Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Welcome to Life Happens. Are you prepared?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is our weekly radio program for baby bloomers and
their families where we address the challenges we all face
as we age. We talk about aging as a lifestyle,
the issues that must be confronted, and the careful planning
that's required to avoid crises in the future. Life Happens
Radio will provide you with tools to educate and prepare
yourself for events like retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning for nursing, home and home care, special needs, wills
(00:26):
and trusts, planning for an untimely death, and resolving disputes
in and out of court. I am Aaron Connor from
Pure O'Connor and Strauss, joined by my most frequent radio compadre,
mister Frank Kemmick.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Are there.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining us. I feel
like I haven't done this in a while.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I feel that, Yeah, I mean, and I feel like
I haven't done it with you in a while. Yeah,
which is also strange because we by far have done
this the most of when I'm on the radio, I've
done this more with you than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So so we're going to leave baseball aside, because you know,
I think that's the best thing to do right now,
go Liberty. Yeah, I I mean we all agree with
that things sure, okay, no, no, no rooting interest in
(01:15):
that for me.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
So why not we could board the Giant season probably now, yes,
or shortly shortly coming up probably yes.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah. I don't know who Liz Frank is, but I
don't like her. Keeps keeps just attacking.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Athletes leave people's feet alone.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, exactly, it's a weird foot fetish.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
But anyway, I think maybe maybe we've gone too far. Now.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's fine, it's early in the show.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So yes, things can be going better for the Giants.
But that's a common statement for the last ten years.
I mean I do. I do have a number of
friends who are Jets fans, so watching them like think
that they were going to be awesome and not being that.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Well, they have a new receipt.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yes, that's gonna fix everything.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You heard it here first first, folks, right, Jets?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Fine, Yeah, Eric undefeated rest of the year, they were
one player away.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Now that they have him. Yes, I did see. Uh,
I did see a lot of memes this week of
people like faking that the that the Jets were going
to sign other former old Packers like like Jordy Nelson
or Forrest Gregg Edi Eddie Lacy. I mean that there
were there were some good ones part star before going
(02:34):
back that far, at least, like people that played with
Aaron Rodgers and just people that you hadn't I.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Mean, we could go like David Whitehurst, Lynn Dickey. I mean, uh,
you know, don Magic Man Mkowski.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
That's I mean, I don't know if you want to
go back that far.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But Tony Mandris, Tony Mandris, he's probably not doing anything.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He's probably available.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So unfortunately, I just don't forget sports players.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Know, I know, obviously you know you know I was
thinking at Dorsey Levins right right, Robert Brooks.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yep, I'm on green Yeah, good running back.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So anyway, drafted him like for for like a string
of years in my fantasy football team if you go
back enough.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So anyway, we don't actually talk about sports on the show.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
We could, though, that's the thing, you really could.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I don't think that other people. It would be easy
for us, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
But what we're really talking about are being prepared, right,
I mean I know that you know when Lewis pointing
at you on TV. That's what he's telling you to do, right,
And you know, I'm sorry that he's pointing.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
It's effective.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I've asked him not to point. But here we are,
so that just doesn't happen by itself. No, there's steps you.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Need to take. I mean, I feel like we say
it a lot when we talk about just planning in general,
it's like the state has a plan for you.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yes, and it's to take all of your money.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Generally it's better to split up your money in ways
that you probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Want, right.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I mean, I'm just bitter because we just passed October fifteenth.
And you know when you when you own a business,
you generally are on extension, right because you don't get
your documents and then so you usually end up paying
some more money on October fifteenth.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And you know that may or may not have happened
to me.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I think you're really salty about it.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
No, not at all. So, but not just taxes. Right, So.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
If the state can get your money, excuse me, they're
going to get it. And one of the ways that
they they one of the ways that you can lose
money you've earned over a lifetime and saved and paid
taxes on is not preparing.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And we unfortunately watch it happen every day. You know,
Frank does all of our medicaid applications currently although he
has a.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Understudy.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yes that's true, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And has Dylan done the radio yet?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
No? Not yet?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, So I'm sure Dylan will be in the rotation
at some point.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
We will, we will throw him onto the rotation, but
not yet.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, So you know that's important.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And we're doing those applications many times for people who
haven't planned, right, sometimes for people.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Who have planned. Yeah, right, I don't know what do
you think to divide is on that.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Not fifty to fifty? I don't think unfortunately, right, I
think it's weird in my brain. I don't know if
this is actually the case, but in my brain, I
feel like if we do home care applications, it's for
people that have were more likely to have worked with
us previous and maybe did some planning where maybe they
did a trust and now like because they did a trust,
now they're they're basically eligible or there's very little we
(06:00):
have to do to make them eligible. Right Nursing home
I think it's much less likely that they've done planning
five years in advance and they're through. That doesn't always
mean that they haven't done any planning, right.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Sometimes it's partial, right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Sometimes it's we just did something and now we have
to tear the plan down. I have had clients recently
where we've had to do something similar to that. And
it's not that we've never had people that said, hey,
we came in five years ago, we've made it through
the period. Now mom or dad, now they need the help,
and now we're through the period, and now we're good,
and we're so glad that we did. We'd like to
hear more of that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I think we're kind of in a little bit
of a pocket for that, right.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, we've worked in the last I don't know, five
to seven years with more younger people.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
All right, So I've been at this for a while.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
When I first started, it really was mostly older people
coming in. And I'm I mean, my definition of older
might be different than certainly my children. Right, My children
tell me once I turn fifty, I'm old.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Oh, they were already trying to put you now.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I don't know that they probably we wanted money or something,
but like for right now, I'm not old yet.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Fair enough, but.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Older meaning like seventy five up, which many times is
is later than you really should be starting.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I mean, it's later and you should be starting.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But some of those people made out okay, meaning that
they made it through the five years, but many of them.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Didn't, say, I mean, I've seen plenty of people in
their mid to later seventies even early eighties that are
living very full, fulfilling, good lives. Yes, but I don't
know in their nineties, I said, but I don't know
how often that is like the gamble you want to.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Take, right, Yeah, I mean, if if we ever had
like a an intern right statistician, had be really interesting
to find out how many people did the plan and
then made it through. Yeah, that's true, right, Yeah, But
we're never going to be able to do that, no,
because we barely have any time to get to the
work we have in front of us.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But you know, we could put it on the back
burner for you hypothetical down the road future.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, aspirational goal for twenty forty.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, yeah, I thought you're gonna say, it would be
great if we had like an eighty year old intern
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That's where I thought, now, but now I don't think
that would be great.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I was I was curious you were taking that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
It would be like a blue from old school m
you know, yeah, yep, probably can't have a raging kegger.
But anyway, I digress.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So, but when people do get out in front of
the problem, right, and and sometimes again it's not a complete.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Completely getting out in front of it.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And what I mean by that is we meet with people,
we put their home into a trust, they own maybe
other property. If they had this account that they never touch,
we might put that in their life insurance with cash value,
depending on where they are wise and health wise. Right,
nobody ever gives up all of their money. They shouldn't,
(09:00):
and I'd agree one hundred percent they should not, right.
But so no one ever knows when they're gonna need
a nursing home really either, right, not unless.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
It's like imminent. And that's a much different conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So, you know, even a lot of times we're leaving
like one hundred thousand dollars outside of a trust if
people are older, right, if they're younger, we might be
leaving much more than that. Yeah, and so that might
be the risk, right, But Frank, if they're married, is
that really much.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Of a risk?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Not really. If we leave around one hundred thousand out,
if one of them needs medicaid, we can shelter all
one hundred thousand between what the medicaid spouse is allowed
to have that's roughly thirty one thousand dollars these days,
and then the community spouse can have roughly seventy five
ish thousand dollars. Again, really, no questions asked there, So
in a lot of respects, No, you're not really putting
much on the table by doing that, which I think
(09:55):
is honestly still one of the most surprising things, like
when we have consultations with families is letting them know, like,
while you can't have tons and tons and tons of money,
you probably don't need to be impoverished to the level
that you're thinking, correct, unless you've come in and you've
gotten into you know, talk with us or gotten other
information from people that actually know how all of this works.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Right, So, I mean, there's always a solution, right, Some
solutions are better than others, right, Usually the further out
in front they are, the better off we're going to be.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean I had a recent consultation with a
family where there it's a very simple situation. It's his husband, wife,
one kid there, one child, does not have any children,
so there's no grandchildren. And they've got a house, they've
got retirement accounts, and they've got like a brokerage account
and some life insurance. But the brokerage account they've got
like one point five million dollars in it. Yeah, it's
(10:46):
a significant amounty, right, And I said, ultimately, it's going
to be up to you guys, as a family, to
have a family discussion with not only yourselves, but probably
your financial advisor to figure out how much you want
to front load the trust with, right, because you know,
mom and dad are probably a little bit past where
we'd want them to be age wise. They are having
(11:08):
starting to have some health issues, but they don't require
any hands on care or assistance now. And you know,
not to be crass about it, but they only have
one child, right, right, and he doesn't have any children,
so that it's not like we're worried about leaving a
lot of money for lots of beneficiaries, right. They're bigger problem, honestly,
is what happens if their son predeceases them, that's a
(11:29):
much bigger concern.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, in a lot of ways in a situation like that,
look and not saying that they want to just throw
money out the window.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
We're not saying that.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
But if you had to spend some two hundred thousand
dollars of one point five million dollars.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Right, it's not terrible, right, And that was kind of
my point because I tried to walk them through like
all the scenarios, and there are many, and you change
one fact and then the recommendation may change. But essentially
it's like, if you guys front load the trust with
just call it a million dollars, right, if you leave
five hundred thousand outside, plus you're checking account. If then
(12:04):
something happens, unless it happens almost immediately, we're probably going
to be in a position where we're going to be
probably private paying through the remainder of the five year period,
exactly because you know, while they both are in relatively
good health, they both are having similar health issues, and
they're both of similar age. So the one of the
other options is to completely tear that plan down, revoke
(12:26):
the trust, give it all to the spouse who's well
doesn't require medicaid, But then you destroy all that time
that you've accrued towards getting through the five year period
and when they're sitting on that level of assets to
private pay Again, would it be fun to privately pay
for care for several hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
No?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
No, But they have plenty of money to do it,
and then they could fully protect everything that's been in
that trust for five years. And that's if they leave
five hundred thousand. Now I don't think they'll do that.
I think it'll probably be more like between one to
maybe three hundred thousand based on what they were saying,
But that's ultimately going to be there choice, and that's
one of the important things to you know, to realize
when it comes to this, we are going to make
(13:05):
recommendations based upon what we've seen and just the current
environment of what care looks like and what it costs.
