Life Happens

February 1st, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning, everybody. This is Life Happens Radio. Are you prepared?
This is our weekly radio program for individuals 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

(00:22):
events like preparing for retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning to pay for a nursing home and home care,
special needs 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 help you make smart decisions to ensure
that your goals are reached and your needs are met

(00:44):
for both you and your family. So I'm Frank Heming.
I'm one of the partners with Pierre O'Connor and Strauss.
We are a full service elder law firm located in Latham.
We do have a full time office also in New
York City. I know we're kind of due to this
time slot, so it's entirely possible that you're hearing our
show for the first time. So if you are, it's
great that you're here with us on this morning, and

(01:09):
thankfully for I think for you guys. I'm not just
sitting here in the studio by myself. Normally I'm joined
by either one of the other partners, Lou or Aaron.
But today I have the pleasure to be doing the
show for the first time with one of our associates,
mister Brent Stack.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Hey, Brent, Hey, Frank, how's it going.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
I'm doing well. How about you?

Speaker 2 (01:28):
I'm pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
Thank you for being here. So why do we do
this because we've never done this before. But I know
you've been on the show, but again, since we might
be hitting people kind of for the first time, So
just quickly go into if you don't mind, what you
actually do with our firm.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
So I'm in the le litigation department, which I guess
consists of myself, Aaron, and our legal assistants and paralegals.
So we are the guys who write nasty letters, you know,
going to court.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
So you're the people that like to sue people.

Speaker 4 (02:05):
Yeah, you know plane in the Yeah, the plane is
short of it, Frank, is we sue people. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, nobody likes getting our mail or our phone
calls or yes, your bill or our bill. Yeah, Aaron
and I, you know, we get involved when things get messy,
which you know, I know on your side of the building,

(02:25):
you guys work your tails off to make sure that
that doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
But yeah, as we know, it does happen.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Yeah, it's it's it's interesting that they paired us together
because like, well, I would say, we're we're pretty you know,
we're pretty good buds at this point.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
From you, you haven't been with the firm super long.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
But but I always enjoy working with you, talking with you,
But like I never really directly work with you, right,
because well you you're a litigator.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
That's the goal Frank.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Right, I'm not a litigator by trade. I I do
some court work, but it's it's typically in the nature
of hearings and things where it's like not really real court.
You kind of do whatever you want. So like evidence,
I'm rusty yet because I don't ever really need to
know it for my general practice. But it's it's cool

(03:12):
because like I think you can bring a unique perspective
to the show and the things that we're going to
talk about that that I don't always consider or look
at because again, I'm not the one in court typically,
so again just to I guess orient our listeners, so
I am the main person on all of our medicaid applications,
and then I probably do more irrevocable trust planning than

(03:34):
probably anybody else in the firm. I don't I'm not
the only one that does it in Aaron oversees kind
of that wing in that department, but I probably do
more than just about anybody, and that's that's been.

Speaker 3 (03:43):
That way for a while.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
So typically when I'm on the show, we talk about
long term care, nursing home, medicaid, home care, that kind
of stuff, where where Brent's daily life is dealing with
issues with wills, with trusts. And then the other big
part of your practice, Brent, not to sell you short,
is you work a lot with guardianships.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
That's right. I do a lot of Article eighty one work.

Speaker 4 (04:07):
That's Article eighty one of the Mental Hygiene Law for
folks who become incapacitated later in life and need someone
to step up and take care of their property fairs,
and personal management needs.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Yeah, so we talk a lot about this on this show, again,
typically when I'm here and certainly when I'm running the show,
about the importance to do your plan and the types
of things that you need to consider when you're planning.
One of those things is always to get your documents
in place. You know, have your power of attorney, make
sure it's well drafted, make sure the right people are
on it. And guardianship is the way that I explain

(04:41):
it to people. So, Brent, if I you know, if
there's a better way to put this, please please buy
all means jump in. But I typically equate guardianship to
this is like what happens when you don't do your
power of attorney, you don't do your healthcare proxy, and
then something happens. You lose your capacity and now you
can't do those things right because you're not well enough
to do the documents.

Speaker 4 (05:01):
That's true in most cases, if you've got your POA,
your power of attorney in place, and your health care proxy,
you can manage most events that occur late in life.
Short of with a power of attorney and health care proxy,
you cannot place your loved one in a nursing home.
For that, you will need to go back into guardianship,

(05:22):
even though you have done everything that we will tell
you to do.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Short of guardianship. That's the one thing that you need.

Speaker 4 (05:30):
You can also not with even with guardianship, you cannot
place your loved one in a state or a psychiatric
hospital or an alcohol abuse.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Facility, which I'm I'm really glad that you say that,
just to put that out there for the listeners, because again,
I meet with a lot of people in a lot
of different circumstances, and I think a lot of people
one of the reasons why they don't always want to
do their plan is because they have that concern. Right
It's like someone is going to take this document and
they're going to put me somewhere where I don't want

(06:01):
to be. And again I try not to dive too
much into it, just because it's not my area of practice,
but my general statement to them is you cannot be
placed against your will. Rightly, you can be placed against
your will by a court or someone appointed by a court,
But like your healthcare agent can't just walk into a

(06:21):
nursing home with the health care proxy and say like,
please go pick up my mother, my brother, you know,
whomever it is, especially if you're objecting to.

