Life Happens

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Good morning, everybody. Welcome toLife Happens Radio. This is our weekly
radio program for baby boomers and theirfamilies where we address the challenges we all
face as we age. We talkabout aging as a lifestyle, the issues
that must be confronted, and thecareful planning that's required to avoid crises in
the future. Life Happens will provideyou with tools to educate and prepare yourself

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

(00:42):
are reached, and your needs aremet for both yourself and for your family.
So again, welcome, good morningeverybody. It's a Saturday. Thank
you for being here. I'm FrankHeming. I'm the senior associate attorney for
Pierre, O'Connor and Strauss. Weare an elder law firm located here in
the Capitol district in Latham. I'mfrequently on the show as a co host.

(01:03):
Normally I'm not sitting in the captain'schair. But the fact that I'm
already talking to you, hopefully Cujian, that they they're letting me run the
show today, which this could gowell, it could go horribly, but
I guess we're just gonna see howit goes. But I do do this
occasionally, so I do ask youto bear with me. The show's usually
a little bit more relaxed when Ido it, you know, So we'll

(01:23):
see where we go. We havesome good topics to talk about. And
I'm sitting alone in the studio here, but I am not alone on the
show. So on the phone,I am joined by I think my third
most frequent co host, and that'smister Anthony Chewi. Hi Anthony, Yeah,
how are you, Frank? Hello? That world a pleasure review with
you on this fine Saturday morning.I say from an undisclosed location. But

(01:45):
if you heard the sirens, heis down in New York City. That's
all we're gonna say about that.But Anthony is a he's a rock star
down in our New York City office. Anthony has been with our firm for
quite some time now, and Anthonyis a good friend of mine, so
I I think we're going to havea good show for everybody. But Anthony,
I just want to say thank youfor giving up some time on a
Saturday morning and doing this with me, because I do appreciate it my absolute

(02:07):
pleasure, and I'm excited about estateplanning and helping the listeners navigate the complexities
and the tribulations of figuring out astate plans and the best approach for not
only themselves but for their families andfuture descendants. Yeah, hopefully, I
think we're going to cover, youknow, a lot of different stuff that
talks about people and their families andall that kind of stuff. But of

(02:29):
course, because we're lawyers, andbecause we talk about a state planning and
death and sickness and stuff I thinkwe should talk about quickly, we might
not talk a lot about planning here. But I am a sports fan.
Typically when I'm on the show,I feel like at the start of the
show, Aaron and I we normallybecause I'm on with him more than Lou,
not that I don't do the showwith Lou, but when I'm on
with Aaron, we talk a lotabout sports and you know, kind of

(02:52):
what's going on in the world.And unfortunately, it has been a bad
week if you are a Hall ofFame sports figure. This week we lost
two really big ones. I thoughtthe first one was bad enough in and
of itself, and then we kindof doubled down and we lost another one.
So so we lost at least sincethe last time I've been on the
show. We lost Jerry West first. He was a Hall of Fame basketball

(03:13):
player, mainly made headlines I thinkfor the Lakers. That's certainly where I
know him, you know, professionallyand just from my fandom perspective. You
know, I'm not old enough tohave seen Jerry West play, but you
know, if you've seen the NBAlogo, which I think everyone has probably
seen, you know, even ifyou don't know anything about basketball, I'm
sure you've seen that logo with thered, the white, the blue,

(03:36):
and the basketball player. He iswidely considered to be the silhouette for the
basketball logo. So like, obviously, if you're the logo for something,
you you're a pretty big deal.But there were just some some eye catching
things as I kind of just lookedinto, like who Jerry West the guy
was, because, like I again, I know he's a Hall of Famer.
I know he was the logo,but I didn't know a lot about

(03:59):
the guy, honestly, because I'mI'm a Knicks fan. If I have
a team for basketball purposes, Iroot for the Knicks because I'm not smart
and you know, and and theLakers are are are not somebody you typically
root for when you're root for theKnicks. So he's never really been of
interest to me in the team thathe's always been associated with, in my
mind, has never been a teamthat I've had good thoughts about. But

(04:20):
I mean, so, Anthony,I'm just gonna hit you with some like
tidbits about Jerry West. So I'mgonna ask you a few little things about
Jerry West if you don't mind.But it's completely on the spot, So
don't hold anything against Anthony. Idid not tell him I was doing this.
But so if I told you,Anthony, Jerry West played in the
NBA for fourteen seasons, do youknow how many times in those fourteen seasons
he was an All Star? Youknow what? He was an amazing player.

(04:44):
I'm gonna say everyone, that's right, that's true. He was an
All Star every one of his fourteenyears, which is crazy because you could
think like one year he had toget hurt, or like one year everybody
else is crazy and he just didn'tmake it or like whatever. But he
was an All Star every one ofhis fourteen years, which is which is
like in and of itself, likealready a bonker's stat. Right. He
did win the championship in nineteen seventytwo, but he had lost like seven

(05:11):
times i think in the finals beforehe won the title in nineteen seventy two,
like that, right, Yeah,So I mean think about this,
right, You're like at the topof your game. You're at the top
of your craft. You get tothe championship like seven different times, and
then you lose like every one ofthem. And that's mainly because at that
time, like there was this otherteam called the Boston Celtics, don't know
if you've heard of them, wherethey just won like all the time,

(05:34):
and they just routinely like would matchup with the Lakers, and typically the
Celtics would win, at least atthat period of time, and then the
Knicks actually beat them in I thinkit was nineteen seventy if I'm remembering my
facts right. So, so JerryWest did a lot of losing, but
he did finally win a championship inseventy two. And the reason why I
bring this up besides again just kindof show tribute to clearly a great basketball

