Life Happens

September 21st, 2024

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, everybody. This is Life Happens Radio. Are you prepared?
I'm Frank Hemming. I'm one of the partners of Piero
Connorance Strauss, and you're with us here today for Life Happens.
This is our weekly radio program for baby boomers and
their families where we address the challenges.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
We all face as we age.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
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
preparing for retirement, protecting your incoming assets, planning to pay
for a nursing home and for home care, planning for
special needs, preparing wills and trusts, planning for an untimely death,

(00:37):
and resolving disputes in and out of court. As the
laws and necessities for planning and care continue to evolve,
Life Happens will help you make smart decisions to ensure
that your goals are reached and your needs are met
for both you and your family. So again, welcome on
Saturday morning. It's a little hazy outside. It's certainly starting
to feel a little bit more like Faull as time
goes on. So, as I said, I'm Frank Hemming. I'm

(00:58):
one of the partners for Piero Connorance. We're a full
service elder law firm located in Latham. We also have
our full time office in New York City, but we
do see clients in Hudson, we see clients in Plattsburgh,
we see clients in Lake Placid. So if you're in
New York, there's a chance that you can help you.
We might just have not an office super close to
where you are.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
So I was on two.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Weeks ago and I was very honored and privileged to
be joined with Sarah by Sarah Grimes. She's one of
my good buddies from nice Arc and we had a
great conversation. So if you miss that, you certainly can
go back into the archives with the podcast and check
that out. Luckily, for everybody out there, I'm not alone
in the studio. I'm now joined by one of our
associate attorneys, Miss Kristin Peck.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Hi Kristin, Hi, Frank, how you doing.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
I'm pretty good. How are you?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:45):
I think I've done the show with you more than
any other person when they asked me to do the show. So,
so Aaron usually says, I'm his most frequent radio Campandre,
so you can be mine.

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Okay, I feel like I have frequented aerin lately. I
have not done the show with Lou in quite some time.

Speaker 1 (01:59):
Yeah, well there's been I mean, I'm not saying he's
not doing the show. He's been around right and traveling
and he's on the move. Yeah, he's a busy guy
and he's uh, he's he's out of town right now.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
I believe.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
I'm not going to say where he is, but yeah,
I believe he's out of town. I fully it was
that much fun or that that much of a secret.
But so Lou I believe is traveling. So they asked
me to do the show, and I'm I'm very happy
to do it, and and thank you for giving up
Saturday morning for part of it to come and do
this with me.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
No problem.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
So today is National Singles Day. I know, I know
how exciting. So I'm not well first talk about this
because it's been a very long time since I was single,
I guess, thankfully, but no. But but honestly, all jokes
aside people that are single make up a very large
part of our population, and they kind of present some

(02:53):
unique challenges when we talk about planning and and kind
of preparing things. So so we're going to get into
that probably once we get past our first break.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
I always like to start the show.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Kind of like you know, why, you know, waiting in
nothing too crazy right at the first segment. So I
have some stories that I want to tell. But christ
and I'll ask you first, do you have any stories
that came up in the office that you want to
share with the listeners?

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Anything come to mind?

Speaker 3 (03:16):
Any stories in.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
The And I'm putting you on the spot, so it's
perfectly fine if you say, like no, you need a
minute to.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Tell about it.

Speaker 4 (03:22):
Let me think, why don't you get into your story
and maybe I will have a recent event.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
In the office that it's good tease right there? Okay,
all right, So I had two that came up this week.
I think they're both. They're both good in general, and
I think they kind of illustrate some points that I
like to emphasize when I'm on the show, and that's
it's never too late to do a plan, and it's
always nice because the plan can change or even if
you don't think there's a plan. Sometimes there there can

(03:50):
be one. So the first one that comes to mind,
so I had a guy and his brother come into
the office. They wanted to sit down. Mom is currently
in a nursing home, not coming home she deserves or
she has to be in a nursing home. Her care
has gotten to the point like where she has to
be in a facility. And the first thing the guy said, basically,
once we got done introducing ourselves and things, so that

(04:10):
I always ask the client, you know, why are you here?
Because you know, sometimes people come with one set of
expectations and I'm coming with my own, and sometime I
just want to make sure we're on the same page.
So I asked them, r are you here? Said, well,
we want to talk about mom, and she's in this facility,
and we want to talk about if there's any way
to save some money.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Okay, we can certainly talk about that.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
So because she said, you know, I was planning on
just spending all of her money and just giving it
all to the nursing home, and when it ran out,
we would just pay the nursing home. And I said, well,
you know, you're certainly well off to do that you
certainly that's a choice you can make. Depending on what
you tell me. There might be some other avenues that
we can do some other things. So the unfortunate part

(04:51):
here is that Mom doesn't have a ton, But the
nice thing is it's all sitting basically in cash. And
essentially what we're going to do is we're going to
work with the family and we're gonna save her, probably
in the neighborhood of forty or fifty thousand dollars, probably
as long as the math works out. As I'm thinking,
we have to finalize all that and soon coming in
the next few days. But essentially, like the point of

(05:14):
all this is, even though Mom is in the nursing home,
even though she didn't do any advanced planning. While it's
certainly not what we would typically want to see from people,
we understand that many people put off planning or they
don't think that they have to or that they should,
or that they have enough to do it. And in
this instance, right rather than spending all her money down
to about thirty thousand and getting her on medicaid, we're

(05:34):
probably going to save the family. You know, like I said,
forty fifty thousand, give or take a little bit. So
in all, that's better than losing it all, basically, you know,
saving just thirty So I thought that was a good
kind of quick story to share. You know, just because
you haven't done anything doesn't mean there's nothing we can do,
if you know, just to kind of illustrate the point,
if she was already down to around thirty thousand, which

