Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
Good morning, Welcome to Life HappensRadio. Are you prepared? This is
our weekly radio program for baby boomersand their families. We talk about the
challenges we 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. We're goingto talk about trusts, wills, trust
and will contests, medicaid, Whyyou need to have things in place,
(00:26):
why you know probably long term careis coming for all of us or most
all of us. The things youneed to think about. I'm Aaron Connor
from Pierre O'Connor and Strauss join thisweekend by our associate Kristin Peck. Good
morning, Kristen. Morning Aaron.So I think people should know by now.
How long have you been with thefirm? Almost three years? And
(00:48):
Kristin does mostly trust work, righte? Revocable or irrevocable yep. I do
the Medicaid asset protection trust. Ido revocable trusts. I do a little
bit of high net worth planning.You love retirement trusts, right oh?
I love them? We chuckle,because retirement trusts are important for several instances.
(01:11):
So As time has gone on,clients who come in the office more
and more tend to have two largeassets, right. I mean other people
have other things, don't get mewrong, but if you have two assets,
it seems like you have a houseand you have a retirement account.
Right. Most people, I thinktake time to accumulate anything else because you're
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probably accumulating your retirement account while you'reworking. So a trust for that is
I think complicated, to say theleast. There's a lot of factors,
and we use those trusts really whenwe want to kind of safeguard people from
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themselves. Can be a spouse.That happens occasionally, but usually not because
you want to take the spousal rollover, which is the only non tax event,
and we like non tax events ifyou can to have them, especially
with retirement accounts. But most ofthe time we're using that for how children
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receive the money. And can youlike elaborate on that a little bit,
so standalone retirement trust I think really, you know, when you have complex
beneficiaries or beneficiaries who need certain things, like you were saying, if you
need to safeguard a beneficiary from theirmoney, but we like to add subtrusts
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to our trust plans, whether itbe a standalone retirement trust or revocable trust
or any other trust. And sowe will add what we like to call
our beneficiary control trusts to safeguard themoney for the beneficiary. So in this
type of trust, the beneficiary canbe their own trustee, they can manage
their own money, and it's protectedif they got sued or divorced or filed
(03:00):
bankruptcy and so like an example ofthese can be all over the place.
There could be substance abuse, whetherit's alcoholism or drug use, it could
be mental illness, it could justbe lack of financial viability or ability all
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of these reasons when it's an assetthat is not a tax deferred retirement account,
right, so people get caught upon that IRA four oh one K
four H three B four P fiftyseven thrift savings plan. I'm sure maybe
I forgot one, but those arepredominantly what we're talking about, and four
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to fifty seven is a deferred countplan, right, So that's what people
at the state call it. Generallyspeaking, money has to come out of
those accept in very limited exceptions whichhave to do with disability or a chronic
illness or you know, closeness inage of a spouse, certain things.
(04:06):
Right when we have other assets,So let's say we sold a house,
but we had money in the marketthat was had already been tax paid.
Right when the invested, that moneycan go to a BCT and doesn't need
to come out on any kind ofregular schedule. Right, it can,
it can? Right. Kristen lovesit when I tell her that we need
(04:28):
to do a unit trust, becausethat's I'm probably the one that uses a
unit trust more than anybody else.I think I would say that, Yeah,
But I the reason I like unitrustis coming from a litigation background.
With the unit trust, it's it'sI don't know how to say. It's
kind of almost like a set itand forget it, right, five percent
or four percent or whatever percent really, but generally it's four or five You
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can, you can make it whateveryou want. Comes out every year,
which allows the principle to be invested, and in most years you're not going
to lose any value, and insome years you're going to gain value even
with that, and that allows peopleto have an income stream. It's become
kind of sort of de facto retirementaccount for certain people that way when they
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have not been able to save fora four to oh one K or four
or three V or et cetera,et cetera. And in some cases we
have parents who are appointing a siblingto be the trustee of that trust,
which can be a very awkward position. So Johnny comes to Sally to ask
for money and Sally says no,right, because I don't think this is
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a good reason. Well, obviouslythat's going to lead to some friction,
and it might be a good reason, it might be a spiteful reason,
right. It's hard to tell.People tend to act a little differently after
their parents have died. Not everybody, but it's pretty typical that the relationship
changes a little bit between siblings,especially when money is involved, and the
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more money that's involved, well,people are funny around money, yes,
And we see this a lot wherethere's a sibling who doesn't have children,
so the other, you know,other siblings are trying to make sure there's
money left because it's going to goback to their kids or something like that.
