Life Happens

April 5th, 2025

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to this week's edition of Life Happens Radio.
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 in 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

(00:21):
events like preparing for retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning to pay for nursing, home and home care, planning
for 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

(00:42):
that your goals are reached and your needs are met
for both yourself and your family. So again, welcome everybody.
Happy Rady Saturday. I'm Frank Hemming. I'm one of the
partners of Pierre, O'Connor and Strauss. We are a full
service elder law firm located here in Latham, and I
thank you. I'm not sitting alone in the studio. I'm

(01:02):
joined by my most frequent radio co host, recently, Miss
Patty Wheel and Hi.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Patty, Hi Frank morning. Are you good?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Thank you for taking some time to spend with me
and the listeners today.

Speaker 4 (01:14):
Oh of course, it's an honor and a pleasure to
be here with you this morn already.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
All right, that's fine. So it's it's a little depressing outside,
but it is getting warmer. The snow has been gone
for a little while, although I did see snow at
least flakes in the forecast for like next week a
little bit. Oh no, but I don't think it's gonna
amount to anything. It seems like it's going to be
too warm to accumulate or at least, let's hope, but
not sure. The bad weather is completely gone, so let's

(01:40):
cross our fingers. But it is a spring So it's
the first spring show since since I've been on, Yeah,
because it was winter last time we were here.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
So we have a few things on the agenda today.
So obviously because it's spring, the topic for the show
that we wanted to put out there was kind of
spring clean. Whether that's you know, updating your plan, making
your plan just cleaning up your plan. But before we
get to that, we've got some other things I wanted
to dive into.

Speaker 3 (02:09):
So, as usual, I.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Like to start with either stories or recent current events,
that kind of thing. So, so we've got a new
celebrity death to talk about just a little bit, really
we do.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
So.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
I guess you either didn't see it or you already
don't remember, which is fine. That's why that's why we're
doing this. So we lost an actor by the name
of Val Kilmer. Oh I didn't know that, okay, I say, so, so.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
You know who he is.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
No, I don't know who that is.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Okay, So so let's let's educate Patty a little bit.
So Val Kilmer was a was a very prominent actor
for a while.

Speaker 4 (02:45):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
He was only sixty five when he passed away, so
he was I would say, a bit on the younger side.
But he uh he did have some pretty uh serious
health issues the last few years. He had throat cancer.
I don't know if he had some other things going on,
but he had some stuff medically going on. So when
I saw the news, while I was sad, I can't
say that I was shocked, just because again I knew

(03:06):
he hadn't been well, so he's been. His resume here
is pretty pretty substanti, pretty substantial. I can tell you.
I'm looking at all of his movies now, I can
tell you without having looked at this list, he's in
probably two of my top ten films of all.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Time, if I had to put them down.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Really.

Speaker 3 (03:29):
So one is Top Gun.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Oh okay, yes, I've heard of that movie.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
So he was.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
He was Iceman who was one of the other pilots
and Top Gun. Obviously not Tom Cruise. He was one
of the other pilots in Top Gun. So he was
in the movie. I wouldn't say his role was huge
in Top Gun, but he was in Top Gun. And
I have seen that movie twenty times. Because it's I've
said this before, I don't mind putting this on the radio.

(03:55):
It's the perfect date movie because it's good for guys,
because we watch it, every one of us wants to
go be a fighter pilot.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
It's good for girls.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Because it's got some romance and it's got some other
things going on. It's got a good story. So everyone typically,
I think, would be happy when you watch Top Gun.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's true, that's I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
So he and then he was in he had He
did come back for kind of a quick cammeo in
Top Gun Maverick, which was the sequel to Top Gun.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
So we'll talk a little bit about that in just
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
The other really famous movie or favorite movie of mine
that he was in, again without having looked, is a
movie called Heat, which it's it's him and al Pacino,
where sorry, it's de Niro and Pacino. They're the main characters,
but Val Kilmer is part of a group of like
thieves and things that are in the movie. So again

(04:45):
he does not have the biggest role in it, but
he's in that movie. And now that i'm looking, here's
another one of my probably not top ten, but another
movie that I enjoy very much. It's a movie called
The Ghost in the Darkness, which it's from nineteen ninety six,
which didn't realize it was that long ago, so now.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
I feel extra old, I think.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
So it's a it's a movie with Michael Douglas, and
essentially the premise of the movie is Val Kilmer. It's
in the eighteen hundred sometime, and he's he goes to
Africa because they want to build this bridge, and so
he's the engineer that wants to build this bridge, and
the problem is that they are having trouble building this

(05:27):
bridge because there are these wild lions that keep like
killing people as they're building this bridge, and it's he
works with then Michael Douglas to figure out how they're
going to solve this this wild lion problem in Africa.
And it's a really, really good movie. I'm probably not
doing the plot justice, but I really enjoyed that movie
when I watched it, so so and obviously he was

(05:50):
in a whole bunch of other things too, Kiss Kiss,
Bang Bang. I know that I saw him and liked
a lot Deja Vu, which is a Denzel movie, so
clearly I'm going to love that because Denzil is Mike
and then most recently Top Gun Maverick. So he so
he was in again, plenty of movies. I'm sure plenty
of people would either know who he is or recognize
him if you saw him. So obviously, rest in peace

(06:12):
to Val Kilmer. His net worth, according to the Internet
from what I could tell, was somewhere between I think
ten to twenty five million estimated, so not talking small
amounts of money here, and one of the things that
came up in the news articles that I was reading
about him that I would not have thought of, And honestly,
I don't even think I really even knew, to be honest.

