Life Happens

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Good morning, Welcome to Life HappensRadio. Are you prepared? This is
our weekly radio program for baby boomersand their families where we address the challenges
we all face as we age.We talk about aging as a lifestyle,
the issues that must be confronted,and the careful planning that's required to avoid
crises in the future. Life Happenswill provide you with tools to educate and
prepare yourself for events like retirement,protecting your income and assets, planning to

(00:22):
pay for nursing, home and homecare, special needs, wills and trust,
and resolving disputes in and out ofcourt. Good morning, everybody.
I'm Aaron Connor from Pire O'Connor andStrass, joined by one of our associates,
Kristin Peck. Good morning, Kristen. Morning Aaron. So you're not
Frank Emmick. I am not okaybecause I think you know this is kind

(00:46):
of a joke, but kind ofnot a joke. But I would say
seventy five percent at least of theradio shows I've done probably are with Frank.
You've gotten upgrade today, and Imean certainly not the first time we've
done it, So maybe you're maybeyou're in like the five percent, right,
I mean, do you typically doit with Frank, but you do

(01:07):
it with Jacob too, Right.I've done a few with Jacob, probably
three or four something, maybe five, but not a lot more than that.
And you know, I've done afew with Lou, right, probably
more with Lou especially. So I'vebeen with the firm for twelve years and

(01:30):
I'm certainly in the first five yearsit was mostly with Lou. There was
rarely a time when Lou wasn't hostingm sometimes well, and back then we
had a co host, right,we had Bob Andandy and Brian Johnson.
Shout out to Bob and Brian Johnson. That's right, And if you need
some long term care insurance, thoseare the guys to call it aib.

(01:53):
They took a step back. Idon't even remember when that was now,
but it was a while ago,probably before you were with the firm,
right, Yeah, I've heard I'veheard that you used to be in between
their show and uh was it,well they did the show with us?
Oh they did? Okay, Yeah, sometimes it was like their week,
other times it was our week.Sometimes we did it together. But I

(02:15):
mean that was a you know,so if you're a long time Life Happens
listener, I'm sure you remember thatif you just come to us recently.
Hey, that's okay, still havegood information, right, mm hmm.
It's a it's a big weekend.It's Mother's Day weekend. Yes, and
I will say Happy Mother's Day tomy mom, who just had knee replacement

(02:38):
surgery. So she's probably gimping arounda little bit, but we're we're hoping
that this is this is good.We think it's good. So speedy recovery.
For that, you have nothing tosay to your mom, I'm good.
It's okay. My mom and Ihave just gotten an argument recently,

(02:59):
so love it. I'm going tosend her a Mother's Day card. Okay,
all right, Kristen's starting off spicy, so that's a good sign for
the radio show. But you know, these are times when people get together,
Right Mother's Day, maybe you're goingto brunch or maybe you're not,

(03:20):
because that's just a crazy idea.And I think me personally, I'd rather
go to brunch any other day thanMother's Day because it's very difficult. I
will say that when I did belongto a country club, it was great
for that purpose because you could justmake a reservation, have a lovely brunch,
have a nice time, and notreally fight people. But Mother's Day

(03:45):
brunches tends to be a rough timeto try to go out and even dinner
around that date. I've found it'shard to get a reservation. So are
you doing anything you and your wifeand your kids? Not really, because
you know, there's a lot ofmothers, right, So there's her mother,

(04:05):
there's my mother and her. Thatdoesn't mean we don't want it to
be a special day for all ofthem, right, But when you have
to factor all of that in,I think we were having breakfast with her
mother, but like not at arestaurant. And you know we have we
have gifts lined up for my wife. But then we'll have to go to

(04:26):
my parents as well because my mother'snot really mobile yet, right, so
couldn't have any big elaborate plans.The good news is we don't have any
softball games on Sunday, so wellthat's nice, Yeah, to wake up
early for those I'm sure, yep, all day, all day Saturday.
But you know, hey, that'swhat it's like when you have kids,

(04:46):
right. So, but this islike I said in an occasion where people
get together, and we are advocatesat times when people get together of maybe
discussing some things, right, discussingwhether you've done a plan. So we
recently did a seminar from the radioshow with Dave Kopek, who was on

(05:11):
before and after us. That's whoit is, all right, So I
mean he he must like to tormenthimself, but he is on before and
after, which is and he doesa great job. So I certainly encourage
you to listen to his show.But we did seminar together, and we've
been meeting with a lot of peoplefrom that seminar, and most of those
people are I would say, intheir sixties, but a lot of them

(05:36):
had no planning at all, zeroand if they did, they had a
will that they did twenty years ago. Yeah, hear that all the time,
right, And I want people tothink about really where they're at and
why those are not good ideas.Right. Lots of things change in twenty

(05:58):
years, right, the family dynamic. I mean, Kristen was a minor
twenty years ago, right as Iwas like an elementary school. I was
in elementary school twenty years ago,and I I think I was in law
school because I worked a couple ofyears before I went to law school.

