Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everybody to Life Happens Radio. My name is Frank Hemming.
I'm one of the attorneys at Pierre O'Connor and Strauss.
It's great to be here with you on this Saturday morning.
There actually is sun shining out my window here at
the studio, which is not normally what happens when I
seem like do it in the radio the past few months,
and I'm very pleased to have you here with me.
(00:22):
I'm hoping to have one of our associates, mister Tommy
Morasco joined me shortly on the radio here, but I
think we're just trying to deal with some technical issues
in the boost to get him on. So while we're
waiting for him, let me talk to you for a
little bit. So this is Life Happens. It's our weekly
radio program where we address where we address the challenges
we all face as we age. We talk about aging
(00:44):
as a lifestyle. We talk about the issues that must
be confronted and the careful planning that's required to avoid
crises in the future. Life Happens will provide you with
tools to educate and prepare yourself for events like retirement,
protecting your income and assets, planning to pay for a
nursing home and home care, planning for special needs, preparing wills,
preparing trusts, planning for an untimely death, and then resolving
(01:06):
disputes in and out of court. As the laws and
necessities for planning and care continue to evolve, Life Happens
will help you make smart decisions to ensure that your
goals are reached and your needs are met for you
and your family. So again, thank you for being here
with us. I hope it's not your first time listening,
but if it is, that's a little bit about what
the show is. So again, I'm Frank Hemming. I'm one
(01:27):
of the partners of Pierre, O'Connor and Strauss. We are
a full service elder law firm. Our main office is
located here in the Capitol District in Latham, but we
do have a full, full time, full service office as
well in Manhattan, but we also see clients all over
the place. So we do see clients in Hudson, Lake Placid,
and then obviously we can go either west or south
(01:51):
or north with special arrangements if that's needed. So that's
a little bit about who we are. And I'm not
the most common host that you have, So I'm I'm
thankful to be here, and what I like to do
when when I host the show is I like to
talk a little bit about stories and things that we've
seen in the in the in the office, and and
(02:14):
kind of like to start the show easy. So I'm
not going to do any client stories right now. I'm
going to try to wait for Tommy for that if
we can figure out how to get him on, because
I haven't been in the office much recently. I had
a vacation and then I unfortunately had some family things
going on, so I haven't really been in the office much.
So I'm going to try to think of a client
(02:35):
story or two while we're while we're doing the show here.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Just good morning. I'm sorry for the technical differ, for.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Having me, No problem, no problem.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I'm just glad that they got you on, because for
the listener's sake, I wouldn't want to listen to just
me for the for.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
The whole time.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Oh cut that out. They would be more than more
than happy to.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So I was just saying that I haven't been in
the office much recently, so while I'd like to start
the show with client stories, I don't really have any
that come to mind, just because I haven't been around
very much, so not to put you on the spot,
but do you have anything quickly that comes to mind
of anything interesting you've seen? And if not, we certainly
can can go kind of to the next thing I
was going to talk about.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
Well I can't.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
I actually ken briefly there was there was a second
marriage and the old wife was still in the will
and things didn't get updated, and of course not everything
was in trust and couldn't avoid probates. So now you
know we're dealing with that issue. You can see that's
(03:36):
a problem that could be a problem.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, yeah, it certainly could have been. Hopefully it won't
be the biggest problem, depending how all that shakes out
with the court and probate and all that stuff. But
that's actually a really good teaser, if you will, because
we're going to talk about blendid families and things as
we kind of get into the substance of the show
in a little bit. While you're talking, I did actually
(03:59):
have a story come to mind, so I'm gonna share
that real quick, and then we're gonna hit our.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
First break, if that's all right.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
So we had a gentleman contact our office, and he
unfortunately was calling us because Mom is not doing well.
She's in a facility and does not seem like she's
going to have the ability to return home. And unfortunately,
that's that's a very stressful situation for families, but it's
a common one that we encounter as attorneys. And one
(04:29):
of the things that he was most concerned about besides
just making sure his mom was okay and cared for,
and you know, obviously the very very most important things
about Mom specifically, but the other piece that he was
most concerned about was protecting the family house. Because he
is a musician, he travels quite often, and while he
(04:53):
still does some touring and some other things, he essentially
moved into the house with mom I think fifth within
the last fifteen or twenty years, if I'm not mistaken,
and he actually became her full time caregiver while she
was starting to age and have health issues and things.
