Life Happens

March 22nd, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Good morning everyone. Welcome to Life Happens Radio. I'm a Loupiro,
your host for this morning from the firm of Pier
O'Connor and Strauss, and Life Happens tries to prepare you
for the things that are going to come your way
and what's happening in your life. Think about all the
things that are going on your family, your friends, what's
going on in the world around you, what's going on

(00:22):
with you and your health, your career. Life throws you curveballs.
Are you ready to swing at that curveball? And can
you hit it for a base hit or a home run.
We're going to talk about how to plan what are
the things that you should be thinking about as you
go through life. And this is everything from when you're
going to college and education and how to make sure

(00:44):
that the right educational opportunities are available that's now controversial.
It's going to talk about how when you have your
first child and you're holding that baby in your arms
and you think to yourself, I know I did, Oh
my goodness, I am now respond for another human being
and how do you fulfill those responsibilities? What should you

(01:05):
be thinking in terms of planning for education, but also
planning for those life events. What if you have a
disabling event and you can't work, What if you get
an accident, you die prematurely. How do your children survive?
How do they get the people they need, get a

(01:25):
guardian appointed in a will? How do they have enough money?
And life insurance very often comes into the plan. How
do you create a trust for those children to make
sure the money is managed properly for them and used
properly for them. So all away from those early events,
right on through your working years, your career, you start

(01:45):
planning for retirement, making sure your IRA four o one
k is growing nicely, make sure that you have sufficient
income in retirement to satisfy your needs. All of these
are things we're going to kind of tie together today
through today's topic, and certainly as you get through your
retirement and into the years, those golden years, we want

(02:09):
to make sure that those golden years don't get tarnished.
How can you protect yourself and make sure that you
have a plan in place so that retirement becomes the
thing you want it to be. You want to be
able to live your life. You want to be able
to do the things, travel, see your family, support your family,
help out the grandkids. How do you make sure that

(02:29):
all of those things happen in a legal world, in
legal planning, there is one word that kind of threads
through all of those life stages and life events, and
that is trusts. Many of you have heard of trusts.
Many of you may have a trust, but what do
trusts really do?

Speaker 2 (02:50):
How do they.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Fit into an estate plan? And how do they work
at every stage of life, whether you're planning for a
newborn or you're planning for your later years when you
get into your eighties and nineties, hundreds to make sure
that you have sufficient money and a protection of those
assets that you've worked a lifetime for. To help me
through this discussion today, and I'm going to open up

(03:12):
the phone lines right away in a moment, but to
help me through this discussion is someone who has experienced
it all of the things that we're talking about, and
that is my partner, Peter Strauss.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Good morning, Peter, Good morning, Lou, Good morning everyone listening
this morning, and Peter's joining.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Us from New York City and I'm here in the
studio at WGY looking out the window at a very bright,
brisk March day and the old adage March comes in
like a lion, goes out.

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Like a lamp. We'll see.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
But still chillier this weekend than we've had. But Peter,
how are things down in the city.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Looking out my window, it's a little cloudy and quite warm,
the first time we've had a warm day. And I'm
looking forward to the buds in Central Park, which is
white nearby, and after the show, I'll be taking my
dog Nelly for a walk.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
So I said, I'm going to open the phone lines,
and I'm gonna be an honest man. So if you
have questions on estate planning law, anything you want to
ask us, you want to make comments, we welcome your calls.
It's a better show when it includes you. So give
us a call. Eight hundred eight two five five nine
four nine. That's eight hundred talk wg Y again. Eight

(04:29):
hundred eight two five five nine four nine, And Peter,
I kind of went through the whole litany of different
life stages, and I think the first time that people
really think about this topic. Most most people in their twenties,
unless they have families, aren't thinking about it. But as
soon as you have that first child to me, life

(04:51):
changes and you have to be prepared.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
So let's let's talk about it.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Let's talk about what people should be thinking about when
they have a young family, and what are the considerations
for planning as we grow that family, we go through
our careers, we make sure that we have all of
the bases covered.

Speaker 4 (05:12):
Well.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
I think that there are various stages. As you pointed out,
you need to plan for yourself and what happens if
you were to become incapacitated. Who's going to take care
of your needs, your financial affairs. If you have a
good marriage and you're close to your spouse, of course
that's the first choice, but the selection of that person

(05:37):
who could implement the plan is very very important. And
the other thing listening to you just now, it occurred
to me, we need to point out to our audience
when we get finished telling them how to do a
plan and what might be in it, you have to
remember too that that plan may need to be modified,
So don't forget the step that might be necessary if

(06:02):
part of your plan doesn't work out. I just have
been working with a woman who's ninety eight, it retired psychiatrist,
her plan to care for her two children. One of
whom has schizophrenia, was all set and then her daughter,
who was her primary caregiver, who was sixty hell on
the ice last winter, hit her head on the ground