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So the unit trust takes a lotof the discretion away, takes a
lot of the risk away. Whenwe do a unit trust type trust and
let's say you know, five let'ssay there's three hundred thousand in there,
that means fifteen thousand it's going tocome out a year. Right, that's
a good supplement for a lot ofpeople while they're working. Yeah. Right,
it's not life changing money, butit probably makes life easier. They
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still have a hem standard and Kristen, can you kind of explain what that
means? So they can use themoney for health, education, maintenance or
support, which is you know,a fairly broad steer ner. I you
know, just circling back to whatyou were saying about the unit trust,
and you know it taking the discretionaway. You know, if a sibling
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is managing that money, you knowthey're kind of you're removing the discretion,
like you said, So so theincome that comes out, that's you know,
the sibling doesn't really have a sayover that. That's just going to
the beneficiary. And you know,you don't have to kind of say oh
yes or no to this. Thisis just what they're getting and if they
abuse it, they abuse it.But then you know, the corpus,
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the principle of the trust is goingto continue to grow you've limited the exposure
to abuse, and the HEM standardgives a trustee some discretion if there's a
valid need, right not I wantto buy a Ferrari, not, you
know, but if there's a validreason I need a roof and I can't
afford it, well, that certainlywould qualify. The maintenance and support is
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not as bungeible as it may soundeither. It's got to be a real
need that there is not other sourcesthat can satisfy to. So any trust
we draft can be drafted flexibly orinflexibly, really depending on what people want.
And that's important. So if youhave a complicated situation, don't just
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give up and don't do anything,because that leads to a lot of problems
and it's not a solution. Wesee it all the time. Fights after
death are not pleasant. They're verypopular, it's not the right word,
(08:45):
but probably too common. And ifyou get out and you create a set
of documents, that's what you wantit and I think that makes it an
easier sell to people in their mind. Very important. Yeah, I feel
like all too often I hear peoplecoming in They're like they want to do
their planning because something happened with theirsiblings when their parents passed away. And
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so that's the common story that wehear. I say that we have two
types of clients. We have clientswhose parents did everything wrong, and we
have clients whose parents did everything rightreally not much in the middle, right.
And what I mean by everything wrongis either they didn't have a will,
or they only had a will,they didn't have a trust, they
didn't protect their assets from long termcare going to a nursing home, that
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kind of thing, or some otherpredator, you know, third wife,
fourth husband, whatever it may be. Right, pool boy, it's funny
you said, pool Boy. Iwas thinking it. You said it faster
than I could. I don't know. Maybe it's because I watched Palm Royal
recently. Ricky Martin's the pool Boyand he's supposed to be left the entire
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estate there. So it's interesting.So there's that that's the bad side,
and then there's people who whose parentsdid an irrevocable trust, protected their assets,
maybe did some downstream planning right,and people come in and they see
how well that worked, and theysee that money wasn't dissipated for things that
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it didn't have to be, right, People still should live a good life.
They should do what they want todo. But that doesn't mean you
can't protect things. You know.Number one among those things is generally your
house. It does not affect yourlife. And five years from when we
put it into an irrevocable trust,it's safe. And the sooner you do
that, the better generally. SoI think we'll take our first break when
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we come back. I want totalk about what's going on with Tony Bennett,
some dust ups over his estate.So this is Life Happens Radio Americ
Connor for Pierre O'Connor and Strauss willbe back right after this. Welcome back,
(11:00):
This is Life passens the radio.Happy Father's Day to all the dads
out there a day early. Hopefullyyou're enjoying some nice weather, maybe playing
some golf, I don't know.I'm sure dance, do other things rather
than play golf or you know,vacuuming pools. But hopefully you're not vacuuming
a pool this weekend. So butI will be just roping it together with
(11:22):
the pool boy. But so,as an aside, I thought this was
interesting that my daughter's tend and shewas giving me a hard time about my
shampoo. Now, I used Panteene, which I thought was like a decent
product, and she told me myshampoo was trash and what I really needed
(11:43):
to upgrade. Did she use theword trash? Yes, only so she
uses some Japanese hair mask. It'scalled I think fino what. Yeah,
I don't know. I don't knowwhere she saw it, but the first
time it came, it's literally writtenin all Japanese. The second time it
came it had like translated on it. But so it must come from she
(12:07):
must have seen it on YouTube.But oh my god. Yeah, it
makes me fear for the younger generation. So maybe get your dad's in nice
shampoo. So recent news story ofsome family situation not going maybe as planned
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is just this week. Tony Bennettwas in the news. I read this
in the post a few days ago. And he has several children, which
is makes it more likely that peopleare not going to get along. And