(05:57):
player here was was the quick thatI wrote from him. And I guess
when he won the championship in seventytwo, he was doing an interview and
he was quoted as saying, thelast time I won a championship was in
the twelfth grade, right, SoI mean to think about how good that
guy was at basketball and then playedfor all those years and then finally won

(06:17):
something, and it had been sincehigh school since he'd won a championship.
It's just again, it's just kindof like just kind of like ridiculous,
right. I had no idea thatthat was like the case, another cool
thing, not just statistically speaking,but just talks to like Jerry West the
guy. But apparently it's been rumoredthat his nose was broken at least nine

(06:38):
different times while he was playing,and he would just play through it.
So so I mean talk about likeyou know, these days with sports,
it's all about like load management andkeeping your players healthy and safe and stuff.
And I'm not saying that that's wrong, to be clear, right,
I think I think a lot ofsteps have to be taken to keep the
guys on the field or on thecourt. But I mean, the guy
broke his nose like nine different times. It was like, I'm good,

(06:59):
I'm just going to keep playing.You remember Richard Hamilton had to wear a
face mask because he broke his nose. Oh yeah, yeah, and then
he just kept wearing it after that, right because he got tired of like
breaking it, so he just keptwearing the mask. But so so they
said, you know, not onlywas he like this crazy good basketball player,
but he was also like super toughbecause like you know, he'd get
beat up and he would just keepplaying. When he retired, he averaged

(07:21):
twenty seven points for his career duringthe regular season, which at the time
it was the third highest at thattime. It is now the eighth highest,
just because there have obviously been peoplethat have come since then have and
have since retired, but he's stilltop ten statistically speaking in career average.
And then and then I think justanother thing that just like again, I

(07:45):
didn't know this, so I justthought it was super interesting. So in
nineteen sixty nine, his Lakers wentto the finals against the Celtics, and
the Celtics won, but Jerry Westaveraged thirty seven point nine points in the
finals, so he basically averaged thirtyeight points per game in the Finals.
He he averaged forty two in theclinching and deciding game, and in that

(08:09):
last deciding game, he also hadthirteen rebounds twelve assists, so we had
something called a triple double, andand he was leading a heart a fourth
quarter comeback. But they did windup losing, but he was named the
MVP for the series, even thoughthe Lakers lost the series. And it's
the only time that a losing playerin the NBA has been named as the

(08:30):
Finals MVP when they didn't win.That's remarkable. Before you said that,
I was going to say, howoften does that happen? Yeah, it's
literally the only time that that's happened, right, So I'm just looking to
see if there's any other like statshere that I wanted to throw out there,
because they're there. I mean,there's there's a ton of them.
Oh you know what, there issomething else. So it's not it's not
really statistics anyway. But so Anthony, again, I will just throw this

(08:54):
out there. How many times doyou think Jerry West has been elect did
to the Basketball Hall of Fame?This? This sounds like a trick question.
It either maybe it is, maybeit isn't. Well, he was
probably in the Hall of Fame forthe NBA, right, So that's that's

(09:16):
definite. I would imagine in hismaybe high school. Oh I like to
thought, okay, so that's twoanymore. Is there a Hall of Fame
for college? Uh? There is, but not in this instance. So
so all right, okay, soI'm gonna go with two two, Okay,
so incorrect? Good try though,the answer is three and and here

(09:41):
and here's how that happens, right, Because I was like, how are
you elected three times? Right?Once? Once sounds good enough. But
he's actually been elected for three differentreasons. So one is the obvious one.
He was elected as a player becauseof all the great stuff I was
just talking about. Second, hewas elected as a what's he was?
He was a member of the nineteensixty US Olympic team, which apparently was

(10:03):
like the most dominant Olympic basketball teammade of amateur players that people think have
ever been assembled. I looked uptheir stats quickly. They won like every
game by like an average of likeforty five points. It was not even
close. So they inducted that entireteams into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
So he's in technically as a memberof that team. And then recently,

(10:26):
I think just this year, hewas elected for the third time as what's
called a contributor, and in thiscontest, in this context, he's recognized
as a Hall of Famer because ofhis work in the front office and player
development scouting. And he actually waseven a head coach for I think two,
I think three years something like that. He was not the best coach.
I don't think he won anything.He definitely didn't win a championship if

(10:48):
I'm remembering correctly. But you know, to say that he was all over
the game of basketball is definitely anunderstatement. So to show that he was
elected three separate times a Hall ofFame, so I know that the audience
isn't here just to hear about basketball, so we will move on from Jerry
West. But I didn't want topay tribute to clearly just a really,

(11:09):
really unique human that I did notknow much about. And obviously, you
know, condolences to Jerry's family.You lost a great guy. It sounds
like, so that's basketball. Nowwe're gonna move to another legend because I
said we lost two. So theother one just recently on I think it
was the eighteenth. I believe welost Willie Mays him. I know him,

(11:31):
I definitely know. I've been tothe Hall of Fame for Baseball in
Cooperstown three times, I think.And if you know anything about baseball and
statistics and stuff, you know WillieMays, you probably can make the argument
depending on who you're talking about toand talking about that he is the single
greatest player to ever play baseball.Some players, you know, some people
obviously disagree, but he's certainly inthe discussion. So Anthony, again,

(11:56):
I'm going to I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna give a little bit,
right, So, so I'm gonnatell you he played like twenty four years,
you know, basically twenty four seasons. Okay, how many times was
he how many times was he anAll Star? And like, you know
what, I was right the firsttime with Jerry West saying every time.

