Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker C: Our guest speaker now is Connie Glass. She has been doing elder law for many years. Did I hear 1997 is when your law firm began?
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Yes. Okay.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: And she is the very best of the best. We're thankful that she's up in this area. What a blessing to have her nearby and a blessing to have her with us today. So she's going to share with you a lot about the legalities and things that you may have questions about. I do want to say this real quickly, that we are going to have a question answer panel after this session. Connie, Gary, and Marshall will all be up on stage to answer questions. So if there are specific questions that you have, you're those on a piece of paper and bring them to me. I'll be standing back in the back of this presentation. You can bring that to me. And then we'll begin to work through those questions as we go. And if we have time, if there are questions from the audience, we'll take some of those as well. We've got a few questions that were given to us online, so we're going to run through those as well. So anyway, thank you so much.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: You guys will be blessed.
[00:01:35] Speaker D: All right, thank you all. Can everybody hear me? Everybody in the back, I'm speaking, so if you can't hear me in the.
[00:01:42] Speaker A: Back, raise your hand.
[00:01:45] Speaker D: All right. I'm assuming I have on a plethora of microphones here for various and sundry reasons, so I don't usually Come wired. So these are not accoutrements to my outfit.
Thank you all for having me. We were just talking about, this is the first time, post COVID that you all have done this. So, yay, we're back together again. I was here. Gosh, it's been about five or six years ago now that we did this before and enjoyed it so much and glad to see all of you out. I was told that you all had.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: A long day already, so I'm going to have to be perky if I'm going to.
[00:02:28] Speaker D: Sing. Maybe some of you do that for us and you all can come a little sideshow while I talk up here, but this is not the most stimulating topic. We're going to talk about getting ill and becoming incapacitated and dying. So it's not the cheeriest topic in the world, but important information. So hopefully you can all stay awake with me for the next 45 minutes or so, and then we'll switch up and do a panel, and hopefully that'll get you awake again.
My handout is in your little booklet, so if you've got your little program book, that's where my handout is. I don't do PowerPoint. Two things. One is the party line is that I would much rather you focus on what I'm saying rather than looking at a screen. The real reason is because I'm 66 years old and have never done a PowerPoint presentation in my life, and my daughter's in Birmingham now and can't do PowerPoint for me, so that's why I don't have PowerPoint. So that's the real reason.
Since I've seen you all, I'm now grandmother.
I have twin granddaughters who are five months old, so I had to give up seeing them this weekend so I could be here with you all.
So I FaceTimed them, so we're okay. I got to see them. They're finally looking at the screen.
Three or four months. They're just like. They don't really look at the screen. They didn't know Grandma was there, but now they're kind of looking at me. I'm not sure they know who I am, but they do know that voice is coming out of that little box. So it's wonderful being a grandparent. Why didn't you all tell me about this before, how great it was? I would have done it sooner. WEll, I actually didn't have a choice.
All right, let's talk about elder law. I've been doing this for lots of years. I moved to Huntsville in 1987, worked at Tarcock for ten years, opened my law firm in 1997, so been with the elder law firm since then, graduated in 81. So it's been a long time since I graduated law school.
I'm a certified elder law attorney. What that means for you guys is that that should mean I know what I'm doing.
There are only four of us now certified in Alabama.
I'm in North Alabama and then there are three in Birmingham. There are three certified elder law attorneys in Birmingham. We did have one in Decatur, but he moved to Mississippi, so now I'm the only one north of Birmingham. Certification meant that I had to take an exam much like the bar exam, which, yes, did make my hands sweat somewhat when I had to take that exam. And even talking about it, the certification exam was to ensure that I did have the knowledge to practice in elder law. Then I have to be recertified every five years to prove that I do have knowledge about the area and that I actually do practice in the field of elder law, which is really what I do exclusively. One of the few firms in Alabama that we do this do. I don't do criminal law, bankruptcy, divorce, any of those things. I do strictly elder law, which really encompasses a lot of stuff. And we're going to talk about that today.
I want to talk first about long term care, what's available, how you're going to pay for it. And I want to finish up by talking about something that's going to apply to, hopefully everybody in the room. No matter whether you're a caregiver, whether you're young, old in between.
Old is a shifting number for me now that I'm 66, people in their sixty s are definitely not old. So that number shifts as I get older at some .1 hundred is not going to be old. So as I get closer there, hopefully.
But as we age, our needs change.
If you are a caregiver for someone who is aging or who has a chronic condition, then you know that the needs of that person are very different from their needs when they were up and around and doing much better than baby they're doing now. So we want to talk today about things perhaps for the person for whom you are the caregiver, as well as some things you need to think about for yourself.
