some retirement accounts,
so I think between them, I think there's four hundred
five hundred thousand retirement accounts combined, something like that. So
for those who may be new or are not very
knowledgeable about medicaid. So one of the benefits we have
of being in New York Medicaid wise is your retirement

(29:36):
accounts or exempt for Medicaid purposes as long as they're
in payment status, meaning you're taking your required minimum distributions.
These folks are past seventy three, so they have to
so their retirement acounts are already exempt two So before
we had to do anything, really get to tell them
your house is fine. It's then a trust that's fine,
and your retirement accounts are off the table. So we're

(29:57):
say we're doing good, right, you've done good so far.
And then we started looking into some of the other things.
So they have a brokerage account, so not a retirement account.
It's got about two d two hundred thousand dollars in it,
not in their trust, not exempt for medicaid, Okay, So
they wanted to talk a little bit about that. And

(30:20):
they had about one hundred or so in cash in
their bank accounts, you know, just savings accounts, that kind
of stuff, because their incomes are pretty decent.

Speaker 3 (30:29):
They don't make it.

Speaker 1 (30:30):
They don't make enough to pay for care if they
needed it, but they you know, they make more than
enough to cover their bills and they're not spenders. So
as time savings YS is cropped up yep. So they've
accumulated some cash in retirement, which is great, and they
have this brokerage account and I said, well, that's your
exposure right there, your cash and your brokerage account. Because

(30:51):
you've done a really good job protecting your house. Your
retirement accounts are exempt already. But if we're concerned about
if you need care of not having to spend all
that down to about thirty grand for each of you,
then we maybe want to do some planning for that say.
The other things that we looked at was their existing
their ancillary documents, like they did power of attorney, they
did healthcare proxy when they did their stuff, so their

(31:13):
their power of attorney was.

Speaker 3 (31:16):
Quite old.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
I don't think they updated that in twenty thirteen, so
I think that one was more from two thousand and two,
two thousand and three.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
It was a while, but it was long. It was
old enough.

Speaker 1 (31:27):
It was essentially two pages, and it's been quite a
while since the New York short form was two pages.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
Now.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
Again, it wasn't terrible. It did have gifting power on it,
so it didn't suffer from the defect that we just
talked about with the guy and his mom and not
being able to do a trust. But this one had
a different issue in it, and it's that the agents
were not in the order that they would want anymore.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Oh okay, because when.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
They did it, they did spouse first, and then they
did son, and then they did their daughters after their son.
And while they still like their son, they still have
a good relationship with their son, he's going through some
personal things that they thought one of their daughters would
be better suited now to take over. Yeah, of course
that's I mean, nothing bad, right, nothing bad has happened

(32:18):
enough like where we have to be concerned that he
was on it because something had happened. It's just they
just thought that there was better suited people at this
point because things had changed since when they did it.

Speaker 3 (32:29):
So we talked about that.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
And then same deal with the healthcare proxy where they
had all the kids on them, but the order wasn't
quite what they would want at this point. So you know,
so the more the or the kind of the setup
for this is they've done some planning already, so they're
not one of the people that have put it off

(32:52):
or didn't want to have the conversation. They've done a
lot of good work. But it sounds like it just
needs some updating. And that's exactly why we talk about
updating your plan every three to five years. You probably
want to have it reviewed because things like this can happen.
So let's take a little bit of that and step
and break that down a little bit. So, so my

(33:14):
plan for them was instead of doing or instead of
taking that brokerage account and that cash, instead of putting
it into their existing your avocal trust because that's one
option we have. I suggested, let's do a new one.
And the reason behind that is because we still have
that five year look back period for the nursing home.
And my thought was, the trust they have is safe,

(33:38):
the house in the trust is safe for the cash.
Let's not mess with it, right, if something happens to
your health now within the next five years, right, we
have to try to undo this, partially, revoke it, right,
do something with it. Let's not put the trust we
know that's safe at risk by messing with it, because
it was they were very happy just to have the

(34:00):
assurance that the first trust they did in the house
are protected at this point. So I said, well, you
seemed very relieved by that. Let's keep it that way, right.
The best hedge we have to keep it that way
is let's not mess with it. Right, So instead of
putting things in that trust, let's just do a new one.
And when we do a new one, it can work

(34:21):
very similarly to your old one. It'll be irrevocable. You
can name your daughter as your trustee because the son
is the trustee of the first one, right, which again
they're okay with. They're not planning on selling their house.
They're not planning and doing anything with it, so he's
not really doing anything with it. He hasn't really had
to do anything with it, so they're not upset with
him being trustee. So while we did discuss maybe wanting