(12:18):
So I'm gonna roll the dice andgo for it again. Hey man,
that's a good beat. Good job. So he was a twenty four time
all twenty four times. Twenty fourtimes isn't all? That's I mean,
there are probably plenty of people thatif you if the day you reached the
major league they said you're gonna bean All Star one time? What do
you think you good with that?Plenty of players be like, you know
what, I'm good. Like Ithought maybe it'd be more, but I

(12:39):
got one. Goes on the resume, goes on my baseball reference page.
You know, I'm good. Someof his like, you know, iye
popping statistics. He hit six hundredand sixty home runs, you know,
still an astronomical number. His lifetimeaverage over twenty four years is three oh
one for his lifetime. I mean, I can tell you right now,

(13:01):
I think the last time I sawthe statistic, because I was watching one
of the met games earlier this week. I think the batting average league wide
in the majors literally right now islike two forty one something like that.
It's definitely two forty something. Theguy averaged three to ozho one for his
career where he played twenty four seasons. That's crazy. So again, I

(13:24):
think I didn't want to spend asmuch time with Willy just because I think
one, we got other things weneed to talk about. But second,
most people probably know who he isa little bit more than maybe Jerry West.
But again, if you're a prominentsports figure, uh, not a
good week for you. Unfortunately.I'm sorry that we keep losing these these
juggernauts of sports. But but youknow, condolences to to Willy, his

(13:46):
family and his so Anthony. Idon't know if you know this his I
believe it's his nephew. Hold onone second, let me check this godson.
That's what it is. Godson,his god son, will Willie Mays.
God's on probably another baseball player youprobably have heard of. And you
know little guy named Barry Bond's everheard of him? Yeah? I heard

(14:07):
a couple. Yeah, so uhyes, I say, quite the baseball
family. So uh so there yougo. Condolences to Jerry West, Condolences
to Willie Mays. We'll probably neversee players like them again. So so
why do we do this? Wehave plenty of other things to talk about.
Let's get out of here. Let'stake the first break and then we'll
come back and we will talk aboutuh some estate planning stuff, I promise,

(14:28):
so by all means, come onback after the break. This is
Life Happens Radio. Welcome back,everybody, This is Life Happens Radio.
Thanks for sticking with us through thebreak. It is still Saturday. I'm
still Frank Hemming, thanks again forbeing here. And uh, I still
have my my good buddy Anthony Chewyon the phone. Anthony is still there,

(14:50):
all right. So, uh,I promised we would do less sports
talk for for the segments going forward. So so no, somebody else died.
No, I'm kidding, No,we actually so this. I do
like to talk about celebrities when Iam on the show. I think it's
always a fun topic because of theshow that like things you know, happened
to people right that have lots ofmoney, that could take care of things,

(15:13):
or at least try to take careof things, and even if they
try to take care of things,things don't always go as they want.
So that's the segue to get overto what I'm looking at now. So
it came out this week that TonyBennett's daughters are having or if they filed
a lawsuit against their brother. Soagain I apologize. I don't have the
biggest amount of personal experience with TonyBennett, but I know, you know,

(15:35):
I know who he is. Iknow he was a singer. I've
I've looked over his catalog of music. I know I recognize quite a few
number of songs from the top oflike Apple Music. I know he did
some collaboration stuff with Lady Gaga withinI don't know the last five or ten
years, however long it's been,but certainly, like you know enough that
I was aware of it, andI think I've seen him in like maybe

(15:56):
like guest stars on maybe either TVor movie or something. So you know,
I wouldn't say I'm a Tony Bennettfan, but I know who he
is, and I know he's beenyou know, he's been gone for a
while. So anytime that we seesomething like where the families are gonna start
fighting, right and I know I'mgonna be on the show, well,
I'm gonna read the I'm gonna readthe news article. So apparently what's going

(16:18):
on is there are two daughters,Antonia and Joanna, and they filed lawsuit
against their brother, whose name isDeAndrea, but they call him by Danny,
so if I call him Danny,that's why. So they are coming
after Danny, and I guess there'sa family trust, and I don't know
if it's because it isn't known orit's just because of like the resources that
Rolling Stone had when they wrote thisarticle, but it doesn't it doesn't really

(16:41):
give a lot of detail about thetrusts or the family trust as they call
it. So there's definitely a trustinvolved in this case. But essentially what
the suit is alleging is that therewas mismanagement of funds and that Danny might
have been personally benefiting from some ofthe activits with either the trust or maybe

(17:02):
Tony's like music or his possessions andthings. And essentially, like here's where
the interesting point comes in. Thisis why I wanted to bring it to
everybody's attention, beside you just beinga newsworthy thing. Is like the daughters
are claiming that in the last let'ssee how long fifteen years of his career,
they believe that Tony Bennett made anestimated at least one hundred million dollars

(17:25):
right at least, so it couldhave been more, could have been less
but one hundred million dollars, Sowhich is I don't know, seems like
a lot of money, right,my bank account isn't anywhere near that.
I'd be happy with one hundred milliondollars. But here's here's where some of
the intrigue comes in because according tothem, they were told by their brother
that the amount in the trust thatthey are beneficiary of is only seven million
dollars. Now seven million still apretty big number, right, I would

(17:51):
still trade set for seven million dollars. But if you told me on one
hand it's it's one hundred million plusversus seven million. Yeah, big discrepancy.
Where what happened to the other ninetythree million dollars? So I think
that's that's uh, that's really whatthe question is here. So they have
asked for something called an accounting,which is where the trustee, so Danny
and any other people that were involvedin the trust, have to put together

(18:15):
all the records and things and showthe activity of what was going on with
the trust. But yeah, soAnthony, I think the point here is
that I wanted to talk about andobviously, if you think you've got other
things to that, he hate hereby all means, you know, he
clearly did some planning, right.There is a family trust now again it
doesn't really say what that is orwhat that entails, but he definitely did

(18:37):
something and now like it seems like, well, there's still either going to
be fighting like amongst the family aboutit now. Again, not to say
that like the trustee is wrong orthat they did anything wrong or improper,
but like, even with a plan, there's still some some issues here,
and I think that's that's something thatunfortunately, like even with the best plans,
sometimes things go awry. Would youagree? I will agree. And