In Alabama, there's levels of care in which you can receive long term care. Obviously you can get care at home. I'm not going to talk about that a lot because most often care in the home is out of pocket. It's expensive. It's one on one care. It's probably the most expensive. It's not probably. It is the most expensive kind of care you can receive simply because it's one caregiver, one person.
If you're doing round the clock care at home, you can look at somewhere between twelve and $20,000 a month to do care in the home. That's 24 hours, days, seven day a week. Now, if you only need a few hours a day, that's different. But when you're starting to get all day, every day, seven days a week, then you're looking at thousands of dollars in the cost of home care.
The next level of care that people move into, not independent living. I'm not talking about people moving into apartments, but the next level of care where you can actually get care is assisted living facilities.
I'm a big fan of assisted living facilities. I think it's a great intermediate level of care. Assisted living facilities are basically for people who can't live at home. They have some need with their activities of daily living.
They still want to usually be independent. In a room alone, they're ambulatory, whether they're in a wheelchair, in ambulatory, or whether they're walking with a walker or walking without assistance. They take meals in a dining room. But there's somebody on staff there at the facility at all times, and there are things provided for that person. There's usually you get your room clean, all meals are provided. You can get medication assistance. So there's services available to help you maintain your independence to the level that you can be independent in an assisted living facility.
Another type of assisted living facility is called a specialty care Assisted Living Facility. Many of us call that memory care.
It's an assisted living facility that is for people with cognitive impairment.
Many years ago, when assisted Living first opened in Alabama, if you were diagnosed with dementia and you began to exhibit symptoms, wandering or needing help, knowing, taking medicines, that kind of thing, you couldn't necessarily stay in regular assisted living, and there was really no other place to go except home or nursing home. So now there's another intermediate level of care called specialty care assisted living. Again, it's commonly referred to as memory care.
It's very similar to assisted living, except the staffing levels are higher, there's more services provided, and everyone in specialty care assisted living facility has some sort of cognitive impairment, maybe Alzheimer's, dementia, stroke related issues with memory. But everyone there has cognitive issues.
Assisted living and specialty care assisted living are generally paid for out of pocket. Medicare doesn't cover those levels of care. Neither does Medicaid. So for the most part, unless you've got long term care insurance, you're going to be usually writing a check for that kind of care.
The next level of care past assisted living is in nursing care. Skilled nursing facilities. Nursing homes There are several nursing homes in Madison County. All of the nursing homes in Madison county are Medicaid participating, except two. We have two that are not Medicaid participating. That's Redstone Village and Magnolia Trace. All the others do participate in the Medicaid program. Now, note, I'm not saying Medicare, I'm saying Medicaid.
We also have a veterans nursing home in Huntsville. There are four in Alabama. There's one here in Huntsville, the Tutfan Veterans Nursing Home. So if you are a veteran, that is a good choice for you financially for nursing home care.
The only downside really to Tutfan is there's usually a waiting list. That waiting list varies, sometimes three months to a year, depending on time of year, who's going in, when you're going in.
So if you have a veteran in the family who is declining, who may need skilled nursing care, you might want to consider looking at getting that person on the waiting list at Tutfan so that the care is there if you need it.
So how are we going to pay for all these levels of care that we've talked about? Obviously, you can write a check. As long as you've got money in the bank, you can pay the bill.
Assisted living facilities run anywhere from 3000 thousand, $5 a month upwards.
Nursing homes in this area are usually between seven, 8000, up to about 11,000 a month. So not all of us can write checks for a long time until we're out of money and we're having to look at some other source of payment.
Some people have long term care insurance, that is, insurance that pays for the need of going into a long term care setting. Long term care insurance generally can pay for care at home. It can pay for assisted living, memory care or skilled nursing. Usually policies pay for any level of care that you need.
Everybody's policy is different. So if you have a policy, I have no idea what your policy is going to cover. A lot of people in the last few years have begun to drop their policies because premiums are increasing. I've had a lot of phone calls within the last year of different companies doubling premiums on long term care policies, and people can't afford it anymore. So they're either going to have to drop their policy, reduce their coverage, do something where they can make those premiums affordable. The premiums are based on age and health, so the premiums are going to vary from person to person. Obviously, the younger and healthier you are, the cheaper the insurance is going to be, the older you are, and the more health conditions you've already been diagnosed with are going to cause the premiums to be higher.
Generally, I tell my clients to start looking at around 55 to 60 for a long term care policy if they're looking at one, mainly because that's a good age, and most often you haven't developed those chronic conditions that you might develop later on in life.