(06:21):
Pretty sure. Yeah, so,yes, twenty years ago I was in
law school. So trying to givesome perspective, right of how things can
change in twenty years, spouses,children, adulthood. I wasn't that young
twenty years I was. Yeah,I was, well, you were probably

(06:44):
like your daughter's ages. Yet's let'sbe truthful, all right, nine is
young. Okay, you couldn't geta job, right, because I tell
my kids all the time they haveto get a job, but they know
I'm kidding because they can't actually geta job. I mean, I guess
you could deliver newspapers, if that'sstill thing now. I did that,
but I think I don't know thatthat's really a thing anyway. I'm not

(07:05):
sure. I mean, maybe it'sname for me. I'm not sure that
many people are reading a newspaper thesedays. They have well on paper,
yes, they have other avenues ofreading. I read, I read the
Times Union online. I've come tothe age where I read the obituaries right.
Well, sometimes sadly it's our clientsright. More strangely, it was

(07:28):
two kids that I went to elementaryschool with, So that's frightening because I
don't consider myself an old person.I'm under fifty, and not that I
consider someone fifty an old person,but I mean, just to put it
in perspective, right, I mean, I also think that as you get
older, who you consider old isa moving target. I was sitting at

(07:49):
my daughter's softball game last night andsome teenagers in the back were like,
yeah, that league is just abunch of old dudes playing soccer. They're
all fifty, and it was likehurtful. It was hurtful, you know,
like it sounded like they were likethey might be dead. I don't
know, it might just be theirspirits running aroud. I'll probably say that

(08:09):
if they were in their thirties,well they would, I know. But
I'm just saying that perspective changes overtime. Yeah, right now, I
still say to all that people allthe time, when they come in their
sixties, they're not old because they'renot. No, we anticipate that people
are going to live much longer thanThat doesn't always happen, but it does
happen for the most part, andwe meet with people in their eighties and

(08:31):
nineties on a regular basis. Yeah, but that can be detrimental to do
your planning that one hundred percent.So if that's like for an update,
or maybe now somebody needs medicaid becausethey've done a plan, okay, right,
because a lot of the updates unfortunatelyrelate to people passing on agents,

(08:52):
whether it's a spouse, sometimes it'sa child, sometimes it's just somebody else,
and you have to update your documents. So some of those changes are
based on that. Some changes maybe that people have acted out in a
way that they need to be removedfrom the plan, and those those I
think are more tall. I don'twant to use the word tolerable, but

(09:13):
like those are good changes to bemaking at that age. Yeah, when
as opposed to you, you mentionedmedicaid planning and that has you know,
a look back period for asset transfers, So you don't really want to be
doing that kind of planning in youreighties or nineties because you're kind of rolling
the dice exactly. And then youknow, also tax planning has ramifications.

(09:37):
You know, if you're going tobe in a taxable estate and you do
completed gifts, there's a clawback inNew York State, so you have to
outlive those gifts by three years.Right, So those are things you know,
people should take into consideration when doingtheir planning, especially if you're in
your eighties or nineties. Hop toit. Well, agreed, But I

(09:58):
mean so, just just the phrasecompleted gifts probably give some people some pause.
So if I say I'm going togive you something, that's certainly an
incomplete gift because I have not deliveredit to you, right, And from
a planning standpoint, we use incompletegifts because we want them included in an
estate. Why oh, for sofor medicaid purposes, when we do the

(10:26):
Medicaid trust, there in complete giftsbecause we want them to still be able
to exercise a power appointment over thoseassets or change the beneficiaries. Or that's
certainly a big part of it,absolutely, because if it's a completed gift,
you can't do that. We seethat all the time when people make
a life estate deed and then they'relike, oh, I shouldn't have done
that, right, right, youcan't just pull that back. That's a

(10:48):
completed gift. One of the otherbig reasons is basis right, right,
because if you make a completed gift, people come in all the time and
they say I want to give myhouse to my Well, that's a bad
idea ninety nine percent of the timebecause usually they have a low basis and
if you make an outright gift,they get a carryover basis. And what