(06:34):
Is so as I as I mentioned before, he had
throat cancer, so he had a very difficult time speaking
in the later parts of his life because I think
of the treatments and the cancer and all that kind
of stuff. So I believe in Top Gun Maverick they
actually did some cool things with AI and technology where

(06:55):
they digitally recreated his voice.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (06:57):
Interesting, So I'm not sure that, like, even though he's
like looking to speak the actual spoken words in the movie,
I'm not sure that's his voice that actually you're hearing,
and it might be a digital recreation of his voice.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah, at least again, that's what I read. So if
I'm wrong, I'm sorry, but that's what I read. But
why I think it's interesting is because now that he's gone,
if there is this digital place for Valcimer's voice to
live and be used, well, then his will, his trust,
his estate planning documents might control like his intellectual property

(07:35):
and the use of like his likeness or his voice,
the likeness of his voice or his voice in general,
so I don't know whether that was anticipated by.

Speaker 3 (07:46):
Him prior to his passing.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
I don't think I've ever seen a document that we've
done that specifically talks about like my ai digitally created
voice after my death, but it might be something we
have to think about.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, that's really interest Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Because like the article was, like, imagine if you're just
sitting on your couch watching TV and then you see
a commercial come on, and you know the spokesman telling
you to use this product was Val Kilmer's voice. Because again,
if they have this digitally recreation of it, just because
he's gone doesn't mean hypothetically they couldn't use it for
something or try to market things with it.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
So I don't know. Yeah, so I'll have to see.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
So if Val Kimer starts telling us to buy stuff, well, no,
it's not really him obviously because he's gone, but it'll
be interesting to see if something like that either comes
up with with either him or his estate or maybe
future celebrities that passed in the future, So who knows.
So there's the celebrity news for him, and then I

(08:47):
have a quick update on somebody else that we spoke
about last time. That we were here so last time,
I think right before the last show that we did together, Patty,
I think that's right when we lost Gene Hackman, yes,
and his wife yes. So obviously some some further news
has come out about the whole circumstances around that. That
very odd, right, Well, I mean we were I don't

(09:09):
think we were speculated too much, but I think we
both said it seems strange, yeah, right, to have them
both pass in the house and that stuff. So now
I think they have a much better idea as to
like the order of events and what happened. So the
reason why I'm bringing it up now is so there
was an Entertainment Weekly article that talked about, you know,

(09:30):
updates on on Gene Hackman's case and things, and the
headline is Gene Hackman's three children not named as successors
in eighty million dollar will what. But so I'm gonna
be very just want to I want to be careful
about how I how I explained this. I'm not sure
it's as bad as that headline makes it seem, right,

(09:50):
because I've read this a few times and it's possible
maybe I'm either under or overthinking it, or maybe the
article is a little you know, under underdeveloped here, or
maybe the journalist who wrote it isn't going to pick
up on the same things that I would, given that
there they write news articles and things that I do
a state planning. But according to this, Gene Hackman and

(10:13):
his will named his wife as the sole beneficiaria of
his estate with no backups, right, which isn't great. She
or he named her as the personal representative of his
estate first, so obviously we know that's not going to happen.
And then where Here's why I think it may not
be as bad as it sounds. So it says he

(10:34):
also named her the successor trustee of the Gene Hackman
Living Trust. Now why that would be in a will,
not really sure of that. That's not really where you'd
normally put that. But at least it sounds like there's
a trust. Yeah, that sounds so again just kind of
nitpicking here. So if we did a trust for Gene Hackman,

(10:56):
typically we would do it where he would have a
trust or or several trusts, depending on kind of what
we were looking to do. And then his will typically
the first things in his will would be poor over provisions, right,
which just says if there's anything that winds up in
my estate, we're going to move it over into the
name of my trust or trusts or however, again, the
plan's supposed to kind of distribute from trusts. So if

(11:20):
his will actually is a poorover will which tried to
essentially give everything to either his wife and if not
his wife, then his trust, as long as the trust
is then set up to go to his children or
you know, whatever he wanted to have happen, then I'm
not sure that him just not naming them directly in
the will is as bad as it sounds, because again

(11:41):
it sounds like there is some other there are documents
that play here that maybe we don't have all the
information about.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, what resident do you know? Like where did he die?

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Would state New Mexico?

Speaker 4 (11:52):
Okay, Well, what I was thinking of is that in
some states they have, you know, that rule where you
can incorporate by reference, like I think.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Florida has that.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
That's a really good point.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
You know, in New York you can't just say, you know,
in your will, hey look at my trust for the
terms and you know the provisions, like you have to
actually list everything out again. But in states like Florida,
you can just incorporate by reference where you can just
you know, direct the judge to, you know, look at
the other document. So I don't know what the laws
in New Mexico are, but perhaps you know, that could be.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
Yeah, it's entirely possible. And I don't know.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
And just in Patty, that's a really good point that
I didn't even think of, so kudos to you. But
the other thing I will say is I don't think
that his stuff was updated very or very close to
the time of his death because the person he named
after his wife as his executor was his former attorney,
who had died in twenty nineteen. Oh wow, so so