(06:24):
and died. So that whole plan needs to be revisited. Unfortunately,
the elder mother is still capable of doing that, but
we can't forget that second step. But today we're going
to talk about the plan and.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Trusts and how trusts fit in. So when you have newborns,
the question becomes do you need a will? And the
answer is absolutely so. With a young family, a will
is one of the central documents because if you have
that accident and folks, all you have to do is
think about the paper every day, the news every day,
your neighbors, friends. These events happen all around us on

(07:04):
a daily basis. For those people that are prepared, it
is not the end of the world. It is a
change in circumstances that is accommodated by a well drafted plan,
and a will for a young couple is where we start.
But the will also includes peter a trust because if

(07:25):
that husband and wife, the mother and father of those
children are no longer available and they have exited this life,
the children need to have funds available to fund education, housing, healthcare,
all the things that they will need as they grow.
And whether you do this in a will or in

(07:46):
a living trust, and we're going to talk about the differences.
You want to make sure that you have a plan
in place that creates a trust for those miners and
has it protected with, as you said, the right people
managing the true trust for them and making sure that
their needs are met. So for young couples, wills are
very often the first planning that they do. Make sure

(08:09):
that you get it done with a qualified attorney, whether
it's our firm or another firm. Don't don't do it
on the internet, don't use legal zoom. Talk to someone
who does this every day because and I find this
with clients as we go through the interview process, Peter,
you don't know what you don't know. And when you're

(08:30):
doing it yourself, there are a lot of considerations that
we put on the table for clients that they've never
had before.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
They've never thought about things.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
So when you're creating a trust for a child, you
want it to put in there, what types of distributions
you want? When do you want those distributions? Who is
going to manage the trust for those children, and at
what point does that trust end or does it end?
And we're crafting a trust for our kids that may
end at twenty five, thirty thirty five, but we also

(09:01):
use trusts that continue on for the children's lifetimes. And
so we're going to start kind of at the end here.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
We're going to.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Start talking about trusts for the next generation and trusts
for your children. This is done again in a will
or a living trust, and we'll get to that. But
these trusts we call either beneficiary control trusts if the
children have all of the opportunities available to them at
some point to manage it themselves, or if they don't.

(09:32):
And we have how many children now peter A on
the spectrum that are diagnosed on the spectrum where we
want to have a trust that maybe has some more
protections and it may go over to something called a
special needs trust. So these trust peter very much depend
upon the needs and aptitudes of the beneficiary.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Absolutely. And the other most critical point that issue that
I think has to be said at this time time
is that the choice of who it is going to
be that will make the decisions that the trust allows
them to make the trustee. That person has got a

(10:15):
major role and picking that person who is the one
that you have to decide on the future without knowing,
certainly when you're talking about a new baby, but even
for the first ten years or so, you may not
know what the problems are going to be. And therefore

(10:36):
the selection of your trustee in a sense the guardian,
and you can appoint that person as guardian also, but
the critical issue is the selection absolutely who's the best.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
This gets into a discussion of who's available, and if
it's mother, father and neither is available, is it Uncle John?
Is it Aunt Susie? Is it a bank trust company?
These are the kinds of considerations that people have and
things that people should be thinking about. And again, I'm

(11:09):
gonna throw the phone number out there one more time.
Pick up the phone, give us a call. Eight hundred
eight two five five nine four nine. It's eight hundred
talk wgy Zach is ready to answer. The phone lines
are open. Selection of a trustee is going to thread
through everything we talk about this morning, because having the
right people with the right powers in the right place

(11:31):
is vital to your success. When you are no longer
the one making decisions, and that successor trustee, the person
who's going to step in and manage, has a tremendous
amount of responsibility. If it's your children who are in
their you know, early stages four, five, six, thirteen, fourteen,

(11:52):
fifteen on into their twenties, these things change and your
ideas change as children. And I know in my own case,
my children are now twenty six, twenty nine, thirty, and
they're all working. They all have lives, married, engaged, maybe
to be engaged, and so their lives have more often

(12:16):
changed in my viewpoint on them has changed to the
point now I feel like any one of them could
handle being their own trustee. And there's a point, a
pivot point, Peter, when the beneficiary can actually become their
own trustee in a trust. And that's something that people
don't really.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Gas and you and our listeners should know that. We'll
talk about the difference between irrevgable or an irrevocable trust.
With a revocable trust, you can amend it to change
the trustees. So when your kids get to be fifteen
or sixteen, you may decide that the people you chose

(12:56):
aren't going to be a good fit going forward, so
you can amend your trust, change the trustees. You can
also have different persons, one for the trusteeship to make
personal decisions almost as if they were a guardian as
to where what educational facilities, and then the other trustee

(13:18):
can handle the financial affairs, depending on how you evaluate
your choices within the family or friends.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, when you.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
Have little kids, it isn't always the person that can
manage money that you want to manage your children. So
the role of guardian for a young couple.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
Is absolutely critical.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
You're going to choose a guardian and you're going to
think about these things like where will my children live,
will they keep the house we have now and the
guardian moves in with them?

