June 16, 2025 • 23 mins
The importance of a will trusts how to save money from probate Florida
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Ask The Experts Florida is broadcast live Mondays at 9AM ET and Thursdays at 5PM ET on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com). Ask The Experts Florida is viewed on Talk 4 TV (www.talk4tv.com).
Ask The Experts Florida Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The topics and opinions express in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio, it's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY
Radio or it's employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to the Ask the Expert Show on W four
CY Radio and Talk for TV, where we bring you
educational information from top local experts in the fields of legal, health,
financial and home improvement. Now sit back and listen to
experts in family law, association, law, hearing laws, business brokers,
(00:47):
home care, along with many other topics. Now here are
your hosts, Stevo and Sophia.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hey, Good morning, South Florida. Welcome to another Ask the
Expert show where we bring you the top experts in
the field of legal, health, financial, and home improvement. The
show that we've got coming up Now, we just got
the greatest text from a listener. We start promoting the
show a couple of days out. You know, somebody who
(01:18):
just found the show for the first time. And of
all the questions I've asked to our expert attorney Andrew
Rosenberg of the Rosenberg Law Firm, I thought was such
a great question. Good morning Andy.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Hey, Hey, good morning there, Steve O. How are you happy, duke?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, I hope you had a happy Father's Day and.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I did, and I hope you did as well.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, my kids are in Dallas. But you know what,
when you get older and you get a phone call,
that's all it matters. Hey, they were thinking about you.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That's true. That's true. I got one that's in New
York right now down here, so I was able to
see one of.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The that's wonderful. So Andy, first of all, tell everybody,
because we find that we get so many people who
are finding the show for the first time. Tell people
about the Rosenberg Law Firm.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. So, the law firm has been around for a
long time. As I am officially in old Farts so firm.
The firm is in Coral Springs, Florida. That's where our
main office is. I have a satellite office that I
use in Weston, and another one that I have access
to and bought Boston in poker ratone, so I do
(02:38):
have access to different locations, but the main offices in
Coral Springs, and we do Wills, Truss, estate planning, and
probate and elderlaw. So that's kind of that's what that's
our area. I've been doing it for I think thirty
thirty plus years now. Stevo, it's getting.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You look so young.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I don't know. I got a lot of gray hair
in my hair now, but at least I still got it.
I still got hair, so I'm happy about that. But yeah,
so I live in Coral I live in Weston, but
I have an office in the Coral Spring and we
served the whole state of Florida.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You know, it's cool Andy that we've probably had four
or five people ride us checking up on your help
because you had some health issues. I thought that was
so cool, just people writing how's Andy doing?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, Yeah, I know it's you know, I've had a
lot of health issues unfortunately over my years. Between all
my athletics, I was a Division one tennis player, and
because of that, I've had to have a fake knee
and a fake hit put in and a rope and
a rotator surgery on the shoulder for the tennis arm.
But besides all that, I've had a ton of kidney stones.
(03:47):
So we had an ECH. We had an episode not
long ago where I was struggling with kidney stones, and
I've had like fifteen to twenty of them over the
past couple of years. It's been horrible, and I've been
going through genetic testing to find out why I'm producing
all this stuff, and so far we're trying to get
to the bottom of it. But I'm doing okay. Guys.
I had to have surgery because I had one that
(04:08):
just wouldn't pass. It was too big, and that I
had that was not fun. But but we got through
the surgery and I got through the stent that they
put in through your and you know what your privates,
and but I'm through. I'm doing great. I feel great,
and I'm just uh, I'm just trying to stay in
shape and stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I just thought that was so nice people taking the
time out just to write asking how you're doing. Yeah, no,
that's always That was really cool. So I gotta tell you,
we gotta lean this morning and it said I just
found the show can you walk me through when a
(04:47):
person comes to your office who has no will, who
has not planned at all because I'm too lazy? Can
you walk us through the steps that you take once
a person comes in?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Absolutely question? Yeah, yeah, so you know, as you know, STEVEO,
I do a lot of workshops, and so that's usually
a question I actually get at the workshop at the end,
they're like, well, what do we do? How do we
prepare when we want to meet with you? So this
is the answer I give to everybody. Number One, it
is a low key meeting. Okay, don't panic, don't freak
(05:26):
out when you're meeting with an attorney to talk about
your state plan. That's number one. I try to make
it as easy going as we can. Number Two, it
would help, It's not required, but it would help to
have a general idea of what you have asset one,
meaning you have a house, you have stocks, you have bonds,
you have life insurance, all that kind of stuff. Just
(05:47):