(12:49):
so then we were two executors down. Luckily, the third
person named was also an attorney. She is still living,
so she was the one that actually started filing papers
with the core in things. And the wife's will did
the exact same thing with the name of executors. She
named her husband than this first attorney who had passed,

(13:09):
and then the second attorney who's now alive. So so
whether they I don't you know. The wills were dated
June seventh of two thousand and five. Wow, you know,
so they're around twenty years old, so I don't know
if they resided in New Mexico when they wrote them,
right right, because that's also that would also be important

(13:31):
because they could have been in a corporation by reference
state when they wrote them, and if New Mexico isn't,
then they don't quite work or vice versa. Yeah, so
who knows. I think obviously more things will come out
as time goes on, but I just wanted to kind
of give the update on this that we are starting
to get some information about this, but it does sound

(13:51):
like there were some documents in place. The other thing
that comes up with this story, and we did talk
about this on the last show, is the survivorship of
the spouses from one another right and trying to order
and trying to figure out order of death and how
that all goes because the wife's plan does go a
little differently depending about order of death. It sounds like

(14:14):
so she left everything to her husband if he survived her,
which he did, but we don't think it was for
very long. And again according to the news article, it
looks like he had to survive her for ninety days
to be deemed to have survived her under the terms
of her will.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
We know that didn't happen. So if he didn't.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Survive her, then then I believe her estate, if there's anything,
then goes to a charitable trust that was then going
to either be in creation or would be created for,
you know, charitable purposes, for whatever she and Jean wanted
to put it towards. It doesn't give a lot of
information about that. So essentially, just to kind of flesh

(14:54):
that out just a little bit before our break, if
if Jeane had survived her, everything was supposed to go
into this Gene Hackman living Trust, where then it would
likely filter to his beneficiaries. And I'm assuming that that
was all discussed with them when they did all this,
and I'm assuming she was pretty much fine with that.
But because he didn't survive her by ninety days, he's

(15:14):
then treated as if he did not survive her, right
and then everything wouldn't go into this trust. It would
then go according to the other provisions of her will,
and it sounds like it's going to go to charitable
bequests of some kind or a charitable trust of some kind.
So again, order of death matters doesn't always matter in
this case. It matters, So Jean's kids might wind up

(15:35):
getting just stuff from his side rather than both sides.
But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
So why don't we take our first break. I've been
talking a lot, so let's give the listeners a break too.
So we'll take a break, and then we'll come back
right after this and welcome back everybody. Thanks for sticking

(15:59):
with us through there. Got to take a drink, got
to give the voice a little rest there. But I
hope that was interesting for everybody to kind of get
some some celebrity news. I think it's always interesting to
see how the other the other half lives, or at
least set up things to go is that when they pass.
So so I've got some client stories. So, Patty, we

(16:19):
were talking before the show that you didn't think you
had any, So any come to mind, just because I
don't want to step on you if you.

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Did not yet, but I'll keep thinking.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Okay, sounds good, All right, So I had I had
some consultations recently that I think brought up some interesting
things that I wanted to discuss on the radio. One
goes right in line with the theme of the show,
so I think I'll save that one until we get
into the kind of the topic for today. So the
first so the other one is kind of a it's
kind of a case study of maybe what not to do,

(16:51):
or at least you know, some things you may not
want to do or want to consider a little earlier.
So I had a I had a meeting with a
son this week and he wanted to talk about his
mom and trying to get some care for her. So,
mom is I believe ninety five, ninety five or ninety
six she is. She's getting up there, yeah, living with
him because she has dementia and Alzheimer's going on. I

(17:18):
don't think I think she's got some other age related
health issues going on too, where she just can't really
take care of her herself. At this point, she like
can't make her meals, She needs assistance getting to the bathroom.
You know, she needs a lot of help. And essentially
they've got an aid with her just about twenty four
hours a day, or the or the sun helps, so

(17:38):
there's always somebody with her, whether it's a paid aid
or the family. And she doesn't have much left in
terms of finances and things, which is why they wanted
to talk to us because he wanted to see if
we could do some medicaid things for her. And unfortunately,
there are some other hurdles here that just don't have
easy solutions unfortunately. So for one, her main asset that

(18:01):
she still has is her house. So her house is
sitting vacant at the moment. And because there wasn't a
lot of money or or you know, liquid funds available
to mom, the family's already taken her reverse mortgage against
the property, so they've already used a lot of the

(18:21):
equity in it. So I think there's about one hundred
and twenty five or so equity left. They can't draw
on the reverse mortgage anymore. Either the draw period's over
or they've maxed it out. Either way, it doesn't doesn't
really matter. But so house is kind of tapped for
what it could be for now, she's about one hundred
and twenty five left inequity. She's got about two thousand

(18:43):
dollars or so in the bank, and she brings in
about two thousand dollars a month in Social Security and
that's about it. So when we talk medicaid, we have
to talk about eligibility financially medically, So medically here we're
not concerned about. She clearly needs some help, so that's
not a concerned but we wanted to talk financial about
finances here, and that's where some of the issues start

(19:05):
coming in. So so this house, you know, I'm very
used to saying, well, your house doesn't count for medicaid purposes. Well,
your house doesn't count as long as you live in
your house, and she doesn't live in her house. She
lives in the son's house, so the house actually counts
as an asset if she were to apply for medicaid.
So we couldn't apply for medicaid for her with that

(19:26):
house and her name. So that's one problem. We typically
like to solve that problem by moving it to a trust.
And now here's where the second problem is. Then, well,
her son has a power of attorney, doesn't have gifting powers.
Oh no, another problem. There's a second power of attorney

(19:52):
because there have been some family issues with some of
the other siblings, some of the other children. So there's
one version where it's son and daughter. There's another version
that just has son on it. So you know, there's
kind of some inconsistencies there, which is fine. You know,
you can update your things, but you want to maybe

(20:14):
revoke your your prior documents when you do it, or
you know that kind of thing. I don't think either
of them specifically said that they revoked any past ones,
just based on my remembrance. So they both could be
technically active. So when you have multiple active documents that
that aren't doing the same things or at least using
the same people, that that can present issues for obvious reasons.

