Life Happens

September 7th, 2024

Episode Transcript

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

(00:20):
preparing for retirement, protecting your income and assets, planning to
pay for a nursing home and for home care, planning
for special needs, creating wills and trusts, planning for an
untimely death, and resolving disputes in and out of court.
As the laws and necessities for planning and care continue
to evolve, Life Happens will make you aware of how
to make smart decisions to ensure that your goals are

(00:40):
reached and your needs are met for both you and
your family. So again, welcome everybody. This is Life Happens Radio.
I am Frank Heming. I am not usually in the
Captain's chair, but I am in the captain's chair today
because the other partners are doing other things. So I
am one of the partners of Pierre, O'Connor and Strauss.
We are a full service elder law firm located in Latham.

(01:01):
We also have our New York City office as well,
but we see clients all throughout New York. We have
an office in Hudson, We see clients up north in
Lake Placid or even Plattsburgh. We do have and we
have a kind of a sister office on Long Island.
So if you're in New York, we probably can at
least consider helping you. If you're close to us, I
know we can help you if you have planning needs.
So I am here. Normally I am joined by one

(01:24):
of the other employees of the firm to whoever is
drawing the short straw that we usually gets put in
the chair next to me, but today we actually have
a outside person here as my guest.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Today.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
It's one of my absolutely favorite people to talk to professionally,
and that is Miss Sarah Grimes. She is the director
of Outreaching Community Relations for nice Arc Trust Services. So
good morning, Sarah, good morning, how are you.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
I'm good for having.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Me, of course, thank you for giving up some of
your Saturday morning to be here with me. I would say,
the weather's so nice, but it kind of isn't it.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
But it makes it easy to be here.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, yeah, it's true. No, Sarah, we were talking just
before we went on air. Sarah kind of joined nice
Arc right around the same time that I joined the firm,
and it's been really really nice to kind of see
where her career has gone, how she's grown, how nice
Arc I think has changed some things, and we've kind
of just grown up together where I think we started
kind of not knowing much and now hopefully we know

(02:21):
a little bit more than nothing. And honestly, as we're
going to talk, you know, during the time that we
have today, Nice ARC and other pool trusts they provide
such a needed service when you do planning with Medicaid
and you get people enrolled on Medicaid to get their
home care benefits there assisted living benefits. They're not typically

(02:42):
as helpful with nursing homes for obvious reasons. We'll talk
a little bit about that, but again, like without a
pool trust, without the services they provide, people literally could
not stay in their house and kind of get the
care they want where they want, which is something that
we pride ourselves on at the firm. We want people
to stay at home. We wanted to age and play.
We want you to be where you want to be,
get the care you deserve, and stay in your house

(03:03):
to do it. And without the pool trust, without the
ability to save your monthly income and do the things, uh,
the other things that sometimes trusts are used for, that
just wouldn't be possible. So so Sarah again, thanks for
being here.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Right.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Uh, Typically when I'm on the show I like to
kind of coast into it a little bit. I usually
tell a story or two or bring up kind of
a news worthy item right to start. So so if
you don't mind, let's let's just talk generically about you know,
what are two little things that I want to talk about,
if you don't mind, and then we'll get all into
you and nice lark and what you guys do.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Is that sound all right? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:34):
That sounds great.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
All right.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
So so I'm gonna I'm gonna bring the I'm gonna
bring the mood down for just a second. I don't
I was really debating whether I wanted to say something
about this or not. But I feel like I kind
of I feel like I have to. And uh, and
the other partners aren't here, so they can't tell me
what to do. So it's this news is about a
week old. I'm assuming that if you, if you know

(03:56):
anything about sports or watch the news, I'm assuming you
may have seen this.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
I'm not a big watcher of the news myself, so
I don't know how much national coverage this was getting.
But I wanted to talk for a second about the
two hockey players that were killed about a week ago,
Johnny Gudreau and his and his brother Matthew. Now I'm
I'm kind of a fair weather hockey fan. I tend
to only watch during the playoffs, and when I do,
I tend to root for the Rangers. So the fact

(04:21):
that Johnny played for the Flames and the Blue Jackets,
you know, I'd heard of him. I'd heard the name
or the nickname Johnny Hockey before. I can't say I
didn't have any idea who he was, but to say
that he he like profoundly impacted my life from my
sports fan and would not be accurate.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
So I'm not gonna say anything like that.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
But the the news that's come out since the tragedy
happened of just like what good what a good guy?
He seemed like and just the overall tragic circumstances of
this accident are heartbreaking, and and the reason why I
wanted to bring it up, for one, is it kind
of shows that again, like it's the name of the show,
but life happens, right, Like there was no reason to

(05:01):
think when he went out for a bike ride with
his brother about a week ago, the night before his
sister was to be married, that he was then going
to be hit.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
By a allegedly drunk driver.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
I don't think I could say he was drunk, even
though I'm pretty sure there he made public statements saying
that he had several beers before he got on the
road that night, So so I'll do the lawyer thing
and say allegedly intoxicated. But but you know the fact
that he was not doing anything crazy. He went out
for a bike ride with his brother, and somebody just

(05:35):
made a really really really terrible decision and then kind
of doubled down and then made another really really bad decision,
one being he drove, you know, after having alcohol, and
then and then got super impatient and got super aggressive
on the road and tried to pass someone illegally, and
it resulted in the death of of of.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Of two people is heartbreaking.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
And I was reading their obits this morning just because
I hadn't read them, and and you know, of the
one of the things that resonated most with me when
the news broke was again their sister was supposed to
be married the following day. That's why they were home.
They were home at the family at the family home
to congregate because you know, one of theirs was getting

(06:15):
married and they were both in the wedding. But it
also turns at that matt the younger brother, So Johnny
was kind of the well known all star hockey player.
He was thirty one. Matthew was his younger brother, also
a hockey player. I don't think he was playing in
the NHL, and I don't think he had previously, but
he was in the minors. So he was a very
accomplished hockey player himself. He his wife is expecting and