(05:56):
is your allowance for medicaid, then there would be very
little probably at that point we could do.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Right, if your money's gone, then it's gone.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Right as good as we are at coming up with
unique strategies and doing planning, the money's not there. If
the assets are gone, we can't get them back. Typically
we can't unspend those or unpay those bills for things
like that. That's why coming in advance of the bad
stuff happening is important. The other one is at a
little more again sad I think at the start, but

(06:25):
again I think uplifting just because there are things we
can do. So I had a console on Tuesday, I
think it was this week, and I had a family
come in and I had just seen them pretty recently.
We had just done a neurovocable trust for this woman
and her husband to protect some things for them and
for their children. And when the wife called and said,

(06:47):
you know, I need to come in. Things have changed,
you know, well, I was happy that she reached out.
That usually doesn't mean things are going well, right if
we just been planning within the last few months, and
now you need to talk again because things are progressing.
So unfortunately, the husband has some dementia and some other
health issues going on, and the family wanted to try

(07:07):
to keep him home, but unfortunately, his disease is progressing
much quicker than anyone thought, and he's actually getting to
the point where he's starting to show some not really
bad yet, but certainly some tendencies toward violent behavior. And unfortunately,
the family just doesn't think that he's well suited to
remain in the residence with mom, given that he's having
some of these traits you know, showed themselves because of

(07:30):
the other cognitive issues he's having, So they're thinking placement
is going to be necessary for him, which given what
they've said, I tend to agree as much as I know,
that's not really what they want. So now we're working
with them to get him placed and then you know,
get him on Medicaid as well. The nice thing is,
even though they just did their trust right, we do

(07:51):
have the ability to pull that back, so we can
undo the plan that we put in place, kind of
rework it now to make it make a little more
sense for the current situation. We can avoid penalties for
the nursing home and things because we can undo that
transfer to the trust. We can get him set back up,
or we can get him set up on Medicaid, and
then we can potentially redo the plan for mom once

(08:11):
all the dust settles.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
You know.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
That's that's a lot packed into a very few statements.
But essentially, again, even though they did their plan, because
of change of circumstance, now we have to alter the plan.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
And again it's nice that we live with that.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
We leave the ability that we can rework the plan
if we have something like this happen, you know in
this family's you know benefit, I guess right. The change
happened pretty fast, so it's not like we got a
lot of the way through the five years and now
we have to undo it. Right if we were four
and a half years through, that would be a much
different circumstance because we'd want to try to preserve that

(08:46):
four and a half years time. But because we're only
a few months in, there's really not a huge penalty
for undoing things, kind of starting back at square one
and seeing what medicaid can do now to help them.
So again, it's it's good to get out in front
of this. It's good you have a plan. It's also
nice and good to have a plan that can kind
of change with you, a change with your family, and
change with your circumstance. So you know, those are two

(09:08):
quick examples of where maybe you didn't have a plan
and we still might be able to help you, and
another one where we made one and now we gotta
alter it. So those were the two that came to mind.
So anything coming to mind, christ and anything.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (09:20):
So I had a consult this week and I had
a woman who had already done her planning, and I
think it was a good thing that she came in
because her two agents had passed away and so she
was on her last agent and she wanted to update
those things.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Good plan, And so.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
I guess it's just a reminder for everyone out there,
even though they've done their state planning, to review it
and to make sure it is the way they want
it to be because she had done it a number
years of years ago, and the people that she appointed
weren't you know, either weren't available or weren't local, and
those weren't the people that she wanted to act for her. Yeah,
and so we're redoing a lot of her planning. She

(10:02):
already has a trust in place, and so we're changing
her trustees and we're changing some of her beneficiaries as well.
So she's really, you know, updating a lot of things.
So she's updating all of her you know, her power
of attorney, healthcare proxy, disposition of hermains, she's changing the
trustees of her trust, and she's changing the beneficiaries of

(10:22):
her dress.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
That's that's just about everything. Yeah, pretty much like that's
I mean, I don't want to say it's starting.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
From from nothing. She's not.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
She's kind of just evolving the plan or changing it, right,
But that's a lot of changes. But that's Hey, if
that's what she wants to do, then that's what she
wants to do.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah. So it was just good that she came in
just to review it.

Speaker 4 (10:41):
And I was just thinking, because I feel like we're
in the kind of like the storytelling of people who
have come in and maybe like modified their plan or
we've come up with a new plan for them. I'm
thinking of something that happened maybe a few weeks ago.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Yeah, sure, I had.

Speaker 4 (10:58):
I had a couple come in and they had already
done wills, and so I had kind of explained to
them some trust planning and why it might be important
to do some trust planning. And they had never been
talked to about doing trust planning. And this couple didn't
have kids. They had I think they were doing the

(11:21):
nieces or nephews or you know, cousins or god children
or something to that effect. And I had talked about,
you know, probate and what probate looks like. And for
those of you out there who haven't gone through probate,
it's the process of proving.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
That you have a valid will.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
And so just because you have a will doesn't mean
that you avoid the court's involvement.

Speaker 3 (11:43):
It's actually the opposite.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
You're actually kind of guaranteeing the course will be involved
down the road, especially in cir circumstances like if you
own real property. That's going to be one of the
common ways that probate happens for people I don't know.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
I don't know about you, Kristen.

Speaker 1 (11:59):
I hear from clients constantly, like when we're having that
trust conversation about whether one makes sense. Well, you know,
I have joint accounts, or I have beneficiaries, or you know,
things like or when my parents died, they didn't go
to court or no one.

Speaker 2 (12:12):
Need ouheaded you with that, right.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
So, there are many assets that you can have handled
by co ownership, beneficiary designation, things like that that can
avoid probate. But real property tends to be one of
the ones that not that it's impossible, but it requires
a lot more work than just going to the bank
or filling out a form. Usually it's going to involve
a trust. Sometimes can involve like a life estate deed

(12:35):
or even a transfer on death deed, which now we
have in New York potent. You know, we we haven't
done one of those yet, I don't think, but they
are a thing now and that so so no, I
certainly can understand like why people wanted to or why
you were having that conversation about probate with them, Yeah, right.