But ultimately this is gonna be mom and Dad's decision
of how much to put in that trust, and it
can always be amended and changed with money being able
to fly out of that trust that they needed, or
more additional funds put in if they underfund it, so
they leave themselves a lot of flexibility.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
All right, well, I think that's a good place to
take our first break.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
This is Life Happens Radio. When we come back, we'll
be talking about more medicaid issues. Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
piro'connor and Trouss. Welcome back to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Piro connor and Trouss joined by Frank Hemmick. Still here,
mister Medicaid as I refer to them, yeah you do.
I mean that's like the nicest way I refer to them,
but it's still the way one of the ways I refer.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
To It's still a family show.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah right. I mean who could guess what it could
be with alliteration with Frank? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But you know, hey, whatever, anyway, we have been talking
about planning and as we you know, if you listen
to this show at all, is that.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Frank is our medicaid guy. I mean he does other things.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Too, right, but started doing strictly just medicaid and never
really never really stopped and just sort of expanding out
to do other things exactly. That's the way to put that.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
So, you know, I think generally speaking, the best way
to talk about these is real life.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Examples, and that's what Frank was doing. And I think
you had one you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, I kind of had a very difficult console earlier
this week, and we actually aren't even through kind of
coming up with a full plan for this. I just
kind of wanted to pick up bits and pieces because
I think the listeners could benefit from from just kind
of hearing of the pitfalls of other people. Right. So,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna keep some facts out of
(14:59):
this because it and they're not all relevant. But there's
at least two different issues at play here of what
of why this is going to be a difficult case
to solve and get a good result for. So one
is going right to the topic we've been talking about,
and that's planning and planning early so on. One issue
we have is that this client, he and his wife,
(15:21):
they did an ear of vocable trust, but they didn't
do it five years ago, and now wife is in
need of nursing home care and she's been in the
nursing home since I believe the right around the beginning
of the year. So husband's been private paying for a
nursing home right from approximately January until now, so it's
you know, ten ish months of private pay. You know,
look at it, cost of cares about sixteen seventeen thousand
(15:44):
dollars a month, so you know, we're talking one hundred
and sixty one hundred and seventy thousand dollars that he's
paid like thus far, which is obviously not a small amount, right,
which would say, which clearly is a lot of money
because she is not on Medicaid currently. So so one
one kind of angle of weeds we have to get
through is getting through trying to figure out what we
want to do with this trust, because it's it's decently
(16:07):
through the five years, but it's not, it's not all
the way through. So one option is to private pay
through the remainder right, which there's enough money to probably
do that. Other option is to revoke it, put it
back with the husband and kind of destroy the period
of time that they've built up. But husband himself is
in his later eighties, so you know, destroying it and
(16:28):
giving him everything back is an ideal either, because then
we're putting all that money at risk that if something
happens to him, just like it's already happened to his wife.
Now that's all back on the table, right and at risk,
you know, for if something happens to him. So that's
one issue we see that you know, relatively commonly. I
would think, especially again if you were older when you
(16:49):
started the process, like, there's at least the chance you're
not going to get through the five years and sure
we're gonna have to talk about this.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Right, that's I mean, that's frankly one of the reasons
we do the show, yeah, is still let people know that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
You need to do it earlier. Then you probably think.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, so, I mean, it's great that they did something.
The unfortunate part is they probably waited longer than they
should have. So so that's kind of problem. One problem
too is they have made other gifts in the past
five years, and you know, again without disclosing any real
personal information. You know, they they've made gifts to their
(17:25):
to their child, to their grandchildren for college. You know,
they they wanted to be good grandparents.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Things things that grandparents typically want to do.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, just everyday stuff like nothing, nothing crazy, right, It's
not like they went out and just started throwing money around,
not being uh, you know, foolish with their money.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I would say, well, frankly, you can get away with
being foolish with your money if you spend it on yourself.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's kind of like being a little bit of the
slap in the face.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah. I mean, if they if they had gone out
and bought a ferrari, you know, it was their ferrari,
it's fine. But but no, unfortunately they didn't do that. No,
they were doing things like paying for their grandchildren's college,
you know, doing nice grandparent things that most I think
grandparents would like to do if they could for their grandchildren.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And we have guidance really on five twenty nines, right,
which I feel like for a long time we really
didn't have.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, And that's and that's kind of the third that's
the third piece of the puzzle. Right, So we have
we have trust that's not through five years. We have
other gifts not within or within the five year period.
And the money is not there to be returned because
one way of curing that would be for a person
who got the money to give it all back or
give some of it back, and we don't think that's
realistic in this case. Correct, So that's kind of problem too.
(18:36):
And then problem three is that they have a big
five twenty nine that they've been contributing to for a
long time for their grandchildren, again trying to be nice,
trying to put money aside to help their grandchildren go
to college. You know, the last thing I want to
say is that that you should not want to do that,
that you should not want to help out your grandchildren.
You know that that doesn't seem like that is the
(18:57):
correct take to get from the story, right. The problem
with it is for medicaid purposes, the Medicaid rules count
five to twenty nins is being an asset of the
holder of the account. So in this case, it's it's grandpa,
it's the well person in the scenario. So he's got
one hundred and sixty thousand, give or take in his
five twenty nine plan that he could withdraw that money from.
(19:20):
At any time. He can take that money back, give
it back to himself, and take the money back. One
of the problems is with five twenty nine, and now
we are not financial advisors, but with five twenty nins
is you know, if you withdraw money for something that's
a non qualified expense, so typically that would be something
like for education purposes from the beneficiary, you get taxed
(19:42):
on that money because one of the benefits of a
five twenty nine is it's growing tax free. That's why
people like to set them up. So we've got like
significant growth in this account because it's been growing for
twenty years or however long they've had it. So there's
going to be income tax consequences to Grandpa pulls all
the money back out, which clearly we don't really want
(20:03):
to do if we don't have.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
To, right, But unfortunately in this situation like this, that's
one of the smaller problems.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Right, that's I mean, but that might be what has
to happen other options or other issue with that also
is that you know, the grandparent or sorry, the grandchildren
and their families were kind of plant making some of
their decisions based on this money being available to help
them pay for college because they know that it's there.
That's the whole point of again why the accounts were
(20:31):
set up. So now again the way that at least
that I'm being that I'm interpreting all this thus far,
we might have some more research to do on it.
But if you have a five twenty nine seat of
for the beneficiary, who is your grandchild. And then you
distribute money that's technically yours for the benefit of your grandchild.
That's a gift, right, that's a trans Yeah, absolutely right.
(20:51):
So if they use the money for the intended purpose,
then I think medicaid is going to penalize him or
his wife for eligible purposes for using the money for
the purpose they set it aside for right, And it
seems like a lot of that doesn't really make a
lot of sense in some ways, but that's again that's
how I'm interpreting the rules for now. The unfortunate part
(21:14):
of all this is, you know, if you fix one problem,
you have another one, right, And kind of the last
thing that I want to throw out there, just because Aaron,
you and I talked about it earlier this week, is
I think I at least have an idea of how
some of this could be avoided with the five twenty nine. Obviously,
again we are not financial advisors. I would strongly want
(21:38):
you to talk to financial people to make sure that
this jives with your financial plan if you're working with somebody,
But I think in this instance, the safer thing would
have been for you know, father or someone else to
have established the five twenty nine for the grandchildren right,
not have the grandparents own it right right, and then
had tried them to it rrect because if that had happened, right,
(21:59):
just to show the different right now, the issue is
we have one hundred and sixty thousand dollars of asset
for Grandpa, which is a medicaid problem. If they if
they had contributed the amount of money that they had
put in the five twenty nines over the past five years,
just to an account that maybe their son owned or
their daughter owned, right somebody that was directly tied to
the grandchildren, they'd have like a twelve thousand dollars gift problem,
(22:23):
which is like one month in eligibility, which is again
is it ideal? Of course not. Is it backbreaking to
the plan. It is not right. We could deal with that,
but that's not the problem that we have. So here's
my take home for this for the listeners is if
you're if you're older, if you're grandparents, I'm not saying
you don't have five twenty ninees. I'm just saying it
(22:44):
might make sense to maybe have you not own them
or have them owned by a trust because I believe
that I have had a client or two that have
five twenty nines within a trust. So you could, you know,
put the money in a trust and then slowly seed
the five twenty nine within the trust. I think you
get the same intended result there. So they're there are
other options to use five twenty nine and use them appropriately.
(23:04):
I just don't think if you're older, you want to
have them sitting in your own name without knowing that
if you wannd them in a medicaid situation, you're looking
at this potentially right.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So, I mean, you can do a lot of things
right financially, but unfortunately they can be kind of wrong
for a medicaid situation.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And it's all of this is counterintuitive.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, And I was spitballing this idea with a financial
advisor friend of mine a few months ago, saying like,
I haven't seen this case yet, but I'm guessing there's
one out there.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We knew that there was going to be a five
to twenty nine problem coming, we just didn't know exactly when.
So we are coming up to the news and so.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We're going to take our midway break. When we come back,
we're going to talk about medicaid issues maybe what we
see in the future, although I don't didn't bring my
crystal ball, so I'm not one hundred percent certain of that.
But this is Life Happens Radio, and when we'll be
back after this, Welcome back to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Frank Kemming of Pure O'Connor and Strouss. We are talking medicaid. Nope, nope,
(24:06):
don't turn a dial. It's better than you think, it's
more interesting than you think. It may apply to you
at some point or so when you know, as we say,
Medicaid is really the middle class lifeline. I say this
all the time, and it's true.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
My grandmother, my dad's mom, would say, if you don't
have any money, don't worry about it. They'll take care
of you, which is true. If you have all the
money in the world, you don't have to worry about.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It because you can pay for it, right. But it's
the people in the middle who are going to get squeezed.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, I wasn't on it for very long. I unfortunately
got kind of double booked with something. But there was
a consultation that some of the associates in the city
office were having and a woman came in because her
spouse was in need of care and she wanted to
talk about whether medicaid made sense or not. And once
we kind of put all the pieces together, we were
realizing that even with her diminished, you know, capacity to
(25:03):
continue to run her business, even if she got out
of the business that she was in, it could continue
to function without her and she was still going to
probably clear about five hundred thousand dollars of profit or
income from the business. It's like, you don't you don't
need medicaid, right if you make that kind of money,
because what you'd have to do to get on.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It would we have to burn so much money.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
And that was the point, right, that was literally the point.