(06:40):
is like five months pregnant, I think, or something like that,
five or six months pregnant. And then Johnny had left
two small kids of his own. So just seeing that
that this family lost these these two young guys in
the prime of their lives because of just stupid decisions,
I just feel like again, if you don't really know
anything about the story, I would encourage you to go
check it out. And and schools are back in session now,

(07:04):
like little kids are back now out during the day.
Don't do anything stupid on the road for you know, please,
I beg of you, Like, just make better decisions when
you're on the road. Take the extra time, let it
let you know, do the speed limit, do the responsible things,
take the extra five minutes to get somewhere. I just
I just had to say something. So, Sarah, do you

(07:25):
wanted to jump in. I'm sorry, Yeah, no.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
That's heartbreaking, honestly, just awful and like you said, just
really does ring true to the show. You know, things
happen so suddenly sometimes, you know, and at such a
young age, right.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Yeah, I mean it's bad because like my my, my
first reaction after just the tragedy, the heartbreak, the sadness
was like, well, like, how's that going to play out
with like his estate now, because like that's going to
be a mess, probably because I mean, could he have
done a will or a trust or planning? Sure, of course,
Like I don't think I don't think that he didn't
have the means too for obvious reasons. But I'm sure,

(08:04):
being in the prime of his of his life, I'm
sure he was not thinking about what happens if suddenly
I go out for a bike ride and don't come
home right And and obviously, like this is not the
time to talk about any of that. If if details
come out with that, I'm sure I will try to
keep an eye on it, just because again I think
it's I think it's timely. I think it makes sense
to discuss, you know, possibly learn from from from the

(08:26):
lessons of others. But but obviously now would not be
the time for that. But yeah, of course, like it
just life happens. I don't know how else to say it.
And and this probably will like stay with me longer
than a.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Lot of tragedy that does, just because of like just
the nature of all of it.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
And again, this this isn't even somebody that that I
really knew anything about. But it's just it's so profoundly
sad that I felt like I could not get behind
the mic and not kind of talk a little bit
about it. Just given what we talk about and the
job that I have and the services we try to
provide for everybody, the information we try to share it.
Just make make good choices, guys, please and get your

(09:02):
plan done, Like maybe not when you're in your thirties
without you know, thinking that something unnecessarily bad could happen
like that.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
But it's never too early to plan.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
So so all right with that, let's talk about something
a little nicer. I wanted to do that, but let's
talk about something a little better. So I do have
some good news to share. We do a lot of
medicaid work in our office. We're going to talk a
lot about medicaid today when when we get into everything
with Sarah and nice arc. But we had a really
particular case that had a lot of wrinkles to it,

(09:31):
and thankfully we got a really really good result from it.
So I just kind of wanted to share just the
brief facts of it, just to show why it's important
to go to people who don't just kind of dabble
around and medicaid right when you want to medicaid, if
you have state planning needs, like you kind of have
to go to people that really know the in and outs,
They know the rules, they know how this works. So

(09:52):
to make a longer story short, we had a family here.
Their daughter came to us quite some time ago. Now
Mom had fallen on some bad health. She wound up
going out to kind of the western part of or
like mid you know, part of the state out west.
She had moved in with her younger daughter. The older
daughter was the one that was working with us here

(10:13):
here in the Capitol District, and then Mom was living
with the younger daughter for a while. Health continued to
not really go well, and then she wound up having
to go to a nursing home. So daughter came in
wanted to retain us to talk about doing some Medicaid
stuff getting the nursing home paid for, and pretty much
like every nursing home consultation, we asked has there been
any large gifts or transfers in the past five years,

(10:35):
because we have that five year look back period to
worry about, and unfortunately, in this case, there had been
a pretty significant transfer. So it turned out that Mom
had inherited half of a house when her parents died,
so she owned half the house and her sister owned
the other half of the house. Now sisters lived in
the house for years. Her family grew up in the house.

(10:57):
Like our client Mom in this instance, she's had no
real dealings with the house other than she inherited half
of it when Mom died, and then when Mom's health
started to go down, they decided as a family that
it would make sense just let's get Mom's name off
the off the house and let's just give a sister,
you know, aunt, for our for the daughter, our client.
Let's give her the house. It's her house, her family's

(11:18):
in the house. Let's give her the house. So they
gave her the house. Problem is, when you give half
the house away, that is a transfer for medicaid purposes.
So so we wound up, you know, walking through kind
of that scenario, figuring it all out, and then it
turns out that there's there is an easier fix to this,
and that would have been to have the house given

(11:40):
back to Mom, and then sister aunt, you know, the
other co owner of the house, could then sign something
saying she does not intend to sell it, she has
no intention to sell it.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
That would exempt it for medicaid purposes.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
It would essentially make the real property unavailable because Mom
could not liquidate the entirety of that property without the
consent of someone else. So we approached the sister asked,
would you mind giving half the property back just so
we can fix this for mom get her on Medicaid,
and sister said no, so we had we had another

(12:13):
wrinkle because we kind of had an out and family
didn't feel comfortable taking it, so we had to come
up with a new plan. So instead we wound up
doing some additional research. We did some affidavits, we did
some other things, and essentially we claimed that the transfer
was made for purposes other than to qualify for Medicaid.
We also claimed hardship that if they did not approve this,

(12:35):
Mom's life and well being would be in danger because
then she wouldn't be eligible for her nursing home care,
which she would need to you know, to take care
of her. And luckily the county agreed they approved our case.
We did not get penalized because of the transfer, and
now Mom gets to get her nursing home benefits like
we really were intending.

Speaker 2 (12:52):
For her to get.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
So with all that said that that was a lot
of information very quickly. I apologize for going quickly through it,
but I do want it up for a break in
just a second. But you know that that was a
complicated case. We don't like to rely on hardships. We
don't like to rely on possibly having to go to
a fair hearing to argue that a transfer was made
for a purpose other than to qualify for medicaid. But

(13:15):
when you have decent facts on your side, you can
at least make the arguments. And in this case, it
came in in our favor. So we got a really
really good result. Very very pleased about that, So just
wanted to share that with everybody. So with that, Zach,
why don't you take us to our first break? Stay
with us here. It's Life Happens on Saturday morning when
we're When we come back, we'll talk to Sarah from

(13:36):
Nice Arc about Pool Trust and every good thing that
they do. So come on back, Welcome back, everybody, Thanks
for sticking with us to the break again.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
I'm Frank Heming.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
This is Life Happens Radio here on Saturday morning and
still joined in studio with Sarah Crime.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
So Sarah, I told you right when.