(20:38):
And the second power attorney that has two people on
it rather than one also doesn't have gifting powers, so
we don't have any gifting authorities. And Mom has had
a dementia diagnosis for five or six years. If I
had to take a guess, it's a long time, it's not.
It's not recent unfortunately, So so we have a we

(20:59):
have a likely a capacity problem here where Mom doesn't
sound like she has the capacity to to do planning
at this point. And unfortunately, you know, and we try
to we try to flesh this out I think pretty
well when we talk about it to either our clients
here on the radio seminars. But like capacity is not

(21:21):
cut and dry, it's a sliding scale, if you will,
someone can have capacity and then lose it. That day,
that week, that month, Right, Like, it's not, it's it's
very hard to judge, you know, at different times.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
The only way to really know whether somebody has capacity
really is for someone to be sitting with them, meeting
with them, and spending some time with them and making
their own determination on that. Doesn't sound like mom has
capacity most of the time based on the suns you
know telling me about her. And what this gets harder
is because if we don't think she has capacity, then

(21:59):
like we probably don't even really want to get involved
to try to update our stuff if capacity is in question,
if there's family quarreling going on. Right, No, right, because
if a power of attorney is done and she did
not have capacity, it could be challenged and it could
be found to be invalid and then the transactions that

(22:21):
it acted upon then could be invalidated and just a mess. Right,
it could be a mess. If everyone's on the same page,
then we still have to determine capacity. We still have
to make sure that that person has it. But obviously
if everyone's on the same page, planning is a little easier.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
Yes, yeah, but as.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Soon as things aren't lining up, as soon as people
aren't on the same page again red flags. So so
in this instance I told him that I thought the
best avenue for him to help Mom would be potentially
to talk or think about whether he really wants to
potentially go and do a guardianship for her, because a

(23:00):
guardian could do all the medicaid planning that we'd want
them to do. A guardian could be given the powers
to create a trust. The guardian could be given the
power to make gifts on her behalf, do a Medicaid
application on her behalf, you know, do all the things
that we would want to typically do to set somebody
up for getting care and getting Medicaid to pay for it.

(23:22):
But the unfortunate part with guardianship is again it's public
and its litigation, and if there are issues with the family,
if he files for guardianship, nothing is going to stop
his other family members from potentially challenging his appointment as guardian.
So then if they start fighting, then it gets messy
and expensive and time consuming. And Mom doesn't have a

(23:44):
lot of money right the money she really has is
tied up in that house that isn't liquid at the moment,
so it's not really a great situation. And unfortunately a
lot of it could have been planned for if they
had a better power of attorney.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
So there's there's the.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Quick story on how you want to make sure your
documents are they're good, that they're in place, and that
they do the actual things that you needed to do.
Because he thought he was fine, and unfortunately I had
some not great news to talk to tell him. So
with that said, we're coming up to the news, So
thank you for sticking with us through the first half
of the show. Patty and I are going to talk
about spring cleaning and cleaning up your plan on the

(24:24):
second half, so come on back right after the news
and welcome back. Thank you for sticking through the news.
This is Still Life Happens Radio, and I'm Frank Hemming,

(24:46):
one of the partners, and I'm joined in studio with
Mss Patty Wheland, one of our associates. So before we
jump into the topic, I feel like I should do
some advertising for us. So we're going to do a
seminar because we love seminar. So we're going to do
a seminar on Thursday, April seventeenth, and it's going to
be at the Colony Town Library and the title of

(25:09):
the program is your home or the nursing home question mark,
So essentially we're asking where would you want to be
your house or the nursing home? And I'd think I
know how most people are going to answer that question,
but you never know. And speaking at this event, it's
going to be myself and our founding partner, mister Lupieriro,

(25:30):
and then our friends from ever Home Care Advisors are
also going to be joining us too, so we're going
to have some attorneys, We're gonna have some care managers.
So if you want to come out to the library
to come see us again, Colonytown Library, it's from one
pm to two pm on Thursday, April seventeenth, So if
you want to come and spend some time with us,

(25:51):
you can register at our website which is www dot
pro law dot com slash events, or you can give
us just have a just give our office a call,
which number for the office is five point eight four
and we can sign you up that way too. So
we're hoping to see a lot of people to come

(26:12):
see us. All right, spring cleaning, Patty, have you done
any spring cleaning?

Speaker 4 (26:19):
I did, Actually it's a lot of cleaning. Yesterday I
had to go through some old clothes that I have
some old clothes from. Honestly, this is maybe embarrassing, but
from like college, they still.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Have I mean, you're not going to put those put
those on on a weekend or something.