(34:43):
to make a change in trustee of that first trust,
they said they were fine to leave him, so fine
with me. But on the new trust, they're going to
put the daughter first and put the other children back
on her up just in case, because again they think
there's the the daughter's in a better place to do it,
so we can clean that up. We could start running
the five year clock on everything right for the broker's

(35:05):
account and whatever amount of cash ultimately they want to
put in the trust, and then after five years, hopefully
then we protect everything because now everything's held in trust
or it's still in the retirement accounts. And they were
very on board with it. So we're going to be
working with them to kind of clean this up. But
again it's you know, they're doing the right things. They

(35:26):
did a plan, they're coming in, they're getting it reviewed,
they're talking about updates. Some things are fine, we're going
to leave them. Some other things might not be fine.
So we're going to tweak him a little bit. And
then the last piece that they didn't have, which again
not super surprising, but they didn't have a disposition of
remains appointment. Yeah. So so, Patty, why don't you tell

(35:46):
listeners what that is, just in case people are unfamiliar.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
So, a disposition remains appointment, or what we call it DORA,
is a document by which you can appoint agents, so
different people to help you make you know, funeral burial,
you know, those types of decisions after you're gone. Basically,
this document handles how you want your remains to be,
you know, handled and taken care of once you're no

(36:09):
longer here. And within this document you can leave special
instructions for your agent. So if you have particular wishes
that you want them to follow, this document is great
because that's where you can lay all that stuff out.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 1 (36:24):
And people a lot of people say, well, do I
really need that document? And honestly, for a lot of people,
I'm not going to say you don't need it, but
I don't think it's the most important one that you have.
If we're gonna if we're gonna put them in priority,
right right, Yeah, I don't think it hurts to have
it in many instances, but just for instance, like with

(36:44):
this couple. So wife said, you know, I'm I'm Catholic.
I'm very strong in my Catholic faith. Like faith, I
want the service, right, I want certain things to happen,
like I know, I want you know, I want this
to happen. I don't want this to happen right. I
want to be crazy, and this is where I think
I want my ashes to go. I don't think i'd
want someone having to make that decision for me. I said, well,

(37:06):
that's exactly why you have that document, because then you
can lay all that out with instructions for people. That way,
if they didn't know what you want, you've already told
them what you want, or you can prepay for it
and kind of use both prepayment arrangements and your document
to make sure things are carried out. So again they
were relieved that that they could take a little bit

(37:29):
of the burden off the kids, you know, when they're
both gonest figuring some of that out. Because husband was
a lot more relaxed about it. He said, you know,
I'm I'm not not not in favor of some of
those things. But they don't mean nearly as much to
me as they do to her. Right, So he's like, so,
I just don't want to be on the mantle after
I'm gone. He's like, you know, I want to be cremated.

(37:53):
I just don't want people looking at me and like
the urn or whatever on the mantle. As long as
that doesn't happen. I'm not sure that I really care,
which is fine. Rights, they have difference of it. They
have differences of opinion about that, which is perfectly fine.
But that's that's why we can do the documents, lay
it out and put out in order. So again, if
they think daughter is kind of in best position to
kind of handle all that, they're gonna put daughter after

(38:14):
the spouse and then layer in the other kids and
hopefully everything is now in a better place, and if
something then changes again, they can always change it again, right,
all right, So let's let's take our last break, because
we have one more break to do before the end
of the show. So let's take the last break, and
then Patty and I will come back and we'll clean
up our conversation about bring cleaning. So come on back

(38:36):
after this our last one of the show. So again,
Welcome back to Life Happens Radio. I'm still Frank. I'm
still here with Patty, and we've been talking about celebrities,
we've been talking about client stories, and now we're talking
about cleaning up your estate plan for the spring. So
so I have my article here and it's talking about

(38:59):
some regular reasons why you might want to have to
clean up your planner, why you might want to look
into having it cleaned up. So first category of things
are changes in family structure, So that sounds pretty important.
So the first thing they have here is marriage. I

(39:19):
would say, if you get married, you probably should consider
either doing some documents or getting them updated. Did them
before when you were single or not married. Things are
a little different now once you get married.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Yeah, And we're working on one together right now. Where
the client, unbeknownst to us, got married.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Yeah, in the middle of the planning.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Process, so we had to and we're still working on
you know that's true. We had to reevaluate his plan completely.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah, because.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
Let's see plan A if you will, for this gentleman
was his girlfriend sitting in all these spots and then
they went and got married, which congratulations to them.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
Were happy for you.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
But we can't always have wife sit in the same
spot as girlfriend could.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yes, for legal reason reasons.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Yeah, you know, girlfriend in some ways can give you
different things in your planning documents than your spouse can correct.
So again we can still reformulate the plan, but we
got to make some changes.