Speaker 1 (14:00):
We got off for the news or for the break
that I would talk less this time.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
So with that, why don't we talk a little bit
about you and your company?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
So tell me a little bit, like you know, tell
the listeners that's a better way to put that. Tell
the listeners who nice ARC is, Like, what the company is?

Speaker 2 (14:14):
What do you do?

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah? Sure? So Nice Art Trust Services is a nonprofit organization.
We were started in nineteen seventy two, so we've actually
been administering these types of trust special needs trusts for
over fifty years. Just a little bit of time, just
a little bit, yeah, a little bit of experience.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Yeah, they're not new with this.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, and you know, we primarily serve older adults, people
who are over the age of sixty five who need
to protect their own income or assets in order to
qualify financially for means tested government benefits, which is what
allows us to serve older adults who are looking to
be able to live at home for as long as possible,
being able to shelter income that they have that exceeds

(14:54):
the Medicaid allowable levels, not have to give up that
money to Medicaid or use it towards care, leaving them
strapped and unable to afford their living expenses, so that
they can actually age a place and not just afford bills,
but really to maintain their standard of living right be
able to continue to live the way that they were
living prior right, and try and make them as comfortable

(15:17):
as possible, allow them to live where they choose.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Right.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
So, as you talked about being your own home, a
lot of people want to stay in their own homes.
Sometimes downsizing or getting in a smaller place might be
more beneficial for their care.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, So like just you know, just to just to
throw kind of a wrinkle on that, right, Like, it
doesn't mean that you have to stay in your house
if the house isn't the best.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Living scenario for you any longer.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
There's nothing stopping you from downsizing, moving to a nice
either smaller home or maybe you're a senior apartment or
something like that, and then getting care in there. But
then you're still going to have expenses, which is somewhere
where like the pool.

Speaker 3 (15:48):
Trust can come in, right, And it's all about being
able to use that money for non medical expenses. Generally,
there are some situations where we might pay for medical
expenses that aren't covered by other insurances. But we're really
one of the only states in the country that allows
you to do that.

Speaker 1 (16:03):
Yeah, I was gonna say I every time that we
talk about this, I don't know whether it's safe to
say New York is the only one because I don't
think I know of any others that do. That doesn't
mean that there aren't, but but yeah, I mean, we
talk about medicaid a lot when specifically when I'm on
the show, but we talk about it generally on the
show a lot, just because it's a big part of
what we do. But it's it's still I think shocking

(16:25):
to people to find out, like how generous New York's
medicaid program is comparatively speaking to other states. And this
is another example of like how we have taken steps
to help our aging populations stay where they want because
we allow you to use things like a pool trust.

Speaker 3 (16:40):
Yeah, and I mean, I think it's also important to
point out, you know, it is often used by older adults,
but it can be a person of any age that
needs to access these services. You know, these are trusts
that are designed specifically for people with disabilities to give
them a way to preserve their you know, money they
have in their own name, but can also be by parents,

(17:00):
older adults that might be planning for a child with
a disability. Older adults are often you know, if you
have a child with a disability and you're listening, many
of you know the hardships of they may be still
living with you, and they might be living with you
well beyond you know, the age of eighteen, and as
you get older, you're kind of worried and thinking about,
you know, what is what kind of services I love

(17:22):
I'm going to have, you know, how am I going
to plan for their future? How I'm going to ensure
that there's funds available to them. And that's another service
that we provide where we're able to help families leave
an inheritance to a person with a disability in a
way that it's not going to put them put those
benefits at jeopardy in jeopardy.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
Yeah, so fantastic, right, That's that's just kind of a
small sliver of why why we work with them.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
As much as we do.

Speaker 1 (17:46):
So why don't we set the stage a little bit
just to kind of throw maybe like an example out
there of kind of what a typical case maybe you
and I would be working on.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Would look like.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So we typically are going to get somebody into the
firm that wants to you know, keep someone at home,
get care services, and to help them, whether this is
the individual themselves working with us, could be their spouse,
it could be the children.

Speaker 2 (18:06):
So let's say we have I.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
Don't know, we have dad at home in this instance, right,
So we have Dad at home and he's got monthly
income every month that comes in. So when we talk
about medicaid, we have to plan for around both his
income and his assets. So let's say in this example,
let's say his monthly income is I don't know about
sixty seven hundred dollars give or take a little bit. Right,
Because we are in the Capital district, we have lots

(18:28):
of retirees with state pensions and things. So I'm not
going to do it down to the penny because that's
mean to do on a Saturday. So your your monthly
income allowance for medicaid if you're a single person in
your home, is seventeen hundred and fifty two dollars, right,
that is your allowance. So in this instance, let's just
say it's seventeen hundred. We'll let the math a little easier.
So if his allowance is seventeen hundred approximately, and he

(18:52):
makes sixty seven hundred a month of just income between
Social Security pension, if he has an IRA taking stuff
from that, he has five thousand dollars two much monthly income.
Now another piece that comes with this from a planning
side is then people turn around and to say, well,
I have way too much income, right, how can I
apply for medicaid and get it? When you just said

(19:12):
the income limits seventeen hundred dollars and he's got sixty
seven hundred dollars. Well, here's where the pool trust comes in.
We use a pool trust or a pooled income trust.
I'll try to be careful how I say that, because
there are different types of pool trust. So in this instance,
it's a pooled income trust where an account is set
up and then every month, that five thousand dollars excess
goes every month. And nice ARC is one of the

(19:35):
if not the biggest, one of the biggest pool trusts
providers in the state.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
So we if we're working together, we would.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Typically help our client fill out the joinder agreement, which
is kind of just the document that establishes the account
that gets sent into nice to nice Arc and your
intake team, and then an account gets set up in
Dad's name and then that five thousand dollars goes in there.
So Sarah, so that five thousand dollars goes in, tell
us what can they do with that now that now
that the money is out of Dad's account.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Yeah, it's a great question. And before I go into that,
I do want to just highlight that, as you mentioned,
so many families they look at their dollar amounts and
they say, I'm not going to qualify you. But so
often they're also told right by healthcare professionals at the hospital,
at the you know, the nursing room wherever, right that
they are never going to qualify for Medicaid.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Misinformation right everywhere.