(19:00):
it seems like there's two different schoolsof thoughts among practitioners. There are some
that think that when you're doing yourstate plan that you sort of involve your
family. You have an open dialoguewith them, You explain to them in
your financial situation what your intent is, so that way everyone in the family

(19:21):
is on the same page. Theyknow what your assets are, they know
what your intention is, and ifthere is any sort of disagreement at that
moment, it sort of comes tolight and the parents could explain to their
children that's their intent and that's whatthey want, and hopefully they could overcome
it. But the other school ofthought is those sort of conversations can be

(19:41):
difficult, especially with family and money, right, those are often volatile mixes
family and money, and that youif there is maybe should be kept private
just with your spouse, and it'snot your the business of your children,
and why should they know what you'redoing your money. Maybe you change your
mind, maybe great hard feelings.Maybe a family member thinks that they were

(20:03):
entitled to money and now your stateplan doesn't include them to that extent,
and now they're upset, and it, you know, damages relationships. Of
the school of thought that I believein transparency. I believe in having open
conversations and even if there is hardfeelings, you're able to sort of work
it out while the person's alive.I think when the estate plan has sort

(20:25):
of kept private between the individual orwith the individual and the spouse, that's
when there's distrust. And that's whenyou have the possibility of a sibling or
spouse or a child to say momor dad promised me this or that,
or you influenced that or where wasall this money? And that's when there's
a misalignment of you know, potentialthe reality of the situation, what his

(20:48):
actual funds were, and you know, what their expectations were. So I
believe in having the transparent conversation withyour family, with your immediate family and
involving them so that they know whatthe situation is. But not everyone is
comfortable doing that. Rank. Yeah, I mean it's a lot different.
Like let's just say, you know, let's let's just throw out a hypothetical,

(21:10):
right, if you've got let's sayTony, like Dad in his instance,
he's got three kids, you know, if he wanted maybe something to
go like mostly to Danny just toyou know, again, hypothetical, Right,
that's gonna be a lot different ifif the two sisters, the two
daughters, right, hear that rightfrom Dad, I want Danny to handle
the trust, or I want Dannyto get in a bigger proportion of the

(21:32):
assets, or you know, Iwant him to manage everything when I'm not
around or when I'm not able to, right. And it kind of not
that, not that that always meansthat there's going to be you know,
good heart or good feelings around thetable about every aspect of that. Sometimes
there are difficult conversations that have tobe had but I think it tends to
go better when people hear from theperson what their intentions are, what they

(21:53):
want, what their wishes are,rather than hearing it through a document or
through you know, through the sunor the trust or whatever after someone's past,
because then you have all this ambiguityand gray area and potentially, you
know, potential issues because things weren'tmanaged appropriately, or they could have been
managed better, or somebody else shouldhave been doing it, or or anything
like that. So I certainly doagree that the transparency conversation is probably a

(22:18):
good one to have, But obviouslyevery everybody's gonna have their own preference,
right, The best we can dois make the recommendation and see how people
feel about it. So so yeah, I don't think I could really disagree
with anything that you said if AaronConnor were on the show, right,
he is our litigator. He isa big fan I think of generally having

(22:40):
that that transparency talk of just thisis what I want, this is what
I intend to do, this isthe plan that I'm putting in place,
this is why I'm doing it becauselike as much as as much as like
we the attorneys benefit from from litigation. Right, typically, isn't very kind
to people's wallets, to the trustfunds things like that, because like who

(23:00):
wants to pay people like us todo do more things and fight about things
more when you have the stress ofthe situation. Also yeah, yeah,
I mean it's it's there's yeah,it's not even just a monetary loss.
Yeah, of course, like whowho's Like, Man, I went through
that lawsuit. It was the bestthing that ever happened. Like, I've
never been in better shape than Iwas than when I was going to that

(23:22):
lawsuit getting sued. It was fantastic. I'm gonna try to go get sued
tomorrow, like, like I missit so much, Like like I've not
I have not heard that in uhin my you know, almost ten years
of practice. So yeah, no, that's a great, great, great
point. So we think it's goodto take a step back and just realize
that this is a moment, youknow, where the family is grieving,

(23:45):
they just lost a loved one,and emotions are raw and people are upset
understandably, and then there's a situationlike this that you think, let me,
let me just get us oude forthe news, because we got to
we have a break coming up.So I apologize for in around thing.
So we're going to go go afterthe news. We're going to come right
back. Stay with us for thesecond half of Life Happens Radio. And

(24:07):
welcome back second half of Life HappensRadio again, thanks for being here on
Saturday. I am Frank Heming,Senior Associate Attorney with Pierre O'Connor and Strauss,
joined on the phone by one ofour other associates, mister Anthony Kachuwi.
Anthony, I am sorry for cuttingyou off for the break, but
the news does not care right.The news is going to cut us off
if you keep talking, so Idid not want that to happen. So
by all means, pick up backwhere you were talking about, Sir,
I am sorry, no problem.You know the news must go on right,

(24:32):
just like the show. There go. But I was just trying to
say to the audience, is thatto put yourself in the situation when a
family member dies, it's usually avery difficult time and emotions are high.
And now you think that your fatheror your loved one had X amount of
money and you find out that it'sactually significantly less. So not only you're
grappling with the grief, of theloss of the loved one, but now

(24:53):
you engage in a lawsuit, whichis another emotionally challenging situation. So I
think it's good to sort of tryto prevent these unfortunate fights and and torn
relationships while you're alive and address thesematters so that way everyone on the family

(25:14):
is on the same page. Yeah. So there was another aspect of this
that I want to get your inputon, Anthony, because because so for
those of you who are maybe alittle bit more unfamiliar with like where Anthony
kind of fits in our practice.So Anthony works in our New York City
office, and he does a lotof work with with trusts and you know,
revocable trusts and taxes. But hedoes a lot of high end He