And he said, you know, one of the reasons that
he did that was because the family house was this
(05:16):
the thing that they wanted to protect and keep in
the family and everything, and that was one of the
reasons why he wanted to keep her in the.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
House as long as he could.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And one of his biggest concerns was that he tried
to seek counsel before speaking with our office, and he
unfortunately wasn't connected with somebody who was very skilled in
Medicaid and long term care and elder low and all
the things we'd like to do. And he was very
concerned that there was no way to protect the house
because the attorney that he had spoken to said, you know,
(05:46):
there wasn't really a way to do that given the circumstances.
And luckily I was able to speak with him. We
talked about like kind of the history of the family
and mom and all the things that he'd been doing.
And luckily he qualifies for something called the caregiver child exception,
which we talk about on the show. I don't want
to say a lot, but relatively frequently when we talk
(06:07):
about medicaid planning about how if you if you have
a child live in the house with you when you're
when you're elderly, and they essentially become your caregiver as
long as it's for a period of at least two
years prior to institutionalization, and if they provide essentially a
nursing home level of care to you, then you actually
can transfer your house to that child free of Medicaid penalty.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
And it's it's not an.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Exception that I think we like to use if we
have other ones available to us, because there are other
issues with taxes and inheritance, yeah, and capital gains and things.
Speaker 3 (06:45):
But certainly it's.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
Way way, way way better than doing nothing and having
the house that you know, either having to be sold
or subject to a lean or a state recovery or
all kind of the nasty things that come with Medicaid
at times. So so we're so we're working on this
case now. I anticipate that we're going to get a
pretty good result here. I will try to remember to
(07:08):
update our listeners as time goes on and we get
closer to kind of bringing it to a resolution. But
it just goes to show, you know, just seeking counsel
doesn't always mean very much if you don't get tied
up and connected with the right kinds of attorneys, because
the the advice that he received the first time was
clearly not correct, at least in my opinion, And it
(07:30):
just goes to show it all it all depends on
who you talk to.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
So so Tommy.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Yeah, yeah, really so far so so Tommy, we're gonna
we're gonna hit our first break. So now that we've
got you here, stay here with me that, you know,
for the sake of everybody else, will take the break
and then we'll come back and we'll kind of get
into the into the substance of the show a little bit.
So with that coming back after the break. Right, So
(08:00):
we are back from break. I am Frank Hemming, one
of the partners from Pierre O'Connor and Strauss. Tommy's still
on the line with me.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yes, I am. I'm still here perfect.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Love that and obviously I don't think I thank you
so thanks for being here, Tommy. I really appreciate you
being here on your Saturday.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Thank you for having me. I'm always always happy to
be here.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah, it's it's always great that we get to do
this because for those who again, if this is your
first time, or maybe this might be your first time
hearing the two of us. I am located in our
Latham office. Tommy primarily practices out of our New York
City office. So while I speak to Tommy, I don't know,
probably several times a week. Most often I don't see
(08:39):
you very much, and usually it's a quick phone call
here there, or a quick email or something, or we
happen to be like kind of a firm meeting or
something like that. So it's always nice to be able
to kind of do this with you since I don't
get to see all that often in person.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Agreed, I agree, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
So, so the premise of the show is celebrity and
what kind of happens with celebrities, And I always like
talking about celebrity deaths when I'm on because I always
think they're they're current. I think people are interested in
one of them. And I like to try to impress
upon our listeners that just because you have a famous person,
that doesn't mean that they don't deal with the same
(09:16):
kind of issues that every day people do, or at
least a lot of the issues that they have are
very probably similar to you or me or people that
you know. And just because they have lots of money
doesn't mean that that you know their stuff is really
going to be much different than maybe what you want
to do for your family. And then, unfortunately, because they're famous,
if they if they don't do a good job with stuff,
(09:36):
that tends to make headlines and give us stuff to
talk about.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
So that's why I like to.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
To kind of to talk about this kind of thing,
like when we can be that safe to say that
it's not obviously good when people pass away. It's heartbreaking
for the families, So we would I never say. I
always try to make sure that I'm very careful. I
don't wish death upon famous people to give me something
to talk about on the radio. But if you do
pass way, you know, I might be appreciative that at
least we have some some good things to speak about.