It was like, could we do it? We could, but
the hoops that you would put on kind of the
plan to make it work doesn't make sense. Wouldn't make sense,
Like you'd go crazy trying to kind of fit within
the confines of the system. Right, which in that respect,
she has lots of money. They can use it for
her care without going to medicaid and she can pay
for stuff and should be okay.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, And that's when you hear like people talk about
millionaires on Medicaid, right, right. I mean I'm not saying
that wealthy wealthy. I mean, look, a million dollars is
a lot of money. I think there's like a about
what wealthy actually means, right of course. I mean, if
you have a million dollars in your retirement account, it's great,
but it's not necessarily wealth that's available to you.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Say what happens if you have three million dollars because
you bought the right building in New York City in
that but that's really all that you have.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Right, right, Like it's not liquid, right, and if you
sell it, you're going to have a tax problem.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So I'm not saying that a million dollars is a
little bit of money, but just a million dollars depending
on how it is. If it's in a brokerage account, yeah,
you're you're doing great, right, But if it's that's your
retirement savings. In today's world where fewer and fewer people
have a defined benefit program, right like a pension.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That was gonna be My thought was, you know, it's
not only how much do you have in your accounts,
but it's what does your income look like? What do
your expenses look like? Right, because you could have a
lot of money built up and then knowing you're going
to have to start eating into that pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Isn't that the Pat Patrick doing?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I make a lot, but I also spend a lot
something like that, So poor Patrick.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah. Patrick Ewing was my favorite nick growing up.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Mine too didn't go well for him most of the time,
Michael Jordan's.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And even when he retired, they still couldn't do it.
I know, I'll never forget that game being interrupted.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
By the OJ chase. Oh really, yep, the finals game.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
They took the finals game off the air to watch
a white Bronco slowly traverse the highway like it wouldn't
be on other channels, right, come on, I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So that was ninety four, had to be.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Right, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I still remember the morning I was going to school
with my buddy and his like Volkswagen Rabbit, which was
very loud for a small car, and that came across
the radio that you know, Oja was wanted for murder.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So yeah, I would not have known who OJ.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Was at that time, not even from commercials. No, not
for naked gun.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
No. I don't want to say how old I was
at the time, but that's.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Well, I know, but I mean he was in a
lot of Hurts commercials. I think it was Hurts, it
was rental cars. I don't remember, Yeah, no, particularly what
it was.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
And so you know, anyway, now I would know, right,
but now I probably know who he is because of that.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Well, right, I'm sure people of your generation and younger
that's the only one.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, I mean, like after the fact, I learned like
who he was and why he was so well known
before all that.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But I mean probably kids in Buffalo would know who
he was, right, I would hope. I mean, he did
play for San Francisco for a couple of years at
the end of his career, but it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's what running backs do, thankfully, I'm not doing that
just so Claire, right, I'm not going to do like
the the Franco Harris and go play for the Seahawks
or the Tony dor Sat and go play for the
Denver Broncos.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I'm pure O'Connor and Strauss to the end.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You might need to giants, might need a left tackle. Yeah,
I'm just saying, Yeah, it's not running back but.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
No, if I were playing it, I don't. I think
it'd be called walking back or like you know, I
it certainly would not be a running back jogging back.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He's just the back. Yeah, he just stands there. He
stays in that back. He stays in the back. That
defies a cotter's football. Stay at the back.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
There you go. Never had speed, speed or jumping ability,
is not was not blessed with.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That's all right, So.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Anyway, I don't need medicaid however currently, No, even though
I have no speed or jumping a.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Bill, despite what your daughters say, that is.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Not actually activities of daily living there as far.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
As running or jumping. No, right, no, not off topic.
Weirdly enough, I read an article relatively recently that they
said statistically, so I'm making up the number, but I
think it was around this. I think it was like
eighty between eighty and eighty five percent of people once
you passed. I think it was the age of thirty
(30:17):
five will never sprint again in their lifetime.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So one of my buddies, who was in his forties,
was not happy with how his Pop Warner team was practicing,
and he said, I'm still faster than all of you guys,
and you know, pulled a hammy like four or five steps.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Into his I say it did. Did sprint didn't go? Well?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, I mean it was straight out of like a
comedy movie. But it was real, So I would not
even attempt to sprint.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
No, I'm just saying I just thought it was shocking
of just like like, if you think about it, it's like, well,
why would you have to write barring like public and
urgency that kind of thing. Like I can't think of
a reason why you'd be forced to right, or you can.
You can choose to right, you can become a runner,
you could work out, you can do things to stay active.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, I'd probably just be like, okay, guy, just murder me. Fine,
I'm not gonna get away. Let's just let's just those
extra three minutes of me sweating aren't making a difference.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
So well, now, if we're ever trapped in a horror movie,
I want to be with with Aaron because now I
just had to run faster than him.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, I know I can.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I mean, yeah, I'm certain you can do that.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah, I've become a runner as time has gone on.
I know, I could anyway, but like if you're just
gonna give up.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I literally can't think of anything I dislike more than running,
Like I will clench my teeth when I run, Like
my jaw will hurt after run.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I love it, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
So, I mean I didn't mind playing basketball, like with
there was a sport where it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Was a point, but like running for running, No, thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I'm sure. I'm sure you're not alone. I'm sure lots
of people dislike I'm I'm sure how much I like
it either. Remember, I just have decided that something I
want to do to stay healthy.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So I feel like this decision was reinforced to me
when we had a medicaid consult oh, where a guy
had fallen running a marathon in his fifties. Yeah, and
had injured his head and he was in bad shape.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, now that you now, that you bring that up,
I do occasionally tell that story. Yeah. The guy who
called us the son, I think was younger than me.
I mean not substantially. I think it was within two
or three years, but I mean I was newer at
that time, so I was okay, let's call me, let's
call it thirty give or take sure. So he was
(32:39):
probably twenty seven to twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, I think he was because his father was not, I.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Mean like he was. He was clearly an adult, you know,
clearly was capable of trying to help his father. And
it was one of the rare instances where I felt
like we kind of wanted to know what had led
to that circumstance, because obviously, when you do what we do, yeah,
I could have been accident, don't You don't always want
to know how the things have happened, right, But just
(33:05):
to know that somebody of his father's age had wound
up in that circumstance was like, you know, was this
a condition? Had something happened? Wasn't an accident? And yeah,
it's that he had been literally in the middle of
running a marathon apparently was you know, dehydrated during the race,
passed out and hit his head on like a curb
or something, and that a traumatic brain injury, and clearly
(33:28):
was not the same afterwards.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So so I will avoid that story because I will
not be running on purpose.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
But I mean, so there's one of those situations that
just comes out of the blue, right, there's no planning
for that situation other than having a health care proxy and.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Power of attorney, right, Yeah, I mean we say it
all the time, and I think he did. Actually, yeah,
I think the sun was the power of attorney. I
think that's literally why or one of the reasons why
we were talking to him.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Because it would have been a guardianship otherwise, right.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
And I don't remember that being discussed. And clearly if
we needed.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
To know he's a little bit DOWNSTA, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You would have been doing that because you do all
the guardian hips. Yeah, so he clearly had done some planning.
But you know, it's not always a h it's not
always an age factor here, Like you know, in that instance,
he was he was he clearly had to be pretty healthy.
He was running a marathon, it was. So it's not
like he wasn't young or he wasn't healthy, right, And
(34:24):
still something unexpected happened that had him to be in
a state where he was no longer in the in
the position to handle his affairs. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So, I mean we were making fun a little bit
of my hate of running, right, But like staying in
good shape is obviously important too to avoid long term care, right,
I mean, it's not there's no one thing that says
(34:51):
you're not going to because we've seen very healthy people
developed dementia. Right, We've seen I've seen I don't want
to speak for Franks, I've seen a lot of heavy
drinkers develop FTD dementia.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
You're probably right. I don't think I've.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
People who've said, yeah, their kids have said to me
they were a heavy drinker, right, can't I can't say
that I knew yet?
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Right, that's fair? Yep. Well, that and like kind of
playing not saying something differently, just or not saying something different,
just saying it differently. Like, I've seen plenty of what
I would think looked like healthier people get sick, right,
But I don't think that I've seen what I would
at least what outwardly would appear to be a very
(35:35):
unhealthy person live substantially long into like their later eighties,
nineties and even past that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
That's all right, agreed.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So I mean, there's no be all end all, but
people who stay physically active and stay mentally active, whether
that's working, which I'm not a big advocate of working
late in life. That's just my personal feeling on that.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I have said many times. I've said it even recently
because people people have been asking just in general, like
when they're working with us, of what happens if, like
the firm isn't here, right, if we do all our
planning with you, what happens at the firm isn't here
very very And I obviously I say that, but I say,
you know, at some point, hopefully I'm not going to
be here any longer, right, because I don't want to
work until I'm very very old. At some point I
(36:27):
will be done and I won't have a problem walking
away whenever.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
That is yeah, me saying, right, Lou will be working
because Lou loves working.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, they're like Peter Strauss clearly loves working because he
is still working, right and he's in his eighties, and
that's good. That's clearly what he wants to do. I
will not make that choice.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
All right.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So we're coming up on our last break here this
is Life Happens Radio. I'm Aaron Connor from Pierre O'Connor Strauss,
and when we come back, we're going to answer some
common medicaid questions that we get all the time. And
if Frank gets anything wrong, we're going to have a
very stern conversation.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Off the air. All right, look forward to that Life
Happens Radio. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to
Life Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Aaron Connor, Frank Hemming, pure O'Connor and Straus your estate planning,
medicaid planning, guardianship trust and will contest attorneys.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Hopefully not really as much as the last stuff we'd
prefer not to do. Yeah, those kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
But that's if you need me, That's where I'm at. Yeah,
So I often say people, I'm sorry that you need me,
but you do need me. I literally usually not a
great scenario.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So I literally told the room of financial advisors I
did a program for for some last this week, and
I literally told them, you'd much rather have to have
your clients meet Aaron because they're doing a power of attorney,
rather than if they don't, the family has to go
meet him to do a guardianship. YEA literally told a
room full of people's true.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So we have a bunch of common questions, right, and
so a lot of them revolve around the home, because
that tends to be a larger asset, yes, and an
asset that's not particularly easy to deal with in a
lot of situations. Some of that's because it's full.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Of stuff, right, that's true.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I mean that's often an issue. Yeah, and it has
deferred maintenance, right, that's often an issue. So people often
want to sell the house or wonder if it's the
(38:44):
right move. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, it's easily one of the more common questions we
get when it comes to the house. Right, So biggest
thing when you sell the house, because I think in
this context it's usually are we going to lose Medicaid
because we sold the house? And the like pretty much
any other answer when it comes to a lot of
this stuff, it depends, Right, is the house and a trust.