Speaker 4 (26:33):
No, I mean they're you know, they were like trendy pieces,
so they're not really in style anymore. You know, some
of them all better a little bit too small, like
you know, I gotcha. So I did do some spring
cleaning last night.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Actually that's great.

Speaker 1 (26:46):
I uh, I actually did some myself, I feel like,
and I didn't really plan on doing it. It was
more just we had some things going on in the
house and my wife constantly is is saying, I need
to like get some things in order. So I tried
to clean out some of my closet and stuff with
stuff I know I will not wear anymore either. It
doesn't fit. It's been ten years since I wore it

(27:06):
last Like am I going to miss it? So there
was a bit Marie Condo vibes going on. But so
I did get rid of some stuff myself. So spring
is a time of kind of rebirth and and you know,
reviewing things. So we thought it would be a great
time to talk about reviewing your plan, and we have
an article here that I have that I'm going to

(27:28):
rely on if we need more things to talk about.
But I had a really really good client meeting that
goes right hand in hand with this, So rather than
talk about an article, I'd rather talk a little bit
about the people I met with and kind of go
from there. So we I had this nice couple come in.
Now I'd met with them previously, but it was because
husband's sister has some some needs going on. We did

(27:51):
some medicaid consultation work for her and things, so he
had come in first to really talk about her and
his wife come with him, just because a lot of
this is confusing, a lot of people tend to get
a little either confused or overwhelmed, or they're afraid they're
going to be so they like to have that second
pair of hands and ears and things like that. So
I'd met this couple before, but they weren't coming in

(28:13):
for the sister this time. They were coming in to
talk about themselves, so it was nice to see them again.

Speaker 3 (28:17):
So it was very nice.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
They came in and came back, and we usually ask
our prospective clients to do some homework for us before
they come into the office. So we ask them to
complete a questionnaire so that way we have some idea
of like who you are, who your family is, and
some financial information, just because again, if we're gonna try
to give you an idea of what we think is
most appropriate, we kind of need to know who you

(28:38):
are and what you're bringing to the table. So I'm
looking at their questionnaire and their stuff before I go
into the meeting, and says that they've done some planning
but already, but they want to take a look. They
want it reviewed and you know, maybe update some things
and talk about if there's ayting else that they should do,
because they're getting older and they want to make sure
things are in place for them if something were to happen.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
So perfect great.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
So I sit down with them and they had a
trust not from us, but from another area firm who
does what we do. And well, I'm not going to
say who it was, I will say it was a
very well done trust. It really did not have many
issues with it. It was one little nitpicky thing that
I didn't love, just because we just do it a
little differently, but perfectly fine. And they're past their five years.

(29:22):
So because their past five years, the issue that I
had really isn't going to come up at this point
because there's really no going to be a reason to
nitpick with that trust.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
At this point.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
It's past the five years, So their house is in
this trust, and I think it was done in roughly
twenty thirteen or so, so about twelve years ago if
I'm remembering correctly. So house is already off the table
no matter what happens to either one of them.

Speaker 3 (29:43):
So great, we're off to a great start.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
They also had some retirement accounts, so I think between them,
I think there's four hundred five hundred thousand retirement accounts combined,
something like that. So for those who may be new
or are not very knowledgeable about Medicaid. So one of
the benefits we have of being in New York Medicaid wise,
is your retirement accounts or exempt for Medicaid purposes as

(30:06):
long as they're in payment status, meaning you're taking your
required minimum distributions. These folks are past seventy three, so
they have to so their retirement accounts are already exempt too.
So before we had to do anything, really get to
tell them your house is fine. It's then a trust.
That's fine, and your retirement accounts are off the table.
So we're say, we're doing good. Right, you've done good

(30:26):
so far. And then we started looking into some of
the other things. So they have a brokerage account, so
not a retirement account. It's got about two hundred two
hundred thousand dollars in it, not in their trust, not
exempt for medicaid, okay, So they wanted to talk a
little bit about that. And they had about one hundred

(30:50):
or so in cash in their bank accounts, you know,
just savings accounts, that kind of stuff. Because their incomes
are pretty decent. They don't make it. They don't make
enough to like pay for care if they needed it,
but they you know, they make more than enough to
cover their bills and they're not spenders, so as time
saving us as cropped up.

Speaker 3 (31:08):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
So they've accumulated some cash and retirement which is great,
and they have this brokerage account and I said, well,
that's your exposure right there, your cash and your brokerage account.
Because you've done a really good job protecting your house.
Your retirement accounts are exempted already. But if we're concerned
about if you need care of not having to spend
all that down to about thirty grand for each of you,

(31:29):
then we maybe want to do some planning for that.

Speaker 3 (31:32):
Say.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
The other things that we looked at was their existing
doc their ancillary documents, like they did power of attorney,
they did health care proxy when they did their stuff,
so their their power of attorney was.

Speaker 3 (31:44):
Quite old.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
I don't think they updated that in twenty thirteen, so
I think that one was more from two thousand and
two and three.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
I don't know. It was a while. Well, it was long,
it was old enough.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
It was it was essentially two pages, and it's been
quite a while since the new or short form was
two pages.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Now. Again, it wasn't terrible.