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Will they move in with.

Speaker 1 (13:50):
The guardian, the whole host of issues that go along
with the selection of guardian. This is part of the
planning process for young children. And then who is going
to manage the money? And that's the trustee side of things.
If your children have special needs, you may need a
special trustee and there are companies that specialize and we

(14:11):
were just talking about this before the show, Peter companies,
bank trust companies that specialize in managing trusts for children
who cannot manage for themselves. So we have different levels
of trust for kids who are completely capable and independent
all the way through to kids who need a trustee,
and in many cases a bank trustee. The trustee has

(14:32):
some serious work to do, and we're going to talk
about that. What is the trustee's role, what are their duties,
what are their functions? And a trust because today's show
is all about trust and trusts, and we're gonna come
back right after this short break.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
We are Mac.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
I hope you're enjoying the sunshine and the show, and
here with Peter Strauss, my partner from New York City,
and together Peter and I have over one hundred years
of legal experience, so we've been doing this a while
and I won't say who's got more, but it's not me.
And Peter has a great perspective on the practice of
law because he has seen it and he has done

(15:16):
it for many, many years. I'm Lupiro, your host for
this morning. We're talking about trusts. I'm going to give
the phone number out there give us a call if
you have questions on trusts. We're going to talk about
living trusts right now. We started with something called the
testamentary trust, and how do you choose a trustee, how
do you structure it for beneficiaries? And what are the
advantages of revocable and irrevocable trusts. You're going to get

(15:39):
all of that. Call us at eight hundred eighty two
five five nine four nine, eight hundred talk Wgy again
eight hundred eight two five fifty nine forty nine and Peter,
that selection of trustee is so critical. I started with
young couples and young children and the trusts that we
structure for them. We want to put flexibility into those trusts,

(16:00):
so we have we drafted very carefully to be able
to modify the trust as the needs of the child change.
And a lot of documents don't do that. So when
you're creating a trust for a beneficiary and you're choosing
your trustee, choose carefully. Is it an individual, is it
a combination of individuals. Do you have co trustees or

(16:23):
is it a trust company? All possibilities in your trust.
But once the trustee takes office, they have powers that
you draft in and benefits that the beneficiaries are eligible for.
And it's your trustee who's going to interpret the document
that you create. So in this we're talking about creating
it through a will, having a guardian, an executor, a trust,

(16:45):
and a trustee, and all of that can be accomplished
in the will. If you're a young couple and you
don't have a lot of assets built up yet, you
want to buy that term insurance policy and make sure
that you have enough money flowing in to satisfy the
needs of those beneficiaries. But that is a testamentary trust.
We're going to flip it over to living trusts as
soon as we take the first call and we have

(17:07):
Mike and Troy.

Speaker 2 (17:08):
Good morning, Mike, Welcome to Life Happens.

Speaker 5 (17:11):
Yes, how you doing this is a great episode for
me and my mother in law in this moment because
she just fell and broke our head. She has a
will and she has my wife the power attorney, but
she does not have a trust. And now she just
got admitted to a rehab Is there any way we
still can set up the trust or everything is settled

(17:31):
now it would take another five to seven years to
have everything organized. We were told we can't set up
a trust.

Speaker 2 (17:37):
Now, yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
So you can absolutely set up a trust, and you
have to look at it in terms of what are
the goals of the trust? And this is going to
lead us right into our conversation that we were going
to start anyway. So it's perfect call. A revocable trust
can be done. It avoids probate, it manages assets. But
the situation that you're in right now, where you have

(18:00):
a fractured hip, this is life happening right and you
have the need for potentially ongoing long term care. And
when we have this conversation, one of the critical questions
we ask is what was her ability to function before
the broken hip?

Speaker 2 (18:19):
Was she independent?

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Okay, So the rehabilitation for someone like that, the goal
is to bring them back up to the level they
were at before the broken hip, and that takes work.
She's gonna have to work her hips off to get
back to that point because it's there's pain involved, there
is work involved. And if she can get back to

(18:46):
the point that she was before, you've got time on
your side. If she can't, right, if she needs to
stay in that nursing home because she can't go home
and she needs care more than can be provided to
her or in her home, then you have a five
year look back. But that is not the end of
the story. Even with that five year look back, there

(19:09):
is planning that can be done and an ability even
at the eleventh hour, Mike, you can save about half
of your assets, so she can absolutely do a trust.
The worst case scenario, she saves about half of what
she has and then you would look.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
At the rest. But if she has the ability to get.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
Back home medicate home care, and this is a thing
that a lot of people don't know, Medicaid home care
does not have that five year lookback. So if we
can get her back home, even with some eight hours
a day of home health aids to help her out
in home, Medicaid will pay for that, and you don't
have that five year waiting period. So you can create