Speaker 4 (06:29):
You maintain the most basic and fundamental human rights, even
if you execute a health care proxy or a power
of attorney.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
And the other thing that I had just going off
in my head while you were where you were going
through what you were just talking about, Brent is and
again this is this is less common, but I know
we have seen this. I think I have been kind
of involved with some of these cases. Is sometimes we
even have documents in place, like someone will come in,
you know, for typically for a loved one, and they

(06:57):
may have already executed a power of attorney or health
care proxy, but for whatever reason, the document is deficient
in something right, whether maybe it doesn't have gifting powers
on it, maybe it doesn't have you know, other needed powers,
or sometimes there's just missing provisions that are needed for
the current situation, and because that person lacks capacity to

(07:18):
sign new ones, you actually need to do a guardianship
to kind of get those issues resolved. And it's not
because they didn't try to take care of them, it's
just unfortunately the documents were it done in a manner
that that would lead to resolution with the current issue.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
I would say that you know, in most cases, if
you do your planning, your power of attorney in health
care proxy, you're going to cover most instances, but not all.
And by the time it's too late, it's too late.
And unfortunately, guardianship does cost a bit of money. You
do want to avoid that at.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
All, one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Yeah, guardianship is you can't get it without going to
Supreme Court. Yep, you cannot get it without an attorney.
I've seen less than a handful of pro sae attempts
at guardianship since I've been doing it for ten plus years.

Speaker 2 (08:06):
A lot of courts will send.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
You out and say come back with an attorney, and
that's costly.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, And that's interesting because I don't think I actually
knew that like I did. Obviously I'm a biased person, right,
I'm an attorney. I would generally tell people if something
is a legal matter, you should consult an attorney, probably
hire an attorney. But that's interesting to hear that, Like,
courts won't even really let people do this.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
On their own.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
It's a difficult process. It has to occur in Supreme Court.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
There's another form of guardianship recognized New York State courts,
and that's the seventeen eight guardianship. That's a circuits court matter,
and that's typically when you see disabled persons, it's typically
parents applying for guardianship of their child. Sure, once that
individual turns eighteen, you know they're an adult and they

(08:56):
are going to be the ones that need to apply
for public consistance to get into facilities, et cetera. That
is mostly a pro say proceeding. It occurs in circuits court,
and you will get lots of help from the circuit.
They'll take you in, they'll help you with your PaperWorks,
et cetera. But arc Lady one is a different story altogether.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
Yeah, and just kind of maybe just to reorient to
listeners here for a second. So, I mean, there are
many ways people can be either be incapacitated or become incapacitated.
So again, the way that I kind of simplify this
is artic Lady one is much more commonly used, I
think for people that had their capacity and then lost
it absolutely right, regardless of whether that's cognitive impairment, accident,

(09:39):
you know, health event whatever, right, they but they had
their capacity at.

Speaker 3 (09:42):
Some point and then they lost it.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
Seventeen A, generally speaking, I think is much more used
when it was someone born with a disability where they
would not really be able to manage their affairs even
as they got older. And obviously, when you become eighteen,
you become a legal adult, whether you can handle your
affairs or not. So typically as seventeen, a guardianship is
going to be necessary to manage that adults person, their property,

(10:08):
their decisions as they reach adulthood, knowing that they were
never really going to have the ability to do that themselves.
In the court is then going to step in and
appoint either a guardian or guardians for that person. That's correct, Frank,
thank you, thank you, thank you, And I appreciate that.
So so I would say a good way to kind

(10:33):
of get into into this right into the show is
I like to kind of take things a little a
little light. So we're going to be coming up to
our first break in just a in just a minute
or just a few minutes here, so so more importantly
than just going into the case study that I want
to talk about, like the super Bowl is going to
be coming up pretty soon, and as a Giants fan,

(10:55):
I can't say that I'm excited about like the teams
that are that are playing.

Speaker 4 (10:59):
As a Giants fan, you cannot even stand to see
the Philadelphia.

Speaker 3 (11:03):
Right, That's I mean.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
So, so I was gonna say, sorry, you're in the
same boat with me on that one. I'd say, because
you are also a Giants fan.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
You have to pledge to to forever despise the field.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, that's and last week we were put in a
unique situation with with Washington vision Philadelphia. It's kind of like,
I don't really like either of these one of the
best to win, but I would have preferred Washington over Philadelphia.
So but I think as much as like I think
people are kind of tired of of Kansas City, I

(11:33):
think that's kind of I know, I know, I know,
but you know what, I'm not a I'm not a
Taylor Swift fan. I'm not a Swifty and I'm sure
that's shocking to people that know me. But but I
I find it hard to believe that like there isn't
some good that come to her exposure with with the NFL.
That's a valid point, right, Like, I think a lot
of more people are because of her, for good or

(11:57):
for bad. But but I will say when it comes
to just the teams on the field.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Uh, go Kansas City. Yeah, then they're done that because
I can't. I can't.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Literally, they're done that.

Speaker 1 (12:06):
You can't can't do it, And then we're both baseball guys.
And spring training is like it's closer than you think.
But like when it's cold and miserable and snowy and
icy and all kinds of stuff, it's just it's hard
to believe.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
But like spring training is coming.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
So so I've read an article yesterday, Frank, I don't know, yeah,
for what it's worth, but I think one of the
Steinbrenners said that the Yankees are a better team today
than they were this time last year. So I'm sure
that's a point more for the back and gods to discuss. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(12:42):
then you and I No, no, no, it just caught
my eye. I mean I think they have a there
must be a requirement to publish a certain number of
Yankee stories throughout the winter, just to just to keep
it all going.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
I would I would say just in general as a
as a as a fan of the other New York team,
not the Yankees.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Uh, the fact that that we.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Are going to have someone playing right field for us,
that that's no longer playing for for the other New
York team makes it hard for me to believe that
they are a better team than they were last year
just from that fact alone. But on the other hand,
like you know, I I've gotten over the fact that

(13:25):
the Yankees winning doesn't impact my daily life. Right when
I was growing up as a as a as a
Mets fan growing up, like when I was when I
was younger, they won like every year, Like I was
right learning to be a baseball fan in the middle
of like the Yankee dynasty, and it just seems like
they won every year.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
So I grew up with a lot of ill will
towards the Yanks.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
But you're still here.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I'm still here. Eighth grade was like the worst year
of my sports life because my my Spanish teacher, who
I sat front row center because it was assigned seats,
was the biggest Yankee fan in the school and that
was the year that the Mets and the Yankees played
in the World Series, and I had to like look
at him in the face like every day with him
just mocking me for that entire year because the Mets

(14:09):
lost in the World Series the Yankees.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
He probably didn't even know he's mocking you for.