Speaker 3 (40:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
So yeah, so marriage pretty important, especially if there are
kids later down the road, or whether you're bringing kids
to the marriage, because sometimes people have kids prior to
marriage and then they get married.

Speaker 3 (40:26):
So I think again in.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
New York, like, if you die without a will, right,
if you're married with no kids, your spouse does get
everything right, But if you're married with kids with no will,
it doesn't all go to your spouse, right, which.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
A lot of people don't know apparently.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, I think that comes up a lot when I'm
doing the radio. How we have either a recent story
or a newsworthy item about that. But yeah, at least
in New York, Like, if you die without a will
and you have spouse and you have kids, it doesn't
all go to your spouse. It's not how it works,
all right, So marriage would be a good reason to
update your documents or to get some big one kind

(41:00):
of Conversely, divorce.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
Oh yeah, right, I had.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
I had a client this week. Tell me, well, I
did a will a long time ago, but my ex
wife's still in it now.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Now we're not matrimonial attorneys, but pretty sure that they
divorce decree. Divorced documents essentially remove your person from your
planning documents anyway, But you probably don't want to have
documents floating around that still name your ex spouse in them.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Well, yeah, that's true. What about beneficiary designations?

Speaker 3 (41:31):
Right? They would? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (41:32):
Would they control? Or would the divorce decree?

Speaker 1 (41:35):
I'm not I'm not one, but I think the best
advice is to update them and then don't. Then you
don't have to worry about it. Yeah, right, At best,
it's the law might have already said. Again, divorce knocks
them out, just in case they don't, or that doesn't,
just update them. Next one again, I think pretty self explanatory.
Birth or adoption of a child or grandchild. Now child

(42:00):
I think in this instance is a little more important
than grandchild, depending on how your documents are drafted.

Speaker 3 (42:06):
If you already have them. So here I'll elaborate.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
So, if you don't have any children, then you have
one doing some planning, I think is very important because
you'd want to make sure that the right people are
then going to be put in place to care for
your child if it isn't going to be you or
your spouse. That's why I wound up doing my plan
with my wife after we had our daughter, because up
to that point, I'm not saying it wasn't concerning to me,

(42:31):
but ultimately everything would have wound up with my wife
if something did happen to me because there was nobody else.
Once we had our daughter, then we want to make
sure something happens to us, the right people are going
to manage both her and the money that she gets
from us or from other people in the future. So
obviously you want to update that. Grandchildren could be a

(42:52):
little differently or could be handled a little differently. So
for instance, a lot of people, now I'm not saying everybody,
lot of people in their planning documents tend to say
everything goes to my spouse if I have one. If
not my spouse, then my children, not saying they don't
provide for grandchildren. But it's not as common as not,

(43:14):
so it's more common to not give the grandchildren anything directly,
even everything to the kids and then again depending on
personal wishes here then a lot of people then would say,
if I lose my child, then the grandchildren take what
my child would have gotten. Okay, so the grandchildren are
incorporated into mom or dad's place. If you had a
child predecee, you now, if it's drafted, just per sturpees,

(43:39):
which is the common way, an easy way to do that.
If they have another child, you know, if your children
have another child, so you have a new grandchild. If
it just says to their descendants, per sturpees, the new
grandchild's already in there. Because we didn't name them specifically.
We just said, any children of your child take in
your child's place. It doesn't matter how many they have,

(44:01):
what their names are, whatever, They're already in there. But
if you specifically say I want to give five thousand dollars,
and then you name each of your grandchildren by name
and you get a new one, well then you want
to update that to name your new grandchild as long
as you want them to be treated the same.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (44:22):
So, like I said, I'm not going to say it's
not important. I'm just saying grandchildren are potentially less important.
For just updating things depending on how your plan is
supposed to work. All right, Next one, This one's sad
adoption which is good? Or death of a pet Huh. Yeah,
as I said, sad or obviously a death of a

(44:44):
person in your estate plan. Yeah, whether that's a direct
beneficiary or tie it back to the gene to gene Hackman, Right,
he had an executor or a successor executor die before.
So if you've got an agent listed in your documents
who then pred ceases you, yeah, might make sense to
update your documents to put some new people right in place. Yeah,