(11:11):
that means is they have your basis. So just to put some numbers on
it, if you bought your housefor fifty thousand and it's worth two hundred
and fifty thousand, and you giveit to your kids, they sell it
for two hundred and fifty thousand,they now have your basis of fifty thousand,
They have two hundred thousand dollars incapital gains. They have at least
fifty thousand dollars in tax. Badmove. Yeah. I mean, if

(11:35):
you really love paying tax, gofor it. But I particularly do not.
And I think that's a common misconceptiontoo. I think a lot of
people are like, oh, Iput my son or daughter's name on the
deed because they want to avoid probate. And they went to, you know,
someone else that might not do ac planning, or someone gave them

(11:56):
this advice, and that might notbe a good thing for you know,
for basis, for tax purposes andfor medicaid purposes that that can really harm
somebody. Yeah, and you know, just in general, if you get
advice for free, it's it's probablybad advice, right, or for people

(12:20):
who don't know what they're talking about, if you get it from your neighbor,
you know whoever, it's it's notgenerally the way to go. At
a minimum, you need to investigatethat, right because usually services that cost
more are worth more. Now that'smaybe that's not true one hundred percent of
the time, but I have yetto see someone cheap what I would consider

(12:46):
cheaping out right, and like tryingto just do things with a deed that
cost problems later on, cous mediclots of medicaid problems, give things away,
put people's names on things, andit causes all sorts of other complications,
especially if your son or daughter,your grandchild is applying for college.
If you have names on all ofthese accounts, well guess what accounts on

(13:09):
their financial aid form. It's notgood. And there's one hundred better ways
to do that. So I thinkit's a good time to take our first
break. When we come back,we're going to continue talking about things through
the lens of Mother's Day, tryingto get you know, some talking going
and you know, maybe reward momfrom for everything that she's done. This

(13:33):
is Life Happens Radio. I'm AaronConnor from Perro connoran Strauss and we'll be
right back after this. Welcome backto Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Perro Conoran Strauss, joined by KristenPeck, one of our associates in the
office. Again. Happy Mother's Dayto all the moms out there. On
this Mother's Day weekend, we aretalking about things to do to maybe protect

(13:56):
mom or help mom out right,so not doing anything not a solution,
right. Plans can be complicated,but they can also be simple. I
generally come from the school that complicatedisn't necessarily better. There may be situations

(14:20):
that call for complicated and those tendto be related to let's say, people
who own a business or a fractionof a business. More likely blended families
tend to be a little more complicatedplanning. And what that means is if
you are married and you have childrenfrom previous marriages and you're all together.

(14:43):
One of the big questions is whathappens on the first death. We face
this a lot, and are youleaving it to your kids. Are you
leaving some portion to your kids?Are you leaving everything to your wife?
Because your wife may but she alsomay not leave it to your kids some
portion of your kids. And Idon't know about you, but it surprises

(15:05):
me how many people really haven't thoughtabout that when they come in the office.
Yeah, it really is. Itis something that people don't really think
about. And then there are peoplewho think about it and then it gets
very complicated as to what they want. Well, it also sometimes causes some
friction, yes, right, andit can't be you know, we've been

(15:26):
in these situations. It can beuncomfortable just because they are talking, they're
thinking about it and having this discussionin front of us. That's right,
yes, and that's not really thebest place to have it. I mean
it will help to the extent wecan help, yeah, right, But
and you know you're in the middleand you're like, well, okay,
it sounds like you're saying this,you know, but you're representing both of

(15:48):
these people, and that's absolutely correct. Right, So we when we represent
a married couple, we have todo well by both of them. We
can't help one over the other.Right, the husband or wife can't come
back around later and say I wantto do X, Y or Z adverse
to that person without that person's knowledge. So sometime, most of the time,

(16:11):
married couple representation is uncomplicated. Theycommend that everything's joint. If they
have the same kids, great,if they don't. If they've talked about
it and they've come up with aplan that they agree on, great.
Occasionally we will have a person comein, comes in without their spouse and

(16:37):
wants to do planning. Now,in New York, Kristen, can I
cut out my spouse completely? No, you can't, And what would I
have to leave my spouse? Soyou in New York State, there's something
called the elective share, and soyou have to leave your spouse the greater
of fifty thousand dollars or one thirdof their correct So unless you have a

(17:04):
prenup right which would govern some ofthat, it generally wouldn't govern assets you
acquire after marriage. People can waivetheir elective share. Now, they can't
just do that verbally, okay,they have to sign a document which is
not necessarily elaborate, but has tobe done. If that is in fact