(39:09):
If the house isn't a trust and it's an irrevocable
Medicaid asset protection trust that you've done to protect your house,
then no, the trust can sell your house. The proceeds
going the trust, and now the trust is protecting the
proceeds just like the house. No, by all means sell
the house. If it's mom and dad live in the house,
or just mom just dad, whatever. If they live in
the house and then they sell the house, well, you know,
(39:31):
for Medicaid purposes, your house is exempt as an asset
as long as you, your spouse or disabled child like
live in the house. Right, but if you sell your house, well,
now your house is now cash, and cash isn't exempt.
So if selling your house now gives you three hundred
thousand dollars, four hundred thousand dollars, whatever the proceeds are,
(39:53):
then you're on Medicaid. Yeah, that's going to be a
problem unless you turn around and then you do a
trust or you do some other planning to get that
money away from you. You might lose eligibility for a
short period of time if the county happens to be
looking at what you're doing. And you know, I feel
like this is appropriate to say. You know, if we
have these look backs next year that are coming from
(40:14):
home care, we can't potentially just flip that into a
trust like we could now, Like right now, we literally
take those proceeds, throw them in a trust that they
weren't already there, right, and you continue on with you know,
minimal interruptions for things. Right, if they do institute the
home care lookback like has been rumored for you know
since twenty twenty, can't just flip it into a trust, right, right,
then that gets more difficult. And then we've got to
(40:35):
figure out do we have any other options to keep
beyond benefits. So quick answer is it depends. Longer answer
is there's usually going to be a way that you
can keep it. It's just a matter of what you
have to do right.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
And you know, again challenges with life estates. Don't do
a life estate, don't.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Do a life estate. Yeah, we talk about that, I
think pretty routinely when we talk about this topic just
in general, about how if you have a life estate
interest in the house sells, you're owed a portion of
those funds back. Again, if you're on medicaid, you don't
usually want to get money unexpectedly back in your name
because can give you too much. Obviously, some of that
(41:10):
is going to depend on the value of the house
and the age of the person that has the life
estate interests. So you know, as you get older, your
life estate interests will get will get less a valuable right.
But if you do it, you know, if you did
a life estate deed in your sixty sixty five and
you sell the house pretty quickly, that's going to be
a pretty substantial amount of money now coming back to you.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
So and no capital gains tax exemption on a to
the remainder people generally speaking.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah, say, unless unless they're living in the residents too,
which you know we have had that is, we have
had that happen, but more often than not, the kids
are not living at home any longer, right, and now
they do not get the capital gains exclusion, which mom
and dad would just get it was just their house.
So yeah, their tax reasons also not to do a
life estate.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
So one of the other common questions, right, is if
dad goes to a nursing home, will mom lose all
of his income?
Speaker 1 (42:11):
It depends, right, but always just depends.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
I know, I'm just saying like it's it's I wish
it was easier in some ways, but.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Be a very boring radio.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, yep, the answer is yes, it depends. So in
this instance, we have a spouse, right, We're assuming there's
a spouse, So we have one spouse in the nursing home,
one spouse not in the nursing home. So what we
need to look at is what is the income of
the spouse that's at home or at least in the community, right,
because they get a spousal income allowance themselves about thirty
(42:43):
eight hundred dollars. I'm rounding for the listener's sake, right,
it's about thirty eight hundred dollars. So if you if
well spouse has income above thirty eight hundred dollars by themselves,
just between their social Security, their pension, their IRA distributions,
their interest and dividends off their accounts, you know, whatever
it is that they have. If they have income above
(43:05):
thirty eight hundred, yes, then there would be no money
that then would be saved from the nursing home spouse.
It would all go to the nursing home as his
Medicaid payment. Conversely, if she's got say it's one thousand
dollars a month of monthly income, say she just gets
social Security, and it's a wife in this context who
never you know worked, you know, was a stay at
(43:26):
home spouse. If she's got one thousand dollars a month
of her own income, then she would get twenty one
hundred dollars approximately of husbands that would bring her up
to the thirty eight hundred a month getting her to
her allowance, and then dad's remaining income would then go
to the nursing home if there is any remaining. We've
had cases where that would wipe out dad's income. Nursing
home gets nothing, take that nursing home. Yeah, they I mean,
(43:50):
I don't want to say like they're mad, but I
mean like they get it, Like it's not ideal for them.
But you know, if we have low income people, there's
usually a way that if the if the one spouse
is alive and well and in the community, you might
be able to save all of the income between the
two of them.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Well, right, And that's what we often say that this
is an incentive to keep people at home. Right, Yes,
if it can be done, is that you get to
keep all of the income, then yes, And if there's
going to be a loss of significant amount of income,
that's that's a good solution to get around it, assuming
it's going to work for other reasons.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oftentimes we're talking about situations where because of dementia, people
are not themselves anymore.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Yeah, yep, or just could be like I've had I've
had a few clients lately we've kind of wanted to
start thinking home care, but like their loved one is
just they're going to be a two person assist right, like,
no matter what at this point, Yes, and that's going
to be just it's going to make home care essentially
impossible or it's going to be very very costly. So
(44:53):
there are circumstances that unfortunately just kind of take home
care out of the equation unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I mean we say all the time that they're never
going to give you two people.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, right, yep, they're not trying not trying to laugh
at the comments. We're having enough trouble finding one.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Right, exactly right.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
If we could find two, that'd be fantastic, But they're
not going to pay two, right, And if you can
find two, you're already ahead of the game because a
lot of people can't find one, or they can't find
you know, maybe more than one or two.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Right, And even in a situation where we're kind of
doing hybrid right pay one Medicaid pay one, yes, right,
we would have extreme difficulty just seven staffing that case.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, And it's not going to be a savings at
that point, because no, the the private pay for the
second person is going to be probably and I mean
if it's a full twenty four to seven scenario, yeah,
it's going to be roughly just as much, if not
more than than a nursing home. Correct, mean, if you
want to look at it in a monetary perspective.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
And it may not actually be right. I mean, it
may be safer for that person to be in.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
A nursing home. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
And geography plays into this more than I think people
realize too, meaning that are you near a hospital, are
you near an ambulance service?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Are you remote? Right?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah? I mean we we do a lot of work
in the North Country, you know, as soon as we
know it's a North Country consult it's harder to do
home care.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
There unless your kids are whomever, You've got people lined
up to.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Be exactly that's I mean, like if you're going to
rely on outside people, whether it's agency people, friends, you know,
church members, whatever, right, unless you kind of have this
stable of people ready, willing and able to help you. Right.
The more remote you live, the harder this is going
to be.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Right, here's an easy one. This one might be a
yes or no question. Then some elaboration. All right, you're ready, yep?
Should I spend down my assets before applying for medicaid?
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Generally no? Right? Right. The elaboration is, well, how much
are we talking about? At least that in my brain,
that's that's where that's going right, right.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I mean the answer is don't do that, right unless
you shouldn't never have to spend down all of your
assets because you have an asset limit, right, don't spend
your IRA.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Correct, do not. I'm just saying like, if somebody came
in and they said, you know, the county declined my
medicaid application because I had too much money and gifts
and I had you know, and they had thirty two
thousand dollars, It's like, Okay, spend a thousand, You're good, right,
and that instance, sure, spend it.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Down, yeah, but not significant no money, at least without
a consultation. Because sometimes we are doing applications and notes
for people who made significant gifts, right, Yeah, I mean
they can't get it back, but they.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Have enough money to cover the gift.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
If you don't have enough money to cover the gift,
we're in real problem.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah. That's I was going to say. I had a
client and probably about a year ago at this point,
it's been a little while where the gifts had essentially
already been made. The family got some bad advice. So
when we talk about our promised sory note plan where
we can save half and lose half, they'd essentially already
given away half, and then we did our promisory note
literally to just cover the past gift. So there wasn't
(48:24):
really any additional savings for them, but at least guaranteed
that what they had already done didn't disqualify Mom for
medicaid going forward.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Right, So.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
You know the other thing is one of these is
how do I find out if my sibling has POA? Well,
there really isn't a good way to do that, right,
If your sibling has POA and they haven't told you
Mom or Dad haven't told you, one of two things
is happening. They don't want you involved, yep, or hurt
(49:01):
your sibling is taking advantage of a.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Situation which isn't good for a different reason.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
So either way, it's not. But there's no legal requirement
that you get notice of who has power of attorney.
If you are the power of attorney, yes, you have
to know, yeah, because you would have to sign it.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
You'd have to sign it to use it, or at
least the current forms, yes, yeah, there are older forms
I think where it's possible the agent didn't have to
sign all the time. But anything that's been done anytime
and remotely in time to now the agents have to
sign in order for it to use. You would know,
you'd have to know. But that's another reason why we
encourage families to have these conversations. Yes, because you would
(49:42):
want people to know. Do I have documents, who's on them?
Maybe even why someone isn't on them, or maybe why
they're not named first or second, because sometimes there are
legitimate reasons and not saying that like you want to
hurt feelings. But you know, sometimes it's better to hear
like you said all the time. It's better to hear
it from mom or dad generally speaking, yes, than to
(50:04):
find out, like down the road after they've gotten sick
or even after they've passed away, that they did things
not as you were expecting and now you don't know why.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
So if you ever want to hear more of this,
you can certainly check out our podcast page or Medicaid Monday,
the second Monday of every month. Thank you for listening,
Aaron Connor and Frank Hemming, Pier O'Connor and Strauss have
a great weekend.
Good morning, Welcome to Life Happens. Are you prepared?
Speaker 2 (00:03):
This is our weekly radio program for baby bloomers and
their families where we address the challenges we all face
as we age. We talk about aging as a lifestyle,
the issues that must be confronted, and the careful planning
that's required to avoid crises in the future. Life Happens
Radio will provide you with tools to educate and prepare
yourself for events like retirement, protecting your income and assets,
planning for nursing, home and home care, special needs, wills
(00:26):
and trusts, planning for an untimely death, and resolving disputes
in and out of court. I am Aaron Connor from
Pure O'Connor and Strauss, joined by my most frequent radio compadre,
mister Frank Kemmick.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Are there.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning everybody. Thank you for joining us. I feel
like I haven't done this in a while.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I feel that, Yeah, I mean, and I feel like
I haven't done it with you in a while. Yeah,
which is also strange because we by far have done
this the most of when I'm on the radio, I've
done this more with you than anybody else.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Absolutely true.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So so we're going to leave baseball aside, because you know,
I think that's the best thing to do right now,
go Liberty. Yeah, I I mean we all agree with
that things sure, okay, no, no, no rooting interest in
(01:15):
that for me.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
So why not we could board the Giant season probably now, yes,
or shortly shortly coming up probably yes.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah. I don't know who Liz Frank is, but I
don't like her. Keeps keeps just attacking.