(25:34):
does a lot of tax planning.He does a lot of the things in
the firm that like I don't do. I think together we're pretty dangerous because
I kind of handle the long termside of the of the firm. You
handle more of the estate planning sideof the firm. But there was one
aspect of this, this article thatcame up that that I know, like
as a attorney, I thought itwas really noteworthy of like maybe why this

(25:55):
is a problem. Maybe right,I don't know, maybe it isn't,
but I guess according to you either, I'm guessing it's the trust right because
again the news article is a littlevague here, but I guess according to
the to the information that Rolling Stonegot when they wrote this article, Tony
Bennett's plan, you know, hisestate plan said that tangible personal property was
supposed to be distributed equally amongst hischildren. And I was thinking, well,

(26:18):
like, if you have his likemusic catalog, his music rights,
his royalties, you know, whatever, right are those personal property? Like
I certainly can see an argument thatthey would be. I could also see
maybe an argument that they wouldn't be. So the point here that I wanted
to talk about, and Anthony,I want you to like weigh in here
with any thoughts that you have,is like this is why like specificity in

(26:41):
your documents and your drafting is veryimportant because like let's just say, let's
say Tony wanted all that stuff tobe split between his kids, like with
all of his music and his rightsin his catalog and all that stuff,
Well, like that should then happenhypothetically, right has he wanted? He
tried to put a plan in place, said that, but again, because

(27:02):
arguments could be made that it isn'tmaybe they won't be because like I could
certainly see the argument saying, tangiblepersonal property, that's that's like items of
property, right, that's the thingsin your drawers, right, that's your
books, that's your clothes, that'syour knickknacks, it's that stuff. But
it's not it's not these other intangiblemusical rights things like that. So so
I think there's some ambiguity here.So I'm kind of curious myself if maybe

(27:23):
more comes out once the accounting getsdone and other things to say, like
you know, maybe not only areis there a lot of money missing or
why, but like you know,who's supposed to get what and what does
that actually consist of? Yeah,I think you also encounter this situation where
a client will gift a house toone family member, but say that all

(27:45):
their tangible personal property will go toa different family member. And then the
question is, well, what aboutthe contents the tangible personal property in the
home that's gifted to the other familymember. Is that going to go with
the house or is that going togo to a family member that is getting
just your tangible personal property, justyour stuff. So there's always sort of

(28:08):
potential ambiguity when you're not clearly identifyingeverything in your state, and I think,
frank some of it is just hardto do right. Sometimes, even
with the best plan, even forclients who are successful and famous, we
often see that either there's ambiguity oroften we see that they don't even have

(28:30):
a plan because life gets in theway. And I think unfortunately for many
people having an estate plan, it'snot something that they like to sort of
think about. No one likes tothink about their own mortality and thinking about
who's going to get your assets whenyou die, I think makes a lot
of people sort of push off thinkingabout their plan without realizing that if you
don't develop your own plan, thenthe state will come up with the plans

(28:53):
for you, right, and there'sthe laws of intestity that will outline who's
going to get your assets if youdo not make that determination yourself. So
I think in the estate planning world, there's always a potential ambiguity, especially
for clients that have lots of apps. That's lots of things. But I
think there's also the issue of noteven having a plan and I think that's

(29:15):
more dangerous than anything. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean it's kind of
like it's kind of like maybe weplanned this. I'm looking at the next
article that I was going to talkto talk about, and the headline of
the article is six estate planning mistakesthat celebrities have made, because always think
this stuff is interesting. So thefirst one says having no estate plan at

(29:37):
all, so goes to everything youjust talked about. Right, how many
times have we heard so and sodied without a plan at all, let
alone like a good one. Likethe article talks about prints and how his
estate like wound up, you know, which was worth a lot of money,
right, according to the article,is worth one hundred and fifty six
million dollars and how ultimately split upbetween six primary people. But you know,

(30:03):
there were court proceedings to figure outwho the airs even were because I
think they were like half siblings andother things. So I think part of,
you know, things need to getsettled out of just who was even
going to be a taker under hisyou know, of his estate ultimately.
And then once all that was figuredout, which I don't think was a
small amount of time, then onceit was figured out, Okay, we

(30:26):
have these these six people, theseare the beneficiaries. Well, then they
couldn't figure out how they were goingto split up everything, So then there
was gonna be more fights and morelitigation talking about you know, now that
we know where the takers, well, then what are we all getting?
Because I'm guessing again, uh kindof you know, going off the cuff
here, but I have feelings.Some of them were probably like, well,
like I don't really want like maybeall of his like you know,

(30:48):
personal items and all the purple stuffin his house, Like I want,
I want I want the music stuff, right, I want the music rights
and all that stuff that comes withthat, because that's really that's where the
value really is going to be longterm because of prints and what he did
during his lifetime. I want thatstuff, and you can have all the
personal stuff and we can put avalue on both those things. You can
have all the personal stuff and I'lltake all the music stuff and we're good.