(17:27):
what we want to happen. Andsometimes we do want that to happen.
Sometimes we want that to happen becausewe've talked about it, and the person
is leaving their assets to their children, right, if both spouses have done
pretty well, and you know,nine times out of ten, I feel

(17:49):
like it's the female that survives.I don't know if it's nine times out
of ten, but it seems likeit's pretty close to that to me.
If they have enough income, ifthen and some assets. Lots of times
the other person wants to leave theirmoney to their kids. And it's really

(18:11):
a thought process between both of thosethings, because you can have a lot
of assets, but if you don'thave a lot of income, your assets
may dissipate pretty quickly. And youknow, if you have good income,
assets shouldn't be as much of aproblem. But certainly, you know,
you wouldn't want to leave someone's destitute. So when I first started doing this,

(18:34):
I would see a lot of littleold ladies who had very small Social
Security payments because their husband had diedand they had had so security. Now
when the spouse dies, they getthe larger amount, but they lose whatever
they were getting, right, right, So like, for instance, I

(18:55):
always say it this way. Mygrandmother didn't work outside the house, right,
she had five kids. She worked, but it wasn't a paying job,
right, And so she got halfmy grandfather's solid security when my grandfather
was alive, but when he passedaway she got his. But she functionally

(19:15):
loses a third of her income,right, And that can be pretty devastating
to some people. And some pensionshave a survivor benefit and some pensions don't.
Based on most of the time whatpeople elect to do, and it
affects the amount of the pension theyget. So that analysis is pretty important

(19:38):
because the other thing that you needto factor in there is inflation. Because
my parents aren't even what I wouldconsider that old, right early seventies.
My father's been retired for nineteen years, so nineteen years ago his pension dollar

(20:00):
went certainly farther than they do now. Now he's My parents are certainly not
in any crunch on that. Butyou have to fact Now there's some cost
of living adjustment, but does thatoutpace inflation? Probably not. So.
I have seen people come in whohave been retired for thirty or forty years.

(20:21):
I remember a woman who had beenretired longer than she had worked.
Wow. Right, Well, that'sthat's the slam dunk. I mean,
if you can get there, that'spretty awesome, right. But I mean
if you live into your nineties,that's a real possibility, right. You
know, certain jobs allow you toretire younger, like certainly like police and

(20:44):
fire, which are dangerous jobs,you can retire after twenty years. I
think CEOs can retire. I don'tthink it's twenty but maybe it's twenty five,
right, So you can be apretty young person and be retired.
And you know, with the state, you could be retired in your late
fifties, maybe early sixties, soyou could be retired for thirty or thirty

(21:06):
five years. And those are bigconsiderations to take in to a plan and
when we do a long term caretype plan, if we're doing it early,
and what I mean by early isyou're in your sixties, you're healthy,
right, We're starting this kind ofan incremental way. We're not going

(21:27):
to make you destitute on day one, right, right, because there's no
there's no push to do that.We want to protect things kind of in
an orderly fashion, and I thinkthe house really is the easiest thing to
protect right out of the gate,right, because you can, you know,
continue to live there, pay theproperty taxes, the maintenance and the

(21:48):
upkeep, and so it's it's likeyou didn't do anything to it. It's
just in aterest sitting there for yourbenefit. But it's protecting. You're starting
the clock to protect the house becausenursing home Medicaid has that five year lookback
period, and you know soon theywill implement a look back period for community

(22:10):
Medicaid. So if you needed careat home and you want Medicaid to pay
for that, they're going to lookat when you transfer those assets. So
putting the house into a trust thatis the transfer that has the five year
look back period. Right, Andit really I say this to people every

(22:30):
day does not affect your life,right, right, You still pay if
you have a mortgage, you're stillgoing to be paying a mortgage, which
is not totally unusual. We seelots of people with that have paid most
of their mortgage, but maybe notall of it. But if you've paid
it all down, still you're stillresponsible for property tax, You're still responsible

(22:52):
for maintenance. Right. You canstill do whatever alterations you want to do,
and it if you own more thanone piece of property, it's really
good to put it into a trust, and you're avoiding probate by putting it
into a trust. And real propertyis really the number one thing that goes
to probate because there isn't a goodway to put a beneficiary on it.