get a basic understanding of what you have, approximate values
of them. And the most important thing for me at least,
and it is how are these assets titled? That's really
what I'm going to ask the question of does not
believe it or not. The amount of dollars is not
as important as how their title is more important to
(06:10):
me in the long run, and I'll tell you why
in a minute. But I mean, so that first meeting
is I get to know you a session. I need
to understand what your what you're what keeps you up
at two o'clock in the morning, you know, and you're
I asked that question, I go, what is keeping you
up at two o'clock in the morning, and your in
regards to your state plan, I just I want to
(06:30):
know what is going on, what's bothering? And then once
I get that information, whether you have in a state
plan or not, I'm going to start asking questions about
how what you have asset wise, how things are titled,
the approximate dollar amounts, et cetera. And then from there,
in that first meeting, I'm going to analyze the whole
(06:50):
situation and I'm going to hopefully give you a couple
of options of what we can do. I'm like, here's
option A, and it's going to cost X dollars. Here's
option B and it's going to cost wide ops. And
there might be an option fee which will cost z
dollars and I'll give you a bunch of different options,
and then that's pretty much the meeting. And then if
(07:11):
you want to move forward, then we schedule what we
call a design meeting. That's what I call it a
design meeting. And at the next meeting, that's when I'm
going to sit down and we're going to actually design
the plan for you, and we're going to go through
and ask for all the information as far as who
we want to name as your healthcare surrogate, your durable power,
(07:32):
your trustee, your trust who you want to give distributions to,
are there any specific distributions you want to give to
certain people, et cetera. So the first meeting is a
discovery meeting for lack of a better term, and then
if we want to move forward, then we sign paperwork
and then we schedule a design meeting. The design meeting
is going to be what the heck are we going
to do and who's it going to and how? And
(07:53):
then the last meeting is the signing meeting. So it's
typically three meetings with me as the process goes. And
that's whether you have an estate plan or you don't.
Because a lot of people Steve O. Come to me
and they already have some sort of of an estate
plan that was done twenty plus years ago, and they're like,
something twenty years ago, Now what do I do? And
(08:13):
I'm like, well, it's probably not going to be valid.
We probably need to it's not gonna be up to date,
and so we're probably gonna have to redo a bunch
of stuff. And so I get a lot of those people,
and then I get a lot of people that have
nothing in place. And I always tell people, Stevo, in fact,
I told you I wrote a book, and I do
a videos and everything else, and I at the end
(08:34):
of my videos and at the end of my workshop,
I try not to get people upset, but this is
and my book is titled the same thing. I'll look
right into the camera on the video, or I'll talk
to the people at the workshop and I'll tell them
and I'll say this, and you know what I'm gonna say.
You want to say, and remember, if you don't plan,
you're stupid. And that's what I tell people. I go,
(08:55):
you got to I can't tell you, Steve O, how
many situations I've had where someone tells me something that
has happened and there's nothing we could do at that point.
It's too late, and so whateveryone needs to understand is
that life happens and we can't control when it's our time.
And everyone thinks that they have until tomorrow to do something,
(09:17):
and then tomorrow never happened. Problem. In fact, Steve, I'm
going to tell you a quick story that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
People love your story.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Dan, I know it's I get these calls all the time, Guys.
You've got to understand. I get these calls all the time.
I got a call from someone the emergency meeting. So
it was on Friday, So we had the emergency meeting.
And the meeting was with the daughter and the ex
(09:45):
wife and the uncle of the daughter, and it was
for the father slash ex husband slash brother. And apparently
he's he was fifty approximately fifty two years old, and
had a stroke or a heart attack, and he is
in the hospital and is not on live support, but
is obviously unconscious and not doing great. And they called
(10:08):
me and they said, what can we do to plan
for this situation? And I said, and I said to them,
are you kidding me? I go, what do you mean?
What can you do to plan. I said, you can.
You can go to court, that's what you can do.
They said, we need to going to handle his financial
affairs and to deal with all the healthcare decision making.
I said, well, the healthcare decision making, the hospital's going
(10:29):
to probably follow the next of kin rules if there's
nothing in place, which means the daughter is going to
be the one that's going to be in charge, not
the ex wife, not the brother, no one like that's
probably going to be the daughter, which and they may
not agree that the ex wife and the daughter and
the brother may not all agree, so it's a problem.
So they said, well, how do we do something? I said, well,
(10:50):
you can't. I said, he's incapacitating. And they said, well,
how do we handle all the financial affairs? You can't,
he's incapacitated. And but literally, STEVEO, this was on Friday.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Why do people wait so long? Andy?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Because people think that they haven't till tomorrow, and it's
and I talk about it in a workshop, I talk
about it in my book. We talk about here in
the podcast. People think they're invincible, buddy, They think that
they could that nothing's going to happen to them. But listen.
I'm the first one to be an example of that.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
As I told you, you're an athlete.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I'm an athlete. Yeah, but I had a heart attack.