Speaker 3 (14:13):
Oh no, he did it on purpose. He knew, and
he's a great guy. And he taught me a.

Speaker 1 (14:17):
Lot of Spanish that I've since forgotten. So sorry, but
but I will say, like I've gotten over like just
thinking bad things for the Yankees unless it directly affects
that right when when they when they play each other,
I clearly can't root for them, but like, but unless
it directly affects the Mets, like, the Yanks are gonna
do what they're gonna do. And if we if we
wind up both deep in October, we're both going to

(14:39):
be pretty happy.

Speaker 2 (14:41):
So so that's that's big say so.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
So that's the take home message for the first segment
is just you know, try to try to grow as
a person, find your maturity right and uh and root
for root for the for the Chiefs and not the Eagles.
There you go, all right, So we're so we're gonna go,
We're gonna take our first break. We'll get back into
a state planning and the stuff we're supposed to be
talking about right after this break, and welcome back. Thanks

(15:15):
for sticking through the break. I'm Frank Hemming, of Pierre
O'Connor and Strauss joined in studio with mister Brent Stack. Hey, Frank,
thanks for sticking through the break. I'm not between you
and the door. You could have could have made the
vault for it, but you didn't, so I appreciate that.
So as much as I would love to do an
hour of sports, we're not supposed to do that. And
so we should talk about estate planning and you know too, yeah, exactly.

(15:39):
So Again, since we don't work together on files jointly
very much, I thought the best way to kind of
approach this was to kind of come up with a
hypothetical that we could take some elements of real cases
and kind of talk through some issues and things. So
the hypothetical we've come up with is, so we have
let's say we have a husband and wife. Ye husband

(16:02):
passes and he leaves his wife a trust. So with
a trust, you've got some different players. You've got your trustee,
that's the person that's managing the trust. You've got your
beneficiary or beneficiaries, those are the people that benefit from
the trust. And then and then I guess, I guess
I should break that out a little bit better. You
have your life schedule, you have your lifetime beneficiaries, that's

(16:25):
who's going to benefit during the lifetime of the trust,
or the people that it's supposed to benefit, and then
you have the at death beneficiaries or those residuary beneficiaries.
Then Brent is referencing that says like, once people have passed,
who gets the stuff in the trust? So again, because
this is made up, and because this is hypothetical, right,
kind of spitball in bits and pieces of this. So

(16:47):
in actuality, this would be a very difficult trust to
go exactly the way that we're going to go through it.
But I think the points will be will be well
taken here.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
So husband, one, let's call stuff in the trust. Let's
call that stuff money.

Speaker 3 (16:57):
Yeah, of course, Yeah, we'll get there. I'm gonna I'm
gonna do a little bit better.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Sorry, Yeah, I'm just saying because like, the best way
that I think this works is husband can leave a
trust to his wife. You can't really do it the
way that we're going to go through because to do
it in real life you have to go through a
will and all kinds of stuff. But freeze, let's not
do that, right, So I'm just throwing it out there.
It's not one hundred percent accurate. The points I think
are going to be pretty clear. So husband leaves trust
for wife. It's there to take care of the wife

(17:22):
during her lifetime, for her health care and all that stuff,
just to make sure that if something happens to her,
the money or anything else that's in that trust, probably
money more than anything, is there to support her.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
I think most people would understand the benefit to a
plan like that. Someone has money, they want to say,
if something happens to me, the people I care about
in this instance, the wife, she's taken care of. Fine,
sounds great. Well he's got to name a trustee in
this document to say who's going to manage all the stuff.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
For the wife.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's a big time decision.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
It is, especially depending on what's in what's in the trust.
So for our hypothetical, say he's got a million dollars,
so not not you know, do whatever you want money,
but certainly more than enough to be comfortable. Yeah, yeah,
not that right, not that. So so we've got enough money, right,
wife should be pretty comfortable. Right now, we have to

(18:16):
say who's going to manage this money for wife?

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Right? Right?

Speaker 1 (18:19):
So in this instance, let's say it's not the wife.
Let's say either she's got some health concerns or say
the husband just maybe she's not great with money for
whatever reason.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Husband didn't pick wife.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Although ironically, Frank, it could be right.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
I mean, depending on depending on the nature of the trustee.
There's a lot of times where the trustee and the
beneficiar are going to be the same. Right, kind of
depends on the nature of the trust Right, in this instance,
let's not have it be her because it's more fun. Right,
We're going to throw more chaos in there and say
it isn't her. So wife's not going to be the trustee.
So let's say that they've got two kids. Okay, the

(18:57):
two kids are going to be the trustee. Okay, Okay,
so we've got husband passes away, leaves trust for wife,
million dollars in the trust. Kids are going to be
the trustees.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
Got it? Now, you painted the picture, Frank, I'm right there.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
It's like you're right. It's like you're there sitting there
at the kitchen game. I got you, all right, So
this is I think, Now, this is I think a
good scenario if everyone's on the same page, right, Husband
had his wishes taken care of, trust, got set up

(19:30):
for the wife. Wife's got her needs. Now she's gonna
have plenty of money. Kids are there, they can manage
the money, they can help mom out.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
In this ideal scenario, can happen, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
Yeah, right, so especially sounds pretty good.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, that's we would probably want to make sure that
like this went as smoothly as possible if we were
the ones doing this situation, exactly right. But we're not
here to make this easy. We're here because we want
to be educational and entertaining, and we're going to throw
some chaos in you, all right, So let's throw let's
throw this grenade in the middle. Right, So we got
the kids. Let's say, for whatever reason, kids don't have