(23:15):
There are ways, right as wekind of intimated before you put somebody's name
on a deed. You can doa life estate deed, but there are
a lot of problems with those,so generally, or even more than generally
n or ninety five percent of thetime, a trust is a way to
go. So we're coming up onour break. When we come back,

(23:40):
we're going to talk about getting marriedlate in life scenario and a lot of
things to consider there more probably thanyou would think of, and how to
navigate that. On Aaron Connor,Peril Connor, Strouss. This is Life
Happens Radio, and we'll be backright after the news. Welcome back to

(24:00):
Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,Pierre O'Connor, and Strauss joined by Kristen
Peck, an associate here in ourlethe of office. We are talking about
Mother's Day, so it's also baseballseason, So what if mom comes home
and throws a curveball something you reallydidn't have in mind. So we have

(24:26):
a case in the office where momis in her late seventies and she's decided
to get married. Oh boy,yeah, family drama. Yeah, I
can hear the break screeching right nowor the record going off and h So

(24:49):
I can say that the son inthis case thought it was a joke.
First, Oh my goodness, haveyou talked to the sun or is this
what the mom said? No,no, no, both, But it
wasn't a joke. So have theybeen together a while? Or I didn't
really want to get into that asI was feeling kind of awkward. Right,

(25:12):
I'm not here to question those kindsof life choices, right, right,
right, we you know this iswhat you're gonna do. We're gonna
help you navigate it. Right.We have advised people to get married in
certain scenarios for medicaid purposes, right, people who have been together, not
people who were, like you know, didn't know each other. Definitely,

(25:33):
for tax planning purposes, it doublesyour exemption. Right, So, I
mean there are reasons, and youknow, some people just never got married
for whatever reason. We would say, well, there is some benefit to
getting married from a planning or standpoint. So those several times people have taken
us up on that advice. Butbecause people come to us a lot of

(25:56):
the time and they think they shouldget divorced for medicaid planning and never not
once that ben in the scenario thatwe've seen would make sense. So when
you get married late in life,there are things to consider. One is
what are your assets and what arehis or her assets? Right? Are

(26:22):
you going to intermingle them? Doyou both have a house? Does only
one of you have a house?So I mean something we deal with on
a regular basis is sometimes there's akid living in a house, right,
how long are they going to staythere after mom or dad or spouse has
passed? And I've seen all sortsof bad planning done in wills, life's

(26:48):
estates and wills. Right to occupyin a will, It's really not a
good thing to do in a willbecause it becomes very hard to navigate and
if you have problems, you haveto make motions. And the only guy
who's making out well for that purposeis me. Right now, it's the

(27:10):
truth. We're helping you. We'retrying to help you avoid these problems.
Right, if you take the thecheap route, this is where you're going
to end up. Right, otherpeople are going to be paying more at
the end. And it's relatively easyto put a life estate for someone into
a trust right. I mean,that's something we do on a regular basis.

(27:33):
I just talked to someone this morningabout a life estate and address.
So also a blended family situation whereshe is leaving everything to her daughters second
marriage and we are having them,like you had mentioned earlier, sign waivers
of right, the right of electionright, so you know, let's just

(28:00):
play it out. You don't doany planning, or maybe you have a
will but probably not houses in mom'sname right, second second marriage house then
goes to her estate. She doesn'thave a will, leaving it to her
husband. He gets a fractional chairbased on right of election right or intestincy

(28:26):
depends. So if she has awill, doesn't leave anything to him,
he can elect based on right ofelection, and then you have a mess
of deed and every other thing.So lots of math problems, which I
really don't like. That's one ofthe reasons I became a lawyer. My
SAT score was higher on the mathside. But I really disliked it.

(28:48):
Disliked it. I have to say, anytime I go to Frank with a
question, he's like, this isnot like a law question. This is
a math question. Yes, takethe maths somewhere house please, all right?
And I that you want to avoidSo if there's no will, then

(29:11):
the spouse gets the first fifty kplus half, which is also a nightmare
because how do you write that deedif it's only the house, right,
you can get an appraisal and thenyou say five or yeah, six eleventh
of this house belongs to Can youimagine would you just sell the house in

(29:33):
that situation? What if they don'thave anywhere to live, they don't have
to They can take the house.Now, if the beneficiaries don't like that,
they can do a partition action,right, which is a way to
force the sale of a house.Ugly. Yeah, But most of the
time we are having this discussion doyou want this person thrown out on the

(29:56):
street? Right? I don't thinkI've had a positive answer to that yet
so so far every time now,right, so that's good, nobody's getting
thrown out on the street. Buthow are we accomplishing that, and how
long are they going to be there? Because we don't have to give them