Speaker 1 (32:05):
It did have gifting power on it, so it didn't
suffer from the defect that we just talked about with
the guy and his mom and not being able to
do a trust. But this one had a different issue
in it, and it's that the agents were not in
the order that they would want anymore, okay, because when
they did it, they did spouse first, and then they

(32:27):
did son, and then they did their daughters after their son.
And while they still like their son, they still have
a good relationship with their son. He's going through some
personal things that they thought one of their daughters would
be better suited now to take over. Yeah, of course
that's I mean, nothing bad, right, nothing bad has happened
enough like where we have to be concerned that he

(32:48):
was on it because nothing had happened. It's just they
just thought that there was better suited people at this
point because things had changed since when they did it.
So we talked about that, and then same deal with
the healthcare proxy where they had all the kids on them,
but the order wasn't quite what they would want at

(33:08):
this point. So you know, so the more the or
the kind of the setup for this is they've done
some planning already, so they're not one of the people
that I've put it off or didn't want to have
the conversation. They've done a lot of good work. But
it sounds like it just needs some updating. And that's
exactly why we talk about updating your plan every three

(33:32):
to five years. You probably want to have it reviewed
because things like this can happen. So let's let's take
a little bit of that and step and break that
down a little bit. So, so my plan for them
was instead of doing or instead of taking that brokerage
account and that cash, instead of putting it into their
existing ear of vocal trust, because that's one option we have.

(33:54):
I suggested, let's do a new one. And the reason
behind that is because we still have that five year
look back period for the nursing home. And my thought
was the trust they have is safe, the house in
the trust is safe for the Let's not mess with it,
right if something happens to your health now within the
next five years, right, we have to try to undo this, partially,

(34:16):
revoke it, right, do something with it. Let's not put
the trust we know that's safe at risk by messing
with it, because it was they were very happy just
to have the reassurance that the first trust they did
in the house are protected at this point. So I said, well,
you seemed very relieved by that. Let's keep it that way, right.

(34:37):
The best hedge we have to keep it that way
is let's not mess with it. So instead of putting
things in that trust, let's just do a new one.
And when we do a new one, it can work
very similarly to your old one. It'll be irrevocable. You
can name your daughter as your trustee because the sun
is the trustee of the first one, right which again

(34:58):
they're okay with. There's no but they're not planning on
selling their house. They're not planning on doing anything with it,
so he's not really doing anything with it. He hasn't
really had to do anything with it, so they're not
upset with him being trustee. So while we did discuss
maybe wanting to make a change in trustee of that
first trust, they said they were fine to leave him,
so fine with me. But on the new trust, they're

(35:19):
going to put the daughter first and put the other
children back in her up just in case, because again
they think there's the daughter's in a better place to
do it.

Speaker 3 (35:27):
So we can clean that up.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
We could start running the five year clock on everything
right for the broker's account and whatever amount of cash
ultimately they want to put in the trust, and then
after five years, hopefully then we protect everything because now
everything's held in trust or it's still in the retirement accounts.
And they were very on board with it. So we're
going to be working with them to kind of clean
this up. But again it's you know, they're doing the

(35:53):
right things. They did a plan, they're coming in, they're
getting it reviewed, they're talking about updates. Some things are fine,
we're going to leave them. Some other things might not
be fine, so we're going to tweak them a little bit.
And then the last piece that they didn't have, which
again not super surprising, but they didn't have a disposition
of remains appointment.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
So so, Patty, why don't you tell listeners what that is,
just in case people are unfamiliar.

Speaker 4 (36:17):
So, a disposition or remains appointment, or what we call
a dora, is a document by which you can appoint agents,
so different people to help you make you know, funeral burial,
you know, those types of decisions after you're gone. Basically,
this document handles how you want your remains to be,
you know, handled and taken care of once you're no

(36:37):
longer here. And within this document you can leave special
instructions for your agent. So if you have particular wishes
that you want them to follow, this document is great
because that's where you can lay all that stuff out.

Speaker 1 (36:49):
Yeah, exactly right. And a lot of people say, well,
do I really need that document? And honestly, for a
lot of people, I'm not going to say you don't
need it, but I don't think it's the most important
one that you have if we're going to if we're
gonna put them in priority, right. I don't think it
hurts to have it in many instances, but just for instance,

(37:11):
like with this couple, So wife said, you know, I'm Catholic.
I'm very strong in my Catholic faith. Like faith, I
want the service, right, I want certain things to happen
like I know I want you know, I want this
to happen. I don't want this to happen. I want
to be cremated, and this is where I think I
want my ashes to go. I don't think i'd want
someone having to make that decision for me. I said, well,

(37:34):
that's exactly why you have that document, because then you
can lay all that out with instructions for people. That way,
if they didn't know what you want, you've already told
them what you want, or you can prepay for it
and kind of use both prepayment arrangements and your document
to make sure things are carried out right. So, so
again they were relieved that that they could take a

(37:57):
little bit of the burden off the kids, you know,
when they're both kist figuring some of that out because
husband was a lot more relaxed about it. He said,
you know, I'm I'm not not not in favor of
some of those things, but they don't mean nearly as
much to me as they do to her. So he's like,
so I just don't want to be on the mantle

(38:17):
after I'm gone. He's like, you know, I want to
be cremated. I just don't want people looking at me
and like the earn or whatever on the mantle. As
long as that doesn't happen. I'm not sure that I
really care, which is fine, right, That's there. They have
difference of it. They have differences of opinion about that,
which is perfectly fine. But that's that's why we can
do the documents, lay it out and put out in order.
So again, if they think daughter is kind of in

(38:39):
best position to kind of handle all that, they're gonna
put daughter after the spouse and then layer in the
other kids and hopefully everything is now in a better place,
and if something then changes again, they can always change
it again, right, all right, So let's let's take our
last break, because we have one more break to do
before the end of the show. So let's take the
last break and then Patty and I will come back

(39:00):
and we'll clean up our conversation about bring cleaning. So
come on back after this and welcome back everybody. Thanks
for sticking through the break, our last one of the show,
So again, welcome back to Life Happens Radio. I'm still Frank.