(20:06):
a good relationship with mom. Now, I don't know why
that is. I don't know whether it's their spouses. Could
be Mom wasn't very nice to them growing up. I
don't care. Mom isn't isn't their favorite for whatever reason? Right, So,
now we got kids in charge of the trust for
a mom and mom and kids don't like each other
or don't get along very well. Now again, let's put

(20:28):
aside the obvious and the obvious should be if this
was the case, husbands shouldn't be making the kids the trustees.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Oh yeah, I think we're too late for that.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
I know, but we're already to say, well, we're too
far down the road. Right, Let's say you didn't have
anybody else, right, this was the only choice, which that's possible,
So we had to put the kids in. Kids, don't
you don't want to bring in the neighbor. No, no,
can never trust the neighbor, neighbor, mail man, whatever. Right,
So we got kids on the trust. And let's say again,
as we're going down the road, mom starts having some issues, right,

(20:59):
she has health care issues.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
So let's say something they didn't foresee.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, so let's say let's let's let's not even take
it that far yet. Let's just say that perfectly normal.
She's getting a little older. House is getting to be
too much, right, so house goes, she moves into apartment,
and they want to use the trust money to help
support her apartment. Fine, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Rent is high,
it's not that high. Kids take care of the rent,

(21:23):
no problem. Okay, let's say time goes on, her health
starts to get maybe a little worse. Ye, So now
now we need to get some help in the apartment,
so they start maybe paying for some extra help to
come in. Again, it's not really doing too much to
the finances too much because again they got a million bucks.
Whatever's left direct yea, yeah, so this so they're covering,

(21:45):
they're covering, they're covering stuff. Everything's okay. But then let's
say time continues to go on. Mom's got some stuff,
it's not getting better. Now she needs to go to
assisted living. So now the trust is now paying a
lot more for assisted living because I'm sure if anybody
out there has had experience with assisted livings, they can
go from costly to very cost extremely costly depending on

(22:10):
what level of care, how much services you need. So
now the money is starting to really go much more
quickly than it was. And again because I'm the long
term care guy, ultimately assisted living doesn't remain appropriate and
she needs to go to a nursing home. Okay, so
now we're definitely talking big bucks.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
So say.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Fifteen to seventeen thousand a month right for the nursing
home in this area. Right, So if you're not in
the Capital district, could be a little cheaper, could be
a little more expensive depending where you are, But if
you're right here in the Capital District, fifteen seventeen thousand
dollars a month for just about any facility around, if
it's a nursing home, it's pretty standard. So now money's
really going much much faster because that's a big bill

(22:55):
to stomach every month and I have to pay. So again,
if the kids were on the same page, and kids
are saying, hey, we got plenty of money, we're gonna
be writing checks. You know, we can cover fifteen grand
a month for a long time. We're just gonna pay
the nursing home. Life goes on. Everything's still pretty pretty solid.
But here, here's the next bomb we're gonna throw in.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
Here, What if the.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Kids don't want to pay the money out of the trust?

Speaker 4 (23:22):
Why would that be frank, Are they are these kids
the residual of beneficial.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh yeah, you know what, Brent, they are, and say,
and that's the last bomb to throw in.

Speaker 2 (23:29):
Oh so that might be their money.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Right, So at the end, when mom's gone, well they
get the money. Ah, so they don't want to use
the money because if they use.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
It for mom and they don't like mom any.

Speaker 3 (23:40):
Yeah, they already said they did. They did.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
They haven't liked mom for a long time. They were
just paying their bills. But now Mom's costing a lot
of money and now she's in the nursing home, probably
not going to get any better. It's costing them a
lot of money to pay.

Speaker 3 (23:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
Yeah, So that's the scenario. So we're just up here
to the news. So what we're gonna do is we're
gonna take a break. We're going to go to the news.
We're gonna come back and we're gonna work through some
of the issues that we just laid out in our
hypothetical and I'll do a quick recap. But that's what
you have in sore for you right after the break,
right after the news, please come back to life.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Happen to wait.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
And welcome back again. Thanks for sticking through the news still.
Frank Henning here in studio with Brent Stack. Hey, Frank,
both of Piero, Connor and Strass. Brent's going to keep
doing that when we come back for the break. That's
all good. Brent's my buddy. Thanks again for being here.
So let's let's so we went through this this hypothetical,
right we're sending out this hypothetical. We got mom in

(24:41):
the nursing home, we got this trust We've got kids
on his trustees. Ultimately they're the beneficiaries, and now they
don't want to pay stuff for mom.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
We started with a million bucks.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
But yeah, we're dwindling money, right, We're dwindling it down
because nursing homes are expensive. So so we have you know,
like I said, this is this is a hypothetical, but
we've had we've had cases that have elements to this.
So so one thing that that I think we have
to kind of flesh out here is, well, what what
actions can be can be taken here?

Speaker 3 (25:14):
Right? What can we do for mom?

Speaker 1 (25:17):
And typically, so when we have a trust situation and
we have a trustee kind of going off the rails
a little bitter or at least and.

Speaker 2 (25:25):
At this point, Frank, just no good.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
We're in the nursing home now, correct, Yeah, the nursing
home probably wants to get paid.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean shockingly, like the nursing home
might say, like, we keep sending you fifty thousand.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Dollars bills and no one's paying.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah. Just for context, okay.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Yeaheah, yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, because mom doesn't.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Have the money's not paying That's that's why, that's why
this money was put here, right to support mom. So
so one option or one thing that I think typically
we would want to know. Right, So, if we get
a call from from somebody trying to help mom saying, hey,
you know this is in a good situation, right, we
need to help mom. So this could maybe be her

(26:07):
like her sibling or another family member, could even be
another kid, right, the one that likes Mom, whomever. But
if they're her power of attorney and they're entrusted to
help her, right, which certainly could be possible, then we
might want to start looking into things like with this trust.
One thing you got to do is you got to
see the.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
Trust yep right, get a document.