You know, I'm coming up. It will be June twenty second,
will be nine years and I had a massive heart
attack in the swimming pool. But the difference between that
gentleman that we just talked about me is that I
had a full plan in place and I was not worried.
So if it were if it was my time, my
family was fine. A situation with this guy that's in
(11:47):
the hospital, they're in trouble, there's nothing. I told her
that there's nothing I could do. I go if he
gets better and he's able to communicate, and they said
he's starting to it looks like get better. I said, well,
then you need to do this stuff now. Once the
doctors clear him to say he's a sound mind and
confident to handle things, then you need to do the
state plan. And you know what was funny, STEVEO. At
(12:09):
the end of my phone call with the daughter and
the ex spouse and the uncle, they all said, we
need to schedule meetings with you.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Unbelievable and you know, not many and you know what's funny,
STEVEO ask me how many have made an appointment? How many?
Speaker 4 (12:27):
None?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Wow, yep, you know, it's amazing. It's I just wanted like,
people who come to you that don't even have a
will yet? Is that surprise? Isn't that surprising to you?
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yeah, you know, I guess And no, I've been doing
this for a long time, Steveough and it's the majority
of people that don't have anything that is the majority.
I mean, that is the norm. But it still surprises
me to this day, only because I'm okay, I have
an appointment already here anyway. I it surprises me in
(13:04):
the fact that you know, I have kids. They're twenty six,
twenty seven, and twenty four something like that. I don't
remember how old my daughter is, twenty six or twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
But as soon as I, you know, as soon as
I got married, we had our wills done, my wife
and I and then as soon as we have kids,
we updated everything obviously. So I'm surprised with people that
have families that you know, have a husband or a
wife or a significant other and they have kids and
(13:35):
they've never done anything that really surprises it does It's
to this day, it's still surprise to me. I'm like,
people come in to meet with me and they have
kids my age. I go, what the hell causes you
to meet me with me now versus twenty seven when
you had a kid. They said, I don't know. We
just said we got to take care of things. We're
getting older. And I'm like, okay, makes sense, but you know,
(13:57):
life happens.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
How about the people who do have a will but
never go back and look at that will because things change. Ah.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Yeah, that's that's a problem. That's a real problem, and
that is that's a scary situation might be. And I write,
I wrote in my book about this process. And I
tell people all the time, you know, on on our
podcast together and in the workshops and everywhere else. I
tell people, Listen, estate planning is not static. It's dynamic.
(14:31):
She said, what do you mean? I said, things change,
life changes, People come in and out of your life.
You have relationships, you get in fights, you get pissed
off with people, you want to get back in touch
with people. You've got to review your estate plan for
in my opinion, it should be reviewed on a yearly basis.
(14:53):
Once a year, I listen, I charge my clients five
hundred bucks an hour when they eat with me. And
I created this whole works, this whole private client group
called the Private the Estate in one Place private client
Group this year, and I have a built in it's
built in price, and there's all sorts of things that
come with it. And one of those things is it's
(15:14):
built into that price, is that you meet with me
once a year and it's all built into this one
set price. And the reason I do that, by the way,
stevo is because it's dynamic and people need to make
sure that their beneficiaries are up to date, that their
wills are up to date. I can't tell you how
many times I've told the story where there was an
(15:35):
ex wife divorced situation twenty plus years ago and they
never changed the beneficiary form and the guy's IRA and
he had over a million plus dollars in his IRA,
and his beneficiary was his ex wife ex wife, and
the ex wife got everything and the kids got nothing,
and there was a huge court battle and the ex
(15:57):
wife's gonna win more likely than not. So yeah, so yeah,
it is. I find that more scary EVO than people
that come in without anything.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Well, A friend of mine just passed a couple of
weeks ago, well known, and his name is Bernie Carrick.
He was the head of the New York City Police Department.
In fact, he was the head when nine to eleven happened.
And here's a guy who's great shape, looked incredible, and
(16:33):
it's sixty two years old, passed away from a heart attack.
And I wonder, it's like, did he have any plans made?
Thinking he was so strong and healthy that he doesn't
need a plan right now, he'll get to it. And
I wonder about that.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Yeah, I wonder about that every time I hear about
so and passing away. I mean, unfortunately, it's in my DNA,
you know, because that's what I do. Yes, that is
my you know, that's in the back of my head.
That's the first question I asked. I hope they had
everything put in place. I hope they had an estate plan.