(10:05):
So I know there were Yeah, So I know there
were three of note that happened recently. One I think
is going to be pretty quick to talk about because
I don't don't think we know very much about it.
The other two I think to present some more interesting
issues that we can talk about. So the first one
was was Malcolm Jamal Warner, who I knew as THEO
(10:26):
from The Cosby Show, even though I think I've seen
maybe two episodes of that show. Ever, I was not
a Cosby Show person, and if I'm remembering correctly, and
I could be totally wrong here, I think when it
was most popular and stuff I was probably too young
to either you know, understand it, appreciate it, or anything
(10:46):
like that. So I think when I really got exposed
to it, it was because it was on reruns, and
it was like either right before or right after another
show that I actually, you know, was planning on watching,
so I might have caught bits and pieces of it,
like while I was either you know, hanging on after
the show I watched had finished, or I was tuning
in a few minutes early to catch whatever I wanted
(11:06):
to do. But obviously I know who he is by
by name, and unfortunately, the sad part here is it
just sounds like it's just a really tragic story. He
died while swimming with his daughter, who I believe is
eight years old, and he has a wife and obviously
his daughter, and not much is known about them. It
sounds like he wanted to keep them kind of not
(11:27):
in the limelight. And I mean, again, I'm not the
most knowledgeable here about him. I don't really remember him
making recent headlines anytime, you know, with anything going on
currently or within the past few years. I'm not saying
it's not true, just I'm not aware of it. So
I think just from that, I think he was probably
trying to lead a pretty private life and unfortunately, just
(11:50):
you know, a very tragic thing happened and he wound
up drowning and passing away. But there hasn't really been
much released about the family or his his his state, planning,
his wishes, and given what we kind of don't know
about him, that that doesn't seem super surprising, no, And I.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Think the most more important takeaway there is that none
of us are immune too, you know, obstacles of life
that can come at any given time. And as our
radio show is called, life happened. Obviously this is a
super tragic and unfortunate event, but it just goes to
show it's we can plan all we want, or we
(12:31):
could have plans, but you're not always necessarily going to
go the way that we want. So making sure that
there is a plan that can continue even despite any
unfortunate you know, happenings that could go on, that at
least for our loved ones and the people that we're
going to leave behind, or that people are going to
have to manage, you know, in the event of an
(12:52):
accident or death, that making sure that they're taking care
of in the right way and that they're is a
planning place for them.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, I think that's it's perfect. I think your your
thought is perfect. I think your line of thinking is perfect.
I'm going to talk about myself for a second here, because,
as I say, I think pretty frequently on the show,
I'm an only child, so it's all about me anyway.
But my family's a pretty good example of this and not.
Kind of in some ways it's positive and in other
(13:22):
ways it's not. And I kind of use, you know,
myself when I can. But my father passed at fifty
six years old from cancer when there's no real history
of it in the family. By the time we knew
that he had it, it was already really advanced, and
from time to diagnosis till his passing was I it
was around eleven months. It wasn't even twelve full months.
(13:44):
And he's been gone for fifteen years and it's been
it's been a long time, and it seems crazy in
some ways that he's been gone so long, if you
kind of turn that on its head. Though, my father's parents,
my grandparents, were very, very very help until very recently,
and I just lost my grandfather.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
He just passed.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
I guess it was technically Thursday evening. So that's one
of the reasons i haven't been in the office much,
is because I've had some family stuff going on. But
I but my grandfather lived to be ninety five years old,
and he had a great life, and he was very,
very healthy until probably two ish three ish years ago.