Speaker 4 (12:52):
And so they just wanted things to be easy for
the people that they are putting in, you know, either
the role of a executor and now of successor trustees.
They ended up, you know, moving forward with a revocable trust.
And I just think that they because they don't have children,
they don't have they're not as close with the people

(13:13):
that they are pointing in these roles. I think they
want to make sure that it's as easy as possible
for them. Yeah, and so doing the trust planning is
going to avoid the court involvement. And I don't think
that they realized that when they had initially done their wills.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Yeah, especially if the if the goal is ease, right,
if that was or at least one of the primary
goals is ease. Ease is much easier achieved through a
trust than through wills, as you've gone through. So so
with that, why don't we take our first break. We
have a few breaks to take in the show, so
let's take our first one. So please stick with us.
This is Life Happens Radio coming back with us after.

Speaker 2 (13:50):
The break up. The back everybody, Thanks for sticking with
us through the break.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
This is life having its radio still on your Saturday morning, dazy,
kind of gloomy Saturday morning.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
So far out the window here in Latham. A little
bit depends where I'm looking at right, where I see clouds.
I see all clouds are I'm looking.

Speaker 3 (14:16):
All right, Well, whatever.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
You say, that's fine. Like I hope the sun comes
out more where I can see it. I'm just saying
where I can see, I see clouds, hopefully they go away.
I'm Frank Hemming, joined by Kristen Peck of Pierre O'Connor
and Strauss. Again, thanks for spending your Saturday morning with us.
So we told some client stories in the first, you know,
the first part of the show, because that's what I

(14:38):
wanted to do. So so now we're gonna talk kind
of the theme of today.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
I gave the teaser ready at the start. So today's theme.

Speaker 1 (14:45):
Is single people, right, it's National Singles Day, So if
you are celebrating today, congratulations. It's like I said, I
haven't been single in quite a while, but I was
single for you know, at times in my life and
and honestly, this is another thing I feel like every
time that I do the radio, have in my brain
kind of some things that we want to that I

(15:06):
want to go through or topics we should talk about,
and then I do some research into the topic and
then I think, wow, there's a lot more there than
I thought, right, Or I didn't think of that that way.
So when I was told that one of the topics
we were considering was, you know, single people and planning
for single people, my gut reaction was, Okay, we're talking

(15:29):
single people meaning you've never been married before. Right, That's
to me, that's what my brain defaults to when I
hear single. But there are other ways you can be single.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
You could be divorced, right, so you were married, but
now you're single because you were divorced.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
Right.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
You also could have been married and then your spouse
passed away, right, So you could be like single because.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
You're widowed, or you're widower. So it's not quite as
simple as just saying single as in you were never married.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Might be a lot of people that were previously married
and now they are not for whatever reason, and now
they are single. So so we were looking at or
I was looking at some numbers because you know, it
was I like to kind of put context on like
who we're talking about, and it's like, there's a surprising
amount of people that are single, and I think it's

(16:22):
like close to fifty percent of people are single, right,
I think it's like forty five percent something like that.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
I'm looking for the number now, forty six I was close.

Speaker 3 (16:32):
I had it in front of me and I was
trying to save you.

Speaker 2 (16:35):
Oh that's what, like I said.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
I look, when I read this this morning, I was
I remembered it was close to that. So so we're
talking to a sizeable amount of people. And then obviously,
depending where you are in age, you're more likely to
be single.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
So I know, so you want to help me again.
So there's another statistic in there.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
I think it says that the least likely amount of
people to be single are people right in their mid thirties,
and that is that there too.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
They're thirty to forty nine year olds are the least
likely to be single.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yep. And what's the what's the number of them?

Speaker 3 (17:02):
It's twenty one percent?

Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah, so about one fifth, right, So, which makes sense,
I think because we're we're typically younger and healthier. Where
if you've been married, chances are you're still married because
you hopefully haven't been married enough long enough to be divorced, right,
and you're not you're not old enough where hopefully your
spouse has passed away anything like that. So I think
if you've been married, you probably are still married if

(17:25):
you're in that age range. But obviously, yeah, not always
for everybody. So, so, Kristen, you've been you've been doing
estate planning for how.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Long now, I guess, I guess four or five years?

Speaker 2 (17:38):
Say, because you've been with us for three three years?

Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, which that seems kind of hard to believe in
some ways. So you've been with us for three and
we're not the first firm you worked for doing this.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
So so I'm just gonna ask you a general question.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
Okay, So if you see, like, if you're going into
a consultation with someone and you see that they are single,
what what's thing do you have going in your mind
right from the start or like do you have those things?

Speaker 4 (18:04):
Yeah, so it really depends on age. Age is a
really big factor into.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
A really good point.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
What what what kind of plan we're going to be
doing for them?

Speaker 3 (18:14):
So, if you're genuinely a single.

Speaker 4 (18:17):
Individual and you're probably under you know, in your i
mean maybe late twenties, early thirties, I'm right off the bat,
I'm looking at your assets, I'm looking at age and
I'm looking at your assets as to what kind of
plan I'm going to put together for you.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Right, So you're you're you're close to thirty, right, I'm
not going to say how hope you are.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
You're close to thirty.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
You're in the thirty range, right, and I'm more towards
like close to the forty range. So we're talking people
kind of like our contemporary, right. So yeah, that's a
really good point because you know, if you're single walking
in where you're in your twenties or thirties or something
without any kids, not married, right, I'm not saying that
there's not planning you can do, but they tend to

(18:58):
be people that kind of want to cut their bases
and that's probably about it for now, because their life
can change, i think, pretty drastically from then on out.
Whether that means they become there, they meet the right person,
they get married later, or they or they don't. You know,
they could throw themselves into their career. They could have

(19:19):
really strong relationships with other family members even though they
don't have a significant other.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
So so yeah, I would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Like that's kind of in addition to obviously looking at
age and assets and things, right, is that a common
thing that you're seeing amongst single people is that, you know,
the younger they are, the less likely they are maybe
to do a trust and it's probably more like buttoning
up the basics.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
Right, exactly. Yeah, even even if you're not single. I
know we're talking about single people, but like even younger
people who are married and have kids, it's generally a
similar plan. There are a few other things that we
might look at because there might be kids in this.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
That's what I was going to say. You literally took
the words out of my mouth. Kids can change that,
or at least in my opinion, kids can change that.