(30:18):
a life estate, we can givethem a term. Right, Sometimes it's
well, I'd like them to havea year to find another place to live,
and that happens, and then wehave to figure out who's responsible for
taxes and other upkeep during that periodof time. Is their rent charged?
Usually not, but there could be. So it's not uncomplicated. But I

(30:42):
think it's fairly easy to find asolution of those things when you use a
trust. And the other thing tothink about is so in this case,
women in late seventies is marrying aman in his eighties. When they're married,
what happens if he needs a nursinghome, right, her stuff would

(31:06):
be on the table, her assets, and that could be very bad.
And so, you know, notonly necessarily is a prenup probably a good
idea. And just like anything else, prenups can be very complicated or they
can be pretty pretty basic. Mostbasic is what for a prenup? Mine

(31:33):
is mine, yours is yours?Right, everyone goes in with what they
they come out with what they wentin with, other than assets that were
you know, accumulated during that's thatyou can't. I mean, there is
some ability to do a post nuptialagreement. Very rarely do we do that.

(31:55):
I mean, this isn't really ourarea of law, but we do
do basic prenups when when it relatesto planning. But in a case like
this, medicaid will observe the prina. So it's really for long term care
planning. It's not so much forwe're going to get divorced. And I

(32:17):
hate your face. So that's whyit's important to think this out because if
they just get married, he goesto a nursing home, she's got problems,
right, and she may be payingfor things she never wanted to pay

(32:38):
for. And when Frank Casan,I know we've discussed this sum not every
county goes about this the same way. So Albany County, generally speaking in
Saratoga County are the most aggressive countiesfor spousal refusal or community spouse resource allowances.

(33:07):
So what that means is just roughlya well spouse, right, So
husband is going downhill, it's goingto a nursing home. Wife is fine,
not going to a nursing home,non need care. The well spouse
can shelter in liquid or really otherthan a house or a retirement account about

(33:29):
one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. If you have more than that,
the county has the right to comeafter you. Saratoga and Albaney County almost
always come after you, and themore you have over that amount, you
can bet they're coming. Other countiesare like, they just don't whether it's

(33:49):
a person power issue, it's apolicy issue, whatever it may be.
So there are differences even right herein the immediate area. But let's just
say this person lives in Saratoga Countyand they have money above that amount,
They're gonna get sued. And thatsounds pretty awful. I guess now.

(34:13):
People getting sued is every day forme, right, so I'm desensitized to
that. But I'm sure if Kristengot sued, she would not be not
be desensitized to that. No,that do people see you all the time?
Not me. No, I'm suingpeople all the time. Oh you
understood. I was going to say, no, no, no, not

(34:34):
me. Yeah, yeah, no, I that would not be right.
So that's normal, normal business forme, And so when that happens,
it's kind of jarring for people,but as we have to explain to them,
it's still a benefit to them toeven go down that route because then
they pay with the county pays,and the county pays less than you.

(34:55):
So the county rate might be let'ssay ten five hundred and the private rate
might be fifteen thousand. Well that'sa pretty big benefit for a period of
time, and then you know,we will do other planning to try to
mitigate that even more as we goon, but at least for ninety days,

(35:15):
that's what it's going to look like. But that's really complicated and not
exactly what we're talking about today,but it's just something too that needs to
be thought about in a situation likethis. Yeah, and what assets are
yours and what are going to beavailable? And I hear this all the
time, the other person has theirplanning taken care of? Well what does

(35:37):
that actually mean, right? Isit that they just have a will?
Because to some people that means theyhave their planning taken care of, and
that's not really super accurate. It'sbetter than not having a will, but
there are a lot of things thatreally need to be added to that,
and I think in my opinion,in today's world, nuance gets lost a

(36:02):
lot, right because we need tobe bombastic and say this big point or
this person is wrong and this personis right. But there's really a lot
of nuance in between, and howsomething might be wrong in some ways and
might be right in other ways.It's not really as cut and dry as

(36:22):
that and as black and white.And I guess that's what I really spend
my day doing most of the time. It's parsing things like that. So
some planning good, but more planninggenerally better, and how we do that
is important. So I think thiswould be a good time to take our
last break. When we come back, we'll talk about what having a real

(36:45):
plan in place in this scenario meansand maybe some of the things that could
be avoided because without certain documents thatcould get pretty ugly. This is Life
Happens Radio, Aaron Connor, Piro, Connor, Strouss, and we'll be
back right after this. Welcome backto Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Piro, Connorance Trousse, Still,Kristen Peck, also pier O Connor,

(37:07):
and Strouss one of the associates inour office. Again I transformed into Frank
Hemming. I think the voice isgoing to give it away. So yeah,
you know, if you've maybe givenit a shot and gone a little
deeper, I can't really do it. See, I can't do high.