I hope they had life insurance. I hope they had
everything set up properly so that the kids are taken
(17:12):
care of and the wife is taking care of her,
the husband, et cetera. And I usually hear more about
the situations where things are not setting than they are
set in place, and the people that you think are
that have everything in place are the ones that usually don't,
you know. And the example we give the perfect examples
(17:33):
is down here in South Florida Stevo is Joe, Robbie
and the Dolphins.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
The reason, oh yeah, you.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Know, the reason they had to sell the Dolphins many many,
many moons ago was because they didn't have proper estate
planning and they had a huge tax bill and they
couldn't afford it. They had to sell and liquidate the
team to pay for the taxes. If they had proper
estate planning in place, that would have never happened. And then,
you know, we talked about we talked about prior broadcasts
(18:00):
Gene Affan about how he didn't have his estate plan
in order. You know, he didn't, you know, talk about
static versus dynamic. He didn't estate plan twenty plus years ago,
never looked at it again. He never thought that he
was going to outlive his wife because his wife was
so much exactly, his wife was so much younger, and
they didn't have a contingency plan for the state plan
(18:23):
if she doesn't survive him. And now you got the
kids fighting with the estate and the charities to figure
out who's getting what.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And you handle elder law too, and what's so important
as people, it's so important about planning. Elder law is
just gone through the roof. Yeah, long long you know,
long term care is just amazing. In fact, I just
read the other day that, oh it's one of the
(18:51):
biggest home care facilities here in South Florida. I can't
remember the name of it. And it's expensive to be there.
But now they're telling people that have to go up
even twenty percent more and people can't afford it anymore.
But who plans for? The elder law is so important
(19:14):
to plan for, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, it's really really, really important. Yeah, that's the problem.
You know, my in laws are a perfect example.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Morse Life. Mort's Life is who I'm sure you've probably
heard of Morse Life. Yeah, there was just a big
article about how they're increasing to stay there. But that's
what I'm saying. You know, we have an older population
down here, and it is so important that you get
long especially long term care.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Well, the problem is exactly what you talk about, Stewo.
Is with the long term care insurance market. You can
buy an insurance policy and have it in place for
a long time, and they keep jacking up the Indians
to a point where it unaffordable and they have to
drop the policy, and then they end up not having
(20:06):
any insurance in place, and then they need to go
to an assistant living or nursing home and then what happened?
And that's the problem. So and I preach this all
the time. The issue is as follows elder just so
people know elder care. In my opinion, my definition of
elder care is when someone has to go into an
assisted living or have home health care for having a
(20:29):
nursing home situation. And the question becomes, how do you
pay for all that? And the best way, like we
were talking about Stevell, is with long term care insurance.
That's obviously the best way. The problem is the long
term care insurance has become unaffordable and as you're older
to try and get it, forget it. It's way too
expensive and it's too late at that point. I just
(20:50):
got long term care insurance. I'm fifty seven years old
and it's not cheap for me and I'm young, So
you know, it's just it just it's getting to a
point where it's unaffordable. There's different hybrids of long term
care insurance now where it won't jump as much, and
you need to talk to someone that really knows what's
going on in regards to that. But again, if you
(21:10):
have a situation where you're going into a nursing home
or assist a living and you're concerned about having your
income and your assets get dwindled, you need to reach
out to me because there are ways legally to plan
technically overnight basically to get things done. But that's elder care.
And again we're running out of time today, but I
just want to make sure people know that there is
(21:31):
a way to plan in Florida for that situation, even
if you don't have long term care insurance.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
ED give any classes coming up, any workshops.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I have one coming up actually tomorrow, Steve O. We
have one coming up tomorrow at in the Coral Springs
area at the Total Wine in Coral Springs. I think
it's a five thirty five forty five start time five
thirty and it usually starts around five forty five and
it lasts for about an hour to an hour and
a half. Try and get done by seven pm, especially
(22:03):
tomorrow night, because we got the Panther game. I want
to make sure I'm home to watch the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Oh absolutely, you're a Panther.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Fan, absolutely, so we will definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I am too.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, go Panthers. But yeah, I have a workshop tomorrow
night at the Total Wine Coral Springs. It's called it
State Planning Essentials. If you have an interest, please contact
the office at nine five four seven seven eight oh
three to make a reservation.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Annie. As always, thank you so much. Go Panthers. I
am yeah, I am so into the well. I've always
been a huge Panther fan. But thank you so much.
Andrew and uh have a wonderful and blessed We say
healthy my friend.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You too, and feel better from the cold. Steve O.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Thanks buddy, all right, thanks so much. Sure, that's Andrew Rosenberg,
attorney Andrew Rosenberg, one of the greatest estate planning attorneys
in South Florida. That's it for us today. Thank you
so much for tuning in. Thank you, Rebel. We'll see
you again next week with more Asked Experts.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Thanks for tuning in today to the Ask the Experts
show on the W four CY Radio and Talk for TV.