evidently he had his son as hismanager for a very long time. I
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think I read forty years. AndTony Bennett lived a long life. He
was in his nineties. He performedright up until you know, I think
ninety five or six, and thenhe was developing dementia, which you know,
I not surprising when you live thatlong, unfortunately, But I think
most people would sign up for theTony Bennett life if they get it right,
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a good life. And he passedaway, and so in this case,
I don't really see a lot ofreferences to a trust, so I
don't know if there was a trust. I guess there is a family trust,
but in an LLC. Okay,so there is some sort of complex
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estate planning going on, and probablyshould explain that. So undoubtedly Tony Bennett
had a New York state taxable estate. I would assume he had a federally
taxable estate. Right New York almostseven million, right, federally thirteen in
change yep. Right. So Ican't say for sure, or I guess
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what I should say is would havehad a federally taxable estate if he had
not planned, he may still haveI don't know, but lots of times
LLCs are used to create valuation discounts. So he owns his song songs,
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he owns maybe the recordings to hissongs or some portion of that. He
certainly has royalties, and often inthe music world those are assigned to an
LLC whom I don't want to say. We've dealt with a lot of high
end musicians, but a few,and we had in a state it was
(14:46):
open for a long time because ofthe royalties payments. That was prior to
Kristen, prior to me. Yes, but that estate was opened before I
started and probably open for five toseven years. Was that something to do
with piano royalties or was it amusician with they had It was like a
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jazz or a blues musician. Ican't remember exactly. I thought we had
someone with that sold music books,but maybe I'm more I think that may
be true too, but I don'tthink that is the same person. Okay,
So anyway, royalties are kind ofhard to deal with. If you
don't plan, they just go toyour estate. Then someone has to create
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an entity to transfer them to.Generally you don't own them individually. You
can, but not ideal. Butwe use LLCs to create discounts, so
you're only you can shave off portionsof that thirteen million and change federally and
save other money, right right,So we will create what we call a
(15:52):
holding company to hold either other limitedliability companies which that could own property.
They could own rentals, and thenwe might put life insurance into the holding
company or other you know, otherapt you know, cash, other liquid
assets, and then like you said, we'll have a valuation company value value
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whatever's in that holding company once it'sfully funded, and then the valuation company
will provide a discount. So whenyou gift that LLC into maybe an irrevocable
trust, which is what we calla completed gift, and what that means
is you're using part of your federalexemption to transfer that out of your state
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for state tax purposes. And ourworld, completed and incomplete gifts are important,
right, right. I think it'sfunny for normal people to think about,
what do you mean an incomplete gift? Right? But when we put
a house, let's say, intoa normal Medicaid asset protection trust, that's
an incomplete gift, right because wewant to keep the step up and basis
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on death. And if you makea completed gift, you get a carryover
basis, which means, and justto explain kind of in normal terms,
if your house you bought for fiftythousand and it's worth two hundred and fifty
thousand, and you gift it outright, to your children. They get a
basis of fifty, which is aproblem, right, and if you own
it at death, they get abasis of two fifty. It's avoidable,
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it's it's the better way to dothings. And the big thing with the
basis is capital gains tax correct.So this really means nothing if it's you
know, you plan on holding ontothat house forever. But if you go
to sell and you have a carryoverbasis, then your loved ones they're going
to have a capital gains issue whenthey go to sell the property. Right,
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So that we want to avoid completedgift in that situation. In a
tax planning situation, completely different,right. And so when you make that
completed gift, the valuation of theholding company is really key because they're going
to provide discounts and those discounts aregoing to be key to you know,
when you make that gift, youdon't want you want to use as little
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of your exemption as possible. Right, And you're creating discounts by creating a
voting structure, voting in a nonvoting class of shares and then getting marketability
discount which means that who's going togo out and buy a fractional share.
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An easy way to think about thisis when people put their house into a
life estate, meaning that they transferthe remainder interest, but they reserve the
right to live in it all thattime. That life estate still has a
value. But who's going to buyit? Right, right? Because it
would terminate when that person passes away? Well, who knows when that's going
to be. Could be tomorrow,could be ten years from now. But
(18:53):
I don't you know, there aren'tpeople out there buying life estates, right,
So that is a marketability type discount, which is what happens when you
put some assets in an LL seewho's going to buy the non voting share
right rights? Personal jinks you wantto make coke, But that's very important.