Speaker 4 (20:06):
So if you're you know, on the younger side, if
you're single, you're not married, you don't have any kids,
and you don't have maybe you're not really as established
as someone who might be in their forties or.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
Fifties or sixties.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
You know, generally, we were probably going to talk about
a power of attorney, health care proxy yep, disposition or
remains appointment yep.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Well we'll dig into those in just a second, will
and will. Yeah, So we call them the core four. Right,
everybody should have the core for whether you're single, married,
wealthy not wealthy, or healthy not healthy, right, everybody should
have those.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
You know.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
This is where I love to pat myself on the
back a little bit because I feel like I can
like I didn't have any of those things, even though,
like I tell people constantly that they should until I
was married. Right once I got married, my wife kind
of sat me down and was like, look, you need
to do that, and you don't have any excuses because
you can do all of them, or you can ask
someone else to help you with them.

Speaker 3 (21:08):
I may or may not remember this.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
Yeah you were, you were kind of involved with it.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
But yeah, like up until that point, it's not that
I wasn't worried about things happening. It was just the
likelihood of it happening was so remote that it wasn't
kind of a priority.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Not that it wasn't a concern, But once.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
We were married, and then you know, and then and
then the bigger one, as I was saying before, you know,
the bigger one that changed everything for us was when
we had when we had the kid, right when my
daughter was born, because that's really the one that worried
us the most, was you know, it's one thing if
something had happened to one of us. You know, up
until my daughter's arrival, just about everything we had is

(21:49):
jointly held. We weren't really worried about, you know, things
having to go through probate, you know, beneficiary designations had
been updated. But the main thing was, well, what happens
if something happens both of us, and now we have
to make sure that, you know, the money that we
have is put aside for our daughter how we want,
with the right people managing it and her having access

(22:09):
or not making sure the right people are in charge
of her and the assets or you know, whether those
were going to be the same people. You know, That's
what really kind of spurred action on our part was
was when we had when we.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Had our daughter.

Speaker 1 (22:21):
So so just and to be clear, right, you can
be single and have kids. So I would say, if
if you're single in general, you should still have a plan, right,
it just might not be a complicated one, which is fine.
If you're single and you have children, then I would
say you definitely need to have a plan. Again, doesn't
need to be complicated, but you should have one because

(22:42):
there's probably some things that you have to consider in there.
So so with that said one of the things that
that I saw in one of these articles, because I
don't really want to get into a huge anything to
meaty right now because we're going to hit the news
very soon another two minutes or up. So I did
see there were some tips and tricks here, and that's

(23:03):
that's another kind of common thing that I like to
talk about when I do the show, is kind of
trying to give advice, right, trying to trying to make
sure that people learn something if you're spending the time
with us, that you can walk away from the show
and feel like you've learned something. So I think one
of the really good ideas here that I saw was
if you are single, or if you have someone who's
single in your life, right that you can set up

(23:25):
or have or you should look for somebody to be
what's called an accountability partner. And and the idea behind
this is, right, if if say you're say you say
you know that you need to do something like with
a plan, right, you need to talk to an attorney
or your financial advisor or your account or something. See
if there's anyone in your life who's who's in a

(23:46):
similar circumstance as you, right, who needs to do the
exact same thing. And the idea here is to hold
each other accountable, right. And here's the fun part. Not
only can you kind of like reb on each other
give yourself a hard time if they're not doing it right,
that's always kind of fun. But the other nice thing
is not only does it mean you're more likely to

(24:07):
get it done so that way you'll feel better about it,
but you also can kind of maybe plan together a
reward that you get that maybe you two can take
part in together if you want, for when you actually
get all the stuff done, and then you can feel
really good about it and get the reward, whether that's
a good dinner or something like that. So with that said,
we're just about here up into the news, so thanks

(24:30):
again everybody for joining us on the Saturday morning this
is Life Happens Radio. We're talking about single people today,
but we have other things to talk about too, so
stick with us through the news. I'm Frank Heming, joined
by Kristin Peck here in studio on WGY. Come on
back right after the news, Welcome back, everybody. Still Life

(24:57):
Happens Radio. Still kind of cloudy window.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
I don't care what.

Speaker 3 (25:01):
Kristen says, I see the sunny trees.

Speaker 1 (25:05):
I'm Frank Hemming again from Pierre O'Connor and Strauss, joined
by Kristin peck uh Sigle. People, that's what we're talking
about today. So, so, Kristin, you mentioned some documents real
fast that everybody should have. So why don't we just
dig into those real quick, just to kind of give
everybody a refresh on what they are. So first one
you mentioned is a power of attorney, So tell everybody
what that is.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
So a power of attorney you're designating someone to make
financial decisions in case you're unable.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
To do so.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
So this is if you either lost capacity or if
you directed someone to do so. So if you're taking
a trip and you're in another country and you want
to sell your house, your agent could sign off on
the transfer of the real property.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
I'm not laughing at you. I'm just it's kind of
an interesting u turn of events there. Like you're selling
your house and you're so excited that you're doing it
that you've now left the country and you're leaving somebody else.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
To do it. That's all.