And you know, it's one of those things where just
(14:27):
because he lived to be very long, my dad didn't,
his son didn't. And I don't know what life leads
for me, but I've kind of seen both now. I've
seen what a short life can look like and I've
seen what a very long life can look like. And
you know, again, I don't feel I don't feel weird
saying it, but like I have some documents in place
to try to help my family if something happens to me,
(14:48):
and I'm hoping that's a long time from now. But
at the end of the day, Tommy, to your point,
none of us know, you know, I don't think I
don't think he thought, probably when he went into the
water with his daughter that day, that he wasn't going
to come out of the water that day. But that's
just that's just how it goes. So so yeah, so obviously. Well,
(15:09):
we'll keep our eyes and ears open to see if
anything is further released about just his estate and whether
there are issues or not. I mean, the one that
came to mind, Tommy, and this is pure speculation. The
one thing that I did think of, in addition to
what you've said already is his daughter. Again, I think
she was I think she's only eight years old. So
(15:31):
you know, if he just passed everything to his wife,
which generally that's what married people do, I don't foresee
there being many issues here, but if he did leave
something specific to his daughter, that could present issues, just
with her being so young and things of potentially having
young people, you know, beneficiarid.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Money absolutely, you know, we're talking guardianship involvement. And then
even still, I mean, we don't know exactly what his
net worth was, but in the event that that could
be something really substantial, and it was a situation like
you just pointed out, Rank, there's no way of governing
(16:14):
how over what period of time that they would have
access to this money. So theoretically, by the time she
reached eighteen, no matter what life circumstances would be, she
could potentially inherit whatever that sum is now, it could
be a little or in a situation where it could
be a lot. Obviously that there's certain things that could
be as problematic. I mean, think about when anybody when
(16:35):
you were eighteen, did you really have that type of
financial maturity? Oh no, to appreciate exactly now, I mean so,
I mean it's again it's little things, but they could
have profound impact.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, I think just to put a number out there,
I think what I saw was is estimated net worth
was around six million, but I ever know I idea
if that's accurate, because again, it doesn't seem like there's
been much publicly or released about any of this. But
I mean, even if you wanted to, you know, carve off,
you know, a small percentage of that to the daughter,
(17:13):
that would be a pretty still a pretty substantial amount
of money.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Still significant money, Yeah, still significant you know, lumps some
payout to any young person. I mean that that you know,
completely a totally different story.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
And and and obviously the other thing that that now
sparks in my brain again just because because of the
conversation here is obviously now with with him having passed,
the surviving spouse should update her things. Most likely to
make sure if something happens to her, then what happens
(17:50):
to not only the daughter, but if there are the
beneficiary she wants to provide for, or what happens if
the daughter predeceases. I mean, I know, this is all
real cheery and really you know, uplifting to think about early.
Speaker 3 (18:04):
Saturday morning, but Saturday week.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
You know, these are the kind of things that, unfortunately,
we have to consider as planners. And this is the
kind of thing that that a lot of people.
Speaker 3 (18:15):
Don't spend a lot of time thinking about.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
And unfortunately it's something that you kind of have to
do some thinking about, even if the likelihood of it
happening isn't very high.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And I know, like sometimes we try to
inject some levity whenever we can, but guys like, don't
we understand this is not a glamorous topic. It's not
things that people really want to be focused on or
really want to be giving much thought to it. Even
times when we even have the clients to have, you know,
they do schedule the appointment, they do come in the door,
(18:48):
it's still difficult to talk about even though they obviously
have recognized the importance of it and they're sitting there
in the office, but it can get, you know, uncomfortable.
But sometimes, you know, we have to have those hards
discussions and we have to give it some thought because
really that's like, in a way, it's almost selfish not
(19:08):
to because we're doing the disservice to the people that
we're going to end up leaving in charge and the
loved ones we're going to leave behind because it's something
that we didn't necessarily want to face with during our lifetime,
or just because we thought, well, I'm still really young,
I shouldn't have to think about this right now, or
I don't want to think about this. This is not pleasant, right,
but we just have to think about repercussions and what
(19:31):
that could mean for our loved ones.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
Yeah, no, again, I think you're spot on here.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
My wife and I remember when we were kind of
doing some things for us, we had a long talk
about what would happen if something happened to us one
of us, both of us, and it wasn't fun, but
it was needed to be done. So that just supposed
to show you have to you have to have the talk.