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And the other discount is for lackof voting rights, uh you know,
minority voting rights discount And that isimportant as well, because if you
can't control what happens you're it's notas marketable either, and it's not as
valuable. So that's the trick,if you will, mm hmm, I'm
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sure I shouldn't call it a trick, all right, It's not it's not
obvious, right, So that wasclearly used to some extent in Tony Bennett's
state, but his daughters have nowfiled a demand for an accounting and it
sounded like the son was managing trustcorrect and they are alleging that not everything
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is accounted for, that memorabilia wassold that is not part of the estate
or the trust, which is aproblem. Usually the response on that is,
oh, Dad gave me that stuff, right, which is dubious unless
there's writing. But yeah, Dadhad dementia at the end, so I
(20:30):
mean, yeah, not a greatlook. And there's allegations that royalties from
his last album or last live performanceswere not They don't know where they went,
right. And the article makes clearthat the lawyers for each side have
tried to resolve this before this happened. Well, it's generally how you try
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to do it. You don't wantto go to court. I mean,
so letter writing campaigns don't work froma litigation standpoint. If you're talking to
a lawyer on the other side,and you know, if it's a situation
where that lawyer knows there might besome exposure for their client, then they're
better off negotiating. That's not oftenthe case either, because the lawyer isn't
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really digging into it. The clientdoesn't want to do that, even though
they've been told they have a lotof exposure or any other number of reasons.
In that case, if there's notraction, you have to go to
court because you need a context.You need the pressure of a judge being
involved, of work having to bedone, of them paying a lawyer to
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get things to move. Now,maybe there's nothing missing, right, right,
But an accounting right is a statutoryright. So you can demand an
accounting if you're a beneficiary and theyhave to provide it, and an accounting
and a state like Tony Bennett,I'm guessing is going to be very complex
again because of royalties, because ofentities, all of those things very expensive.
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Yeah, I just I live inthe land of the living. I
don't do the I think of CorpseBride when I say that, Yes,
it sounded like a movie honestly.So you know, I guess just for
people out there, you know,because you handle more seats and things like
that, what's going to go intothis accounting Like like you know, the
(22:32):
sun, he's going to have toproduce statements, He's going to have to
produce you know, he's going tohave to produce an accounting, right,
Okay, the underlying documentation you don'tget immediately. So what happens is he's
going to ask for I'm guessing atleast ninety days to produce an accounting and
he may ask for a protective ordermeaning that the accounting not be public and
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I don't know, maybe maybe not. And who puts this accounting together is
this? This is going to beyou know, his attorney or his attorney
in his accountant and you can hearthe cash register rolling at that point.
It's going to be a lot ofmoney and accounting in a state like that
might be one hundred thousand dollars wow, wow, and they're going to produce
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it. It's going to have allthese schedules of income and you know what
went in and went out of thetrust and why and for you know,
since death, you're really not entitledto it prior to that if it's depends
on the type of trust and whattheir interests worth, so it may be
some before death, may not bethere. Then their attorney is going to
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review the accounty and the next stepis to file objections to the accounty,
saying this is missing, this ismisvalued, this is overvalued if that were
the case, or the attorney's feesare ludicrous, or this is not so
all sorts of potential objections. Thoseget filed, Then you do discovery,
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then you get the statements in theunderlying you file, as you know,
we don't file. You serve adiscovery demand. They get a chance to
then respond to that, and thenyou go to trial. So we're coming
up on the break. We cankind of clean that up on the back
end, but in the second halfof the show, we're just going to
talk about some surprises that happen topeople that we've seen happen to people.