Speaker 4 (25:58):
Well, I just think of it like a husband and
wife situation. So and like yes, the wife is like
drinking wine with her girlfriends in Europe, and the husband's
here and has to sell the house and they're like
moving to Florida to retire.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
That's what I'm saying, Like, I'm certainly not belittling you,
like your thoughts. It's a really good one, and it's
a really good example how often I mean, I think, honestly,
the people that I bought my house from the US,
I think it was the husband, could have been the wife,
don't remember one of the spouses had gotten a new job,
right and had to move to like Florida, not close, right,
And that one spouse had already gone to Florida, was working,

(26:33):
and the second spouse was still in the u Arek
kind of tying everything up together and taking care of
everything and like completing the real estate transaction here.

Speaker 4 (26:41):
You so you would be surprised how many people tell
me that their spouse wasn't there when they bought their car.
I think that's just so weird because when my parents
ever purchased a vehicle, yeah, they they were there together, yeah,
And so it just seems interesting, like that's such a

(27:02):
big purchase, and even you know, selling or buying a
house is such a big purchase.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
It's certainly one of the bigger ones in your lifetime.
Cars in real estate.

Speaker 4 (27:09):
I think it just blows my mind how many people
tell me, oh, my spouse wasn't there, or you know,
my spouse wasn't there, so my husband's the only one
on the d And I've heard it so many like
not a small amount of time.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, yeah, I mean my wife And I don't know
if she's listening. She probably isn't. But like if my
wife was listening, I'm sure she'd thinking. She'd be thinking herself,
like yeah, sure, if he could just do all the
car stuff without me, I'm happy with that.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
My wife hates.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Dealing with the car stuff. Right when we're dealing with
buying the car and everything, she hates it.

Speaker 4 (27:41):
M M.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
She'll she'll, I don't want to say gladly, but she'll
be part of the process because it's a big purchase, right.
We tend to want to do those things together to
make sure that like I don't do anything stupid right,
or or that you know, I at least get her
opinion on stuff, because half the time she's going to
be driving the car. But yeah, no, I I think
like cars, certainly in my opinion, are more likely where

(28:04):
it was just one spouse involved. But yeah, like I
have had times like where I've been sitting down with
a with a couple who's married and then like we
talk about their house or their real estate, and then
it turns out it's only in one person's name. I
don't know if I've heard it as maybe as many
as much as you have, just by the sounds of
it that it was just because one was at the closing.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
It's more with the cars. But I like recently heard
it with a client. You actually you're familiar with this
client as well, and and it was just crazy to
me because I don't know, I like, if I had
a spouse and I couldn't be at the closing, that
that I would still.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Want my whether I'm there or not. Yeah, no, that's
half my house, right, I'm with you, I'm with you.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
It's just it's interesting.

Speaker 4 (28:50):
So that's why you know, and my clients will tell
you that is typically my example for the power of
attorney is if you're you know, taking a lady's trip
and you're in Europe and someone needs to you know
what I'm doing wrong?

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Yeah, I just I don't consider the lady trips.

Speaker 3 (29:04):
Yeah, yeah, you just don't like to drink wine enough.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
And not overseas.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
It sounds nice. I think i'd sign up for it.
But yeah, So that's the power of attorney, right, somebody
who could do your financial thing. And I sorry there
was one of the other important point I wanted to
make about this. You don't need to be incapacitated to
have a power of attorney or to have it work,
or at least most of the time we want it
to make to be able to be used even if
you're not incapacitated, like for that exact circumstance, right, you're

(29:31):
not incapacity. Well maybe in that moment you might be
incapacitated because you've had too much to drink in it
and Italy or wherever you are, but typically, right, you're
not incapacitated, right, And you want your spouse to be
able to handle those things or whoever you've appointed to
be your.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Agent, right, just on your behalf. It could just be.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Something as you were traveling unavailable. You want people to
be able to do stuff perfect, all right. Next one
was a healthcare proxy. Tell us about that one.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
So this is someone to make medical decisions in case
you're unable to do so. So if you're having a
medical procedure and maybe they find something and they're you know,
you're sedated, and they can't ask you, they're going to
ask your agent yep.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
Or you know, if you're.

Speaker 4 (30:10):
Maybe in and out of consciousness and you know you're
not you know, in the mindset to be making medical decisions,
they're going to be the ones that are contacted.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah, that's literally the example I use.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Right, I go for a procedure every year or two
where I get put sleep for a little while, and
it's the best sleep that I get. The one part
of it I look forward to because I always want
to they when they make me count down from ten,
I always want to see how far I can get.
It's usually about seven, right, and then you're out. But
it's the best sleep you get. But it's instantly over
and you're in recovery, and it's very very sad that
that the sleep.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Is over anyway.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
But yeah, like if they found something while I'm while
I'm under right, and they want to check it out
or they want to do something right, they can't ask
me because I'm asleep enjoying my sleep, so who they
can ask the other part of that one, and this
is a little This is kind of like office specific,
I think, because the other one that goes hand in
hand with that is something called a living will YEP,
which is a document that lays out kind of like

(31:05):
your end of life decisions, whether you want to be
kept alight by artificial means, nutrition and hydration, things like that.
Lots of offices have separate healthcare proxy documents and living
will documents. We incorporate both into one, so it's just
one less document to have to carry around. But you know,
the reason I bring this up is you may have

(31:25):
both of those things, but they're separate documents. You might
have if you worked with us in the past, you
might have just one that covers everything. So just something
to be aware of. You might have that you might
not if you haven't done any plan and then you
don't have it. Next one is the disposition of a
main's appointment. So Kristen tell everybody about that, please.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (31:43):
So the prior to documents, the power of attorney and
healthcare proxy.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Those are while you're alive.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
You know you can't either can't make the decision, or
you've directed someone to make the decision. This is after
you've passed away, So this is who's going to make
funeral or burial arrangements for you, and so you might
have pre arranged them. This is something that's common with
a lot of our clients. But this is someone who
is going to either see the plan through or who's

(32:08):
going to create the plan if you are, if you
haven't already implemented one, so you haven't pre arranged.