Speaker 3 (20:25):
So it's so important to know that there are almost
always things that we can do that goes back to
the example you mentioned earlier with the family of the
complex case with the house. The people that know what
they're doing in this industry are able to do a
lot of things in these situations. So don't feel like
you are, you know, don't have options. You almost always do.

Speaker 1 (20:43):
Yeah, make sure that that information is coming from a
credible source. Right, if an elderlaw attorney tells you you
might not be able to be eligible or something, that's
going to be a little more meaningful than if like
the postman tells you that or the guy in the
grocery store, or you know your neighbor's best friend that
you met one.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Time, or that just charge planner at the hospital right now.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
The sad part is the counties sometimes tell people that like,
they're not eligible, and that doesn't mean that you couldn't
become eligible. They're usually i think more just speaking in
that moment you're not eligible, and then they're not usually
encouraged or allowed to give legal advice, so then they
can't really elaborate on why you're not eligible. But that's
why Sarah a great, great point. Obviously, misinformation is rampant.
Make sure that you're getting information from a credible source.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
Please, Yeah, so you know, we'll walk you through. Obviously,
assets are something you'd talk to the lawyer about. You'd
get down to that level, you'd apply for Medicaid. Setting
up the pool trust, as Frank mentioned, is very quick process.
You can get that going in about a week. So
you generally set that up as you are ready to
apply for services. This is not something that you're doing
in advance of needing Medicaid. This is something you're gonna

(21:46):
do once you're ready to start receiving those services. Now
you've got gentlemen's five thousand dollars a month going into
the trust. What can we do with that money? Is
generally going to be items and services for that person, right,
we have a rule, it's got to be use primarily
for this individual.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Medicaid says.

Speaker 3 (22:02):
If we're going to allow you to keep this money
and qualify for these services even though you're over the
income limit, we want to make sure that money is
being used for you and your sole benefit, So bills
in your name. We generally try and look at what
let's try and make this as easy as possible. We
have to track how this money is being spent for
Medicaid purposes. It's not our role, but we need to
be able to show them how we're spending it. So

(22:24):
we look for large bills that are going to eat
up that five thousand dollars. Is there a mortgage. If
there's a mortgage that we can pay automatically every month,
that's going to take a good chunk of that five
thousand dollars. What are the living expenses? The thing you
want to do is kind of sit down and look
at your bills and say, okay, this is the amount
I'm putting into the pool. Trust every month. This is
the amount I'm keeping in my checking account. This is
amount maybe my wife is keeping in there, you know,

(22:46):
so you're going to have different buckets of money. I
was trying to help people, like, think of it that way,
kind of identify the bills you want to use the
trust to pay for. Send those same bills to the
trust every month. It's going to make things easier for you.
Bills that are the same amount each month can be automated.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
That was literally going to be my next question, right,
so you.

Speaker 3 (23:04):
Know, pick a bill that is the same amount every
month so that you can set it up with the
trust and have it paid automatically on a scheduled day
of the month. That's another one of the challenges that
we face. A person will receive their Social Security check,
and sometimes when we're talking about somebody with different sources
of income, they don't always get it at the same
time in the month, right, And so a lot of

(23:26):
setting this up for families is really sitting down and
helping to guide them through this process because it is complicated.
You have to think about when our bills due, when
is the money getting into your bank account, when will
it be available in the trust account to be dispersed
out for expenses, and a great way I always try
and talk to people about this to use the trust
is if you have a credit card, and you're able

(23:47):
to use a credit card for certain expenses. Because one
of the key rules about what we cannot do with
this money is we can never give it back to
the Medicaid applicant. So if you pay a bill out
of your checking account, we can't reimburse you for paying that.
Because if you could access money in this account, if
you could pull money out when you want, if we
could give money to you, Medicaid would count it as

(24:09):
your money. That's that's why it's going into the trust.
It becomes the property of that trust, and we pay
third parties. So we pay your landlord for your rent,
we pay your electric company for your electric bill, or
we reimburse your daughter who went out and bought something
for you.

Speaker 2 (24:22):
That's perfect.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
So that is just a small start of what I
think we're going to talk about for the rest of
our time today. As you can tell, there's a lot
of nitty gritty here, but we're going to stay with Sarah.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
I just asked that.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
You stay with us because we're just about to come
up to the news. So thanks again for being here
on this cloudy Saturday This is Life Happens Radio. I'm
Frank Heming in studio with Sarah Grimes from nice ARC.
Come on back right after the news and welcome back.

(24:58):
Thanks for sticking through the news. They don't give us
a choice about that. We got we gotta do the news.
But again thanks again for being here. It's Life Happens
Saturday morning. I'm Frank Heming in studio with Sarah Grimes,
who's one of my good buddies from nice ARC. So, Sarah,
sorry for cutting you short there because you were quite
on a roll there. We were just kind of talking
about when we have a scenario with someoney getting on

(25:20):
home care and getting Medicaid in their house that they
have an income spent down right of in this instance,
the example we were using was five thousand dollars a month.
What could that five thousand be used before once it
goes into a pooled income trust with an organization like
nice ARC.

Speaker 2 (25:34):
So one of the biggest things.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
You talked about was was a mortgage payment or obviously
rent would be would be very similar, right, Obviously it's
just not going to pay off a mortgage, it's going
just to the landlord or the management company that owns
your apartment. So housing expenses I always start with when
we talk to clients about how this is all gonna work.
That's easily the first one that I think we take
right off the table as well, because it's it's maybe

(25:58):
it isn't always the largest expens but it's it's probably
close to the largest if it isn't, and it's it's
not like it's not something that that there's gonna be
a question whether that's gonna happen every month. Right, your
mortgage payment will happen every month, your rental payment will
be every month. And it's nice it's automated a lot,
or I'm guessing it could be automated most of the
time because you're not going to see fluctuations in the value.