(24:30):
Reasons to plan, reason to getdad, and a state plan for fis
all right, So if you havea question about planning, give us a
call at five. I'm sorry.One four nine. Aaron Connor from Perre
O'Connor and Strauss. This is theLife Happens Radio and we will be back
(24:51):
after the news. Welcome backs likethat this radio. Aaron con pro'conn ins
Trucks, joined by Kristen peck anassociated our office. Happy Father's Day again
to everybody we were just talking toabout. Sorry not too that would be
(25:15):
we have a board in the officehere or in the radio station here talking
about Tony Bennett, not talking toTony Bennett. Maybe we could get him
to sing the intro if that werethe case. It's pretty wild. But
there are some not niceties going onwith his state and trust. His daughters
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and some of his other children arefeuding over value and missing assets and missing
income and all of those things.And we were just talking briefly about the
procedure. So they file an accounting, which I'm guessing is going to be
hundreds of pages. It's going tobe reviewed by the other side. Some
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judges will allow you to do discoverybefore you file objections, which in my
view is the better process because youget better objections then, because otherwise you're
just kind of fumbling in the darkwith objections and making broad objections. How
do you know, you know youhave this accounting, and if you don't
have the discovery to get the statementsand things like that, you don't even
(26:22):
know if the numbers have provided areaccurate. Right now, they've sworn to
them, Okay, now, yeah, well take that for what it's worth,
right, But that is a bigpart of it. It's The other
procedure is you file objections, dodiscovery. Now, discovery is not simple,
right, There's going to be documentdemands, which in that case is
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probably going to be voluminous. They'regoing to be rude, and then you're
going to depose people, certainly hisson, maybe his accountant or business other
business people involved. And then you'regoing to file amended rejections when you saying
these are really the crux of ourissues. Then you there may be motion
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work, meaning that one side orthe other files for summary judgment, arguing
essentially that what's on the papers carriestheir case. Excuse me, lots of
times when you know you're not goingto win one hundred percent, you do
that anyway because it narrows the issues. So even to get to that point,
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you're probably looking at two years wow, and you know then doing a
trial, what are the accounting andattorneys fees at that point? You know,
the case like that easily quarter ofa million dollars? Wow? I
mean, and it makes sense.You know we're talking big money here,
right, you know, just forpeople out there who are thinking, oh,
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you know, I think I gotslighted into mom or Dad's a state
you got to be valuing it.Yeah, I had this conversation with people
all the time, and not tosay that if they got slighted by five
or ten or fifteen thousand dollars thatit's not it's not it's insignificant. It's
not. But if you have tohire me, the cost benefit of hiring
me probably won't be there exactly becauseit takes a lot of work to get
(28:15):
to where we need to be.So then if they have a trial,
you know, most cases will settlebefore that, but not everyone. It
could have days and days of trialand then you have appeals. So settling
generally is a better option than goingall the way to the end for most
people. And frankly, most peoplecan't afford to go all the way to
(28:36):
the end. Okay, So howand just as a general question, how
often do you end up in trialover in accountings? Yeah? Probably not
very often? Do not especially often? One a year maybe something like that.
The guardianships were in court all thetime on because they a lot of
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times require are hearing no one canget on the same page or the incapacitated
person can't agree, and sometimes you'retaking more testimony than other times. But
it is one of the few areasof law that you're going to be in
the courtroom most of the time.So and we just hired someone to join
(29:22):
me in the litigation department, Sothat's exciting. It's someone I know for
a long time, and we've beentalking about this for a while, coming
out of what's known as mental hygienlegal service, which is assigned to people
who they're assigned to children. Oftentimes when there's a guardianship, they're assigned
to people in CDPC sociatric Center whoneed legal assistance. They're assigned in guardianships
(29:51):
a lot when when there isn't necessarilya lot of money to go around,
or you know, sometimes the courtjust feels that they would be a good
person or a good entity, andthere are people who work there to represent
this person's interest. They deal witha guardianship on a regular basis. So
(30:11):
looking forward to that a little bitof litigation on Saturday morning with Aaron.
Now, one thing we really wantedto talk about this weekend is that surprises.
As we say, life happens.And yeah, I generally do it
(30:33):
without finger pointing, but I can'tspeak for my partner. I did have
the odd occasion last week of turningthe NBA Finals on. The second I
turned it on, my voice wason the television because our commercial was running.
So it's a little weird. Butplanning doesn't happen at only one.
(30:59):
You're old, right, Unfortunately somepeople never get to be old. M
hm. Older. Maybe some peopledon't want to be old old. I
don't know. It's a personal decisionobviously, right, and how you live
your life. But things happen.We've had a number of fairly awful situations.
I would say, I would saythat, yeah, people who have
(31:22):
died young mm hmm. And Ican think of a case where a father
passed away m hmm. The wifewas not the beneficiary of his let's say
life insurance. One child was wow, and there was a second child.
(31:47):
So this is kind of a badit's pretty bad scenario that can't really be
fixed all that. Well. Well, so I was just I was just
going to say they were married.Yes, so she has the right to
elect against his estate, and that'swhat we had to do so to get
her some money, right, becauseshe has to raise two minor children.
(32:09):
Oh, she had two children,right, that's what I'm saying. Beneficiary
is only one child. The otherchild is totally out of luck because there
is no right of election for achild and there is no legal obligation.
There is no statue what helps thatchild. I'm surprised that they would allow
a minor child to be named onthe policy. Well, it's a beneficiary.
(32:31):
It's just like you can do iton your IRA. You had a
child, you can name your child. There's different rules for how they get
it. They don't get it outright when they're eight, you know.
But so that so she can help, she can elect and get a third.