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Yeah, so let's go back to something that we were
talking about earlier. So younger people, right, if you're younger
and single, most people, I feel like when you're younger,
haven't really thought about what you want to have happened
if you were to pass.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah, I know I have, Yeah, I have.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
I mean, we do this, but like I think we're
kind of the weird ones with this because we do
this for a living. So like I've kind of I
have put some thought into what I would want. I
haven't put anything in writing raising, but I have done
some thinking about it. But I think, you know, younger
people tend to not really spend a lot of time,
I think, thinking about end of life things. So it's
not uncommon. Whether it's younger, older, doesn't matter. No one

(32:51):
really likes to think about this kind of stuff. So
it's not uncommon where you may not have any real
idea of what you want. So, as Kristen said, it's
in that instance, the document's just serving as appointing someone
to make sure that your arrangements are then made and
then carried out, or if you really do know what
you want, to make sure that they're carried out as
you want. I would say, just again with the topic

(33:13):
of today being single people, this is like one of
the weird kind of pieces of the puzzle that's really
really good.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
I feel like to take care of.

Speaker 1 (33:23):
You on your own right so that other people aren't
don't have to make these decisions. Like I had a client.
I've brought him up on the show in the past.
I had a client along several years ago now because
he's passed. He literally didn't have anybody in the world
to help him. I helped him do some medicaid, but
he was single. He had been married, but then his
wife had had first they were divorced and then she

(33:45):
had died. Anyway, before him, he never had any children.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
He was an only child.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
His parents were long gone, and all of his friends
had kind of abandoned him when he wound up going
into the nursing home, so he literally had no one
in the world to help him. And one of the
things that we did planning wise for him was while
we were doing medicaid stuff for him, we did set
aside some money.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
We prepaid his arrangements.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
We had someone from the funeral home come to the facility,
We met with them together, and we kind of outlined
his funeral and his arrangements and things. Because you know,
as much as I was getting to know him through
this whole process, I couldn't even say that I knew
him really well. You know, I knew aspects of him well,
and I got to know him more over time. But
I would not have felt comfortable making a burial decision

(34:29):
and where that was to be, or whether he you know,
whether he wanted to be buried or cremated or whatever like.
So he got to do all that, and then just
we did the disposition of remains appointment, just to ensure
that if there was any consequence or complications, right if
that funeral home had gone out of business, or you know,
if there was just something else that had to get
taken care of. That I could then handle it because

(34:51):
he did name me to be his agent. And when
he passed, like I was the one who got to
call the funeral home. I had to go down and
sign the papers. You know, it was an interesting It
was an interesting thing to go through because up until
that point, I had never had to do it myself. Right,
I've done a lot of countsl thing about it, and
I dealt with a lot of people who had gone
through it or were thinking of going through it, but
I had never had to do it myself. And you know,

(35:13):
it was one of the things that for one, it
was a really good use of his money because without that,
like we would just we just would have given more
to the nursing home, and that's not what he wanted, right.
And then second again, it took all the pressure off
off me, right, that I didn't have any decisions to
make really, so that was that was great too, that
he that he did that.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
Can you go back a second and just explain for
those of the one of the things that you just said,
you said that you had prepaid his funeral and it
you know, least went to the nursing home. Can you
explain that to everyone listening?

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Sure? Yeah, do my job for me.

Speaker 1 (35:49):
Sure, So when you're on Medicaid or when you try
to get qualified for Medicaid, you can only have a
very limited.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Amount of money to do that.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Back then, it was in the neighborhood of like fifteen
to sixteen thousand dollars dollars. Nowadays it's about thirty one
thousand dollars. It ballooned quite a bit after COVID. We've
talked about that countless times on the show. So while
thirty one thousand is not a lot of money, it's
certainly a lot more than just about every other state.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
And it's about double of what we used to allow.

Speaker 1 (36:16):
And even the previous levels fourteen fifteen, sixteen thousand were
more than just about every other state as well. So
in this case, trying to get him down to let's
call it fifteen thousand, I think he had around thirty
thirty five maybe by the time when I had really
met him and gotten a handle of what his bills

(36:37):
were and kind of what had happened. So, you know,
if we had to make twenty thousand or so disappear
right one way, you can kind of do it in
a safe way for medicaid is you can actually prepay
your burial arrangements and your funeral arrangements. So he paid
for his funeral, He paid for his headstone, you know,
he paid for you know, every all the incidental expenses

(36:57):
and things. So literally, again, like once he passed that
I got the phone call from the facility that he
had passed. I had to make one call. I to
call the funeral home tell them that he had passed.
We set up an appointment, and then I had to
go down sign some papers just kind of just confirm
everything was still as I knew that he wanted, and
then we set the date for you know, the funeral

(37:20):
and everything else that happened the way that he wanted.
And it was really nothing that I had to do,
which again I would have gladly helped out at that point.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
It was there was nobody else that was going.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
To But it was so nice that I didn't have
to worry that I was making the wrong decision right
or that I wasn't doing something that he would have wanted,
because he outlined all of this. So all right with that,
that's probably a good place to take our final break.
So again, stick with us. We have the last break
and then we'll come back. We'll finish up our discussion
about single people, and thanks again for being here. This

(37:52):
is Life Happens Radio. Come on back and welcome back
everybody into our final segment for Life Happens Radio. Still
Frank Hemming still from Pier O'Connor and Strauss still joined
by Kristen Pack.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
She's still here.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
What a song for the single segment? I just shout
out to Zach, Yeah, good.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Job, Zach.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
I don't want to make Zach feel bad, but I
was thinking in my head that if I was going
to put a bet on what song he may play,
it was all the single ladies might be coming out.