Tune in next week and every week to hear more
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The topics and opinions express in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio, it's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No
liability explicit or implies shall be extended to W FOURCY
Radio or it's employees or affiliates. Any questions or comments
should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
(00:20):
choosing W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome to the Ask the Expert Show on W four
CY Radio and Talk for TV, where we bring you
educational information from top local experts in the fields of legal, health,
financial and home improvement. Now sit back and listen to
experts in family law, association, law, hearing laws, business brokers,
(00:47):
home care, along with many other topics. Now here are
your hosts, Stevo and Sophia.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Hey, Good morning, South Florida. Welcome to another Ask the
Expert show where we bring you the top experts in
the field of legal, health, financial, and home improvement. The
show that we've got coming up Now, we just got
the greatest text from a listener. We start promoting the
show a couple of days out. You know, somebody who
(01:18):
just found the show for the first time. And of
all the questions I've asked to our expert attorney Andrew
Rosenberg of the Rosenberg Law Firm, I thought was such
a great question. Good morning Andy.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
Hey, Hey, good morning there, Steve O. How are you happy, duke?
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, I hope you had a happy Father's Day and.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
I did, and I hope you did as well.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, my kids are in Dallas. But you know what,
when you get older and you get a phone call,
that's all it matters. Hey, they were thinking about you.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That's true. That's true. I got one that's in New
York right now down here, so I was able to
see one of.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
The that's wonderful. So Andy, first of all, tell everybody,
because we find that we get so many people who
are finding the show for the first time. Tell people
about the Rosenberg Law Firm.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
Yeah. So, the law firm has been around for a
long time. As I am officially in old Farts so firm.
The firm is in Coral Springs, Florida. That's where our
main office is. I have a satellite office that I
use in Weston, and another one that I have access
to and bought Boston in poker ratone, so I do
(02:38):
have access to different locations, but the main offices in
Coral Springs, and we do Wills, Truss, estate planning, and
probate and elderlaw. So that's kind of that's what that's
our area. I've been doing it for I think thirty
thirty plus years now. Stevo, it's getting.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
You look so young.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I don't know. I got a lot of gray hair
in my hair now, but at least I still got it.
I still got hair, so I'm happy about that. But yeah,
so I live in Coral I live in Weston, but
I have an office in the Coral Spring and we
served the whole state of Florida.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You know, it's cool Andy that we've probably had four
or five people ride us checking up on your help
because you had some health issues. I thought that was
so cool, just people writing how's Andy doing?
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Yeah, Yeah, I know it's you know, I've had a
lot of health issues unfortunately over my years. Between all
my athletics, I was a Division one tennis player, and
because of that, I've had to have a fake knee
and a fake hit put in and a rope and
a rotator surgery on the shoulder for the tennis arm.
But besides all that, I've had a ton of kidney stones.
(03:47):
So we had an ECH. We had an episode not
long ago where I was struggling with kidney stones, and
I've had like fifteen to twenty of them over the
past couple of years. It's been horrible, and I've been
going through genetic testing to find out why I'm producing
all this stuff, and so far we're trying to get
to the bottom of it. But I'm doing okay. Guys.
I had to have surgery because I had one that
(04:08):
just wouldn't pass. It was too big, and that I
had that was not fun. But but we got through
the surgery and I got through the stent that they
put in through your and you know what your privates,
and but I'm through. I'm doing great. I feel great,
and I'm just uh, I'm just trying to stay in
shape and stay healthy.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I just thought that was so nice people taking the
time out just to write asking how you're doing. Yeah, no,
that's always That was really cool. So I gotta tell you,
we gotta lean this morning and it said I just
found the show can you walk me through when a
(04:47):
person comes to your office who has no will, who
has not planned at all because I'm too lazy? Can
you walk us through the steps that you take once
a person comes in?