(19:49):
a trust today, qualify for Medicaid home care, and get
that process started immediately. So she has a lot more
options than you may have been told.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
So I'd like to add on to what Lu's just
said for two things. First of all, your story tells
us that people need to get advice from people who
know what they're recommending. You don't want to get this online.
You don't want to get documents online. You don't really

(20:23):
want to get advice online, and that's really critical. The
other thing is in choosing whether you're going to have
a revocable trust which your mother in law could amend
make changes, or an irrevocable trust that you will need
to set the assets into a place where it won't

(20:45):
be counted for medicaid eligibility.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
And that.

Speaker 3 (20:50):
Illustrates whether your trust might be revocable and amendable or not. So,
and then you have to figure out which we could
help you with, how you can amnon and honor and
inrevocable trust and there are ways.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
To do that too. So Mike, you were asking a question.

Speaker 6 (21:12):
Yes, so, like I said, the lawyer told us that
we want the trust is too late now and all that,
and we're just trying to save the house and the
little money she has for her two daughters. That's it.

Speaker 5 (21:24):
But if and now you're telling me if medicary home
care will pay for I said, we won't have to
wait for the five years.

Speaker 6 (21:34):
So there's a chance if we do a trust right
away here we could save the.

Speaker 5 (21:39):
House and stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, you may want to get a
second opinion on that. We have some educational videos if
you want to go on our website. At puro law
dot com. We do something called Medicaid Mondays. We've been
doing it for a couple of years now, so there's
a whole library of videos and we have one on
nursing home thirty minute video. We have a thirty minute

(22:02):
video on home care eligibility and how the Medicaid Trust
plays into both.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
So we'd be happy to sit down with you.

Speaker 1 (22:10):
The one thing you need to do is really and
you might have done this already, gather up all of
the information, all of her assets, titled to the assets,
how it's structured, what legal documents does she.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Have in place?

Speaker 1 (22:21):
Does the power of Attorney have a gifting power? That's
an important feature, So can a gifting power. So the
power Attorney has various different powers that can be put in.
One of the things you want to make sure is
that there is a gifting power in there, so that
if the need arises to shift the house transfer title
to the house, that power is conveyed in the power

(22:43):
of attorney. So what we would do is, in a consultation,
go over all of the information, all the documents, look
at what and this is going to be a kind
of a day to day, week to week thing as
to how her rehab progresses. But you want to start
preparing for the trans home today. They're gonna give you

(23:03):
a notice and it hits real quick. It's a forty
eight hour notice where her rehab is done. And they
may have told you, you may have thought that she
has one hundred days of rehab. They can terminate that
rehab at any point in.

Speaker 5 (23:14):
Time, so they're hoping for two weeks rehab and she'll
be back home.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Okay, Then you want to get a plan in place
and start looking at how do you find the aids?
How do you get the aids in We actually have
a seminar coming up that is going to talk about
exactly this. It's your Home or the Nursing Home, and
it's going to have myself, my partner, Frank Heming, and
a geriatric care manager, Diane Mikkel Gottabiowski, who helps coordinate

(23:41):
that home care plan. And that seminar is April seventeenth
at one pm at the Colony Town Library. I'll give
more information on it, but that's also on our website. Thursday,
April seventeenth, one pm. Your Home or the Nursing Home.
We're going to talk about all the issues you just
brought up, Mike, and this is it's a critical time period,
so act fast, get something in place, and have options.

(24:04):
You want to explore those options today because when it's
time for her to come home, you need a plan.
You need a home care plan, and you need a
legal plan. We have some other callers on the line.
Stay with us because I have to take a break
for the news. Bad timing, but we do, so stay
with us. We'll be right back. We're going to take
a break for the news. Peter Strauss, Loupiro from Pier
o' connoran Strauss. Have a great morning and stay with

(24:27):
us for the second half of the show. We'll be
right back and we are back. Welcome back to Life
Happens Radio. Piro, Peter Strauss from pierre' connoran Strauss. We
have a caller James on the line, and if you
want to call us you have questions about planning, trusts,
the things that we're talking about today.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
Eight hundred talk WGY.

Speaker 1 (24:50):
That's eight hundred eight two, five, five, nine, four nine,
And good morning, James.

Speaker 2 (24:55):
Welcome to Life Happens.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
Hey, good morning. I would and then you guys are
a law firm that specializes in some of this preparation
for getting older and maybe guiding some of these I
just listened to the caller you were talking to, guiding
them through some of the challenges they're about to face.