Speaker 2 (38:30):
So I'm glad I'm not. That's why I don't bet,
because I would have lost.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
Miley Cyrus is also a good one.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Ye see.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
The thing is, though, like I could have told Zach
what to play before the show, and I could have
rigged it, but I.

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Didn't do that.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
Well, for all you single people out there, you can
buy your own flowers.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
Oh that's great, all right. So and then the last one.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
So we've talked about power of attorney, health care, proxy
disposition remains last one is your will, right just says
where stuff goes when you die. Right, everybody kind of
knows what that one is. May want to do a
trust instead. So I think while we have another twelvesh
minutes or so, I feel like we should maybe go
through some other talking points and tips and things to
think about if you're either single or you have somebody

(39:12):
in your life that's single. So big one. Now this again,
it's not just a single thing for single people. Sorry
that it's hard to say. It's not just a thing
for single people to consider. But you want to make
sure that you have your people lined up how you want, right,
So that's your agent for all of these things. You
should have your agent for your power of attorney. You

(39:32):
should have your health care proxy. You should have.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Someone to handle your burial arrangements. You should have an executor.

Speaker 1 (39:37):
You should have a trustee to take care of things
if you couldn't, depending on what type of trust that
you have, And as Kristen pointed out right at the
kind of the beginning of the show, you probably need
multiple layers of these people because.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
Sometimes the people that you appoint have things.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Happen to them, whether they pass away, they get sick,
they have their own family. Say you have a falling out,
you just don't want them to be involved in your anymore.
So I think one of the bigger challenges single people
have sometimes, especially if it's single people that don't have children,
it's finding who these people are going to be. Because
I mean, Kristen, again, I don't want to speak for you.

(40:15):
I feel like it's common again depending on age obviously,
but if you have like either a middle aged person
or maybe you know, a senior person if they're single,
you know, siblings are kind of the ones that certainly
could be right, you know, brought up commonly to be
these people and fill these roles. But kind of one

(40:35):
of the issues with that is, well, your siblings are
typically around your age, and if something has happened to you,
what's the likelihood that your siblings are going to be
in a place where they can step in and help.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
This is reminding me of a client that I had,
I mean a while back, and she she was older
in age, she had to be in her fifties or sixties,
and she appointed her nine her mom who was in
her nineties as her ages right like, and that was

(41:05):
definitely not the best and I think she as like
a success or agent. She had, you know, either a
financial institution on her trust, and I think she might
have had her primary care physician as a backup on
her healthcare proxy. And you know, it's just what you know,
maybe not the best, it's.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Certainly it's certainly better than I feel like doing nothing, yes,
but like doing nothing is worse. But obviously there are
some potential issues there right right, because if mom's in
her nineties, what's the likelihood mom is going to be
in a place to help you if something happens, right,
whether that's she's with it enough, healthy enough, or whether
she's still here.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
And exactly not to be morbid about it.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
If you're in your nineties, like you're, you're much closer
to the end than to the start. So and then
and then you have the second thing that you just
brought up, is like when they might have had a
professional doctor or financial advis or something like that. See,
that's the kind of thing like I question myself because
I have had some people that have done those appointments,

(42:10):
Like have.

Speaker 2 (42:11):
You discussed that with this person? Yeah? Do they know
that they are now sitting in this role?

Speaker 4 (42:15):
And you know, we had reached out to the you know,
the financial institution, and we you know, there were communications
with them. I'm not sure on her healthcare proxy, you know,
you know, with the doctor itself. But and I don't
know what physicians stance, you know, what each physician's stances on.

Speaker 3 (42:34):
Serving as a healthcare agent.

Speaker 4 (42:37):
Generally, I've been under the understanding that if you you know,
are at a doctor's officer or you know, you have
a critical event and they don't have like a proxy
in front of them, they're going to try to.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Do everything they can.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
So I wonder what, you know, appointing a doctor if
they're you know, doing what you actually want or what
they think ethically is right. So that I think that's yeah,
And I feel like this is a good place to
mention just another piece of the kind of planning puzzle
that you could put in place.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
That's something called a MOST, which is as another document.
So MOST stands for Medical Order for life sustaining treatment.
It is a document that you can do with your doctor.
It's not a document that we the attorneys would do,
but it allows you to kind of go through different
medical decisions with your doctor to say how you want
to be treated.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Or not.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
And it's just another thing to kind of have, I
think in your overall plan, especially again if you're single,
if you don't have that trusted individual or or you know,
maybe not the best person to make these decisions. The
more planning you do, the more things that you put
in place, that way you leave you take the guesswork
out of it. I think is better. And this would
certainly be another place that you can do it. But

(43:47):
in terms of or in this case, it's more dealing
with like what's happening.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
Medically with you.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
So if you if next time you're at your doctor's office,
by all means, you know, bring up a most if
you haven't done one before, because they can build medicare
and they get paid to do it, so they kind
of want to do it usually. And it's a very
pink form. You'll you'll you'll recognize it in the Yeah,
pretty pretty easy, it is, Yeah, it is. It is
like a very hot pink form. I don't think anything
else that generally would be involved with a lot of

(44:13):
stuff is that color. So it's tender easy to find
if if you're not sure that you have one. M
Another tip here is to make sure that you have
all of your documents in place, right once you like,
once you do them, like once you do your plan,
because step one would we do a plan obviously, but
once you've done it, make sure that there's somebody who knows.

Speaker 2 (44:33):
Where all of it is.