(37:28):
I can go deeper, but deeperis easier for me. I'm attorney.
Frank Hemming. I mean that wassaid with a lot of enthusiasm. I
would say, I mean kind ofe or esque Frank Heming impression. So
I don't know, but we'll haveto see how he feels about that.

(37:50):
But we have a we have agood rapport in the office. Yeah,
yeah, it's definitely a you know, good office, good office vibes.
Everyone likes each Yeah, it's goodthat way, So, believe it or
not, we do enjoy helping people, right, We enjoy doing good plans.
It's rewarding to watch things go asthey're supposed to go. Once we've

(38:15):
set a plan in place. Whenthe inevitable happens and you know, a
parent or a spouse passes away,many many people come in and tell us
how it's been so much easier becauseof the plan that was in place,
and that is rewarding. Yes,because you know, I a career in

(38:37):
law might be can be financially rewarding. It can be you know, maybe
rewarding in the sense of yeah,I want right, but it isn't necessarily
personally fulfilling in a lot of ways. But what we do, I think
it is meaningful and we really helppeople and that makes me feel a lot

(38:59):
better about what we do on aregular basis, So it's easier to get
up and do it every day.Yeah, it's definitely rewarding, especially just
hearing it from clients. And youknow, sometimes it is that proverbiable little
old lady who's coming to us andshe needs help, and you know that

(39:20):
there are people out there that wouldtake advantage of her too if she doesn't
do this right. And so thatprotecting people too is also a big part
of what we do. So wehad been talking about a late in life
marriage, which is comes with somescenarios that you probably wouldn't consider right,

(39:45):
and we've talked about that. Youthere needs to be a discussion about assets
and if you're keeping them separate,you need to document that appropriately. If
you're going to be residing in thesame house, right, well, how
is the ownership of that house held? Because it can be held several ways,

(40:07):
right, And in this case,we're doing a trust because it's owned
by one person and we want torun that person's five y o'clock right,
I mean, so we're getting latein that department. Right, late seventies
is oh, she's in our lateseventies. Yeah, is later than i'd
like to start. But that doesn'tmean it's too late by any means.

(40:32):
You know, no one can reallyknow. But it's better better to get
it going. For sure, it'snot getting it's not going to get any
better by waiting longer. We talkedabout, well is the survivor staying there?
How long are they staying there?What are they responsible for? Right?

(40:53):
Because this can become if not donecarefully, it can become a pretty
big rub between the decedents, kidsand the spouse you know that's living in
the house. Because sometimes maintenance ofthe house can become an issue because as
people get older it may be hardto do certain things the mode the lawn

(41:15):
or trim the bushes or whatever.Some people lose mental capacity and then there's
harm coming to the property in ayou know, damage type sense, and
that that can become problematic. Soyou need to kind of think all of
that out. One of the otherbig things that really needs a discussion and

(41:37):
thought process is what does each spousedoes the state planning look like? And
even just from a healthcare proxy andpower of attorney standpoint, right, do
you want if you don't have ahealthcare proxy? The first person in line

(41:58):
in the New York State statute isso that would be the decision maker about
whether someone could live or die,potentially whether they have a surgery, any
of these things when they can't makethat decision on their own. That might
be what people want, but itmight not. So if you want your

(42:19):
children to make that decision, theonly way that can happen is with a
document, the only way you cansure that will happen. Now without a
power of attorney, we're in areal problem mm hmm, because if that
person loses capacity, there would needto be a guardian ship, right,

(42:39):
and there's a family preference, Butwe're going to have different pieces of a
family here. A spouse is certainlygoing to be a family person and might
get the preference over children. Probablywould, and that might not be what
we want. So I don't doguardianship work at all, But is there

(43:01):
like the healthcare proxy, someone thata line up under New York state law
or anything. Not really, sofirst I know you know this, but
for the radio listeners, there's nostatute that says some who can take power
of attorney decisions. Right The statestatute for healthcare decisions only also applies under

(43:22):
certain circumstances, not all of them, so that's an incomplete solution. But
the lack of a power of attorney, there is no solution for other than
guardianship. And there's not a priority. There's just a preference to family.