Speaker 3 (01:30):
Athletes leave people's feet alone.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, exactly, it's a weird foot fetish.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
But anyway, I think maybe maybe we've gone too far. Now.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
It's fine, it's early in the show.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
So yes, things can be going better for the Giants.
But that's a common statement for the last ten years.
I mean I do. I do have a number of
friends who are Jets fans, so watching them like think
that they were going to be awesome and not being that.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
Well, they have a new receipt.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yes, that's gonna fix everything.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You heard it here first first, folks, right, Jets?
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Fine, Yeah, Eric undefeated rest of the year, they were
one player away.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Now that they have him. Yes, I did see. Uh,
I did see a lot of memes this week of
people like faking that the that the Jets were going
to sign other former old Packers like like Jordy Nelson
or Forrest Gregg Edi Eddie Lacy. I mean that there
were there were some good ones part star before going
(02:34):
back that far, at least, like people that played with
Aaron Rodgers and just people that you hadn't I.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Mean, we could go like David Whitehurst, Lynn Dickey. I mean, uh,
you know, don Magic Man Mkowski.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
That's I mean, I don't know if you want to
go back that far.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
But Tony Mandris, Tony Mandris, he's probably not doing anything.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He's probably available.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So unfortunately, I just don't forget sports players.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Know, I know, obviously you know you know I was
thinking at Dorsey Levins right right, Robert Brooks.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yep, I'm on green Yeah, good running back.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
So anyway, drafted him like for for like a string
of years in my fantasy football team if you go
back enough.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
So anyway, we don't actually talk about sports on the show.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
We could, though, that's the thing, you really could.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I don't think that other people. It would be easy
for us, for sure.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
But what we're really talking about are being prepared, right,
I mean I know that you know when Lewis pointing
at you on TV. That's what he's telling you to do, right,
And you know, I'm sorry that he's pointing.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
It's effective.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I've asked him not to point. But here we are,
so that just doesn't happen by itself. No, there's steps you.
Speaker 3 (03:57):
Need to take. I mean, I feel like we say
it a lot when we talk about just planning in general,
it's like the state has a plan for you.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yes, and it's to take all of your money.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Generally it's better to split up your money in ways
that you probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Want, right.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I mean, I'm just bitter because we just passed October fifteenth.
And you know when you when you own a business,
you generally are on extension, right because you don't get
your documents and then so you usually end up paying
some more money on October fifteenth.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
And you know that may or may not have happened
to me.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
I think you're really salty about it.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
No, not at all. So, but not just taxes. Right, So.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
If the state can get your money, excuse me, they're
going to get it. And one of the ways that
they they one of the ways that you can lose
money you've earned over a lifetime and saved and paid
taxes on is not preparing.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And we unfortunately watch it happen every day. You know,
Frank does all of our medicaid applications currently although he
has a.
Speaker 1 (05:06):
Understudy.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yes that's true, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
And has Dylan done the radio yet?
Speaker 3 (05:13):
No? Not yet?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, So I'm sure Dylan will be in the rotation
at some point.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
We will, we will throw him onto the rotation, but
not yet.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yeah, So you know that's important.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And we're doing those applications many times for people who
haven't planned, right, sometimes for people.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Who have planned. Yeah, right, I don't know what do
you think to divide is on that.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
Not fifty to fifty? I don't think unfortunately, right, I
think it's weird in my brain. I don't know if
this is actually the case, but in my brain, I
feel like if we do home care applications, it's for
people that have were more likely to have worked with
us previous and maybe did some planning where maybe they
did a trust and now like because they did a trust,
now they're they're basically eligible or there's very little we
(06:00):
have to do to make them eligible. Right Nursing home
I think it's much less likely that they've done planning
five years in advance and they're through. That doesn't always
mean that they haven't done any planning, right.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Sometimes it's partial, right.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Sometimes it's we just did something and now we have
to tear the plan down. I have had clients recently
where we've had to do something similar to that. And
it's not that we've never had people that said, hey,
we came in five years ago, we've made it through
the period. Now mom or dad, now they need the help,
and now we're through the period, and now we're good,
and we're so glad that we did. We'd like to
hear more of that.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I think we're kind of in a little bit
of a pocket for that, right.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Yeah, we've worked in the last I don't know, five
to seven years with more younger people.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
All right, So I've been at this for a while.
Speaker 3 (06:43):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
When I first started, it really was mostly older people
coming in. And I'm I mean, my definition of older
might be different than certainly my children. Right, My children
tell me once I turn fifty, I'm old.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Oh, they were already trying to put you now.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I don't know that they probably we wanted money or something,
but like for right now, I'm not old yet.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Fair enough, but.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
Older meaning like seventy five up, which many times is
is later than you really should be starting.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
I mean, it's later and you should be starting.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
But some of those people made out okay, meaning that
they made it through the five years, but many of them.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Didn't, say, I mean, I've seen plenty of people in
their mid to later seventies even early eighties that are
living very full, fulfilling, good lives. Yes, but I don't
know in their nineties, I said, but I don't know
how often that is like the gamble you want to.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Take, right, Yeah, I mean, if if we ever had
like a an intern right statistician, had be really interesting
to find out how many people did the plan and
then made it through. Yeah, that's true, right, Yeah, But
we're never going to be able to do that, no,
because we barely have any time to get to the
work we have in front of us.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
But you know, we could put it on the back
burner for you hypothetical down the road future.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, aspirational goal for twenty forty.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah, yeah, I thought you're gonna say, it would be
great if we had like an eighty year old intern
or something like that.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
That's where I thought, now, but now I don't think
that would be great.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I was I was curious you were taking that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
It would be like a blue from old school m
you know, yeah, yep, probably can't have a raging kegger.
But anyway, I digress.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So, but when people do get out in front of
the problem, right, and and sometimes again it's not a complete.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Completely getting out in front of it.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And what I mean by that is we meet with people,
we put their home into a trust, they own maybe
other property. If they had this account that they never touch,
we might put that in their life insurance with cash value,
depending on where they are wise and health wise. Right,
nobody ever gives up all of their money. They shouldn't,
(09:00):
and I'd agree one hundred percent they should not, right.
But so no one ever knows when they're gonna need
a nursing home really either, right, not unless.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
It's like imminent. And that's a much different conversation.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
So, you know, even a lot of times we're leaving
like one hundred thousand dollars outside of a trust if
people are older, right, if they're younger, we might be
leaving much more than that. Yeah, and so that might
be the risk, right, But Frank, if they're married, is
that really much.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
Of a risk?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Not really. If we leave around one hundred thousand out,
if one of them needs medicaid, we can shelter all
one hundred thousand between what the medicaid spouse is allowed
to have that's roughly thirty one thousand dollars these days,
and then the community spouse can have roughly seventy five
ish thousand dollars. Again, really, no questions asked there, So
in a lot of respects, No, you're not really putting
much on the table by doing that, which I think
(09:55):
is honestly still one of the most surprising things, like
when we have consultations with families is letting them know, like,
while you can't have tons and tons and tons of money,
you probably don't need to be impoverished to the level
that you're thinking, correct, unless you've come in and you've
gotten into you know, talk with us or gotten other
information from people that actually know how all of this works.
Speaker 1 (10:15):
Right, So, I mean, there's always a solution, right, Some
solutions are better than others, right, Usually the further out
in front they are, the better off we're going to be.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean I had a recent consultation with a
family where there it's a very simple situation. It's his husband, wife,
one kid there, one child, does not have any children,
so there's no grandchildren. And they've got a house, they've
got retirement accounts, and they've got like a brokerage account
and some life insurance. But the brokerage account they've got
like one point five million dollars in it. Yeah, it's
(10:46):
a significant amounty, right, And I said, ultimately, it's going
to be up to you guys, as a family, to
have a family discussion with not only yourselves, but probably
your financial advisor to figure out how much you want
to front load the trust with, right, because you know,
mom and dad are probably a little bit past where
we'd want them to be age wise. They are having
(11:08):
starting to have some health issues, but they don't require
any hands on care or assistance now. And you know,
not to be crass about it, but they only have
one child, right, right, and he doesn't have any children,
so that it's not like we're worried about leaving a
lot of money for lots of beneficiaries, right. They're bigger problem, honestly,
is what happens if their son predeceases them, that's a
(11:29):
much bigger concern.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, in a lot of ways in a situation like that,
look and not saying that they want to just throw
money out the window.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
We're not saying that.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
But if you had to spend some two hundred thousand
dollars of one point five million dollars.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Right, it's not terrible, right, And that was kind of
my point because I tried to walk them through like
all the scenarios, and there are many, and you change
one fact and then the recommendation may change. But essentially
it's like, if you guys front load the trust with
just call it a million dollars, right, if you leave
five hundred thousand outside, plus you're checking account. If then
(12:04):
something happens, unless it happens almost immediately, we're probably going
to be in a position where we're going to be
probably private paying through the remainder of the five year period,
exactly because you know, while they both are in relatively
good health, they both are having similar health issues, and
they're both of similar age. So the one of the
other options is to completely tear that plan down, revoke
(12:26):
the trust, give it all to the spouse who's well
doesn't require medicaid, But then you destroy all that time
that you've accrued towards getting through the five year period
and when they're sitting on that level of assets to
private pay Again, would it be fun to privately pay
for care for several hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 1 (12:44):
No?
Speaker 3 (12:44):
No, But they have plenty of money to do it,
and then they could fully protect everything that's been in
that trust for five years. And that's if they leave
five hundred thousand. Now I don't think they'll do that.
I think it'll probably be more like between one to
maybe three hundred thousand based on what they were saying,
But that's ultimately going to be there choice, and that's
one of the important things to you know, to realize
when it comes to this, we are going to make
(13:05):
recommendations based upon what we've seen and just the current
environment of what care looks like and what it costs.
But ultimately this is gonna be mom and Dad's decision
of how much to put in that trust, and it
can always be amended and changed with money being able
to fly out of that trust that they needed, or
more additional funds put in if they underfund it, so
they leave themselves a lot of flexibility.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
All right, well, I think that's a good place to
take our first break.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
This is Life Happens Radio. When we come back, we'll
be talking about more medicaid issues. Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
piro'connor and Trouss. Welcome back to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Piro connor and Trouss joined by Frank Hemmick. Still here,
mister Medicaid as I refer to them, yeah you do.