Speaker 3 (44:35):
Yes, right.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
My my family went through something like this recently where
one of my great aunts passed away and she lives
and lived in Florida, and for a long time we
couldn't find anything with her stuff because we thought we
knew where it was. And then when my grandparents went
to go find it, couldn't find it. So having it

(44:56):
but not being able to find it doesn't really mean much, right,
So by all means, if you do it, make sure
it's somewhere that can be located and that probably one
or two people know where it is.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
And not in a safe deposit box.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
Oh okay, I had a note. I figured that figured
it was going to come up very quickly. Okay, So
so talk about that. Why why are you so strongly
saying that.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
So what happens with safe deposit boxes.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
They're obviously they're out of bank and you want you
if you really want to keep the box, you need
to check with the bank. On who retains access after
you pass away, and even if you check with them,
they get very finicky about this. And so what I
get I get calls about this, and I get calls
from loved ones and they're like, hey, can you get

(45:44):
me letters testamentary.

Speaker 3 (45:46):
Well, what people don't realize is that is a full
probate proceeding.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
Yeah, so, and this is I feel like this is
a problem within the legal profession. Like I think this
is kind of our fault, right because it's a bad name. Right,
letters testamentary is very confusing to somebody who doesn't know.

Speaker 2 (46:01):
What that actually means.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
It is true, right that if you say I need
a letter testamentary, that means it sounds like somebody needs
to type up a letter, right, Because then people call
our office and say, oh, I need a letter from you, right, Okay,
well what what what kind of letter?

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Oh? Hold on, I wrote it down.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
It's letters testamentary And it's like, oh, okay, that's not
a letter like you write someone a letter. It's literally
a document from the core that's part of the whole
probate process. It's not something that we can just give you.
And like I said, it's it's just I think it's
just bad titling.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
It's a bad name.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
I think.

Speaker 4 (46:38):
You know, even when I started practicing, I remember the
paralegal saying, Oh, we need to get letters testamentary, and
I was so confused about the like the phraseology of it.
It's really it's a certificate from the court that allows
your executor to collect assets.

Speaker 3 (46:54):
That's what it is. It has like a raised seal
on it.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Yeah, it's not something that you can just go into
your lawyer's office and get.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
It's something that you literally need to go for the court.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
So if you ever hear, if you ever hear the
phrase letters testamentary, it's really, like Kristin said, it's a
document from the court. It's like a certificate from the court.
That's what they should call it.

Speaker 2 (47:15):
It's like you need a court certificate, right right.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
People called it something different like that. People might understand
a little more of just you got to go to court,
or it's a probate thing.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah. Safe deposit boxes, while.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
They tend to be very safe, they are not always
accessible and in some ways like they keep something so
safe that no one can actually get to it, which
in your time of need may actually be kind of
the worst thing that happens because we sometimes.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
Need to get it stuff and it's and it's really
you know, silly, especially like if you go through all
the ram arole to get to do all that to
get the box opened, and then there's nothing of value
in it. You know, there's a few you know, an
old d that's no longer, you know, the d to
your property, and it might have a copy of your
will and not even the original. The big thing I

(48:03):
hear a lot from older people that they keep in
their safe deposit box aside from you know, important paperwork
is either jewelry or collect or coins.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Oh interesting, okay, so interesting.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Just get a fireproof safe yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:19):
Or or I don't know, Like Aaron loves to tell
the stories about how his loved ones used to put
like cash under the carpet on the stairs, right.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
I don't recommend that, but you know, there are.

Speaker 1 (48:28):
Other ways to do it besides safety deposit box that
may be a little more accessible if the bad stuff happens.
But don't beur it in the backyard. I think that's
a really bad idea.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Hey, it's you know, you could make a treasure map.

Speaker 1 (48:39):
You know, sounds fun until you can't find it or
the map gets destroyed or anything. Yeah, another quick tip,
and I thought again, I thought this was very good
information to share. So on the similar line of that
accountability partner, find like someone to chicken on you from
time to time, Right, if you're older, if you live alone,
have somebody maybe that's going to give you a call
every day or or send you a quick text message

(49:01):
or an email or something just to like they can
check in to make sure you're okay. Tommy Morasco one
of our associates down in the city office. He I
think last time he was on the show, he talked
about his neighbor who's like one hundred or one hundred
and one, and her kids like routinely like try to
check in with her, but there's been a few times
where they haven't been able to get her, and then
they call him and then he has to go check

(49:22):
on her.

Speaker 2 (49:23):
And Yeah, he's.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Very very in line with his.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Person I say, he's he's a super sweet guy and
he's also a volunteer firefighter, so there there's multiple reasons
why like he's doing stuff like that. But you know,
just make sure that you have somebody that's going to
be checking in on you, just to make sure that
you're okay, because the second maybe you're not right. There
might be something that needs to be done to see
if you're actually like not okay, So so find somebody

(49:49):
like that. And then we talked about pre arranging your funeral,
so I think the other big one or at least
another one. And this is kind of this is very nonspecific, right,
this is very you focused. And that's plan for long
term care or not right, because the article I has
here says allow for long term care or plan for

(50:11):
long term care. And my comment about that is maybe
you don't.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Want to, right. I would say, generally speaking, single people,
especially if you're single with no children, I never really
know how they're going to feel about this. Plenty of people.

Speaker 1 (50:25):
Would say, I've worked hard to get my money, get
my legacy. I don't want it to go to the government,
or I don't want it to go to the nursing home.
I want to leave it to somebody. On the other hand,
other people say I'm going to use every dime for
me and if I run out of money, who cares?

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Yeah, because you know, when you are a single who
are your beneficiaries? You know, would you rather see yourself?
You know, you use that money, you know, maybe you
want to Oh.

Speaker 2 (50:53):
No, you're at the end of the show.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
I'm right here at the end of the show.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
So last last tip, obviously is make your plan. Figure
that out.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Who's going to be your people, who's going to be
your beneficiaries, who's going to be your agents, and then
put your plan together, whether that's seeing us or people
who do what we do. So that brings us right
to the end of the show. So thanks again everybody
for another Saturday morning here with Life Happens Radio. Come
on back next week for our next episode. We'll be
talking to you soon.

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Take care of