(32:52):
But we can't transfer any of theother money from that child to the
unnamed child because that child's a minor. Can't make that decision, and it's
not in that child's interest to actuallytransfer money to their sibling legally speaking,
right, right, not morally speakingor whatever. But we're talking about very
(33:15):
small children, so it's not likethere's a vote. When they turn eighteen,
could they give some of that moneyto their sibling? They could,
Now whether that will happen or not, what if you don't get along with
your sibling? Correct, So justthe simple fact of being mindful of beneficiary
designations. If you've gotten married,maybe you need to look at them because
(33:37):
a lot of people before they getmarried and name their parents or a sibling
or whomever. And if you've addedchildren, right, because most times on
a retirement account beneficiary for we haveto name people, actual people. You
can't just say children. They requirepeople with security numbers and you know,
(34:00):
specific beneficiary designations. So that's importantbecause if you've added children, maybe maybe
out of luck, right, Anda lot of so just as a sidebar,
and a lot of our documents wesay to our descendants per sturpies,
correct, and that will cover youif you have more children. And that's
a common question, Right we havea new grandchild, do we have to
(34:22):
update our documents? Most likely not, But beneficiary designations are very different.
The same thing can happen with letlife insurance. We've had life insurance be
left to a parent who's been deadfor forty years. Yeah that is.
I have had people who are youknow, old themselves, right, and
(34:43):
they said, oh, my mom'sstill the beneficiary and she's been dead for
twenty years. Exactly. You needto be well, yeah, that's a
real problem. It is, itreally is. And the other problem is
leaving it to minors, and witha retirement account there's really not a lot
of wiggle room. Again, althoughwhat you can do is leave it to
(35:06):
a trust under a will, whichis some of the most complicated language that
we deal with, right people whoare like, well, can I just
say this, No, you haveto say article whatever of my will dated,
blah blah blah. It's a verycumbersome Yes, this is that,
(35:27):
and we often help people with thatbecause you would never get it right on
your own. So it's important tohave beneficiaries first of all, and documents
like that, because if you don't, retirement account goes to your estate,
you're going to pay your state's goingto pay a lot of tax right up
front. It's not a good ideaif you don't have a beneficiary and life
(35:50):
insurance again, it's going to payto your estate. It's something that doesn't
need to go to your estate.It's really designed not to. So those
things happen lot. So keeping upon your beneficiary designations no matter how old
you are, is important. Havinga power of attorney in a healthcare proxy
is important no matter how old youare. Unfortunately, things can happen yep,
(36:15):
and it doesn't mean that your impairedlong term either. Right, you
could be at a car accident andsomething needs to happen, either financially or
medically, and you may be onehundred percent okay after that, right,
you know, you may fall andhit your head. I mean, I
know it sounds kind of ridiculous,but we see it actually happen everything.
Yeah, I mean, it doeshappen, you know, And I've seen
(36:38):
all sorts of strange things happen.The guy who fell out of bed in
the hospital and I think he developeda blood clot from that and they didn't
detect it and he never really recoveredfrom a broken arm. Right, it's
probably an outlier of a scenario,but he's not the same person. And
(37:00):
it's pretty brutal because you know,you would think that broken arm probably not
a big deal in today's world.But but I feel like that's the motivator
for people to come to us alot of the time, is they will
see a loved one, you know, something will happen, and then that
motivates them to come in and dotheir planning right. Yeah, And again
(37:22):
that's kind of people who didn't doit right necessarily or didn't get out far
enough in front of it. Wehave number of people who come into us
that are eighty or above and they'venever had a power of attorney or a
healthcare proxy, which is part ofme says, well, you are a
(37:43):
very lucky person that you got thisforeign life and you never needed that right.
But it's also frightening because just thesmallest thing could go wrong and bad
things could happen financially and medically.Yeah, so you don't wait to do
those things. Don't wait to doa will. Do you need to do
a trust. That depends on yourcircumstances. And it's not just financial circumstances.
(38:07):
It's family, dynamic circumstances, it'shealth and age and lots of things.
But almost everybody out there in theworld needs a will and a power
of attorney in a healthcare proxy.So those things are important. And if
you have a special needs person,it's important to get out and plan now.