(26:19):
And then it just takes a big chunk out of
the trust every month. Because as much as we love
the Pool Trust, as much as we like the Pool Trust,
we want people to be using as much money out
of it as they can on a monthly basis, just
because if that person passes away, the money in the
account stays with the charity. So in this instance it
would stay with nice Ark, which with Sarah sitting here,
I'm certainly gonna not say anything that that that's bad, right,

(26:42):
that is a great cause for it to go to.
On the other hand, why give your money to a
charity if you can use it for yourself. It is
your money, right, So we want to try to get
an exit strategy out for as much of that money
as possible, especially if you need it to live your
life right, pay your expenses. So, Sarah, you're the expert here.
So if you don't have uh, let's say you don't

(27:04):
have a mortgage payment, right, because plenty of older folks
they have their house, they've paid it off, right. If
they don't have that mortgage payment, they have to get
a little bit more creative with their finances. What types
of things are you seeing them spend on if it
isn't for housing and things.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, and that's a great point. Often so often families
don't have a mortgage anymore. And sometimes that's due to
you know, planning as well. Sometimes they're just you know,
no longer paying that. And so a person with five
thousand dollars, that's going to be a lot to try
and think about how do we make sure we can
spend all that money. So the first thing we look
at is trying to identify all of the bills that

(27:40):
you regularly do pay and you can certainly submit each
of those one by one to the trust and the
trust will pay the third party for that bill. But
another option, and the challenge for a lot of families
is that a lot of those bills maybe are being
automated out of a checking account, right.

Speaker 1 (27:58):
Yeah, biggest I don't want to say hesitation, that's maybe
not the right way. Maybe, like one of the biggest
anxieties that I think people have when we kind of
walk them through a plan that involves the pool Trust
is just trying to explain that the finances like are
going to change, right, Hopefully the amount of money you
have to spend every month isn't going to change very much,
and in some ways they're actually going to improve because

(28:21):
a lot of families when they come in to talk
to people like us, the home.

Speaker 2 (28:26):
Care need is already there. Right, They're already paying for
care or they're or they're.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
Bringing in uh, you know, family, friends, neighbors, church, you
know church goers, you know whomever to kind of get
that care in place. And and most of the time
there is some money going out the going out the
door for the care, whether that's a little bit, sometimes
it's it's a lot, it's it's a crazy amount of money.
So the idea here from on the planning side is, well,

(28:53):
what would your finances look like if we get medicaid
to pay for most, if not all, of that, right,
Because that's usually why people are worried about their finances.
It's because prior to the health event, they could afford
their bills, and now with this increased home care cost,
they can anymore. Now they're shortfalling. Now they're not bringing
in as much as they're spending, and they're watching their

(29:14):
savings go down or they're having to liquidate things, and
you know, things get very scary very quickly. So when
you have that scenario, right, we're talking in this instance, right,
he's got five thousand dollars of usable income, and what
if you didn't have to pay for home care or
other medical services with any of that five thousand dollars,
how then would you spend it?

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Right?

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Right? And so really it's about the amount of money
you put in every month that we're saying five thousand dollars.
There's going to be a nominal fee for the trust
to administer the account and pay the bills, so there'll
be a small amount that's deducted out of that, right
but keep in mind, otherwise you'd be paying all five
thousand to Medicaid in order to access these services, right,
So it's still allowing you to keep the majority of

(29:57):
that amount. And then you want to look at what
bills you have have and try and figure out, you know,
what amount of bills could be sent to the trust.
If you have them already being taken out of your
checking account automatically, as so many families do, we're going
to ask you to put those onto maybe a credit card,
if that's an option, because that's a third party vendor
that the Trust can pay. It also makes things more

(30:18):
efficient for you as a family because instead of having
to send six different bills to the trust every month,
you're simply paying them all on a credit card. They're
all paid on time, you're ensuring that all the bills
are still getting paid, and then you're submitting once a
month the credit card statement. First month, we're going to
ask for a copy of those bills to verify there
for that person. But beyond that, you can just send
the credit card statement and then you can also use

(30:40):
that credit card for the you know, the ancillary expenses
you have throughout the month, you know, food expenses, you know,
you know, clothing, things, you know, over the count right now,
things come up, things that you need, right And that's
often what so many families do if they don't have
a large expense like a mortgage. Another thing is if
you do own a home, you're going to have proper
taxes that come do at some point, right.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
So we know that around here.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, So you know, sometimes people will just kind of
allow that money to accrue so that they can pay
that larger expense in the future.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
You know.

Speaker 3 (31:12):
We as you mentioned earlier, there's a payback provision in
these trusts. Just like any special needs trust that's funded
with a person's own money, that Medicaid wants to be
repaid before any other person gets access to this money
when that person dies. And that's why the charity nonprofit
that we provide services to people with disabilities that are
funded through the Medicaid program. So Medicaid allows us to

(31:34):
retain those funds. We want to make sure that you
can spend that money, and so you don't necessarily generally
want to allow it to build up. But you do
not have to spend all of it in one month, right,
So five thousand might be a lot to spend in
one month. You want to give us as many bills
as you can. And I tell people always try and
use If you have an expense, send it to the

(31:55):
trust and use the funds and the trust before using
funds that you have outside of the trust. But in
some cases people have expenses that are gonna come do
and you do not. Actually at this time, as long
as we currently do not have a community medicaid look back,
there's no requirement for you to spend the money every month,
so you can allow it to roll over from month
to month. Whatever you don't spend in September, we'll go

(32:17):
to you know, you just adding to that balance in
October when you make your next spend down deposit.