Speaker 1 (26:28):
It's possible the document says this is never to be
used for a nursingroom. Now that's ridiculous, but I'm just
hypothetically thrown it out there, right, we want to see.

Speaker 2 (26:35):
The trust, the document. It's really hard to give advice.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
On a document or a trust if you haven't seen it.
So part one. Step one is let's see the document.
Let's see what it says. Because for maybe this is
already addressed. Maybe there's another way to deal with this.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
Who knows. Second thing, then, is what's been going on
with the money?

Speaker 1 (26:55):
So, Brent, this is kind of where I think your
your side of the practice comes in. So if you
think someone maybe doing some fishy things with money, well,
what avenues do they have?

Speaker 4 (27:03):
We've got a question about. Yes, the trust is well,
essentially it's an account. So to find out how that
account is being managed, how the money is being spent,
what we can do is commention, commence an action, and
demand an accounting.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
Okay, and what does that mean?

Speaker 4 (27:20):
So we would sue the trustees with a order show
cause or notice of petition. The petition would be for
the purpose of compelling an accounting of the trust. So
we would ask them to provide us with a full
accounting of what they've done with the money from the
moment that they became trustees and took possession of the assets.

(27:43):
In this case, we're talking cash in an account. How
they've spent that, Specifically, have they've spent that for the
benefit of the designated beneficiary in this case is mom?
So mom has needs? How have you spent this money
that you've been entrusted for the benefit of mom. So
this case, we know Mom's need at this point in
time at least is nursing home care.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Yeah. So so again, let's maybe just walk through this
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
So when they were using it to pay her rent,
no problem, no problem, That's why the money was there
when she needed home health care. Again unless it's violative
of the terms of the trust, and we're going to
say for this it.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Isn't trip no problem to Florida, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:21):
No problem. They were allowed to pay for her home
health aids. Yep.

Speaker 1 (28:24):
When she went to assisted living, they paid that, no problem. Right,
Maybe she needed higher levels of assisted living, no problem.
And now a nursing home again, probably not going to
be a problem for them to pay the nursing home
out of this trust either, because now they've just decided
they don't.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
Want to, right.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
But one reason that maybe they don't want to is
maybe they were doing some fishy things with the money.
Maybe there isn't as much money there as everybody thinks
could be that so this could be a reason to
compel the accounting and wanted to really dive in to
see what's been going on.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
And I think one of the biggest concerns that we have,
Frank is always the for self dealing.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
Yeah, which, okay, explain to the listeners what that means.

Speaker 4 (29:05):
That means, you know, you're entrusted with an asset, and
that asset is meant to be there to benefit someone
else with a designated beneficiary. And because you have this
authority and this access to an asset, you can't resist
that urge to do a little little one for you,

(29:26):
one for me kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
Because yeah, I mean, well because I guess like, let's
just frame this, I think in real life terms, right,
So let's just this trust account with a million dollars
in it when it started could have just literally been
just a fancy checking account at a bank.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yep, any any bank oftentimes.

Speaker 1 (29:43):
Is yeah, that's I mean, it's just it's because I
think people have this misconception that no longer name that
a trust is, right, this big mythical thing that only
really rich people have, when essentially a trust is just
a document, it's a contract, it has terms, it has
people involved with it, and then ultimately when something gets
funded into the trust, really all that means, when especially

(30:03):
when it comes to cash, is that a fancy bank
account with a fancy name on it gets set up
at a financial institution, whether that's an inprestment brokerage company
you know, like Merrill or Morgan Stanley or anything like that,
or it could just be a local bank, and then
the money goes into the bank account just like it
would go into a checking or savors account. It just
has a big fancy name on.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
It and it's very accessible.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
So it's just like it's so the kids in our example,
the trustees could be just walking around with a checkbook
for this million dollar account or however much remains in
the account, and they can just write checks, just like
you could write a check out of your checking account
right now. Now, I know checks are four and out
if people just don't write checks, but again, let's play along, right,

(30:45):
So they could just write checks. So they could write
checks to they could write one check to the nursing
home or to the assist of living. They're not paying
a nursing home, but they could write one check for
mom's benefit. And right say, well, I'm going to write
a checkout for my car payment because I.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
Have the CHECKLOK. Right, yep, that's that's what you're talking.

Speaker 4 (31:03):
About it's why it's important to be prudent when you're
nominating your trustees.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Perfect, yes, yeah, and again, I know, I know the
chaos that I've put in this situation is avoidable, and
that's kind of the point.

Speaker 3 (31:18):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
So, once we kind of get through a few more
points about this, I think we're gonna we're gonna try
to clean this up and say, like, what could have
been done better?

Speaker 2 (31:24):
Right here?

Speaker 1 (31:26):
So, so we've got this accounting proceeding, all right, So
so once the accounting comes back, so let's say, let's
say everything comes back relatively clean, that they haven't done
anything nefarious in the past, right, they just now they're
just refusing to do what they should.

Speaker 4 (31:41):
Yeah, well, in this case, Frank, there they would they
would have to present us with, let's call it a
proposed judicial accounting.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
When we receive that, we take a look at it
with a you know, a very precise combing, you know,
we take a very fine fine, thank you, that's what
I was looking there.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
You go.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
If we see nothing wrong with it, then essentially our
our concerns have been satisfied. And uh, at that point
we kind of have to let the court know our
purposes here have been achieved, and we respectfully withdraw our
our action to compel and accounting that's been completed. If

(32:25):
we're not happy, we file objections. We let the court
know there's an issue here, there's something wrong. We're either
going to need uh, further explanations or in most cases,
when when things go wrong like this, let's how about
that that money back?