So we're just at the news. So Tommy, why don't
you hang out for a little bit and we will
come back to the second half of Life Happens right
(19:57):
here after the news. The This is the second half
of Life Happens Radio, our weekly radio program where we
talk about state planning, elder love, medicaid, when I'm on
special needs, guardianships, wills, trust, all those fun things. So again,
thanks for being here, and thankfully I'm joined still by
our associate from New York City, mister Tommy Morasco. Tommy
(20:19):
still there with me.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
I'm still here, and I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Sounds great, sounds great, So why don't you give me
thirty seconds here. I'm gonna plug something for us and
then we'll get it more into some hopefully some lighter things.
I don't want to say different, but lighter hopefully, because
I think I think I can bring some some levity
to some of these things. So we are doing a
program next week on Wednesday, August sixth at the East
(20:44):
green Bush Community Library. It's going to be both us,
so Pierre O'Connor and Strauss and then are good friends
from ever Home Care Advisors, and we're doing a program
at the library called Your Home or the Nursing Home,
where we talk about different kind of planning techniques to
we have, and ultimately the goal of it is to
just spread education and things about things you can do
(21:05):
to stay in your house long term, protect your house
if something happens, and maybe some options to you know,
get your care in your house if you do need care,
or if you do need a nursing home or other
arrangements as you get older, at least protecting what you
have because at the end of the day, again we
typically know when we ask anybody do you want to
(21:27):
be home or do you want to be in a
nursing home, ninety nine point nine percent of the time
people say they want to be in their house. So
we want to walk you through how to do that.
So if you're interested in coming to see us again,
it's twelve to one thirty on Wednesday, August sixth at
the East green Bush Community Library and then we're going
(21:48):
to follow that one up in Guilderland the following Wednesday,
So Wednesday, August thirteenth, that one is starting at twelve thirty,
it goes till two, and that one's going to be
at the Guilder and YMCA UH. These are free to attend.
We are doing lunch for them. So if you want
to register for those, you can either go to our
website which is www dot here a law dot com
(22:12):
slash events and go to the events tab sign up there,
or if you want to call, if phones are more
your thing, then give the office a call which is
five one eight four and then somebody can take your
information and get your registered to come see us. So
thanks to those who have signed up already, and we
hope to see you soon. And if you're interested, sign
up and then we'll be glad to see you too.
(22:35):
So Tommy, I'm gonna give you the choice, since you're
the guest. We have two big celebrities that have passed
away that I think we need to talk about. So
one is Ozzy Osbourne, the obvious hard you know rock legend.
I think that's probably appropriate. And the other one is
Hulk Hogan, who.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I mean to a non wrestling person, he's probably the
most famous wrestler ever probably if I had to guess,
so I would. So, so who do you think who
would you prefer?
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Who's first?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
I would say simply because the information that we have
on it and how I believe a good example of
proper planning is I'd like to start with that was
your Osborne fair.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Enough so so so I'll let you do some talking here, toy,
because I don't want to hog the show.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
But I think, just to put this in context.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
I think I became most aware of him because of
the Osborne Show, which which was not recent, which seems
crazy because I feel like it just like blew up
and it was just everywhere for a little while and
I never releast watched it, Like I don't I watched
some of it because I feel like you had to
(23:52):
just to kind of know why everyone was talking about them.
But my memory of him, yeah, my memory, my memory
of him or him just like just screaming gibberish at
Sharon laughing about it. That's true, And I don't know,
and I don't know if that was like how he
was depicted throughout the whole show, but that's kind of
my memory of him, just from that.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah, they kind of the Yeah, he was like he
was almost almost like like a characature essentially, like they
almost made him like a cartoonish character, which is funny
because I'm sure with the generation who grew up with
him and knew him otherwise obviously, I mean, his personality
was always kind of that fun and silly, kind of,
(24:36):
you know, persona, But obviously in his later years it
was a it was a different