Speaker 1 (32:22):
So can I interrupt for just a second, Yeah, because
because you just gave me the best segue I think
I could have and you didn't even know it. So,
so good job, Sarah, so Lou and myself at the firm,
we do a webinar series called Medicaid Monday. We do
Medicaid Mondays every second Monday of the month unless there's
like a holiday or something. So we actually have a

(32:43):
Medicaid Monday coming up on Monday, right two days from now,
and our Medicaid Monday topic for this month is what
the potential look back will look like if it comes
into place next year in twenty twenty five, like we've
been thinking as possible for the last four is years,
because the law was passed in twenty twenty to institute

(33:04):
a community look back up to thirty months, but it
hasn't been enforced. So if you want to learn more
about what that looks like and kind of like what
our thoughts on it, what we know, what we still
kind of need to iron out.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
We are doing our.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Medicaid Monday on Monday this coming Monday at twelve noon,
and if you want to sign up for that, you
can go to our website which is Piero Law dot
com and then just search I believe it's under the
events tab and just hit Medicaid Monday and you can
sign up there and you can want to just talk
about that. So, so thank you for the segway, Sarah,
because my thought was, because I'm just finalizing our presentation

(33:40):
is in the look back. If the lookback gets instituted,
like what may happen, It's possible we might really need
people to be spending that five thousand every month as
of right now without the lookback.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Sarah's one hundred percent right. You do not have to
spend it.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Whether that actually comes into play or not with the
look back, whether the lookback comes into play, we don't
know that either, just kind of going off of our
best information that we have. But yeah, for right now,
if you don't spend that five grand, it just builds
up in the account, rolls over to next month. It's
just just like a fancy bank account. Just you have
a helper with it, that's all.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
Yeah, And I think that's a good segue too. What
do we do to ensure that you do spend all
that money every month?

Speaker 2 (34:18):
Right?

Speaker 3 (34:18):
So let's go beyond the basic bills, because you know,
for somebody that's got a five thousand dollars spend down,
they're pulling money out of their retirement. They may not
actually now that they're not paying for a lot of
home care services, they may not now actually have bills,
let's say, for say, and so it's important to note
that the Poulters can be used for more than just bills.

(34:38):
This is about improving a person's quality of life and
giving them the ability to live with dignity and comfort
in their home for as long as possible. And so
it can be improvements to your property. It can be landscaping,
you know, as long as you own that property. There's
so many things that we can do if you rent, right.
It could be furniture in your apartment that makes you

(35:00):
more comfortable. It could be things that make your home
more accessible to you. It can be things that are
purely life enhancing.

Speaker 2 (35:08):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
I always tell people, what is something that lights your
mom up? What is something that makes her happy? Is
it talking to her grandkids? We can buy her an
iPad so she can FaceTime with her grandkids.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
How about plane tickets to go see the grandkids?

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Sure? I mean, if you're able to travel, plane tickets,
train tickets. I mean. And it could be not even
just to see your grandkids. It could be what do
you like to do?

Speaker 2 (35:29):
Right?

Speaker 3 (35:29):
Is it music? Do you want to go see a concert?
Is it you know? Do you want to be able
to go out and play cards with your friends. Where
you need someone to accompany you, is it companionship services?
Because your family all live dispersed around the country and
you want to have somebody be able to come in
and take mom or dad out services that maybe aren't
covered by medicaid. And so there's so much that we

(35:52):
can do. I always tell people, it's very unique to you.
What is it that you want to spend these funds for?

Speaker 2 (35:58):
So let me put you on the spot.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
I once had a client ask me this, and I
don't think we were working with you guys for this
particular request.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
And I know that I'm putting you on the spot.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
So if you're not one hundred cent, sure you're allowed
to say that, Well, what about expenses for like a pet?

Speaker 2 (36:12):
Like if they have a pet? How about that?

Speaker 3 (36:14):
Yeah, that's a really to be honest, that question comes
up a lot.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
Say it probably does.

Speaker 3 (36:19):
And we were actually talking about pets earlier, and I
think you know you can definitely agree and I certainly
would that my animals absolutely improve my quality.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Of Well, I'm asking the questions because you have them,
you love them.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
Sure, So I think that that comes down to one
of those things where it's about are your basic needs
being met first? Right, So, if you're someone who has
a two hundred dollars a month spend down and those
funds need to be used for your bills, then pet
expenses may not be something that the trust could pay for.
But if you've got five thousand dollars in your account,

(36:51):
all of your bills are covered, you have a roof
over your head, food in your fridge, Your basic needs
have been met. That's where we can start to look
at those quality of life things. We generally pay food,
you know, food expenses for pets, you know. The big
concern sometimes is those big vet bills.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Right.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
So again, we would love to be able to pay
that big vet bill, but we can't put you in
a position where that's going to make it so that
you can't afford your bills. Right, So, all of those
things are always evaluated on a case by case basis,
where we look at the situation for that individual. Service animals.
Almost always we're going to be able to pay all
of those expenses, again, unless it's going to put you

(37:31):
in a position where you can't cover your bills. But
even non service animals, right, those are things that are
really important to be.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, I still remember the client.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Obviously I can't say who it is for obvious reasons,
but I still remember getting the call from the daughter
right when we had set up the Pool Trust account,
and she said, you know her, her cat is literally
like her best friend. And now the cat, you know,
it was either a vet bill or it was either
you know, just food or you know, grooming or whatever
it was. And it was like, you know, she it
would mean the world world to her to be able

(38:00):
to keep her cat. But if we don't, we can't
use the pull trust fund.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
She probably doesn't have enough well, And I think it's
something that really kind of has laxed a little bit
over the years. We used to have a very strong
sole benefit rule, meaning that the funds in the trust
could be only used for that person's sole benefit, and
twenty eighteen or so, the Social Security poms kind of
relaxed that a little bit to primary benefit, that there
may be some ancillary benefits to others, but it should

(38:26):
primarily benefit that individual.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
All right, So can I cut you off here just
because I want to get out for our last break
and I really want to talk about what you were
just starting to talk about because it's something that I
get asked probably more than maybe anything else that I
get asked about, So I want to spend some time
on that. So with that, Zach, why don't you take
us to our final break before the end of the
show again, Life Happens Radio. Come on back right after

(38:48):
the break and we'll keep talking with Sarah from Nice Arc.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
Welcome back. It's Life Happens, and it's.