Speaker 1 (32:42):
Yeah, yeah, you used it for something, Yes, something you
were not supposed to.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
So maybe you bought a piece of real property. We're
gonna need to You're gonna have to sell that back.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
You need you need to get the money back, yep.

Speaker 4 (32:52):
Yeah, And uh, then we have uh, you know, protracted litigation,
prolonged litigation, and now now the kids and mom are
really adverse to one another. Yeah, and that's probably never
going to be repaired. But that's the worst case scenario.
So yes, now we're in court. It's going to go

(33:14):
on a long time. It's what nobody wants. And unfortunately,
I mean, I think we can admit this.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Frank.

Speaker 4 (33:22):
The people who are going to walk away with most
of the the remainder of the proceeds of Thiss trust
are going to be the attorneys on either side.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Yeah, we we tend to do okay when people litigate.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Unfortunately, unfortunately, that's that's part of how we have our professionals.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
I don't think that, you know, we need to disclose
that because people need to know that.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Yeah, I mean, you're Breton, You're a pretty nice guy.
You don't do this for free though, No, right, No,
that's I'm saying like, you're you're a nice guy. But
I don't think you just do this because you're you're
a nice guy.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
Now, nor do I really enjoy it, to be honest
with you, Well, it's because I see that there are
lives here at stake.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Yeah, and so so let me I'm gonna take this
another step if you don't mind. And again this is
my non litigation brain working here. So if all we
had to do was compel the accounting right to get
the kind of the the eyeballs on the right stuff
with the court, ye, I certainly understand the utility of that.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
But I'm still seeing a problem here.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So we still have the kids maybe on this trust
this trustee, and they just did some bad stuff. So
is there any remedy for that?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Well?

Speaker 4 (34:28):
All right, so I guess, first of all, even if
they didn't do some bad stuff yet, if the counting
looks okay to us, we still are in court now,
and we can kind of lean on the court to say, hey,
even though there's not evidence of self dealing here, we
still have the purpose of the trust, which is for
mom's benefit, and it doesn't appear that they're spending the

(34:49):
money for mom's benefit. So perhaps at this point we
can have the court suggest to the children, hey, how
about those outstanding nursing home through.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
Or I really like the way that you put that,
because I feel like when you say the court's going
to suggest to the children, now I'm reading into context here,
but I tend to think that it's maybe not quite
just a nice a nice suggestion.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Well when when that you know, friendly woman or man
is wearing a robe, they tend to.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Kind of control the room of it.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
But you know, or court is an excellent opportunity for
people to kind of come together, get everybody, all the
players in the in the same room, and present some solutions. Perhaps,
And I think in this case, Frank, this, I think
this is maybe a good place to segue to medicaid planning,

(35:47):
because it sounds like this is kind of what they
need at this point, when you've got a trust that's
maybe not set up for the right purpose, that is
now has become life and you know that happened. And
so yeah, I think this is called Life Happens Radio.

Speaker 3 (36:02):
Yeah, yeah, no, look at you. No, So let's so yeah,
so let's do that. I think this is a really
good spot. We'll take our last break.

Speaker 1 (36:10):
So we'll take our break, we'll come back, we'll talk
maybe about some how some medicaid planning can come in here,
maybe how we can make some other things work a
little bit better, and we'll kind of wrap things up
right before the end of the show. So with that,
come on back for the last segment of Life Happens
right after this, and welcome back. We're into the final segment.

(36:35):
I know that's hard to believe. It's flying by. We're
having a good time. So one more time, this is
Life Happens Radio. I'm Frank Hemming still with mister Brent Stack.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
Hey, Frank, there it is.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
And we was go to do it.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
It's gould be my new favorite thing. So again, thanks
for thanks for spending the time with us. Hopefully that
I'm hoping that this has been an entertaining conversation, kind
of trying to bring a different flavor to the show
of just kind of like what we do when I'm
on the show. Right when Brent and Aaron are here,
they love to talk about this stuff. I usually don't
dive into this, so I'm learning a bit as as

(37:09):
we're going along. So so Brent, right before we went
to the break, we talked about how maybe maybe one
solution to our scenario with Mom and her plight is
to see what medicaid can do for her.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
So well, yeah, especially when when when you're in litigation,
sometimes people put the blinders on. Yeah, and and forget that,
you know, we can still, we can get out of
this court process and we can work towards resolution.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
And I think sometimes unfortunately, you have to commence the
court process just to get everybody talking.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Yeah, yeah, or maybe I mean, I think there are
better ways to do this, to be clear, But I mean,
maybe it's just they didn't know there were other options, correct,
Or they don't know all of the options, so they.

Speaker 4 (37:54):
Or they get contacted by a law firm who you know, says, hey,
there are other options. But you know, sometimes people don't
like to take calls from law from yeah, because they think,
you know, it's going to lead to litigation.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Right, which which we try to or most people try
to avoid. So so yeah, so let's say, so let's
change them. Let's say let's change some uh some parameters
here of our of our hypothetical and then I'll see
maybe how we walk medicated through this. So so let's
say let's say we've got half a million left in
the trust. Ye all right, half a million left, So

(38:29):
they've burned through half their money and now family has
kind of come around, maybe there's been some reconciliation enough,
like where they've they've made peace with the money's there
for mom. They want to do what they can to
help her. But at the end of the day, Dad
did want money to go to them when Mom was gone,
So they want to preserve what they can as well, right,

(38:50):
So they want to kind of do both. They want
to preserve, you know, help mom, but not lose everything
if there's an avenue.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Right, Remember what the purpose of the trust was.