(45:06):
because we always talk about having multiple layers.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
Of not even death, but also in capacity to I'm
working with Lou on a file where unfortunately the successor
agent and trustee and all the different trusts he has,
you know, got diagnosed with dementia. So now that he's incapacitated,
we need to find a new person to put in
those roles. So now we're in the process of updating
all the documents to account for that change of circumstances.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, definitely don't want somebody who's got cognitive issues as
your backup person for financial or health care decisions, right,
Not so good move, wanting to get that updated for sure.
And then the last one is again I'm not gonna
say not important, could be less important again depending on
kind of where you are and what.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Your feelings are.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
But that's a child reaching adulthood, right, So if your
child's not an adult, chances are they're not named as
an agent somewhere unless you did your planning very recently
with them reaching the age of majority. So if you
do your plan and your kids are seventeen, then I
have put them as backups because the I you know,

(46:14):
with the thought being hopefully nothing happens in the next
few months until they reach eighteen. But if you do
your plan when they're little, right when I did mine,
I think my daughter was about a year old or less. Right,
she's not named as an agent in any of my
documents because she's still quite a ways from being in ability,
you know, having the ability to serve in those places.

(46:36):
When she reaches eighteen or twenty one or twenty five,
you know whatever, I might want to put her as
a backup to my wife or the other people that
I have at that point, because then she's an adult
and then she maybe can help. So if you don't
have your kids incorporated, and but you might want to.
That would be another reason to update your stuff to

(46:57):
include the kids. Usually if it's not the kids then
and usually it's going to be siblings or parents. Right,
at some point your parents likely either will be gone
or the likelihood of them being in a position to
help is going to lessen. Same thing with your siblings
because they're the same general ages as you are. Or
you could be somebody like me who doesn't have siblings.
So like for us, typically it's parents backing us up

(47:18):
because we don't have those brothers sisters. So just again,
you have older kids, might want to incorporate them all right,
Next category changes in financial status. Okay, so this could
go either way. So you could have increased wealth, which
is great, good for you, So you might want to say, well,
now I have a lot more money for whatever reason,

(47:39):
whether you've accumulated yourself, got an inheritance for something. But
if you have a lot more to divvy up, you
might want to change how it's getting divvied up.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Right, right, or even something like buying a new property
in a different state, like we got to you know,
account for that, whether it's putting it in a trust
or you know, if it's a rental property, putting.

Speaker 3 (47:57):
In an LLC.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
You know, not just money, but you know also property.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
Yeah, that's one of the categories selling or acquiring assets.
Oh really, Yeah, so you're right, because like if you
only had an apartment before, and you're like, well, I
would never force probate on anybody because I don't own
any real property. But then you buy a house. Now
you're forcing probate on somebody. Potentially at least it's a
lot more likely if you own real property unless you
do other things if you buy that second piece of property. Right,

(48:25):
if it's in a different state, Now we're looking at
probate in more than one place. Which you may have
been fine with the idea of putting your person through
court in New York, you might feel differently about having
to put them in court in New York plus second state. Yeah,
and just to be clear, we're generally advocating to not
put people in regardless of what state, but correct just

(48:45):
as another consideration. Or conversely, again, you could have a
decrease in financial status. Right, So for instance, like if
you've been hit hard with the financial downturn, if that's
what happens, or your health status has changed and you've
just had to use more money to take care of you. Well,
if you've got a lot less to divvy up, maybe

(49:06):
you want to make sure it only goes to lesser
people or or differently to the people that you want
to provide for, just because there's less to give out.
Other reasons, just because we're essentially at the end of
the show. But other reasons would be change in health
or or capacity right for either yourself or your agents.
So if you get a diagnosis, it might make sense
to you know, do some planning proactively to make sure

(49:29):
that as your prognosis may change, that things could be
handled by the people that you want to be able
to handle them. You could have changes in your relationships
with people, like the agents that you've appointed. So sometimes
you know, that could be your children, it could be friends,
it could be siblings, but families or families for better
or for worse.

Speaker 2 (49:48):
The consult you just had where they you know, felt
like the daughter would be it better exactly, you know.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
That's what I mean. Nothing even bad happened really there.
It's just son's life has changed a little bit and
he's got some other things going on, that's all. And
then they got business ownership and succession. So you know,
maybe you own a business, maybe you're running a business.
Maybe you weren't doing it before. So I can't believe it.
But we're at the end of the show.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Wow, I can't believe it.

Speaker 1 (50:10):
I know, so, so thanks everybody for sticking with us today,
Thank you Patty for being here on this gloomy Saturday.
And we will be back next week for next week's
edition of Life Happens Radio. So I hope that you
will join us next week. We'll talk to you then.