Speaker 4 (05:03):
Absolutely question? Yeah, yeah, so you know, as you know, STEVEO,
I do a lot of workshops, and so that's usually
a question I actually get at the workshop at the end,
they're like, well, what do we do? How do we
prepare when we want to meet with you? So this
is the answer I give to everybody. Number One, it
is a low key meeting. Okay, don't panic, don't freak
(05:26):
out when you're meeting with an attorney to talk about
your state plan. That's number one. I try to make
it as easy going as we can. Number Two, it
would help, It's not required, but it would help to
have a general idea of what you have asset one,
meaning you have a house, you have stocks, you have bonds,
you have life insurance, all that kind of stuff. Just
(05:47):
get a basic understanding of what you have, approximate values
of them. And the most important thing for me at least,
and it is how are these assets titled? That's really
what I'm going to ask the question of does not
believe it or not. The amount of dollars is not
as important as how their title is more important to
(06:10):
me in the long run, and I'll tell you why
in a minute. But I mean, so that first meeting
is I get to know you a session. I need
to understand what your what you're what keeps you up
at two o'clock in the morning, you know, and you're
I asked that question, I go, what is keeping you
up at two o'clock in the morning, and your in
regards to your state plan, I just I want to
(06:30):
know what is going on, what's bothering? And then once
I get that information, whether you have in a state
plan or not, I'm going to start asking questions about
how what you have asset wise, how things are titled,
the approximate dollar amounts, et cetera. And then from there,
in that first meeting, I'm going to analyze the whole
(06:50):
situation and I'm going to hopefully give you a couple
of options of what we can do. I'm like, here's
option A, and it's going to cost X dollars. Here's
option B and it's going to cost wide ops. And
there might be an option fee which will cost z
dollars and I'll give you a bunch of different options,
and then that's pretty much the meeting. And then if
(07:11):
you want to move forward, then we schedule what we
call a design meeting. That's what I call it a
design meeting. And at the next meeting, that's when I'm
going to sit down and we're going to actually design
the plan for you, and we're going to go through
and ask for all the information as far as who
we want to name as your healthcare surrogate, your durable power,
(07:32):
your trustee, your trust who you want to give distributions to,
are there any specific distributions you want to give to
certain people, et cetera. So the first meeting is a
discovery meeting for lack of a better term, and then
if we want to move forward, then we sign paperwork
and then we schedule a design meeting. The design meeting
is going to be what the heck are we going
to do and who's it going to and how? And
(07:53):
then the last meeting is the signing meeting. So it's
typically three meetings with me as the process goes. And
that's whether you have an estate plan or you don't.
Because a lot of people Steve O. Come to me
and they already have some sort of of an estate
plan that was done twenty plus years ago, and they're like,
something twenty years ago, Now what do I do? And
(08:13):
I'm like, well, it's probably not going to be valid.
We probably need to it's not gonna be up to date,
and so we're probably gonna have to redo a bunch
of stuff. And so I get a lot of those people,
and then I get a lot of people that have
nothing in place. And I always tell people, Stevo, in fact,
I told you I wrote a book, and I do
a videos and everything else, and I at the end
(08:34):
of my videos and at the end of my workshop,
I try not to get people upset, but this is
and my book is titled the same thing. I'll look
right into the camera on the video, or I'll talk
to the people at the workshop and I'll tell them
and I'll say this, and you know what I'm gonna say.
You want to say, and remember, if you don't plan,
you're stupid. And that's what I tell people. I go,
(08:55):
you got to I can't tell you, Steve O, how
many situations I've had where someone tells me something that
has happened and there's nothing we could do at that point.
It's too late, and so whateveryone needs to understand is
that life happens and we can't control when it's our time.
And everyone thinks that they have until tomorrow to do something,
(09:17):
and then tomorrow never happened. Problem. In fact, Steve, I'm
going to tell you a quick story that happened over
the weekend.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
People love your story.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Dan, I know it's I get these calls all the time, Guys.
You've got to understand. I get these calls all the time.
I got a call from someone the emergency meeting. So
it was on Friday, So we had the emergency meeting.
And the meeting was with the daughter and the ex
(09:45):
wife and the uncle of the daughter, and it was
for the father slash ex husband slash brother. And apparently
he's he was fifty approximately fifty two years old, and
had a stroke or a heart attack, and he is
in the hospital and is not on live support, but
is obviously unconscious and not doing great. And they called
(10:08):
me and they said, what can we do to plan
for this situation? And I said, and I said to them,
are you kidding me? I go, what do you mean?
What can you do to plan. I said, you can.
You can go to court, that's what you can do.
They said, we need to going to handle his financial
affairs and to deal with all the healthcare decision making.
I said, well, the healthcare decision making, the hospital's going
(10:29):
to probably follow the next of kin rules if there's
nothing in place, which means the daughter is going to
be the one that's going to be in charge, not
the ex wife, not the brother, no one like that's
probably going to be the daughter, which and they may
not agree that the ex wife and the daughter and
the brother may not all agree, so it's a problem.
So they said, well, how do we do something? I said, well,
(10:50):
you can't. I said, he's incapacitating. And they said, well,
how do we handle all the financial affairs? You can't,
he's incapacitated. And but literally, STEVEO, this was on Friday.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Why do people wait so long? Andy?
Speaker 4 (11:03):
Because people think that they haven't till tomorrow, and it's
and I talk about it in a workshop, I talk
about it in my book. We talk about here in
the podcast. People think they're invincible, buddy, They think that
they could that nothing's going to happen to them. But listen.
I'm the first one to be an example of that.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
As I told you, you're an athlete.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
I'm an athlete. Yeah, but I had a heart attack.
You know, I'm coming up. It will be June twenty second,
will be nine years and I had a massive heart
attack in the swimming pool. But the difference between that
gentleman that we just talked about me is that I
had a full plan in place and I was not worried.