Speaker 4 (38:58):
It was to take care of Mom during her life time, yep,
and to provide an asset to the children once Mom passed.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
So let's yeah, so.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
To me, if we can get the money out of
the trust, which again it's hypothetical. So let's say, sure,
we can get the money out of the trust. So
let's say we take all the money out of the trust.
We just dump it in mom's bank account. So now
she's got five hundred thousand dollars trust that in my hypothetical,
we're gonna end the trust.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Trust.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
Yeah, so we're just gonna blow up the trust. We're
gonna give her.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
We're gonna give her all the money, yep, because it
was her for her benefit during her lifetime. It's her money, right,
So here you go, Mom, here's all your money. So
we got five hundred thousands in with mom.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Now it's hers.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
So now if we want to talk about medicaid right now,
we've got to change kind of our focus here and
we've got to figure out how are we going to
get this person with five hundred thousand dollars on medicaid.

Speaker 2 (39:47):
Because medicaid's got a lot of rules, right it does.

Speaker 1 (39:50):
It's it's like you've heard my other previous shows. When
we go through this, Yeah, Medicaid is the program that
the government, you know, if you qualify financially and medically
before the government will pay for your long term care.
Medicare doesn't do this, right, So if you're older than
sixty five, if you have a disability for more than
two years, right, you get Medicare if you live long

(40:11):
enough or you're disabled. But Medicare doesn't pay for things
like your nursing home or your home health are AIDS
or your assisted living. Only Medicaid does that. So one
of the biggest misconceptions with Medicaid is, well, I have
to be poor and not have anything to get Medicaid.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Only poor people get Medicare.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
So most people when we work with them, when we
counsel them, they come in and they say, well, I'm
I'm never going to qualify for Medicaid. So I don't
really understand why we really need to talk about it,
think about it, or plan for it.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Because we have way too much money. I met too
much money, I make too much income. You know.

Speaker 2 (40:42):
The and mom with a half a million in trust
probably is.

Speaker 3 (40:46):
Well not und trust because we got rid of it.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
We got rid of we have a five hundred five
bank account, right, it's never gonna is Yeah, if she
has five hundred thousand dollars, I you know, she's never
going to qualify for medicaid, and that's true if she
keeps all five under one thousand dollars in our bank account.
But there are options of what we can do with
that money. So what comes to mind here in the scenario,
so we have single lady nursing home, no previous medicaid planning, yep,

(41:12):
is we would do something called a crisis plan or
a promisory note in gift. So essentially what this boils
down to is, and I'm going to try to make
this simple, is.

Speaker 4 (41:21):
It a crisis plan, Frank, because we're more or less
out of time to do proper medicaid?

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yes, I would say it. We term it that way
because like the crisis is now, the time for action
is now, and there's been no previous planning. That's a
good way to put that. And that's a smart question because,
as I'm thinking, it has been evident throughout the show,
lawyers love to use our own terms in our own
way of phrasing things, and I'm not always the best
at saying or trying to make it simple for those

(41:48):
people that don't interact with this with arrea much.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
So thank you for that.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
So yeah, So we're kind of doing the plan that
we need to to save as much, knowing we didn't
do anything previous, and now the crisis.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
Is here, us is on fire. How do we put
it out? So?

Speaker 1 (42:03):
So let's say, so to be on medicaid, mom can
only have about thirty grand.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:07):
Now, I don't like to leave people with thirty grand
when we do this, because we don't want you to
go over your asset limit.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
Right. What if they had a scratch off, right?

Speaker 1 (42:14):
Or say there's a mythical bank account that they set
up that mom set up twenty years ago. It's got
five grand in it. She forgot to tell anybody about it,
but somehow they find it, and now she's got five
more thousand dollars than we thought. Yeah, right, so we
left her at thirty The actual allowance is thirty one,
one hundred and seventy five dollars.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Wow, So if she's at thirty one.

Speaker 4 (42:35):
Off the top of his head, well, I have to
have to know that to do my job.

Speaker 1 (42:40):
So if we gave her five thousand extra like that
could present a problem. If she's had thirty and now
she has five, now she's over her allowance. So we're
not going to leave her with thirty. So let's say
we leave her with twenty. Right, So we got twenty thousand.
We're gonna say, this is mom's money, this is the
money she can have and beyond medicaid. So so we
have five hundred thousand. We're leaving twenty with her. So
we've got four eighty that we have to do something with. Now,

(43:04):
I'm gonna do it off the top of my head
with the numbers that I can do in my head,
right to make this simple. But if we were doing
this in real life, I actually do this to the penny, right,
But that's not well, I'm not going to do that now.
So we're gonna cut it down the middle, because it
usually comes out to be around half and half with
with the plan here, Okay, so let's cut it in half.
So half of four eighty is two forty. So we're

(43:27):
going to take two hundred and forty thousand dollars and
we're gonna gift that to the kids.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
You can do that.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
I can do that, well, in this scenario, yes, we
can do that. She would Mom would need a power
of attorney or you know, some other abilities for her
agents to be able to do everything.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
But again have to get some other things in place.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
But let's say, you know, they mom did a power
of attorney with dad when they set up all their
trust stuff, Like, that's okay, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
And this is legal, Frank, nobody's gonna go to prison.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
God, I'm not going to prison, right, So no, I'm
not letting my clients go to prison. And so so yeah,
one hundred percent legal. Do we do this all the time.
So if we take two hundred and forty thousand dollars,
if we then gift away two hundred and forty thousand dollars,
that's going to result in a penalty period because there
is this thing called.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
The five year lookback period.