(25:19):
With her mother that's now had a broken hip. There's
an entire opportunity out there in this world for a
company to embrace the challenges of this part of life. Literally,
we just went through this over five years in my
family with my mom, and she recently passed, you know,

(25:39):
lover to pieces, and we dealt with it right straight
through COVID. She broke her hip, just like this lady
that you just were talking about. She went into a
rehab facility that was during COVID. She was in rehab
for sixteen months. I couldn't see her. I couldn't none

(25:59):
of our siblings to go see or visit her. We
ended up pulling her out, bringing her home. She's got
a seventeen room Victorian house, and not one part of
that house was prepared to have her living there as
a person with severe disability. So we had to go
through the construction phases of remodeling the home, and then

(26:21):
we had to get caregivers. I don't care how much
money you have. You can have all the money in
the world, but to get real, good quality caregivers that
can help you twenty four to seven, it's almost impossible.
So the challenges involved in this are absolutely off the charge.
There are programs out there that the state and federal

(26:43):
will help you with. But the hoops that you got
to go through in the waiting periods you got to
go through, you're at the mercy of the system. I'm
telling you. It is the most unreal thing you'll ever
go through. You could be a young couple gonna have
a baby, Okay, you've been senting you. You've had no
children for the first three years of your marriage, and

(27:04):
now you've got a serious as a serious change of
time in your lives as having your first child. When
your parents get old and they are no longer able
to be on their own, it's just like having kids
coming into the family. Even worse though, because the challenges
that are involved in that, all of the healthcare visits

(27:25):
and everything that they can be having. And then they
go through phases because they've been very independent all their lives,
they go through phases of depression and all kinds as
issues of their own that are overwhelming. They I'm not
saying they're looking to commit suicide, but they can be
very difficult to deal with. They don't want to eat,
they don't want to eat certain foods, they don't want

(27:46):
to go to the bathroom when they need to. I
could go on and on and on of five years
of living with this, and I'm telling you somebody needs
to start a company that can understand every aspect of this.
I'm talking about lining up contractors to be able to
do work. I'm talking about every phase of taking care

(28:08):
of elderly at home because ultimately that's where it needs
to be is in your house. That's where they're the
most happy, is when they're in their own space. James,
very few, yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Could not agree with you more.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
And anyone who has been a caregiver like you have
for five years and you have the role reversal of
a parent who had took care of you and wiped
your snotty nose when you were a kid, and now
all of a sudden they're in need of hands on
care and they're not the same person that they were
when they were nurturing you as your parent. Now you

(28:43):
have to nurture them as your parent and the child
becomes the caregiver. So there's a tremendous role reversal, a
lot of psychological issues. And fortunately there actually is a
company that I started that does this, and we're gonna
have them on next week. And the company is called

(29:03):
ever Home Care Advisors. And no, I didn't set James
up for this call, but the litany of issues that
you just outlined is what every caregiver goes through.

Speaker 2 (29:14):
When you have this situation.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
And there is no manual out there, there is no
training out there to be a caregiver. But Ever Home
Care Advisors has social workers, nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists.
They come into the home, they do a full analysis
of the home and they give you a written care
plan that outlines all the things that need to be done. Now.

(29:39):
The time to do this, James, is not when your
parent has broken the hip and is in the hospital.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
You got a week to get it done.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
The time to do this is in advance, and that's
you hit it so squarely on the head. Ever Home
Care Advisors located right here in Albany. Mikael Gottabiowski is
going to be on with us next week she's the
director of that company and this is exactly what they do.

(30:08):
And not only that, but they have developed technology to
assist you as the caregiver in managing what's going on
in the home. It's some really great ideas and things
that need to be brought in because and I'm sure
you've told you haven't really touched on this, but how
has your experience been with your mom in the healthcare system?

Speaker 4 (30:26):
It was very difficult. I mean, my sister think. I
mean as I always questioned my sister why she retired
at fifty eight, but my gosh, am I glad she
did because she had the time to be able to
focus and really really get involved in the part you're
about to talk about. My sister took that thing, you know,
and ran with it, and she really really helped my

(30:47):
mom process with the medical side of it, with the
legal side of it, with every side of it. Laura
jumped right in there and really did an amazing job.
But that's the point I want to make, is that,
and you just said it, all the preparation that you
can do, you can't do enough. You can start this

(31:07):
at thirty and I guarantee you when you're eighty and
you've got these issues. You haven't done enough yet. There's
so much involved. So to have an asset of this
operation that you're about to start, this company that has
all of the resources and all of the people with
the intelligence and the understanding of every hoop and every step,

(31:28):
I mean, it needs to be an eight to Z system.
And even with a to z, I guarantee you there's
gonna be letters that no one even knew about it
in alphabet that are gonna pop up in the middle.
So it is unbelievable. It is unbelievable the challenges that
come with what's about to happen to a lot of folks.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
I hope you can join us on April seventeenth at
one o'clock. I'm gonna let you make the speech to
the audience because you just covered many of the issues
that we face. It's one pm, April seventeenth at the
Colony Town Library. Your home are the nursing home? Are
you prepared? Are you ready to hunker down at home
and bring in services if and when that becomes necessary.