(39:21):
I'm still here with Patty, and we've been talking about celebrities.
We've been talking about client stories, and now we're talking
about cleaning up your estate plan for the spring. So
I have my article here and it's talking about some
regular reasons why you might want to have to clean
up your planner, why you might want to look into

(39:43):
having it cleaned up. So first category of things are
changes in family structure, So that sounds pretty important. So
the first thing they have here is marriage. I would say,
if you get married, you probably should consider either doing
some documents or getting them updated. Did them before when

(40:05):
you were single or not married. Things are a little
different now once you get married.

Speaker 4 (40:08):
Yeah, And we're working on one together right now. Where
the client, unbeknownst to us, got.

Speaker 3 (40:12):
Married, Yeah, in the middle of the planning process.

Speaker 4 (40:15):
So we had to and we're still working on you know,
that's true. We had to reevaluate his plan completely.

Speaker 1 (40:21):
Yeah, because uh, let's see plan A if you will.
For this gentleman was his girlfriend sitting in all these
spots and then they went and got married, which congratulations
to them, We're happy for you. But we can't always
have wife sit in the same spot as girlfriend could. Yes,
for legal reasons.

Speaker 2 (40:39):
Reasons.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
Yeah, you know, girlfriend in some ways can give you
different things in your planning documents than your than your
spouse can.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (40:46):
So again we can still reformulate the plan, but we
got to make some changes.

Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
So yeah, so marriage pretty important, especially if there are
kids later down the road, or whether you're bringing kids
to the marriage, because sometimes people have kids prior.

Speaker 3 (41:02):
To marriage and then they get married. So I think
again in New.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
York, like if you die without a will, right, if
you're married with no kids, your spouse does get everything, right,
But if you're married with kids with no will, it
doesn't all go to your spouse, right, which.

Speaker 2 (41:15):
A lot of people don't know apparently.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
Yeah, I think that comes up a lot when I'm
doing the radio. How we have either a recent story
or a newsworthy item about that. But yeah, at least
in New York, like if you die without a will
and you have spouse and you have kids. It doesn't
all go to your spouse. It's not how it works,
all right, So marriage would be a good reason to
update your documents or to get some another big one,

(41:38):
kind of conversely, divorce. Oh yeah, right, I had a
client this week. Tell me, well, I did a will
a long time ago, but my ex wife's still in
it now.

Speaker 3 (41:48):
Pretty sure.

Speaker 1 (41:48):
Now we're not matrimonial attorneys, but pretty sure that they
divorce decree. Divorce documents essentially remove your person from your
planning documents anyway, but you probably don't want to have
documents floating around that still name your ex spouse in them.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Well, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
What about beneficiary designations?

Speaker 3 (42:09):
Right? They would? Yeah, what they control?

Speaker 2 (42:11):
Or would the divorce decree.

Speaker 1 (42:13):
I'm not I'm not one, but I think the best
advice is to update them and then don't. Then you
don't have to worry about it. Yeah, right, At best,
it's the law might have already said. Again, divorce knocks
them out just in case they don't, or that doesn't,
just update them. Next one again, I think pretty self
explanatory birth or adoption of a child or grandchild Now

(42:37):
child I think in this instance is a little more
important than grandchild, depending on how your documents are drafted,
if you already have them. So here I'll elaborate. So
if you don't have any children, then you have one.
Doing a doing some planning I think is very important
because you'd want to make sure that the right people

(42:57):
are then going to be put in place to care
for your child if it isn't going to be you
or your spouse. That's why I wound up doing my
plan with my wife after we had our daughter, because
up to that point, I'm not saying it wasn't concerning
to me, but ultimately everything would have wound up with
my wife if something did happen to me because there
was nobody else. Once we had our daughter, then we
want to make sure something happens to us, the right

(43:19):
people are going to manage both her and the money
that she gets from us or from other people in
the future. So obviously you want to update that. Grandchildren
could be a little differently or could be handled a
little differently. So for instance, a lot of people, now
I'm not saying everybody, but a lot of people in
their planning documents tend to say everything goes to my

(43:42):
spouse if I have one. If not my spouse, then
my children. I'm not saying they don't provide for grandchildren,
but it's not as common as not. It's more common
to not give the grandchildren anything directly, even everything to
the kids. And then again depending on personal wishes here
then a lot of people then would say, if I
lose my child, then the grandchildren take what my child

(44:06):
would have gotten. Okay, so the grandchildren are incorporated into
mom or dad's place. If you had a child predecee,
you now, if it's drafted, just per sturpees, which is
the common way, an easy way to do that. If
they have another child, you know, if your children have
another child, so you have a new grandchild. If it
just says to their descendants, per sturpes, the new grandchild's

(44:28):
already in there. Because we didn't name them specifically. We
just said, any children of your child take in your
child's place. It doesn't matter how many they have, what
their names are, whatever, they're already in there. But if
you specifically say I want to give five thousand dollars,
and then you name each of your grandchildren by name,

(44:51):
and you get a new one. Well, then you want
to update that to name your new grandchild as long
as you want them to be treated the same.