Speaker 1 (44:13):
I've heard of that, right, most people they if they
know anything about medicaid, besides it's only for poor people.
The other thing people usually know is that there's a
look back period and there's a penalty if you give
away money within that period.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
I think anyone who talks medicaid has heard of and
talks about this five right.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
Look, most people I would know to see that's the
interesting thing. Most people I think are even confused sometimes
of how long it is, because I've heard people say
five years. I've had people say ten years. I've had
people say seven years, but it is five. So if
you give away something within five years, you get hit
with a penalty. So if I ran the numbers, which
I was just doing on my calculator, so if we
gave away two hundred and forty thousand dollars under the

(44:48):
current rules to the kids, to the kids to save it,
we're saying that would result in a penalty of about
seventeen months. So what does that mean. That means that
if we give away two hundred and forty thousand to
the kid on purpose, then we're anticipating that Medicaid is
going to say, hey, Mom, you can get Medicaid, but
you have to private pay for seventeen months of penalty first.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
And we're looking at again fifteen to seventeen k.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
Per month exactly right.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yes, So so that's not you know, that's that it's
jarring to people, right because they now they're looking at
another seventeen months of penalty because they gave away two
hundred and forty thousand dollars. Okay, all right, so let's
reorient real fast. We got twenty grand with mom. We
took half of her remaining money to two hundred and

(45:35):
forty thousand we gifted to the kids. Now we have
to pay for seventeen months of care because of a penalty. Well,
now what we do is we have to get that
other two hundred and forty thousand. We have to do
something with that. Can't stay with mom, she can't have it.
She's got to get down below thirty grand. So instead
of just gifting that money just like we did with
the other half, we're going to actually loan it to
the kids. And the loan is going to say, hey, kids,

(45:57):
guess what you're going to get this money. You're going
to put it in it's on account, and you're going
to pay back to Mom roughly fifteen grand or whatever
the number turns out to be for seventeen months.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
So essentially what happens is we take half the money,
we give it away, we get a penalty, and then
we take the other half of the money and we
use it through a loan to pay during the penalty.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
Period alone, you know, legalized by a note.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah promise, sorry now yep, it's part of what we do,
part of like our services. If we've got retained to
do this. So Essentially, if you fast forward seventeen months,
half the money's gone because I got paid to the
nursing home. But the other two hundred and forty thousand
it's now sitting with the kids in their account, and
that's their inheritance. That's the benefit of doing the plan.
So now we've saved roughly half the money, and now

(46:49):
Mom is going to go on Medicaid where Medicaid is
going to pay for her nursing home care going forward
for the rest of her life until she's no longer around,
and they kids have preserved that two hundred and forty thousand.
You either use for Mom during her lifetime if there's
something she needs, because again, she doesn't have much money.
She's only got that twenty grand, or it could benefit
them or their families or whatever they want to do

(47:10):
with it, because now that's their money now, and Mom's
got a payment source for her care for the remainder
of her.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
Life because it's a loan that needs to be paid back.
That money can now go to pay this.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
Yeah, So so the loan went to the nursing home.
The gift is theirs, and we've saved half the money,
so I know that we kind of went through that quickly.
I hope I've made it simple enough that you could
follow along out.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
There in the world.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
But the point of doing this is to say that,
like when you have a plan, sometimes things go sideways,
and sometimes it's because a trustee didn't do the right thing,
or sometimes they didn't manage it appropriately, or sometimes there
was a falling out, and that's why we harp on
picking the right people as best you can.

Speaker 4 (47:54):
Maybe no one anticipated that mom would ever need a
nursing home.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
Yeah, it's entirely possible. Maybe you know who knows. But
one of the benefits of having a plan is plans
could adjust.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
Sometimes you have to go to court to do it.

Speaker 1 (48:07):
We try to keep everybody out of court as much
as possible, but there are plenty of times where it's
necessary and there's no other option. So we have the
ability to go to court fight for our clients and
get good outcomes. And then we also have the ability
to help people if they've done no plan right and
at worst it's usually will save half, will lose half,
which is a lot better than losing everything.

Speaker 4 (48:29):
Right if they're too late. We always have crisis planning, right.

Speaker 1 (48:32):
Yeah, always there's very there's there's nothing medici Yeah. I
mean the people that I think it's truly hard to
help are the people that come to us after they
spent all the money.

Speaker 3 (48:44):
Right, if we took the.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Exact scenario we had half a million with mom, if
they spent all of it down to thirty grand and
nothing left, and then say what can you do for us, Well,
that's hard to do anything at that point, right, because
all the money's gone. We could have saved money if
it was there.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
At least they ought to be eligible for medicaid.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
That yes, right, that's the but at that point, right,
what really are are they saving at that point? And
I want to say there's no benefit there, but it's
there's no money to be saved because they spent it all.

Speaker 3 (49:12):
Right, So when.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
It comes to long term care, it's important to get
out in front of things. It's it's important to do
your planning early. It's trying to give yourself the ability
to adjust and know that there are ways that we
can adjust the plan if something happens, as long as
everything's drafted properly, and big pieces of that plan is
you know, make sure you have your power of attorney,
make sure you have your health care proxy. Make sure

(49:35):
you have the right agents appointed to people or for
those for those documents. Make sure you have backups for everything.

Speaker 4 (49:40):
Right, your agents, your trustees. They're not just names on
a sheet of paper.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
No, No, you have to do some thinking about it
because and it's not always as simple as like, well,
let's put it in birth order, right, pick the best person.

Speaker 3 (49:52):
It might be your oldest.

Speaker 1 (49:53):
Child, it might not be, but just make you know,
make a make an informed decision. I don't say you
know anything more than that, because ever, family is different,
every relationship is different. But just do some thinking, put
yourself in the best place to succeed, and do a plan,
because if you don't, there are consequences, and then the
lawyers win at the end. And who wants the lawyers

(50:14):
to win if we don't have to? So thank you, Frank,
I learned a ton today. I love your mother.

Speaker 3 (50:22):
I couldn't say that better.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
You know, just be nice to your parents, be nice
to your siblings, be nice to everybody. That's a bad
that's a good way to close up the show. Be
nice to everybody. But we're just about at the end
of the show, so so I'm going to say thank
you for listening, thank you for being here, Brent, thank
you very much for coming in.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Really and look.

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Forward to when they put us back together again. This
was a lot of fun. We'll come up with crazy hypotheticals.
So with that, come back. Visit us next week for
another edition of Life Happens Radio.