Speaker 1 (39:03):
It's a little sad because our show's gonna come to
a close and just another thirteenish minutes or so. But
until then, it's Frank Hemming from Pierre O'Connor and Strauss.
Thanks again for spending your Saturday morning with us. We
really really appreciate. It's always great to hear from our
listeners and just know that you're out here listening to
us and liking what we put out there. So I'm

(39:23):
gonna get out of the way again. So Sarah, let
me just tea you up with a question if you
don't mind. So you were you were talking about how
some rules changed back in twenty eighteen or so, where
the rules around pool trust and what you guys can
pay for kind of got relaxed because before the previous
rules head to be for the sole benefit of the
Medicaid recipient, and now it's more like more like primary benefit,

(39:45):
if you will. So I think one of the biggest
questions I get asked is, like, we do a lot
of work in cases where we have one spouse who
needs Medicaid one spouse who does not, but obviously lives
in the same house or same apartment. And and typically
just because the way the way it kind of goes,
it's usually, you know, dad is usually the one, our
husband is the one that you normally needs the help

(40:07):
first health wise, Mom still lives with dad, you know,
wife is living with her husband. And again just typically
the male is going to make more income every month,
so then they're going to have the need for the
pool trust. So if we got a pool trust set up,
Dad's on medicaid, Moms in the apartment. Biggest question is, well,
can the pool trust get used for stuff like for

(40:27):
the household, like for the groceries for the household, for
the electricity for the household, because Mom's there too, so
it's not sole benefit for dad. So can you can
you kind of dive in and kind of shed light
on how that works.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
With with with you guys.

Speaker 3 (40:39):
Yeah, of course, and it's understandably a big concern, right,
and yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Huge, right, because if it's no right this, maybe this
plan doesn't work right.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah, exactly. And so again, when it comes to married
couples who live together, we're not We generally don't pro
rate those expenses. If you live in an apartment with
a friend and you guys share those ex fences, you
really only owe fifty percent of that rent. That's where
we are only going to pay fifty percent. When you
live with your wife, we're not necessarily going to look

(41:10):
at your bills and only pay half. Right, if you're
both on that lease agreement, we'll be able to pay
the full rent. We'll be able to pay the full bills.
In some cases, the person who needs cares bill name
might not be on the bill, and that can sometimes
be a little bit more complicated. We do generally like
to see that person's name on that bill because we
want to be able to show to MEDICAI we're paying

(41:31):
a bill that is for this individual. But if they've
taped getten, that person's name off the bill, maybe because
they have dementia or alzheimer.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Yeah, and usually that's what it is.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
It's like, you know, they ran into a problem with
like Spectrum because like they tried to call them their
you know, wife's name wasn't on the bill, and then
they didn't send the power of attorneys, so then they
couldn't talk to anybody.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
So then they just changed the name on it.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, so we can always work with that. And the
important thing for us is that we have documentation, right,
like you were going talking about earlier.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
You have to have the facts.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
You have to be able to have the paper trail
to show to Medicaid that this wasn't you know, this
is all above board, right, So if the person's name
is not on the bill, we can work with that.
Send it to us, well, confirm the service address, make
sure that that is the primary residence of that person.
We document that the reason why the person's not on
the bill. But generally we're able to pay the majority
of expenses. We're not going to pro rate your grocery bill.

(42:20):
We're not gonna you know, split things up in that way.
We don't choose who's responsible for the bills in your household.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Yea, right, no, And that's great because I mean, if
we were making kind of light of it now, because
I like to keep the show a little more light
right when we talk about this kind of stuff. But
like we seriously, like I get clients that say, like,
how would they know that, like the loaf of red
was for mom and not dad, And it's like they're
not going to, right, They're not going to, but they're
they're they're going to be able to work with you.
Here's kind of the whole layout of the house, the financials, everything,

(42:51):
and they're going to work with you to make sure.

Speaker 2 (42:52):
That this works as best as it could. Right.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
And that's what's so refreshing about working with with pool
trusts because you know, kind of just kind of the
stage with this again. The income limit is seventeen hundred
and fifty two dollars a month. So if we had,
if we had this hypothetical gentleman that we've been talking
about for for the last you know, twenty ish thirtyish
minutes here where he's got five thousand dollars too much,
if we don't use a pool trust for him, he

(43:16):
has to take that five thousand dollars and either then
spend it down on qualified medical expenses, right doctors bills,
hospital bills, medication costs, home care if it's through an agency,
you know, those types of things, or he gets pay
it right to the county. Right he gets handed literally
to the Medicaid office and say here is five thousand dollars,
here is my spend down. Now, authorize Medicaid for me

(43:38):
for the following month. And then when the next month
rolls around, then he has to write another check to
the county for another five thousand dollars handed them and
that's all that money down the drain gone where. Now
he has to survive on seventeen hundred and fifty two
dollars a month every month to pay everything that he
needs that Medicaid doesn't pay for, so that that property

(43:58):
tax bill coming out of the seven teen fifty two,
food seventeen fifty two, close seventeen fifty two, and people.

Speaker 2 (44:04):
Cannot do it.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
So without the pool trust, in this instance, home care
doesn't work. And that's that's why it's so great that
that we have the ability to do everything we can
with partners like nice ARC. So Sarah, let me let
me go back to another thing that we were talking about,
and because I think it's good just to kind of
hammer this home, because I haven't had an issue with

(44:27):
this recently, by one hundred percent have had it in
the past. And that's when you said, if if let's
say Dad, in this sense, it's right our person on
medicaid if he pays a bill.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Right.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
So let's say that property tax bill came in the
mail for a few thousand dollars and the family paid
that money out of his checking account savings count right,
Dad essentially paid that bill.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
If they come back and they asked to be reimbursed
from the Pool Trust to reimburse Dad because Dad paid.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
The bill, what happens, Unfortunately the trust cannot pay it, right,
and so, and that's what we're talking going back to
what we're talking about earlier. We can never give someone
money out of this account that the Medicaid applicant, right.
We can't return money to their bank account. We can
never even reburse, reimburse an account that they're on. So
I was actually talking to a daughter this week and she,
you know, mentioned, well, I have this account. His name's

(45:17):
on it. She's like, but my name's on it too.
But if his name is on it, it's all his
money under medicaid eyes.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
Right, Unless you can prove it isn't.