(31:08):
And I'm guessing they wouldn't. Youknow, people probably didn't want to
make a deal like that, sothen they started fighting about that. And
if he had just made a planor at least made some of a plan,
like some, if not all,of those things could have been avoided.
Again, not to say fights don'thappen. We just talked about Tony
Bennett and how stuff's kind of upin the air with him, even though
he clearly did do some things.But but you know, it just goes

(31:32):
to show, right, having themoney isn't necessarily the issue here. These
guys had plenty of money and plentyof time in a lot of respects,
and still didn't do it. Justanother one and just another noteworthy celebrity of
just again, just something kind ofgoing not according to plan because of a
lack of a plan. Is soI might pronounce this name incorrectly, so
I apologize if I do. Hisname was Steve Larson, who he was

(31:56):
the author of the Girl with theDragon Tattoo books, which I know was
popular, you know, quite sometime ago. Apparently he died. I
knew he was gone, but Iguess he didn't have a state He didn't
have a will or an a stateplan. So when he died, apparently
his estate was divided between his fatherand his brother, and that was all
done in accordage according to the lawsof Sweden, where he was a citizen

(32:20):
of But I guess he'd been withhis girlfriend for thirty two years and she
got nothing. Right, So Imean, i'm I'm I'm assuming that he
probably wasn't super upset or wouldn't besuper upset. That's probably a better way
to put that. He would nothave been super upset to know, like,
hey, some of this went toyour father, some of this went
to your brother, assuming that youknow they were on good terms, but
like, hey, your girlfriend thatyou've been with for lots and lots and

(32:43):
lots of years, nothing, shegets nothing, And I don't know,
I have a feeling that's probably notwhat he wanted. So just goes to
show Frank Ye, if I couldjust interject before even some even some celebrities
like Chadwick Postman, she didn't havethe state planning documents and he knew he

(33:05):
had a Yeah. See that's theone I was just That's literally what I
was just going to say. That'sthe hard part for me for for that
because, like I've said on theshow, like I I love all the
geek stuff with comes with Marvel andcomic books and stuff like That's that's another
interest of mine. So I waspretty devastated, like when when he passed
away just because of like, youknow what, what he meant to not

(33:30):
only the movies that I saw himin, but it just seemed like he
was just such a good guy.And then you found out that that that
he that he'd been sick for fora while, and it's like, wait,
what it's like because we didn't,you know, the public, we
didn't know he was sick. Andit sounds like, no, he he
knew not only that he was sick, but he knew it wasn't gonna probably
end very well for him. Sothe fact that he didn't do anything right

(33:52):
knowing the diagnosis he had and whatwas going on like that still perplexes me
of why of why that happened.I think it's important for people to sort
of keep in perspective. A lotof our clients, like I mentioned earlier,
alluded to that they don't like doingestate plans. They like thinking about
it, and often the thought iswell, I could do it another time,

(34:15):
or I'll do it later, ora gopha bit. If something happens,
I could do it at that time. It's not something I need to
spend money on that or spend myenergy my efforts. But unfortunately, once
you get that sort of diagnosis,you know that's a serious thing, and
you know, if you could putyourself in someone's shoes. You find out
you have a disease, you havecancer, goapha bit or some sort of

(34:37):
terminal sickness, the first thought inyour mind is not oh, man,
I better run to the lawyer's office. It's oh, my god, right,
this is this is why? Whyme? How is this happening?
What's my treatment plan? And Ithink a lot of people will realize that
the gravity of the situation will focuson treatments and being with family and spending

(34:59):
time with love one. Then,you know, even though we could take
a spec take a step back asa state planning and turns and say,
oh my god, the first thingyou should do is make sure you have
your beneficiary designations updated and having anestate plan and do this and do that.
But I think for most normal peoplethat's probably one of the last things
that they're thinking about. Right.If you're not a practitioner, you're going
to want to spend time with yourfamily, You're going to want to try

(35:20):
to, you know, enjoy lifeas much as you can. Based on
your situation or you know, focusall your efforts on treatment. You're not
necessarily thinking about your will and you'renot thinking about putting in a plan in
place. And depending on what yourdiagnosis is, you may not have a
lot of time. Right like now, now you can't sit and really put

(35:42):
all your energy into coming up witha plan. You're putting all your energy
into the into the into the battle. So yeah, that's not a great
time to then start thinking of yourestate plan. I mean, and with
him, you know, again Idon't know this. I'm just kind of
you know, I'm taking an educatedguest, but like I'm assuming he had,
you know, other people in hislife to help like with his day

(36:02):
to day like a you know,a business manager or something like that,
or he's Asian, you know,where I would have thought maybe one of
them said like, oh, bythe way, like there are other things
that you got to get in orderhere. Once they kind of knew what
was going on physically with him,you know, health wise for him.
And I'm not saying I'm not sayingthey did, I'm not saying they didn't.
It just again just it seems strangethat like again having the diagnosis,

(36:25):
having all the means that he had, you know, and not doing anything
just seems like an interesting choice.So so so that was number one,
right, Number one was not havinga plan. Well number two which I
don't always think of this one nearlyas much as not having a plan.
That's the first one I usually thinkof with like the biggest mishaps you can

(36:45):
have. But here's another one.Second one here is failing to remove beneficiaries
from your plan. And like Anthonyagain, like I'll let you speak for
yourself here. When I'm doing myreviews and stuff with my clients, I
really try to make it clear ina lot of respects that for a lot
of the stuff that we do.You know, if your plan changes,

(37:07):
you can change it, right youneed to remove a beneficiary, and a
lot of respects you can. Rightyou want to change an agent, you
can. But usually when I bringup removing people a lot of times,
right then the family look back atme and they'll be like, oh,
we're never going to fire the kids, or we're never going to disinherit the
kids, or we're never going todisinherit the grandkids or like whatever. And
you know, I think people reallydon't think in a lot of respects that

(37:30):
like the bad stuff relationship wise,I mean, is going to happen to
their family. But at the endof the day, people are people,
families or families. Things are goingto happen, and sometimes you are going
to have to make a change wheremaybe you don't want someone involved with your
plan anymore. And obviously, ifthat becomes your wish, that someone doesn't
take something or doesn't inherit something thatthey get out of the plan. So

(37:52):
so the example that they put inhere in this article was was Barry White,
who is a singer right from theseventies in the disco era, and
I guess he had been married andthen he had gotten separated from his wife,
but then they didn't formally divorce,and I guess, like, well,
all this was going on, hehad a living girlfriend, he had
some kids. I don't know whetherit was from the girlfriend or from you