So if it were if it was my time, my
family was fine. A situation with this guy that's in
(11:47):
the hospital, they're in trouble, there's nothing. I told her
that there's nothing I could do. I go if he
gets better and he's able to communicate, and they said
he's starting to it looks like get better. I said, well,
then you need to do this stuff now. Once the
doctors clear him to say he's a sound mind and
confident to handle things, then you need to do the
state plan. And you know what was funny, STEVEO. At
(12:09):
the end of my phone call with the daughter and
the ex spouse and the uncle, they all said, we
need to schedule meetings with you.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Unbelievable and you know, not many and you know what's funny,
STEVEO ask me how many have made an appointment? How many?
Speaker 4 (12:27):
None?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Wow, yep, you know, it's amazing. It's I just wanted like,
people who come to you that don't even have a
will yet? Is that surprise? Isn't that surprising to you?
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Yeah, you know, I guess And no, I've been doing
this for a long time, Steveough and it's the majority
of people that don't have anything that is the majority.
I mean, that is the norm. But it still surprises
me to this day, only because I'm okay, I have
an appointment already here anyway. I it surprises me in
(13:04):
the fact that you know, I have kids. They're twenty six,
twenty seven, and twenty four something like that. I don't
remember how old my daughter is, twenty six or twenty seven.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
But as soon as I, you know, as soon as
I got married, we had our wills done, my wife
and I and then as soon as we have kids,
we updated everything obviously. So I'm surprised with people that
have families that you know, have a husband or a
wife or a significant other and they have kids and
(13:35):
they've never done anything that really surprises it does It's
to this day, it's still surprise to me. I'm like,
people come in to meet with me and they have
kids my age. I go, what the hell causes you
to meet me with me now versus twenty seven when
you had a kid. They said, I don't know. We
just said we got to take care of things. We're
getting older. And I'm like, okay, makes sense, but you know,
(13:57):
life happens.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
How about the people who do have a will but
never go back and look at that will because things change. Ah.
Speaker 4 (14:07):
Yeah, that's that's a problem. That's a real problem, and
that is that's a scary situation might be. And I write,
I wrote in my book about this process. And I
tell people all the time, you know, on on our
podcast together and in the workshops and everywhere else. I
tell people, Listen, estate planning is not static. It's dynamic.
(14:31):
She said, what do you mean? I said, things change,
life changes, People come in and out of your life.
You have relationships, you get in fights, you get pissed
off with people, you want to get back in touch
with people. You've got to review your estate plan for
in my opinion, it should be reviewed on a yearly basis.
(14:53):
Once a year, I listen, I charge my clients five
hundred bucks an hour when they eat with me. And
I created this whole works, this whole private client group
called the Private the Estate in one Place private client
Group this year, and I have a built in it's
built in price, and there's all sorts of things that
come with it. And one of those things is it's
(15:14):
built into that price, is that you meet with me
once a year and it's all built into this one
set price. And the reason I do that, by the way,
stevo is because it's dynamic and people need to make
sure that their beneficiaries are up to date, that their
wills are up to date. I can't tell you how
many times I've told the story where there was an
(15:35):
ex wife divorced situation twenty plus years ago and they
never changed the beneficiary form and the guy's IRA and
he had over a million plus dollars in his IRA,
and his beneficiary was his ex wife ex wife, and
the ex wife got everything and the kids got nothing,
and there was a huge court battle and the ex
(15:57):
wife's gonna win more likely than not. So yeah, so yeah,
it is. I find that more scary EVO than people
that come in without anything.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Well, A friend of mine just passed a couple of
weeks ago, well known, and his name is Bernie Carrick.
He was the head of the New York City Police Department.
In fact, he was the head when nine to eleven happened.
And here's a guy who's great shape, looked incredible, and
(16:33):
it's sixty two years old, passed away from a heart attack.
And I wonder, it's like, did he have any plans made?
Thinking he was so strong and healthy that he doesn't
need a plan right now, he'll get to it. And
I wonder about that.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Yeah, I wonder about that every time I hear about
so and passing away. I mean, unfortunately, it's in my DNA,
you know, because that's what I do. Yes, that is
my you know, that's in the back of my head.
That's the first question I asked. I hope they had
everything put in place. I hope they had an estate plan.
I hope they had life insurance. I hope they had
everything set up properly so that the kids are taken
(17:12):
care of and the wife is taking care of her,
the husband, et cetera. And I usually hear more about
the situations where things are not setting than they are
set in place, and the people that you think are
that have everything in place are the ones that usually don't,
you know. And the example we give the perfect examples
(17:33):
is down here in South Florida Stevo is Joe, Robbie
and the Dolphins.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
The reason, oh yeah, you.