I mean that's like the nicest way I refer to them,
but it's still the way one of the ways I refer.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
To It's still a family show.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah right. I mean who could guess what it could
be with alliteration with Frank? Right?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
But you know, hey, whatever, anyway, we have been talking
about planning and as we you know, if you listen
to this show at all, is that.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
Frank is our medicaid guy. I mean he does other things.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Too, right, but started doing strictly just medicaid and never
really never really stopped and just sort of expanding out
to do other things exactly. That's the way to put that.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
So, you know, I think generally speaking, the best way
to talk about these is real life.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Examples, and that's what Frank was doing. And I think
you had one you wanted to talk about.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
Yeah, I kind of had a very difficult console earlier
this week, and we actually aren't even through kind of
coming up with a full plan for this. I just
kind of wanted to pick up bits and pieces because
I think the listeners could benefit from from just kind
of hearing of the pitfalls of other people. Right. So,
so I'm gonna I'm gonna keep some facts out of
(14:59):
this because it and they're not all relevant. But there's
at least two different issues at play here of what
of why this is going to be a difficult case
to solve and get a good result for. So one
is going right to the topic we've been talking about,
and that's planning and planning early so on. One issue
we have is that this client, he and his wife,
(15:21):
they did an ear of vocable trust, but they didn't
do it five years ago, and now wife is in
need of nursing home care and she's been in the
nursing home since I believe the right around the beginning
of the year. So husband's been private paying for a
nursing home right from approximately January until now, so it's
you know, ten ish months of private pay. You know,
look at it, cost of cares about sixteen seventeen thousand
(15:44):
dollars a month, so you know, we're talking one hundred
and sixty one hundred and seventy thousand dollars that he's
paid like thus far, which is obviously not a small amount, right,
which would say, which clearly is a lot of money
because she is not on Medicaid currently. So so one
one kind of angle of weeds we have to get
through is getting through trying to figure out what we
want to do with this trust, because it's it's decently
(16:07):
through the five years, but it's not, it's not all
the way through. So one option is to private pay
through the remainder right, which there's enough money to probably
do that. Other option is to revoke it, put it
back with the husband and kind of destroy the period
of time that they've built up. But husband himself is
in his later eighties, so you know, destroying it and
(16:28):
giving him everything back is an ideal either, because then
we're putting all that money at risk that if something
happens to him, just like it's already happened to his wife.
Now that's all back on the table, right and at risk,
you know, for if something happens to him. So that's
one issue we see that you know, relatively commonly. I
would think, especially again if you were older when you
(16:49):
started the process, like, there's at least the chance you're
not going to get through the five years and sure
we're gonna have to talk about this.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
Right, that's I mean, that's frankly one of the reasons
we do the show, yeah, is still let people know that.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
You need to do it earlier. Then you probably think.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Yeah, so, I mean, it's great that they did something.
The unfortunate part is they probably waited longer than they
should have. So so that's kind of problem. One problem
too is they have made other gifts in the past
five years, and you know, again without disclosing any real
personal information. You know, they they've made gifts to their
(17:25):
to their child, to their grandchildren for college. You know,
they they wanted to be good grandparents.
Speaker 1 (17:29):
Things things that grandparents typically want to do.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Yeah, just everyday stuff like nothing, nothing crazy, right, It's
not like they went out and just started throwing money around,
not being uh, you know, foolish with their money.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
I would say, well, frankly, you can get away with
being foolish with your money if you spend it on yourself.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
That's true.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
That's kind of like being a little bit of the
slap in the face.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Yeah. I mean, if they if they had gone out
and bought a ferrari, you know, it was their ferrari,
it's fine. But but no, unfortunately they didn't do that. No,
they were doing things like paying for their grandchildren's college,
you know, doing nice grandparent things that most I think
grandparents would like to do if they could for their grandchildren.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Right.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
And we have guidance really on five twenty nines, right,
which I feel like for a long time we really
didn't have.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, And that's and that's kind of the third that's
the third piece of the puzzle. Right, So we have
we have trust that's not through five years. We have
other gifts not within or within the five year period.
And the money is not there to be returned because
one way of curing that would be for a person
who got the money to give it all back or
give some of it back, and we don't think that's
realistic in this case. Correct, So that's kind of problem too.
(18:36):
And then problem three is that they have a big
five twenty nine that they've been contributing to for a
long time for their grandchildren, again trying to be nice,
trying to put money aside to help their grandchildren go
to college. You know, the last thing I want to
say is that that you should not want to do that,
that you should not want to help out your grandchildren.
You know that that doesn't seem like that is the
(18:57):
correct take to get from the story, right. The problem
with it is for medicaid purposes, the Medicaid rules count
five to twenty nins is being an asset of the
holder of the account. So in this case, it's it's grandpa,
it's the well person in the scenario. So he's got
one hundred and sixty thousand, give or take in his
five twenty nine plan that he could withdraw that money from.
(19:20):
At any time. He can take that money back, give
it back to himself, and take the money back. One
of the problems is with five twenty nine, and now
we are not financial advisors, but with five twenty nins
is you know, if you withdraw money for something that's
a non qualified expense, so typically that would be something
like for education purposes from the beneficiary, you get taxed
(19:42):
on that money because one of the benefits of a
five twenty nine is it's growing tax free. That's why
people like to set them up. So we've got like
significant growth in this account because it's been growing for
twenty years or however long they've had it. So there's
going to be income tax consequences to Grandpa pulls all
the money back out, which clearly we don't really want
(20:03):
to do if we don't have.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
To, right, But unfortunately in this situation like this, that's
one of the smaller problems.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
Right, that's I mean, but that might be what has
to happen other options or other issue with that also
is that you know, the grandparent or sorry, the grandchildren
and their families were kind of plant making some of
their decisions based on this money being available to help
them pay for college because they know that it's there.
That's the whole point of again why the accounts were
(20:31):
set up. So now again the way that at least
that I'm being that I'm interpreting all this thus far,
we might have some more research to do on it.
But if you have a five twenty nine seat of
for the beneficiary, who is your grandchild. And then you
distribute money that's technically yours for the benefit of your grandchild.
That's a gift, right, that's a trans Yeah, absolutely right.
(20:51):
So if they use the money for the intended purpose,
then I think medicaid is going to penalize him or
his wife for eligible purposes for using the money for
the purpose they set it aside for right, And it
seems like a lot of that doesn't really make a
lot of sense in some ways, but that's again that's
how I'm interpreting the rules for now. The unfortunate part
(21:14):
of all this is, you know, if you fix one problem,
you have another one, right, And kind of the last
thing that I want to throw out there, just because Aaron,
you and I talked about it earlier this week, is
I think I at least have an idea of how
some of this could be avoided with the five twenty nine. Obviously,
again we are not financial advisors. I would strongly want
(21:38):
you to talk to financial people to make sure that
this jives with your financial plan if you're working with somebody,
But I think in this instance, the safer thing would
have been for you know, father or someone else to
have established the five twenty nine for the grandchildren right,
not have the grandparents own it right right, and then
had tried them to it rrect because if that had happened, right,
(21:59):
just to show the different right now, the issue is
we have one hundred and sixty thousand dollars of asset
for Grandpa, which is a medicaid problem. If they if
they had contributed the amount of money that they had
put in the five twenty nines over the past five years,
just to an account that maybe their son owned or
their daughter owned, right somebody that was directly tied to
the grandchildren, they'd have like a twelve thousand dollars gift problem,
(22:23):
which is like one month in eligibility, which is again
is it ideal? Of course not. Is it backbreaking to
the plan. It is not right. We could deal with that,
but that's not the problem that we have. So here's
my take home for this for the listeners is if
you're if you're older, if you're grandparents, I'm not saying
you don't have five twenty ninees. I'm just saying it
(22:44):
might make sense to maybe have you not own them
or have them owned by a trust because I believe
that I have had a client or two that have
five twenty nines within a trust. So you could, you know,
put the money in a trust and then slowly seed
the five twenty nine within the trust. I think you
get the same intended result there. So they're there are
other options to use five twenty nine and use them appropriately.
(23:04):
I just don't think if you're older, you want to
have them sitting in your own name without knowing that
if you wannd them in a medicaid situation, you're looking
at this potentially right.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
So, I mean, you can do a lot of things
right financially, but unfortunately they can be kind of wrong
for a medicaid situation.
Speaker 1 (23:18):
And it's all of this is counterintuitive.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, And I was spitballing this idea with a financial
advisor friend of mine a few months ago, saying like,
I haven't seen this case yet, but I'm guessing there's
one out there.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
We knew that there was going to be a five
to twenty nine problem coming, we just didn't know exactly when.
So we are coming up to the news and so.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
We're going to take our midway break. When we come back,
we're going to talk about medicaid issues maybe what we
see in the future, although I don't didn't bring my
crystal ball, so I'm not one hundred percent certain of that.
But this is Life Happens Radio, and when we'll be
back after this, Welcome back to Life Happens Radio. Aaron Connor,
Frank Kemming of Pure O'Connor and Strouss. We are talking medicaid. Nope, nope,
(24:06):
don't turn a dial. It's better than you think, it's
more interesting than you think. It may apply to you
at some point or so when you know, as we say,
Medicaid is really the middle class lifeline. I say this
all the time, and it's true.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
My grandmother, my dad's mom, would say, if you don't
have any money, don't worry about it. They'll take care
of you, which is true. If you have all the
money in the world, you don't have to worry about.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It because you can pay for it, right. But it's
the people in the middle who are going to get squeezed.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, I wasn't on it for very long. I unfortunately
got kind of double booked with something. But there was
a consultation that some of the associates in the city
office were having and a woman came in because her
spouse was in need of care and she wanted to
talk about whether medicaid made sense or not. And once
we kind of put all the pieces together, we were
realizing that even with her diminished, you know, capacity to
(25:03):
continue to run her business, even if she got out
of the business that she was in, it could continue
to function without her and she was still going to
probably clear about five hundred thousand dollars of profit or
income from the business. It's like, you don't you don't
need medicaid, right if you make that kind of money,
because what you'd have to do to get on.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
It would we have to burn so much money.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
And that was the point, right, that was literally the point.