(32:06):
So many people don't think about that.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
I'd like to just supplement what Lou said. You're absolutely right.
Starting early is the key to it. But I have
to caution you that there are many not for profit
organizations who do provide a great deal of these services,
but with what's going on with the federal budget, many

(32:31):
of them are going to have to cut back their services.
So the private market will have to step up and
provide the services that are necessary, but that may also
be difficult. So for the next year or so, we
have to see how this is going to settle down.
But the not for profits who or the hospitals or

(32:53):
social service agencies are going to be very badly hurt.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (33:00):
So the trust that we're talking about is something that
aids in this and when you create it properly, it
has enough flexibility. Medicaid becomes the payment source at some
point because the care is so expensive. And when you
have Medicaid you have to know how to get financially qualified,

(33:23):
which we will cover on April seventeenth, and you have
to know how to access the care. And as you said,
the unicorn out there is that caregiver. They're hard to find,
hard to keep. So having a professional who has all
of the resources available to them, working with agencies like
the New York State Office for Aging and your county

(33:43):
office for aging, working with a managed long term care company,
working with independent providers. There are people out there in
the marketplace who are in home caregivers. How do you
organize that, how you bring them in, how do you
find them? All of that is essential, and trust me,
no one. I couldn't when my mom had Alzheimer's and

(34:04):
I was the caregiver. I had to hire a professional
care manager to do these things because it was just
not within my scope. And there are professionals out there.
If you want to look it up, it's ever home
careadvisors dot com.

Speaker 2 (34:19):
You can take a look.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
Diane and Nina Cressanda, one of their social workers, will
be on with us next week at nine am, so
you can listen then, and I hope you can all
join us on April seventeenth. These are the issues that
we're going to dig into in today's world. How do
you plan and prepare and if you're in crisis, how
do you deal with it? Because James, these issues are

(34:40):
top of mind for people like you.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
You dealt with it with your mom.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Other people have to think about it in advance to
have that plan in place. And James's left the building.
James thank you for that call that was absolutely on target.
And Peter, let's talk about the trust that we're on now.
We talked about wills and trusts for kids. Let's talk
a little bit about this irrevocable trust that maybe isn't

(35:08):
so irrevocable. And we call it a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust,
and the Medicaid Asset Protection Trust on its face, it
says all over the document that it's irrevocable. There are
certain parameters that you have to have. You do not
act as your own trustee. So in this case, you're
gonna choose your children, or you're gonna choose another third.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
Party to be your trustee.

Speaker 1 (35:35):
And you're gonna have assets like your home, your stocks,
bank accounts, life insurance policies, annuities, real estate, rental properties,
all of those things go into this trust. And James
and the prior caller might point it up that everybody,
here's a five year wait.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Oh, I have the wait five years for nursing home.

Speaker 1 (35:58):
But most people don't want to be in the nursing
So when you use this trust, Medicaid is available to
you the next month. Right away, you get the plan done,
you can apply for Medicaid the following month. Then you're
working with people like ever home care advisors to find
the care, put the plan in place, help to manage

(36:19):
the care, bring in things like sensors, cameras, apps that
can govern medication management, and visits and transportation. All of
those things are available if you know where to find them.
And the Medicaid Asset Protection Trust unlocks that Medicaid door,
so you can use assets to private.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
Pay and you can use.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Assets in the trust to access Medicaid because they are
protected within that trust envelope.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
And Peter, there are kind of two classes of assets
that we deal with.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
One is houses, real estate, bank accounts, and the other
now is retire hronment accounts. And I'm sure in your
career you've seen this. I know in my forty one
years of practice, the type of assets that clients have
today is vastly different than what they had forty years
ago or sixty years ago.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Well, that's absolutely correct, and there are some disadvantages to
the map. You give up control, of course, but your
trustees are people you trust, have confidence and take in
and you can get all of the income from the
assets that are placed in that trust. And then of

(37:38):
course that there are complicated rules about the amount of
income you can keep and how you protect anything beyond that,
which is a discussion for our Medicaid Monday programs. But
you can't have direct payments to yourself of the principle
of the trust. But those distributions if the income isn't

(37:59):
an enough to maintain your standard of living and pay
for your needs, plus you get your Social Security, then
you can make distributions to other people who just happily
may wish to assist you by making payment of some
of your expenses. I do have to say that while

(38:24):
lou was absolutely correct at the present time funding putting
your assets into this Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, there's no
waiting period. But just before COVID, New York passed the
rule that would have imposed a two and a half
year lookback period, in other words, a waiting period that

(38:46):
you might have to have imposed upon you. That law
would that created a two and a half year lookback
period was suspended at the time COVID when it happened,
still on suspense, and for a bunch of complicated reasons,
it could go into effect either at the end of