Speaker 3 (45:26):
Yeah, exactly. So you always want to be paying bills
out of a bank account that does not have the
name of the beneficiary on and it can't be the
spouse's bank account either, right. So, if adult children are
able to pay for certain expenses, we could reimburse them
with proof of payment and the and the documentation for that.
But we can never reimburse you or your checking account.

(45:46):
But how we get around that. That happens from time
to time. Right. People don't know how this works. And
they again they're not trying to deceive medicaid, they just
don't realize that that's not okay. And that's why it's
so important to communicate with the Pool Trust. Often we
are experts in this. This is what we do. We
help hundreds of people every month. We help them figure

(46:06):
this out. Everybody's situation is different, So come to us
and we can help you decide which bills and if
there's something that you paid for that we're not able
to pay for, we can almost always identify something else
that you are paying for that the Trust could pay
for it.

Speaker 2 (46:21):
Right.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
So, walk about property expenses is a big one. So
you really do want to be careful about that because
it's hard to find a bill that's about the same
as that. But I mean income taxes, you know, irrevocable
pre need funeral range. Maybe if you haven't already done
that with your attorneys, Yeah, just.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Say, if we want to bring the tenor down again.

Speaker 1 (46:38):
Right, let's talk about pre paying your burial, because medicaid
is perfectly fine with you prepaying your burial. And sometimes
people don't have all the money up front to put
down the five to ten thousand dollars for the full funeral, burial, cremation, headstone,
you know, whatever it is is that they want, but
you can certainly pay it on installments and things as
you go. There's no reason a pool trust couldn't help
you pay with something pay for something like that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
I think another thing we haven't talked a lot about,
and not that we have a lot of time to
go into a ton of detail about this, but we
all know medicaid is in some cases getting the hours
that you need is sometimes becoming more and more changing.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Oh yeah, we could spend a whole hour show on that,
trust me exactly right.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
So a lot of the times, what we see as
families who are private paying for services they're depleting life savings,
or adult children are depleting their funds trying to help
care for a loved one they go to go on Medicaid.
They were providing maybe around the clock care before and
now they're getting fewer hours from Medicaid. So the trust
can also be used to supplement that care. Right, if

(47:38):
you need to hire an aid to pay for traditional
hours above and beyond what Medicaid's covering, the Pool Trust.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Can be used for that.

Speaker 3 (47:45):
So you can still preserve some of your income to
help with the costs of the home care that you
need to fully staff the case. From your perspective, what
you feel the amount of carry your loved one needs.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
Yeah, couldn't have put it better. It's common that there's
usually one, two, three, family members, children, whatever that are
kind of help in any way. Right, And sometimes like
Medicaid doesn't give you all the hours you need right away,
sometimes we have to go fight for it. We've talked
a lot about some of our client stories where we
have with that. So if your medicaid's a little short,
there's no reason. If you have excess money in your
Pool Trust, the Pool Trust can't pay that agency or

(48:16):
can't pay you know, the woman that comes help you.
As long as they're willing to do a timesheet and
kind of get go on the books.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Right, all this is taxable for them.

Speaker 1 (48:24):
That's the biggest I think kind of concern that comes
up is because a lot of people like to work
under the table. You can't advise people to do that
for obvious reasons. But as long as they're above board
and they're willing to go on the books, they can
certainly be paid from from the pool trust. The other
one that we do, or at least we talk about
a lot, Sarah, that that I know you that we
have talked about when we've worked together, is sometimes like

(48:46):
we have that family member they might not be providing
care to their loved one, but they're kind of the
ones doing all the bill collections, sending all of it in,
you know, coordinating in the care, making sure the household
is being taken care of. So sometimes we do something
called a caregiver agreement where we essentially have that family
member become a paid employee of mom or dad to

(49:06):
provide you know, services other than maybe just hands on care.
But again, as long as they do a timesheet and
they say what hours they work, the services that they work.
Then they get it executed properly. The pool just can
pay them for doing all the other stuff that they do.
So it's another way to kind of get creative, get
money away from the pool trust just so it gets used,

(49:26):
funnels back to the family, keeps mom and dad where
they want. So I know that's another one that we've
talked about that that we use, you know when we
have to.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yeah, absolutely, And like you said, the key is just
doing it above board, having it really be an actual
household employment situation because the trust cannot serve as an employer. Yes,
right by paying people directly, you know that certainly not
only puts our client at risk, but other beneficiaries of
the trust.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
So we have about a minute and a half or so,
so I'm just gonna mention this. Obviously we're not going
to have time to dive into this. But the other
another place where Nisark comes into line with the firm
is sometimes you guys serve as like the recipients of
a large settlement that people get and instead of putting
it into an income trust, you want to take a
large sum of money put it into a pool trust,

(50:15):
a pooled asset trust where then people who are on
benefits stay eligible for those And one of the biggest
benefits that you have when you have a situation like
that is now you have the you know, the management
and the expertise of someone or an organization like NICSARC
now to be your professional trustee. So, Sarah, I know
that a lot of times people are very nervous about
all that stuff. So that's just another place that you

(50:37):
guys can.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
Help, right, Yeah, absolutely, And I think you know a
lot of people think of using a pool trust when
it's a smaller amount of money, right because it maybe
doesn't warrant setting up your own standalone trust. But it's
really about families that need the support of a professional trustee,
want some assistance to be able to ensure that money
can be managed effectively.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
That's great. So with that, we're at the end of
the show. How crazy is that? So, Sarah, thank you
so much for coming on. We're definitely gonna have to
have you back because we have so many other things
that we could talk about. But again, thank you for
joining us here and thank you out there listening for
joining us for another edition of Life Happens Radio. Thanks
again for spending your Saturday with us. By all means,

(51:17):
come on back next week for another edition. I don't
know who's on. I don't think it will be me,
but by then you'll see. Take care, have a great weekend.