(38:15):
know, other relationships or whatever,but according to this there were nine kids
and his living girlfriend and they allgot nothing because it all went to his
you know, soon to maybe bedivorced, you know, soon to be
ex wife who wasn't ex wife whenhe died, which again kind of sounds
like a disaster. So you know, take home here is if you have
people you don't want in your plan, get him out of your plan before

(38:36):
something else happens. Yeah, Andif I could just piggyback off of that,
I would say to review your designationsand to figure out who's actually in
your plant. A lot of peopleopen up bank accounts. What it was
thirty or forty years ago. Ithink when I first opened up some of
my accounts, I was eighteen yearsold, just going to college. Yeah,
and I wasn't married, and Ididn't have a daughter, and I

(38:58):
probably listed my parents. And youknow, people as they get older want
to change their beneficiary designation because Imean not to speak for you, but
like I know you have a greatrelationship with your mom, but like probably
not over your wife or your daughterat this point, right, So don't
say anything. So all right,let's take our last break. So let's

(39:21):
get out for this last break.Please come on back for the last segment.
This again is Life Happens Radio.Thanks again for being here on your
Saturday morning. We'll be right backright after this. All right, everybody,
welcome back. We're in the lastsegment of Life Happens Radio for this
Saturday. Thanks again for joining usagain. I'm Frank Heming with Pierre O'Connor
and Strauss still joined on the phoneby my good friend mister Anthony Chewi.

(39:44):
We are talking about state planning.We're talking about maybe some mistakes you want
to avoid that unfortunately some celebrities havemade, and we're trying to give you
some knowledge to make sure things goa little bit better for you guys.
So so so far we've mentioned nothaving a plan is not a good idea.
We've all so just talked a littlebit about how if you have beneficiaries
in your plan but then your planchanges, that you want to make sure

(40:05):
they're removed. Well, Anthony,you were just starting to talk about this
part right when we got out forthe last break, and it's the next
one is failing to add beneficiaries toyour estate plan. So you want to
give you know, you want togive me your thoughts on that one.
Sure. I mean, as lifeprogresses and you get older, you want

(40:28):
to add people as a beneficiary ofyour state. And I want the audience
to realize that your will does notnecessarily control whol receive the assets in certain
bank accounts, life insurance policies,they could have separate beneficiary designations. So

(40:49):
your will could say all my assetsare then to go to my spouse.
But then in your beneficiary designation ofa life insurance policy, you named your
parents because you got the policy severalyears ago before you're married, or a
siblings, and your bank accounts namesiblings or parents, because the same thing
when you first form those that firstopen those accounts, you weren't married.

(41:12):
Your will will not control those otherassets. So your will may say everything
to your spouse. But if theother assets have beneficiary designations and it does
not name your spouse, your spousemay be getting nothing. Now in New
York there is a right of election, and she would your spouse could be
entitled to a third or would beentitled to a third. But then that's

(41:35):
another nasty process that you want tosort of avoid in putting your spouse in
conflict with your with your family members. So I think a lot of people
don't really get it. They say, I have a will, and my
will controls everything. But the willwill just control the assets that are in
your name or that do not havea beneficiary designation. Yes, I think

(41:57):
I gotta put that on for thisif you don't mind, sure, So
so we just the firm I meanwhen I say we like the firm.
We just changed our carrier for ourIRA four oh one K program. And
because I do this for a living, Like right when I saw that my
money had been moved from my oldaccount to my new account, first thing
I did, besides just get apassword so I can go online and like

(42:17):
check my balance and make sure everythingtransferred properly was I made sure my beneficiaries
were updated because I wanted to makesure, like if God forbid, something
happened to me, like driving homefrom the office, that that money is
going to go or I wanted togo and not somewhere where I didn't want
it to go. So so youknow, it's like it wasn't right my

(42:38):
my my beneficiary designations I had toupdate again, Yeah, that's what I'm
saying, Like they yeah, becausethere were there were like they didn't carry
over from the previous plan. LikeI had to re put them in to
make sure that it was my wifeand my daughter and you know, the
things that I want. And that'ssomething that's pretty subtle. I think a
lot of people, even the evenpractitioners, I think, may be caught

(42:58):
off guard thinking, well, Ihad an account with this carrier, I
updated the beneficiary designations. If myaccount transfers over, the beneficiary designations will
transfer over to But that was notthe case. Yeah, So I mean
that's that's why I wanted to throwit out there, because like if you
would have asked me two or threeweeks ago and you said, hey,
is your are your designations on yourretirement account up to date? I would

(43:19):
have said, yeah, I've Ichecked them periodically, but I know i've
I remember like doing it. Iremember having to find like my daughter's like
social Security number and all that kindof stuff. So I know it's there
because I remember doing it. Butthen when we've got this new change,
uh, I thought like, hey, does that does that just transfer over?
And it did not, so wehad to re update that. So
so you know, just you know, food for thought. If you've had

(43:43):
a carrier change or something that withyour assets, you might want to make
sure that your beneficiary designations also carriedover, and if not, you want
to update those. The other thingthat I just wanted to mention Anthony about
what you were saying, was,so, there is one scenario that I
think I can think of where somethingwouldn't pass, like where something should pass
by beneficiary designation, but then yourwill could control it. So like let's

(44:05):
say let's say that Ira, right, my four oh one k from from
the office, right, if Iif I don't make it home, if
my beneficiary was still was zero,right, was nothing, it was blank
because I didn't update it. Thenit would pay into my estate, and
then my wife could probate my will, and then my will would determine what's
going to happen with all that stuff. But the point here is then she'd
have to probate something. Where ifI would have just named her as beneficiary