(38:32):
That can be all sorts of things. I've seen a lot of very
abled people who have I don't know, maybe autism or something like that,
and many, many times we cando a health care proxy and a power
of attorney because they have capacity.They are doing well, but they may
need assistance with something. Maybe they'renot particularly good with their finances. Right
(38:57):
well, once they turn eighteen,you can't access their finances. You're their
parents, So it's important to makesure that you can do that, and
that's a big part of what wedo. If they are more impaired,
then we're looking at doing perhaps aguardianship. And in New York right now
there's some movement to try to quotereform this type of what's called the seventeen
(39:22):
A guardian ship, which is fora person born with a disability or who
suffers a TBI later in life.Why that's treated differently of other disabilities that
arise later, I really don't know. But that's the way the law is
written, the protections for the personwho is alleged to need assistance in a
(39:45):
seventeen A though or less. Frankly, it's easier for parents to become a
guardian in that situation. And thereare people who are not happy about that
right because they want to make surethat the alleged incapacity person's writes room protected,
which is important, not in anyway saying that it's not, but
(40:07):
there needs to be some balance becausewe see so many situations where there's this
gray area and we can't help thisperson. And ultimately, at least in
my world, and I know there'salways predatory people out there. Nine times
out of ten, the reform,whichever way it swings, is it's going
to affect these people in the middlenegatively. It's not protecting people who who
(40:32):
need to be protected. Really,they're good people out there trying to help
them, and then they're in asituation where maybe guardianship doesn't work, but
the person isn't going to give thema power of attorney in a healthcare proxy,
and they're really in the weeds atthat point. So we need to
take our last break. When wecome back, we'll talk about a couple
of other surprise situations. This isLife Happens Radio. Aaron Connor, Piroconnor,
(40:55):
Trouse. We'll be back right afterthis. Welcome back to Life Happens
Radio. Aaron Connor, Piero ConnoranStrouse, Kristen Peck, also Piero Connor
(41:20):
and s Trouse. We are talkinglast half of the show here about surprises,
and we're not really talking about goodsurprises on show. It's not like
surprise you won the lottery, althoughI suppose surprise your great antid and you
inherited a million dollars. Yeah,it doesn't usually happen, although it's happened
more to people than I thought itever did. But we are talking about
(41:45):
things you want to plan for.And look, if you win the lottery,
you need to do some planning too, So that that's a good surprise.
Please come see us so we canhelp you structure that. We've done
that a few times in the past. That's a good surprise, you know.
Maybe another good surprises. Oh,there's a grand kid. You didn't
know there was a grandkid, right, or it's a new on the way.
(42:06):
How many people come to me andI and we asked them, hey,
do you have any grandchildren? Howmany grandchildren? No? I have
grand dogs. Yeah, they getso sad. That is a very very
common thing, for sure. Andwe we do do a trust for a
pet, yeah, Petris. Andin that vein, I was very surprised
(42:28):
to learn so someone I know theirparents have a parakeet or a macaw or
whatever, a bird bird and thebird can live to be one hundred.
I did not know that because I'mnot really birds aren't really for me and
my friend is not a fan ofthis bird. It's not like the bird.
(42:52):
They don't get along. Should introducethem the bird. To Carl lager
Fellas, I'm not saying it's rightthis His cat introduced the bird and the
cat. See that's not a badidea. I'm sure my friend would like
that. But we had to comeup with a plan for the bird because
(43:12):
the bird is going to outlive thepeople who own the bird currently and their
children do not want the bird.M hm. They do want want their
parents giving them the bird. Who'sthe bird going to? Oh that's funny,
sorry, dad, joke, itseems appropriate. But so we had
(43:34):
to come up with a plan,and we found a taker and and if
that person is not around or unableto take the bird, it's going to
go to like some kind of birdsanctuary. What's the name of the bird?
Do you do you remember? Idon't. Yeah, it's not Polly,
(43:57):
I don't. I can't remember,but I I didn't never knew a
bird could live that long, honestly, So that is something a surprise,
if you will, to me.I know that there's like one hundred and
eighty year old tortoise out there too, So I guess if you have a
tortoise, you need to plan forthat as well. Oh, I was
just looking up Carl Lagerfeld's cat cat'sname, because that was wasn't that in
(44:21):
the news that the cat got apet trust for a ton of money?
And can Chopett was the name ofthe cat Choe, Well he's French.
Yeah, you know, his nameisn't really French, right, But so
I'm guessing I'm not sure if you'repronouncing that correct. Maybe I'm not.
Maybe I don't know. Yeah,yeah, I don't know. But well,
(44:45):
as I'm sure we've said before,a gentleman in our New York City
office drafted Leona Helmsley's pet trust whereI don't know, something like nine million
dollars was left to the dog.Oh my god, that's so funny.
That went through the court system andthey knocked down how much. I forget
what the dog's name was. Idon't know, could have I think they
(45:09):
knocked it down to like two orthree million dollars. Still though it's a
dog. Well, and it's it'smy understanding that the dog was not friendly.