(39:08):
twenty twenty five or possibly at the end of twenty
twenty six, we'll know. So if people need to do
this kind of planning, they need to call firms like
ours and do the planning sooner than later, because otherwise
there may be a wait rather than just doing it
now when there would be no waiting period.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Yeah, when people come into us and sit down, they've
heard a lot of things. There are a lot of
myths out there about medicaid and trusts and oh, my
kids are going to control my life and I'm going
to have to run to them for money. That is
not how this works. So when you create the trust,
and what we do is when we sit down, we
have an advance who your family is, who your people

(39:52):
are that are going to be your trustees, what your
assets are, and we put it all into a flowchart
for our clients. And most people are visuals. I don't
know about you, but when I hear things and you're
trying to put it's like the bubbles over someone's head
in a cartoon, all of these different ideas and you're
trying to assimilate them into your own situation. When you

(40:14):
see it on paper and you see, okay, I have
an IRA or a four oh one K or four
h three B in New York State. A lot of
people don't know that those assets are exempt for medicaid purposes,
so we put them in their own place on the
float chart, and those stay in your name.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
So if you have a.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Five hundred thousand dollars IRA, one hundred thousand dollars IRA,
that is your asset and you don't have to give
it up. You keep it right where it is, and
that's part of the plan, so you can access that
IRA at any time. You're also going to have a
certain amount of cash in your name. For a single individual,
you can keep thirty two thousand dollars and still qualify

(40:55):
for Medicaid.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
So we have in the middle of the.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Float chart you with maybe fifty thousand or sixty thousand,
whatever the cache is that you want in your checking account,
and you have all of your income sources flowing into
that checking account, and that's your money. So you've got
the IRA, that's your money, You've got the checking account
savings account, that's your money. And then you deal with

(41:19):
the Medicaid Asset Protection Trust with those other assets that you.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Want to protect.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
So when you put your home into this trust, you
virtually own the home. You own the equitable interest in
the home because you have the right to live there
for the rest of your life. So you're not giving
up your home. Your trust has your home and you
are the beneficiary of the trust. It keeps all your
same tax benefits. So if you have a star exemption
or a veterans exemption, it gets a step up in

(41:44):
basis you can sell it and get your capital gains exclusion.
So the home is one of the first assets that
we put into the trust, and then we look at
what the other assets are. Do you have a brokerage account, Well,
you keep the income from that, but the investments keep
growing inside the trust. Do you have life and surance
that has cash value that goes into the trust. Do
you have other financial accounts CDs things like that, Those

(42:07):
go into the trust. Do you have deferred annuities not
tax qualified but to standard deferred annuities? They can go
into the trust and the trust you appoint a trustee,
but you have the string to pull. If something happens
and that trustee isn't performing to your liking.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
You fire them. You have the absolute discretion over who
your trustee is going to be. At any moment in time.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
More importantly, you get to choose the beneficiaries and you
can change them at any time, so you have control
over the trustee control over the beneficiaries. Peter mentioned earlier
that you can actually get principle out to those beneficiaries
who you're selecting as you go, and they could then
use the money for anything, including to buy you a car.

(42:54):
So the money stays available to your kids and they
can then use it for your benefit. And you can
control trustees and you control beneficiaries. In Peter, the nature
of the trust that I want to just highlight is
that when you're controlling the beneficiaries and you have a
statute in New York that says I can actually revoke

(43:16):
an irrevocable trust with the consent of the beneficiaries, now
you have a very very flexible structure.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
One other, very very important benefit of this Medicaid Asset
protection trust is there's no claim against the assets in
that trust at the time the Medicaid recipient dies, because
Medicaid's claims are only against probate assets. So another advantage
of avoiding probate by having all your assets in the trust,

(43:50):
you don't have to worry about the county coming after
your house, so it doesn't pass on to your spouse
or children.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
So you win the game, the short term game and
then the long term game. We talked about this early
in the show is creating trusts for your kids so
the assets are protected for them and they flow right
out of your Medicaid asset protection trust. We have a caller,
Tom and Gilderland.

Speaker 6 (44:15):
Good morning Tom, Yes, good morning, Loke.

Speaker 7 (44:19):
How are you.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
I'm good, how are you doing?

Speaker 7 (44:21):
Doing pretty good? Thanks? I just tuned in, so I
apologize this. This has already been covered this morning, but
I did have a question on on the Medicaid trust
that we have irrevocable trust and of course, as you know,
it's got the five year lookback period. And the question is.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
We didn't discuss that it absolutely has a five year
look back for nursing home care. Yeah, there is no
look back for Medicaid home care, which is where most
people start. You want to be at home, right, medicaids
available at home. There is no waiting period for Medicaid
at home.