(44:30):
on my designations, right, shecould have avoided all that. She could
have made things much easier, muchsimpler, much more costly to not have
to deal with the legal process todo with all of it. But yet,
generally, what you were saying onehundred percent right, your will doesn't
touch your stuff that if it goesunder beneficiary, and that's only if the
designation is not completed. First thedesignation was completed, and it wouldn't exactly

(44:52):
right, I'm just saying, likejust to just to show like the difference
between the two. It's like,you could have something that should pass by
beneficiary designation, right, we wantto make sure it does. So make
sure that it's up to date.If it's missed, if it's wrong,
whatever or sorry. If it's missed, right and it's zero. If there's
nothing, then it's going to goto your estate. Then your will will
get it. But now you're forcingprobate when maybe you didn't want to or

(45:13):
didn't need to do that. Sojust wanted to clarify that. Next big
one we already talked about this,so we don't have to spend any more
time on it. But next big, next big mistake here was keeping your
plan private or a secret. Right. We already talked about why that's not
a good idea, or at leastwhy it's something that you really want to
think about, you know, havingconversations about. So next one is not

(45:35):
putting promises in writing. So theISTCT just to circle back real quickly to
this, to keeping the plan,I would also say to have your agents
your family members actually know what yourdocuments are. Big law firm that is
used yep. Often people will say, oh, Anthony I know exactly where
my documents are. They're in mysafety deposit box of the bank, which

(45:57):
is terrible because once you're dead,they're going to lost the safety positive box
and you're not going to be ableto get into it. Now, then
you have to do a special proceedingto go get open that to get that
box open, right. And Ithink a lot of people just intuitively would
say, oh, I put importantthing in a safety pause box at the
bank. It's secure, like that'sa great place for it, without realizing
that it's actually a terrible place.Yeah. And good, you know,

(46:19):
good thought, right, good plan, right, not just a good thought
to have a plan just wasn't avery good plan unfortunately, right. And
I think it makes things easier whenyour family knows the law firm that you
use, they will most likely havethe original will on file. They should
have copies of the documents. Ithink that makes things easier when the family

(46:39):
knows, okay, this is thefirm, they're familiar with the plan,
they have the estate planning documents onfile. I can get electronic copy a
lot of time. Sperms A clientsign duplicate originals with many documents, not
the will, but you know,trust and things like that, so they'll
have all that information on file,and it's just sort of one less thing

(47:01):
for the family to worry about,rather than the family saying, oh,
I know, mom or dad didthis estate plan where there's documents, where
do they keep them, who didthey use? It's already a tough situation.
I think the last thing you wantthen is for your family to be
sort of bogged down with that sortof my new show. Yeah, so
we got we got about three minutesleft, so I got I think two

(47:22):
really fun little examples here that I'mtrying to bring some levity to and then
then we're gonna have to say goodbyefor the for the rest of the you
know, for the show. Sothe example, they said, so again
the mistake was not putting things inwriting. So the example here that they
brought up was that Marlon Brando,right, the actor, no godfather,
that guy. Apparently he promised hishousekeeper that she could inherit his house,

(47:45):
but the bulk of his twenty sixmillion dollar a state went to his producers
and his other like business associates,so seemingly saying like the housekeeper didn't get
the house. So the housekeeper turnedaround sued the estate for the value the
house plus damages for like two milliondollars plus, and then I guess the

(48:05):
case wound up settling out of youknow, for for a reduced amount of
one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars. So if you're the housekeeper going into
it thinking well, I'm going toget the house, and instead you get,
you know, you get a lawsuitthat you have to bring, and
then you get one hundred and twentyfive which I mean that probably you know,
covered maybe a decent amount of theof the the lawsuit fees, but
who knows what else. So soyou know, if you want your housekeeper

(48:29):
to get your house, you needto update your plan to make sure that
the housekeeper gets the house. That'sall I'm saying. Other thing here is
talking quickly about Princess Diana, andunfortunately my copy cut off a little bit,
so I believe what it's saying isthat she had a letter of wishes
that she wanted to kind of happenwith things either going for her children or
to or to you know, bespread amongst her children, or how things

(48:52):
she wanted to go for her childrenfollowing her death if she were to pass
away. And the point here is, at least in New York, we
have we do not have the abilityto incorporate other documents by reference to your
will. So what does that mean. Basically means it's either in your will,
in the actual will itself, orits potentially doesn't matter, right,
if you have like an add on, like a sticky note or something that's

(49:14):
even attached to your will, it'snot actually in the words of your will.
It can be thrown out, nothonored by the court. It doesn't
really matter. There's no real wayto know that that's one hundred percent going
to happen. So do not justput like something with your will and expect
that it would be valid, atleast in New York, because we do
not have the ability to do that. Anthony, I got like twenty thirty
seconds for you. Any add onthoughts for that. Yeah, I would

(49:37):
say that people work their entire livesto accumulate assets, and often their estate
plan is an afterthought. And Ithink that with the effort of the thirty
or forty year career that the clientshave, they need to put some time
into their estate plans to make surethat whoever they want to get those assets
actually inherited. And if you're writingsomething on a sticky note, that's probably
not going to work. Nick,it's a really nice sticky note though,

(50:00):
like you know, yeah, ordo you know, have like different colors.
I don't know. No, it'snot a good idea update your plan,
you know, And it's not somethingthat you have to update every year,
like we tell clients, you know, maybe every five years or so,
check back in with us, letus know how things are going,
if things have changed. So withthat, we are just about at the
end of the show. So Ijust want to say thank you to everybody

(50:22):
for listening in Again. I knowit's a little bit more of a relaxed
show. I hope you've enjoyed yourtime with us. Anthony couldn't thank you
more. Thanks again for being forbeing my co host. I really pread
time doing this and by all means, come on back next week for Life
Happens Radio.