Trouble. His name was Trouble.There you go, just one trouble
or like three troubles. I mean, if it was a Taylor Swift song,
(45:30):
right, it would be trouble threetimes. Right. So no,
goats, don't have any goats.I don't. I'm not aware of any
anyone who owning goats. Sure thereare. I had people who owned alpacas,
oh, all sorts of things.So definitely think horses. Certainly we've
(45:51):
had people done. I've done apet tress for horses. Actually have a
case where there's a dispute about whoowns what percentage of a herd of cattle,
and they're very valuable cattle. Sowhen I got out of law school,
did I think I would be fightingover stuff like that? Probably not
(46:12):
Probably chattle, not cattle. Yes, fair enough, fair enough. So
all of those things need to bethought about. Pets, kids, kids
with pets. Not that we're callingkids pets by any no, no,
no. But frankly, the planningis not necessarily grossly different. You have
(46:36):
to have a trust set up forthem, right, I mean, the
provisions are going to be very different, But the thought process is you have
to plan in advance. You haveto figure out how you want it structured,
what can be paid, for whatcan't be paid for, and if
there's a remainder, what happens tothe remainder. You're going to have a
caretaker for your pet, and you'regoing to have a guardian for your kid,
right, Yes, so all ofthat's very important. Actually, that's
(47:00):
probably one of the biggest breakdowns wesee with younger people is who's going to
be the guardian. Who's going tobe the guardian my parents? No?
My parents? Well not not yourparents? How about your brother or not?
No, not your sister that anda lot of times we have language
in there. It goes to mybrother and sister in law. Let's say
(47:23):
it's so long as they're still married, right, because if a lot of
people don't want to send, ifthat's happened, then maybe it's not the
environment they wanted it. Maybe itis, but there are a lot of
people who choose to only do itif it's if those people are still married,
and then we have contingencies, soyou know, lots of times there
(47:45):
might not be a good choice.Right. A lot of clients now their
kids are waiting till later in lifeto have kids. So Nan and Papa
or grandma and grandpa, whatever,you call them are older than they were
(48:05):
trying to think, So, mymother's parents only would have been in their
late forties when I was born asgrandparents, right, my parents were in
their mid to upper sixties when mykids were born. Pretty big difference.
(48:27):
That is a big difference. Youknow. I was as far as my
dad's family goes, I was oneof the later grandchildren. So my grandfather
was sixty four when I was born. But I think I'm number ten of
thirteen, so you know, therewere a lot before me. Wow,
a lot of a big family.Yeah. But yeah, my grandparents they
were definitely in their fifties when mybrother and I were around, which by
(48:52):
today's standard, would be a hungergrandparents. Right. That doesn't mean there
aren't still some of those people there, definitely are. I'm just saying predominantly
we're seeing older grand yeah, becausemost people are waiting into their thirties,
you know. And I know that'strue because when I go to the softball
field, all the people that mywife went to high school with are there
with the same age kids, right, So if they were, you know,
(49:15):
it would be off otherwise. Sothat's not a scientific point, But
I'm just saying you know anecdotal evidencethat this is also true. So frankly,
if you don't have children, whichis absolutely okay, what's your plan,
right, who's going to be youragent in that situation too? Because
(49:37):
most people appoint their kids, right, Well, I mean you have a
spouse, right, Really the dangerif you have a spouse, the big
danger zone is for the survivor,right, who's the backup? Right?
And do you have an Eastern nephew? Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe not
right? Probably your friends are similarin age to you. Probably, unless
(50:00):
you're a really cool old person,that might be that. You know,
maybe that will work out, ButI don't know. I don't know.
Are you pals with your daughter's friends? No, I don't ever see that
as a thing. But I didhave a lot of old friends when I
was younger, like when I wasin my thirties, I did have probably
several friends that were in their fifties. I don't see them as much anymore,
(50:22):
just because kids take up more ofyour time than when you don't have
kids. I was going to makecomment maybe they're a little older now.
Well they are, certainly, butthey're still with us, so I'd be
thankfully for that. But so allof those things are things to think about.
I'm sure that you know there aren'tmany dads out there that wanted to
(50:43):
stay planned for a Father's Day,right, but certainly in time to think
about it. Maybe if it comesup naturally in conversation you don't have a
plan, maybe we should talk aboutit. Certainly, if dad or whomever
is a single person, they reallyneed to get out think about it.
Yeah, so obviously we hope everyonehas a wonderful Father's Day. If we
(51:05):
have a question we didn't get to, you can call us at the office
at five one eight four five ninetwenty one hundred, or you can contact
us at info at puro law dotcom. That's p I E R r
O Law dot com. And havea great Father's Day and weekend. Everybody,
See you next week.