Speaker 7 (44:56):
Correct. So with that said, my question then would be
what is available after the five year period? Can that
money now? He starts to be withdrawn and give given
to the kids with no penalties. What happens after the
five year period, Yeah, and we're still around, you know,
we're still living, We're still at home or fine.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
The intent is that the money stays in the trust
and it's available for you long term through the kids.
That's kind of the essence of the plan. But there
is no reason. Let's say you have a grandchild going
to college. You want to contribute twenty thousand dollars to
their college education. The trust will be able to accommodate that.
If you want to benefit your kids during your lifetime.

(45:40):
The transfer right when the trust gets funded, when the
assets go in. That's when the five year clock starts.
When the assets go out of the trust, there is
no additional penalty for them because it's already been penalized
when it goes in.

Speaker 7 (45:55):
So, for example, then after let's say five to five
years goes by, and I want to withdraw the money
equally to eat I have three children, so withdraw that.
So let's say, for example, I'd like them to put
a down payment on a house. Can that be done
with as as you just said?

Speaker 6 (46:15):
Really?

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Absolutely?

Speaker 7 (46:16):
And then Let's say a year later one of us
ends up in a nursing home. They can not go
back and say, hey, wait a minute, you know you
distribute that money.

Speaker 5 (46:25):
We need that money back now.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
Once it's in the trust, it's outside of your your
reach for medicaid purposes. And there's no additional penalty for
transfers out of the trust.

Speaker 7 (46:35):
So that five year peer, that's the magic number. Then
the five year we're golden. After that we can distribute
that money absolutely.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
And again we have to keep it clear for nursing
home purposes, not for home paste.

Speaker 7 (46:46):
Right. Oh, that's that's wonderful. Okay, that's perfect.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Well that you answered my question, Lou.

Speaker 7 (46:51):
I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
All right, Tom, thanks for the call.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
We do have to take one more quick short break
and we'll come back to wrap it up with Peter Strauss.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Lupiro.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Thanks for listening. We'll be right back and we are back.
So great calls this morning.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
Peter.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
We have just a few minutes left and I want
to kind of pull all of this together in terms
of trust planning, certainly getting trusts in place for children
who are minors, getting trust in place for yourself, getting
trust in place for the future for long term care
purposes and getting that five year clock for nursing homes started.

(47:28):
There are so many options that people have that they
don't know about. They call it third tier knowledge. We
don't know what we don't know. A good consultation will
walk you through all of your options, everything that's available
to you under the law, and these are things that
need to be done in advance the revocable Trust. We

(47:49):
didn't spend a lot of time on Peter, but for
those people that don't really have the need for long
term care planning, they have sufficient income to pay that
bill the nursing homes now running around two hundred thousand
dollars a year, or maybe you've been smart enough to
buy a long term care insurance policy or a life
insurance policy that will cover your long term care needs.

(48:12):
The revocable Trust for people that don't have the long
term care need is a tremendous vehicle. And just talk
a little bit about the probate process and what it
means for families to have a private, secure administration of
an estate as opposed to the public fiasco that probate
sometimes becomes.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Peter, are you.

Speaker 3 (48:39):
There, No, I watched you for a minute. Will could
you repeat it?

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Oh, just talk the advantage of the revocable trust. We
go through this with families all the time and they'll
come in and they say, oh, yeah, yeah, I'm still
administering mom's estate. It's been four years now and we
don't have any end of the tunnel in sight. We
have assets that are complicated, We have all of these
issues in probate. The advantage of having a private administration

(49:06):
where you control it through your trustees in a revocable
living trust.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
Well, the benefits are myriad. I mean, it's a smooth
assisted it's a legal assistance to your life because if
you become incapacitated, you don't have to struggle with banks,
or insurance companies or or brokers because it's easier to

(49:39):
act and deal with these entities as a trustee than
under a power of attorney. Banks don't like powers of attorney.
They're so disruptive of your life. When you're trying to
help out a person who's been ill for a while,
they keep refusing. In the legislature a number of years

(49:59):
ago had to pass a bill saying it's illegal to
refuse to honor a power of attorney. And these for
that they do it anyway, So they do it anyway,
but they don't do it with trusts because most banks
are used to being trustees. They have corporate trust departments.

(50:21):
So life becomes smoother, and at the time of your death,
it's even more smooth because you don't have to deal
with the surrogates court, which is under budgeted and understaffed
and possibly in some cases under educated.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
We will go there, but I'm going to let that
Peter be the last word. We got about thirty seconds left.
Thank you, Peter Strauss for joining me today. Thank you
for the calls. They've been wonderful. Remember April seventeenth at
one pm Colony Town Library, your home.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Or the nursing home.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
We have other educational opportunities a trust administration workshop that
really digs into the trusts that's coming up on June third.
Always check our website at pierolaw dot com.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Thank you for joining us this morning. We had a
great show.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
We hope you can join us again next week whenever
Homecare Advisors joins us here