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
So, like I said, I'm not going to say it's
not important. I'm just saying grandchildren are potentially less important
for just updating things depending on how your plan is
supposed to work. All right, next one, This one's sad
adoption which is good? Or death of a pet. Huh, Yeah,
that's I said, sad or obviously a death of a

(45:22):
person in your estate plan. Yeah, whether that's a direct
beneficiary or tie it back to the gene. The gene
Hackman right, he had an executor or a successor executor
died before. So if you've got an agent listed in
your documents who then predeceases you, yeah, might make sense
to update your documents to put some new people in place. Yeah,

(45:45):
because we always talk about having multiple layers.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Of not even death, but also in capacity to I'm
working with Lou on a file where unfortunately the successor
agent and trustee and all the different trusts he has,
you know, got diagno with dementia. So now that he's incapacitated,
we need to find a new person to put in
those roles. So now we're in the process of updating
all the documents to account for that change of circumstances.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
Yeah, definitely don't want somebody who's got cognitive issues as
your backup person for financial or health care decisions. Right,
Not so good move. Wanting to get that updated for sure.
And then the last one is again I'm not gonna
say not important. Could be less important again, depending on
kind of where you are and what your feelings are.

(46:32):
But that's a child reaching adulthood, right, So if your
child's not an adult, chances are they're not named as
an agent somewhere unless you've did your planning very recently
with them reaching the age of majority. Right, So if
you do your plan and your kids are seventeen, then
I have put them as backups because the you know what,

(46:53):
the thought being, hopefully nothing happens in the next few
months until they reach eighteen. But if you do your
plan when they're little, right, when I did mine, I
think my daughter was about a year old or less. Right,
she's not named as an agent in any of my
documents because she's still quite a ways from being in ability,
you know, having the ability to serve in those places.

(47:15):
When she reaches eighteen or twenty one or twenty five,
you know whatever, I might want to put her as
a backup to my wife or the other people that
I have at that point, because then she's an adult
and then she maybe can help. So if you don't
have your kids incorporated, and but you might want to,
that would be another reason to update your stuff to

(47:35):
include the kids. Usually if it's not the kids, then
usually it's going to be siblings or parents. Right at
some point your parents likely ei there will be gone,
or the likelihood of them being in a position to
help is going to lessen. Same thing with your siblings
because they're the same general ages as you are, or
you could be somebody like me who doesn't have siblings.
So like for us, typically it's parents backing us up.

(47:57):
We don't have those brothers sisters. So just again, you
have older kids, might want to incorporate them all right,
Next category changes in financial status. Okay, so this could
go either way. So you could have increased wealth, which
is great, good for you. So you might want to say, well,
now I have a lot more money for whatever reason,

(48:18):
whether you've accumulated yourself got an inheritance or something. But
if you have a lot more to divvy up, you
might want to change how it's getting divvied upright.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
Right, or even something like buying a new property in
a different state, like we got to you know, account
for that, whether it's putting it in a trust or
you know, if it's a rental property, putting in an LLC.
You know, not just money, but you know also property.

Speaker 1 (48:40):
Yeah, that's one of the categories selling or acquiring assets.
Oh really, Yeah, so you're right, because like if you
only had an apartment before, and you're like, well, I
would never force probate on anybody because I don't own
any real property. But then you buy a house. Now
you're forcing probate on somebody. Potentially, at least it's a
lot more likely if you own real property, which you
do other things, if you buy that second piece of property, right,

(49:03):
if it's in a different state. Now we're looking at
probate in more than one place. Which you may have
been fine with the idea of putting your person through
court in New York, you might feel differently about having
to put them in court in New York plus second state.
And just to be clear, we're generally advocating to not
put people regardless of what state but correct just as

(49:24):
another consideration. Or conversely, again, you could have a decrease
in financial status, right, So for instance, like if you've
been hit hard with the financial downturn, if that's what happens,
or your health status has changed and you've just had
to use more money to take care of you. Well,
if you've got a lot less to divvy up, maybe

(49:44):
you want to make sure it only goes to lesser
people or differently to the people that you want to
provide for, just because there's less to give out.

Speaker 3 (49:53):
Other reasons, just.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
Because we're essentially at the end of the show, but
other reasons would be changed in health or or capacity
right for either yourself or your agents. So if you
get a diagnosis, it might make sense to, you know,
do some planning proactively to make sure that as your
prognosis may change, that things can be handled by the
people that you want to be able to handle them.

(50:15):
You could have changes in your relationships with people like
the agents that you've appointed. So sometimes you know that
could be your children, it could be friends, it could
be siblings, but families or families for better or.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
For worse the consult you just had where they you know,
felt like the daughter would be a better exactly.

Speaker 1 (50:31):
You know, That's what I mean. Nothing even bad happened
really there. It's just son's life has changed a little
bit and he's got some other things going on, that's all.
And then they got business ownership and succession. So you know,
maybe you own a business, maybe you're running a business,
maybe you weren't doing it before.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
So I can't believe it. But we're at the end
of the show.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
Wow, I can't believe it, I know.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
So, So thanks everybody for sticking with us today, Thank
you Patty for being here on this gloomy Saturday. And
we will be back next week for next week's edition
of Life Happens Radio. So I hope that you will
join us next week. We'll talk to you then