It was like, could we do it? We could, but
the hoops that you would put on kind of the
plan to make it work doesn't make sense. Wouldn't make sense,
Like you'd go crazy trying to kind of fit within
the confines of the system. Right, which in that respect,
she has lots of money. They can use it for
her care without going to medicaid and she can pay
for stuff and should be okay.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, And that's when you hear like people talk about
millionaires on Medicaid, right, right. I mean I'm not saying
that wealthy wealthy. I mean, look, a million dollars is
a lot of money. I think there's like a about
what wealthy actually means, right of course. I mean, if
you have a million dollars in your retirement account, it's great,
but it's not necessarily wealth that's available to you.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Say what happens if you have three million dollars because
you bought the right building in New York City in
that but that's really all that you have.
Speaker 2 (26:16):
Right, right, Like it's not liquid, right, and if you
sell it, you're going to have a tax problem.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:22):
So I'm not saying that a million dollars is a
little bit of money, but just a million dollars depending
on how it is. If it's in a brokerage account, yeah,
you're you're doing great, right, But if it's that's your
retirement savings. In today's world where fewer and fewer people
have a defined benefit program, right like a pension.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
That was gonna be My thought was, you know, it's
not only how much do you have in your accounts,
but it's what does your income look like? What do
your expenses look like? Right, because you could have a
lot of money built up and then knowing you're going
to have to start eating into that pretty quickly.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Isn't that the Pat Patrick doing?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
I make a lot, but I also spend a lot
something like that, So poor Patrick.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah. Patrick Ewing was my favorite nick growing up.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Mine too didn't go well for him most of the time,
Michael Jordan's.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
And even when he retired, they still couldn't do it.
I know, I'll never forget that game being interrupted.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
By the OJ chase. Oh really, yep, the finals game.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
They took the finals game off the air to watch
a white Bronco slowly traverse the highway like it wouldn't
be on other channels, right, come on, I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
So that was ninety four, had to be.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Right, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
I still remember the morning I was going to school
with my buddy and his like Volkswagen Rabbit, which was
very loud for a small car, and that came across
the radio that you know, Oja was wanted for murder.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So yeah, I would not have known who OJ.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Was at that time, not even from commercials. No, not
for naked gun.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
No. I don't want to say how old I was
at the time, but that's.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
Well, I know, but I mean he was in a
lot of Hurts commercials. I think it was Hurts, it
was rental cars. I don't remember, Yeah, no, particularly what
it was.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
And so you know, anyway, now I would know, right,
but now I probably know who he is because of that.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Well, right, I'm sure people of your generation and younger
that's the only one.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
Yeah, I mean, like after the fact, I learned like
who he was and why he was so well known
before all that.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
But I mean probably kids in Buffalo would know who
he was, right, I would hope. I mean, he did
play for San Francisco for a couple of years at
the end of his career, but it's a little different.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Yeah, I mean I don't know.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's what running backs do, thankfully, I'm not doing that
just so Claire, right, I'm not going to do like
the the Franco Harris and go play for the Seahawks
or the Tony dor Sat and go play for the
Denver Broncos.
Speaker 1 (29:02):
I'm pure O'Connor and Strauss to the end.
Speaker 3 (29:05):
You might need to giants, might need a left tackle. Yeah,
I'm just saying, Yeah, it's not running back but.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
No, if I were playing it, I don't. I think
it'd be called walking back or like you know, I
it certainly would not be a running back jogging back.
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
He's just the back. Yeah, he just stands there. He
stays in that back. He stays in the back. That
defies a cotter's football. Stay at the back.
Speaker 1 (29:35):
There you go. Never had speed, speed or jumping ability,
is not was not blessed with.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
That's all right, So.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Anyway, I don't need medicaid however currently, No, even though
I have no speed or jumping a.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
Bill, despite what your daughters say, that is.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Not actually activities of daily living there as far.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
As running or jumping. No, right, no, not off topic.
Weirdly enough, I read an article relatively recently that they
said statistically, so I'm making up the number, but I
think it was around this. I think it was like
eighty between eighty and eighty five percent of people once
you passed. I think it was the age of thirty
(30:17):
five will never sprint again in their lifetime.
Speaker 2 (30:23):
So one of my buddies, who was in his forties,
was not happy with how his Pop Warner team was practicing,
and he said, I'm still faster than all of you guys,
and you know, pulled a hammy like four or five steps.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Into his I say it did. Did sprint didn't go? Well?
Speaker 2 (30:42):
No, I mean it was straight out of like a
comedy movie. But it was real, So I would not
even attempt to sprint.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
No, I'm just saying I just thought it was shocking
of just like like, if you think about it, it's like, well,
why would you have to write barring like public and
urgency that kind of thing. Like I can't think of
a reason why you'd be forced to right, or you can.
You can choose to right, you can become a runner,
you could work out, you can do things to stay active.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yeah, I'd probably just be like, okay, guy, just murder me. Fine,
I'm not gonna get away. Let's just let's just those
extra three minutes of me sweating aren't making a difference.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
So well, now, if we're ever trapped in a horror movie,
I want to be with with Aaron because now I
just had to run faster than him.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
Well, I know I can.
Speaker 1 (31:28):
I mean, yeah, I'm certain you can do that.
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Yeah, I've become a runner as time has gone on.
I know, I could anyway, but like if you're just
gonna give up.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I literally can't think of anything I dislike more than running,
Like I will clench my teeth when I run, Like
my jaw will hurt after run.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
I love it, you know.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
So, I mean I didn't mind playing basketball, like with
there was a sport where it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Was a point, but like running for running, No, thank you.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I'm sure. I'm sure you're not alone. I'm sure lots
of people dislike I'm I'm sure how much I like
it either. Remember, I just have decided that something I
want to do to stay healthy.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
So I feel like this decision was reinforced to me
when we had a medicaid consult oh, where a guy
had fallen running a marathon in his fifties. Yeah, and
had injured his head and he was in bad shape.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Yeah, now that you now, that you bring that up,
I do occasionally tell that story. Yeah. The guy who
called us the son, I think was younger than me.
I mean not substantially. I think it was within two
or three years, but I mean I was newer at
that time, so I was okay, let's call me, let's
call it thirty give or take sure. So he was
(32:39):
probably twenty seven to twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Yeah, I think he was because his father was not, I.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Mean like he was. He was clearly an adult, you know,
clearly was capable of trying to help his father. And
it was one of the rare instances where I felt
like we kind of wanted to know what had led
to that circumstance, because obviously, when you do what we do, yeah,
I could have been accident, don't You don't always want
to know how the things have happened, right, But just
(33:05):
to know that somebody of his father's age had wound
up in that circumstance was like, you know, was this
a condition? Had something happened? Wasn't an accident? And yeah,
it's that he had been literally in the middle of
running a marathon apparently was you know, dehydrated during the race,
passed out and hit his head on like a curb
or something, and that a traumatic brain injury, and clearly
(33:28):
was not the same afterwards.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
So so I will avoid that story because I will
not be running on purpose.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
There you go.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
But I mean, so there's one of those situations that
just comes out of the blue, right, there's no planning
for that situation other than having a health care proxy and.
Speaker 3 (33:45):
Power of attorney, right, Yeah, I mean we say it
all the time, and I think he did. Actually, yeah,
I think the sun was the power of attorney. I
think that's literally why or one of the reasons why
we were talking to him.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Because it would have been a guardianship otherwise, right.
Speaker 3 (33:58):
And I don't remember that being discussed. And clearly if
we needed.
Speaker 1 (34:02):
To know he's a little bit DOWNSTA, you know.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
You would have been doing that because you do all
the guardian hips. Yeah, so he clearly had done some planning.
But you know, it's not always a h it's not
always an age factor here, Like you know, in that instance,
he was he was he clearly had to be pretty healthy.
He was running a marathon, it was. So it's not
like he wasn't young or he wasn't healthy, right, And
(34:24):
still something unexpected happened that had him to be in
a state where he was no longer in the in
the position to handle his affairs. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:31):
So, I mean we were making fun a little bit
of my hate of running, right, But like staying in
good shape is obviously important too to avoid long term care, right,
I mean, it's not there's no one thing that says
(34:51):
you're not going to because we've seen very healthy people
developed dementia. Right, We've seen I've seen I don't want
to speak for Franks, I've seen a lot of heavy
drinkers develop FTD dementia.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
You're probably right. I don't think I've.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
People who've said, yeah, their kids have said to me
they were a heavy drinker, right, can't I can't say
that I knew yet?
Speaker 3 (35:14):
Right, that's fair? Yep. Well, that and like kind of
playing not saying something differently, just or not saying something different,
just saying it differently. Like, I've seen plenty of what
I would think looked like healthier people get sick, right,
But I don't think that I've seen what I would
at least what outwardly would appear to be a very
(35:35):
unhealthy person live substantially long into like their later eighties,
nineties and even past that.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
That's all right, agreed.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
So I mean, there's no be all end all, but
people who stay physically active and stay mentally active, whether
that's working, which I'm not a big advocate of working
late in life. That's just my personal feeling on that.
Speaker 3 (36:04):
I have said many times. I've said it even recently
because people people have been asking just in general, like
when they're working with us, of what happens if, like
the firm isn't here, right, if we do all our
planning with you, what happens at the firm isn't here
very very And I obviously I say that, but I say,
you know, at some point, hopefully I'm not going to
be here any longer, right, because I don't want to
work until I'm very very old. At some point I
(36:27):
will be done and I won't have a problem walking
away whenever.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
That is yeah, me saying, right, Lou will be working
because Lou loves working.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Yeah, they're like Peter Strauss clearly loves working because he
is still working, right and he's in his eighties, and
that's good. That's clearly what he wants to do. I
will not make that choice.
Speaker 1 (36:48):
All right.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
So we're coming up on our last break here this
is Life Happens Radio. I'm Aaron Connor from Pierre O'Connor Strauss,
and when we come back, we're going to answer some
common medicaid questions that we get all the time. And
if Frank gets anything wrong, we're going to have a
very stern conversation.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Off the air. All right, look forward to that Life
Happens Radio. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to
Life Happens Radio.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Aaron Connor, Frank Hemming, pure O'Connor and Straus your estate planning,
medicaid planning, guardianship trust and will contest attorneys.
Speaker 3 (37:24):
Hopefully not really as much as the last stuff we'd
prefer not to do. Yeah, those kinds of things.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
But that's if you need me, That's where I'm at. Yeah,
So I often say people, I'm sorry that you need me,
but you do need me. I literally usually not a
great scenario.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
So I literally told the room of financial advisors I
did a program for for some last this week, and
I literally told them, you'd much rather have to have
your clients meet Aaron because they're doing a power of attorney,
rather than if they don't, the family has to go
meet him to do a guardianship. YEA literally told a
room full of people's true.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
So we have a bunch of common questions, right, and
so a lot of them revolve around the home, because
that tends to be a larger asset, yes, and an
asset that's not particularly easy to deal with in a
lot of situations. Some of that's because it's full.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Of stuff, right, that's true.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I mean that's often an issue. Yeah, and it has
deferred maintenance, right, that's often an issue. So people often
want to sell the house or wonder if it's the
(38:44):
right move. Right.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Yeah, it's easily one of the more common questions we
get when it comes to the house. Right, So biggest
thing when you sell the house, because I think in
this context it's usually are we going to lose Medicaid
because we sold the house? And the like pretty much
any other answer when it comes to a lot of
this stuff, it depends, Right, is the house and a trust.