Speaker 4 (17:39):
Know, the reason they had to sell the Dolphins many many,
many moons ago was because they didn't have proper estate
planning and they had a huge tax bill and they
couldn't afford it. They had to sell and liquidate the
team to pay for the taxes. If they had proper
estate planning in place, that would have never happened. And then,
you know, we talked about we talked about prior broadcasts
(18:00):
Gene Affan about how he didn't have his estate plan
in order. You know, he didn't, you know, talk about
static versus dynamic. He didn't estate plan twenty plus years ago,
never looked at it again. He never thought that he
was going to outlive his wife because his wife was
so much exactly, his wife was so much younger, and
they didn't have a contingency plan for the state plan
(18:23):
if she doesn't survive him. And now you got the
kids fighting with the estate and the charities to figure
out who's getting what.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
And you handle elder law too, and what's so important
as people, it's so important about planning. Elder law is
just gone through the roof. Yeah, long long you know,
long term care is just amazing. In fact, I just
read the other day that, oh it's one of the
(18:51):
biggest home care facilities here in South Florida. I can't
remember the name of it. And it's expensive to be there.
But now they're telling people that have to go up
even twenty percent more and people can't afford it anymore.
But who plans for? The elder law is so important
(19:14):
to plan for, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Yeah, it's really really, really important. Yeah, that's the problem.
You know, my in laws are a perfect example.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
Morse Life. Mort's Life is who I'm sure you've probably
heard of Morse Life. Yeah, there was just a big
article about how they're increasing to stay there. But that's
what I'm saying. You know, we have an older population
down here, and it is so important that you get
long especially long term care.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Well, the problem is exactly what you talk about, Stewo.
Is with the long term care insurance market. You can
buy an insurance policy and have it in place for
a long time, and they keep jacking up the Indians
to a point where it unaffordable and they have to
drop the policy, and then they end up not having
(20:06):
any insurance in place, and then they need to go
to an assistant living or nursing home and then what happened?
And that's the problem. So and I preach this all
the time. The issue is as follows elder just so
people know elder care. In my opinion, my definition of
elder care is when someone has to go into an
assisted living or have home health care for having a
(20:29):
nursing home situation. And the question becomes, how do you
pay for all that? And the best way, like we
were talking about Stevell, is with long term care insurance.
That's obviously the best way. The problem is the long
term care insurance has become unaffordable and as you're older
to try and get it, forget it. It's way too
expensive and it's too late at that point. I just
(20:50):
got long term care insurance. I'm fifty seven years old
and it's not cheap for me and I'm young, So
you know, it's just it just it's getting to a
point where it's unaffordable. There's different hybrids of long term
care insurance now where it won't jump as much, and
you need to talk to someone that really knows what's
going on in regards to that. But again, if you
(21:10):
have a situation where you're going into a nursing home
or assist a living and you're concerned about having your
income and your assets get dwindled, you need to reach
out to me because there are ways legally to plan
technically overnight basically to get things done. But that's elder care.
And again we're running out of time today, but I
just want to make sure people know that there is
(21:31):
a way to plan in Florida for that situation, even
if you don't have long term care insurance.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
ED give any classes coming up, any workshops.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
I have one coming up actually tomorrow, Steve O. We
have one coming up tomorrow at in the Coral Springs
area at the Total Wine in Coral Springs. I think
it's a five thirty five forty five start time five
thirty and it usually starts around five forty five and
it lasts for about an hour to an hour and
a half. Try and get done by seven pm, especially
(22:03):
tomorrow night, because we got the Panther game. I want
to make sure I'm home to watch the Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Oh absolutely, you're a Panther.
Speaker 4 (22:09):
Fan, absolutely, so we will definitely.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
I am too.
Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, go Panthers. But yeah, I have a workshop tomorrow
night at the Total Wine Coral Springs. It's called it
State Planning Essentials. If you have an interest, please contact
the office at nine five four seven seven eight oh
three to make a reservation.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Annie. As always, thank you so much. Go Panthers. I
am yeah, I am so into the well. I've always
been a huge Panther fan. But thank you so much.
Andrew and uh have a wonderful and blessed We say
healthy my friend.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
You too, and feel better from the cold. Steve O.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
Thanks buddy, all right, thanks so much. Sure, that's Andrew Rosenberg,
attorney Andrew Rosenberg, one of the greatest estate planning attorneys
in South Florida. That's it for us today. Thank you
so much for tuning in. Thank you, Rebel. We'll see
you again next week with more Asked Experts.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
Thanks for tuning in today to the Ask the Experts
show on the W four CY Radio and Talk for TV.
Tune in next week and every week to hear more
from our experts on personal injury, insurance, air condition repairs,
estate planning, medicare, and many other topics in the areas
of legal, health, financial and home improvement. See you next week.
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