(43:43):
So that's the kind of thing Ilike as a lawyer because it means I
can argue it either way for manypeople, right. And in some scenarios,
the spouse may be a great choice, but a lot of times the
spouse may be a bad choice becausethey're not really maybe doing that well either
right now. And I don't knowthat if we talked about this, I

(44:04):
don't remember if we talked about thislast week or not. I'm doing a
guardianship for both parents at the sametime, and in that scenario, I
don't know how far along you arein the guardianship process. Is it likely
to be the same guardian for bothof them or will they be different guardians.
So there are multiple children, andthey decided amongst themselves that one would
be the guardian for Mom and onewould be a guardian for Dad. And

(44:30):
I think there's a lot of factorsthat could go into that. There's some
politicking, Right, Dad might bemore willing to accept somebody than another person,
same for Mom. Mom might bemore comfortable having a person make health
decisions for her. Same thing,right, And I've said this a lot,

(44:51):
but the guardianship process is not pretty. So mom and Dad are going
to get served process from a courtpetition saying that they're incapacitated, and if
they have enough capacity to read it, it's not going to be pleasant.
A lot of times people don't.But so it's not an easy step to

(45:14):
take, and it wasn't taken lightlyhere by any means for that reason.
But it had really gotten to thepoint where they needed help and they were
refusing. They were refusing to doany planning, and it will shorten their
life unless people step in, andit could be a very bad scenario.

(45:37):
So but as we say, wetry to counsel people to avoid that scenario
altogether, and that will would mostlybe avoided by just having a power of
attorney on each side. And againhere the decision is who's the power of
attorney. If you're keeping everything separate, well, then probably the spouse shouldn't

(46:00):
be your power of attorney, right, because what could that spouse do?
They could, you know, changethe beneficiaries of your accounts. They could
jointly title an account, right,they could essentially take everything they Yeah,
they could make gifts themselves if yougive them that ability, right, and

(46:24):
it happens. So you can havemore than one power of attorney. This
is confusing for people to document wisetoo. Yes, and I don't mean
just co agents. You can haveco agents. I think we've talked about
that, not today, but youknow in other shows. But you can

(46:46):
have multiple documents empowering people to doX but not why, and then why
but not Z on the other one? Right or sometimes when we do this
often if people are snowbirds, wedo a New York document and a Florida
document just so we don't have aproblem and they can be concurrent. Excuse

(47:07):
me, So in most of thesescenarios, I'm sure that there's going to
be some kind of joint bank accountat some point in time for household expenses.
And maybe it's no problem that it'sgoing to go to the survivor because
that people don't carry a big balancein it, right, But what if
you need a power of attorney overthe person in that account? You then

(47:29):
would have to have another document andall of that just can't happen in a
vacuum, right. So and theother thing, and you mentioned this a
little bit, is that if thesepeople were to acquire money during the term
of their marriage, it would notbe governed by their prenup so unlikely.

(47:55):
But in my head, I waslike, well, what if this woman
placed the lottery in Whins lottery?Right right? How much of that is
going to who? Because I've seenall sorts of weird things happen. We've
had a few lottery winners over theyears, not recently, but we have,
and we would we have these peoplewaive their right of election usually because

(48:21):
we want to make sure that we'recompletely buttoned up. And so what we're
doing there is saying that you don'tyou're not entitled to your third of whatever
was acquired during the marriage. Thatessentially, I mean, that's not an
adjoint account that there are ways aroundit, but it would be in case

(48:43):
there was an inheritance or any otherreason we would want to button that up.
So none of those things are simple. I think it's fair to say
yeah, and there's a lot ofconsiderations. So getting married always has a
lot of considerations, pluses and minuses, hopefully more pluses than mine. But

(49:09):
when you're older, there's a lotto be thought out. It's important that
you go talk to somebody about aplan, that your spouse has a plan,
that you're both aware of these things, and that you've really considered carefully
all the things that may happen.So if mom's getting married, give our

(49:30):
office a call, have a consultation. You can call us at five Pine
eight four five nine twenty one hundred, or you can email us at info
at Piero Law dot com. That'spie r R Law dot com. And
I will say again, speedy recoveryto my mom for her knee surgery.

(49:52):
And happy Mother's Day you holding theline, Happy Mother's Day to everyone out
there, all right, nonspecific loveit all right, this is life happens.
Radio. Lou will be back nextweek. I know he hasn't been
here, so if you're looking forLou, there's your good news. I

(50:13):
appreciate everybody listening. Life Happens Radio, Pierre O'Connor, Shrouse, Aaron Connor.
Have a great weekend.