(39:09):
If the house isn't a trust and it's an irrevocable
Medicaid asset protection trust that you've done to protect your house,
then no, the trust can sell your house. The proceeds
going the trust, and now the trust is protecting the
proceeds just like the house. No, by all means sell
the house. If it's mom and dad live in the house,
or just mom just dad, whatever. If they live in
the house and then they sell the house, well, you know,
(39:31):
for Medicaid purposes, your house is exempt as an asset
as long as you, your spouse or disabled child like
live in the house. Right, but if you sell your house, well,
now your house is now cash, and cash isn't exempt.
So if selling your house now gives you three hundred
thousand dollars, four hundred thousand dollars, whatever the proceeds are,
(39:53):
then you're on Medicaid. Yeah, that's going to be a
problem unless you turn around and then you do a
trust or you do some other planning to get that
money away from you. You might lose eligibility for a
short period of time if the county happens to be
looking at what you're doing. And you know, I feel
like this is appropriate to say. You know, if we
have these look backs next year that are coming from
(40:14):
home care, we can't potentially just flip that into a
trust like we could now, Like right now, we literally
take those proceeds, throw them in a trust that they
weren't already there, right, and you continue on with you know,
minimal interruptions for things. Right, if they do institute the
home care lookback like has been rumored for you know
since twenty twenty, can't just flip it into a trust, right, right,
then that gets more difficult. And then we've got to
(40:35):
figure out do we have any other options to keep
beyond benefits. So quick answer is it depends. Longer answer
is there's usually going to be a way that you
can keep it. It's just a matter of what you
have to do right.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
And you know, again challenges with life estates. Don't do
a life estate, don't.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Do a life estate. Yeah, we talk about that, I
think pretty routinely when we talk about this topic just
in general, about how if you have a life estate
interest in the house sells, you're owed a portion of
those funds back. Again, if you're on medicaid, you don't
usually want to get money unexpectedly back in your name
because can give you too much. Obviously, some of that
(41:10):
is going to depend on the value of the house
and the age of the person that has the life
estate interests. So you know, as you get older, your
life estate interests will get will get less a valuable right.
But if you do it, you know, if you did
a life estate deed in your sixty sixty five and
you sell the house pretty quickly, that's going to be
a pretty substantial amount of money now coming back to you.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
So and no capital gains tax exemption on a to
the remainder people generally speaking.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Yeah, say, unless unless they're living in the residents too,
which you know we have had that is, we have
had that happen, but more often than not, the kids
are not living at home any longer, right, and now
they do not get the capital gains exclusion, which mom
and dad would just get it was just their house.
So yeah, their tax reasons also not to do a
life estate.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
So one of the other common questions, right, is if
dad goes to a nursing home, will mom lose all
of his income?
Speaker 1 (42:11):
It depends, right, but always just depends.
Speaker 3 (42:14):
I know, I'm just saying like it's it's I wish
it was easier in some ways, but.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Be a very boring radio.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah, yep, the answer is yes, it depends. So in
this instance, we have a spouse, right, We're assuming there's
a spouse, So we have one spouse in the nursing home,
one spouse not in the nursing home. So what we
need to look at is what is the income of
the spouse that's at home or at least in the community, right,
because they get a spousal income allowance themselves about thirty
(42:43):
eight hundred dollars. I'm rounding for the listener's sake, right,
it's about thirty eight hundred dollars. So if you if
well spouse has income above thirty eight hundred dollars by themselves,
just between their social Security, their pension, their IRA distributions,
their interest and dividends off their accounts, you know, whatever
it is that they have. If they have income above
(43:05):
thirty eight hundred, yes, then there would be no money
that then would be saved from the nursing home spouse.
It would all go to the nursing home as his
Medicaid payment. Conversely, if she's got say it's one thousand
dollars a month of monthly income, say she just gets
social Security, and it's a wife in this context who
never you know worked, you know, was a stay at
(43:26):
home spouse. If she's got one thousand dollars a month
of her own income, then she would get twenty one
hundred dollars approximately of husbands that would bring her up
to the thirty eight hundred a month getting her to
her allowance, and then dad's remaining income would then go
to the nursing home if there is any remaining. We've
had cases where that would wipe out dad's income. Nursing
home gets nothing, take that nursing home. Yeah, they I mean,
(43:50):
I don't want to say like they're mad, but I
mean like they get it, Like it's not ideal for them.
But you know, if we have low income people, there's
usually a way that if the if the one spouse
is alive and well and in the community, you might
be able to save all of the income between the
two of them.
Speaker 2 (44:04):
Well, right, And that's what we often say that this
is an incentive to keep people at home. Right, Yes,
if it can be done, is that you get to
keep all of the income, then yes, And if there's
going to be a loss of significant amount of income,
that's that's a good solution to get around it, assuming
it's going to work for other reasons.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Right.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Oftentimes we're talking about situations where because of dementia, people
are not themselves anymore.
Speaker 3 (44:30):
Yeah, yep, or just could be like I've had I've
had a few clients lately we've kind of wanted to
start thinking home care, but like their loved one is
just they're going to be a two person assist right, like,
no matter what at this point, Yes, and that's going
to be just it's going to make home care essentially
impossible or it's going to be very very costly. So
(44:53):
there are circumstances that unfortunately just kind of take home
care out of the equation unfortunately.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
I mean we say all the time that they're never
going to give you two people.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
Yeah, right, yep, they're not trying not trying to laugh
at the comments. We're having enough trouble finding one.
Speaker 1 (45:13):
Right, exactly right.
Speaker 3 (45:14):
If we could find two, that'd be fantastic, But they're
not going to pay two, right, And if you can
find two, you're already ahead of the game because a
lot of people can't find one, or they can't find
you know, maybe more than one or two.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Right, And even in a situation where we're kind of
doing hybrid right pay one Medicaid pay one, yes, right,
we would have extreme difficulty just seven staffing that case.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
Yeah, And it's not going to be a savings at
that point, because no, the the private pay for the
second person is going to be probably and I mean
if it's a full twenty four to seven scenario, yeah,
it's going to be roughly just as much, if not
more than than a nursing home. Correct, mean, if you
want to look at it in a monetary perspective.
Speaker 1 (45:58):
And it may not actually be right. I mean, it
may be safer for that person to be in.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
A nursing home. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
And geography plays into this more than I think people
realize too, meaning that are you near a hospital, are
you near an ambulance service?
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Are you remote? Right?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
Yeah? I mean we we do a lot of work
in the North Country, you know, as soon as we
know it's a North Country consult it's harder to do
home care.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
There unless your kids are whomever, You've got people lined
up to.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Be exactly that's I mean, like if you're going to
rely on outside people, whether it's agency people, friends, you know,
church members, whatever, right, unless you kind of have this
stable of people ready, willing and able to help you. Right.
The more remote you live, the harder this is going
to be.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Right, here's an easy one. This one might be a
yes or no question. Then some elaboration. All right, you're ready, yep?
Should I spend down my assets before applying for medicaid?
Speaker 3 (47:06):
Generally no? Right? Right. The elaboration is, well, how much
are we talking about? At least that in my brain,
that's that's where that's going right, right.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
I mean the answer is don't do that, right unless
you shouldn't never have to spend down all of your
assets because you have an asset limit, right, don't spend
your IRA.
Speaker 3 (47:26):
Correct, do not. I'm just saying like, if somebody came
in and they said, you know, the county declined my
medicaid application because I had too much money and gifts
and I had you know, and they had thirty two
thousand dollars, It's like, Okay, spend a thousand, You're good, right,
and that instance, sure, spend it.
Speaker 2 (47:42):
Down, yeah, but not significant no money, at least without
a consultation. Because sometimes we are doing applications and notes
for people who made significant gifts, right, Yeah, I mean
they can't get it back, but they.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
Have enough money to cover the gift.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
If you don't have enough money to cover the gift,
we're in real problem.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
Yeah. That's I was going to say. I had a
client and probably about a year ago at this point,
it's been a little while where the gifts had essentially
already been made. The family got some bad advice. So
when we talk about our promised sory note plan where
we can save half and lose half, they'd essentially already
given away half, and then we did our promisory note
literally to just cover the past gift. So there wasn't
(48:24):
really any additional savings for them, but at least guaranteed
that what they had already done didn't disqualify Mom for
medicaid going forward.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Right, So.
Speaker 2 (48:40):
You know the other thing is one of these is
how do I find out if my sibling has POA? Well,
there really isn't a good way to do that, right,
If your sibling has POA and they haven't told you
Mom or Dad haven't told you, one of two things
is happening. They don't want you involved, yep, or hurt
(49:01):
your sibling is taking advantage of a.
Speaker 3 (49:02):
Situation which isn't good for a different reason.
Speaker 1 (49:06):
So either way, it's not. But there's no legal requirement
that you get notice of who has power of attorney.
If you are the power of attorney, yes, you have
to know, yeah, because you would have to sign it.
Speaker 3 (49:20):
You'd have to sign it to use it, or at
least the current forms, yes, yeah, there are older forms
I think where it's possible the agent didn't have to
sign all the time. But anything that's been done anytime
and remotely in time to now the agents have to
sign in order for it to use. You would know,
you'd have to know. But that's another reason why we
encourage families to have these conversations. Yes, because you would
(49:42):
want people to know. Do I have documents, who's on them?
Maybe even why someone isn't on them, or maybe why
they're not named first or second, because sometimes there are
legitimate reasons and not saying that like you want to
hurt feelings. But you know, sometimes it's better to hear
like you said all the time. It's better to hear
it from mom or dad generally speaking, yes, than to
(50:04):
find out, like down the road after they've gotten sick
or even after they've passed away, that they did things
not as you were expecting and now you don't know why.
Speaker 1 (50:12):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (50:13):
So if you ever want to hear more of this,
you can certainly check out our podcast page or Medicaid Monday,
the second Monday of every month. Thank you for listening,
Aaron Connor and Frank Hemming, Pier O'Connor and Strauss have
a great weekend.
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