If you've got chronic conditions like diabetes, particularly if it's not treated, it's not under control, uncontrolled high blood pressure, history of strokes, heart disease, joint problems are a biggie with long term care insurers because that can cause you to lose the ability to remain independent, to live independently. So there's usually fairly strict underwriting for long term care policies, but I'm again, a big fan of them. If it's something you can work in your budget and you're insurable, there are veterans benefits for veterans and widows of veterans. If you are a veteran and you served at least one day during a wartime period and you were 90 days active duty, honorably discharged, then you probably will at some point in your life qualify for veterans benefits. If you're a widow of such a widower, widower of such a veteran, then you may also be eligible for those benefits.
You might not be eligible at home living independently by yourself, but if you begin to need care, either care in your home, assisted living, nursing home care, then you may be eligible for a benefit through the Veterans Administration. So don't forget that if you are a veteran or a widow or widower of a veteran, that there are benefits there available to you in addition to the Veterans nursing home.
Medicare, most people over the age of 65 have Medicare. I now have a Medicare card. That was a big shock when I got it in the mail.
Yeah, got the AARP card many years ago, so I kind of got used to that. And then I got my Medicare card in the mail. It's like, yes, I really did turn 65, didn't I?
Medicare coverage is very limited for long term care. Medicare was never designed to be a long term care program. Medicare is insurance. It's health insurance. It's health insurance for people who are over 65 who have paid into the Social Security system.
So it's not really for long term care. It's for acute care. It's for when you go to the hospital, the doctor, the ER.
It's not to pay for you to be in a nursing home long term. It's not to pay for home health care at home for a long period of time. That's not what it was designed for at all. The basic requirements for Medicare nursing home coverage, you can be approved for up to 100 days of coverage in a skilled nursing facility. Days one through 20 are fully covered. Days 21 through 100, there's a copayment. That copayment in 2023 is $200 a day. So if you're there for 30 days, 20 of those days are covered 21 through 30. So the next roughly ten days would cost you $2,000, $200 a day.
So don't count on Medicare to pay for long term care is basically what I'm trying to tell you. It's there for short term stays. So if you break your hip, have hip surgery, have to go to the nursing home to rehab for a week or two or three or four, then, yeah, Medicare is great. And then they might even prescribe you some home health care when you come home for a short time. But it's not going to pay for you long term for somebody month after month after month. It's not going to pay for your nursing home care after a hundred days. So just don't count on Medicare for long term.
The largest payer of nursing home care in Alabama is Medicaid.
Medicaid is different from Medicare. I wish they were two totally different names so people don't confuse them.
Medicaid is a needs based program. It's a form of welfare assistance. It's for people with limited income and assets.
It was not designed for long term care, but that's really kind of what it's turned into. There are all kinds of Medicaid programs. There's Medicaid for pregnant women of low income and low means. There's Medicaid for children.
There's Medicaid for persons who have never been able to work, who are disabled.
But the kind of Medicaid I'm talking about is long term care. Medicaid. It's Medicaid for long term care facilities like nursing homes, not assisted living, but nursing homes.
MedicaID is a joint federal state program. It's funded partially by the state, mostly by the federal government.
Our match is about one to $5 in Alabama. So for every dollar we spend, we usually get four to $5 in federal dollars back in addition to our dollar. So if we don't spend our dollar, we don't get those federal dollars.
Every state's match is a little different, but that's what our match is roughly, in Alabama, about 73. 4% of all nursing home residents in Alabama are there under Medicaid. So almost three out of every four people, these are not all poor people, these are people who started with some means, who have used up those assets and have now had to apply for Medicaid. If you stay in the nursing home long enough, unless you have significant assets, if you stay in the nursing home long enough, you probably will have to apply for Medicaid assistance. Nursing homes on average, run about $100,000 a year.
So it doesn't take long to go through your wealth to get to where you can't pay for it anymore.
Medicaid has an income and a resource limit. The only thing I want to tell you, in the interest of saving a little time, about the income limit is don't worry about it. It's a fixable problem. If you go to the nursing home and your income is over the Medicaid income limit and you would otherwise qualify for Medicaid, you can qualify. There's something called a qualified income trust that we can fix the income problem. Don't worry about how it works.
Just know that income is not a barrier to qualifying for Medicaid in the nursing home. It's a problem you got to fix, but we can fix it. It's fairly simple, easy fix.
The bigger issue for people qualifying for Medicaid in the nursing home are resources, or what Medicaid calls assets.
Medicaid looks at your assets as money that you have available to pay for your care.
If you go into a nursing home and you're single, you're never married, you're widowed, widower, divorced, you don't have a living spouse, then you're a single person, and all of the assets that are available to you have to be spent down to less than $2,000 before you can qualify for Medicaid.
Medicaid doesn't count. Just a very few things. They don't count. One vehicle seems OD. They allow a nursing home resident to have a vehicle.
Personal property. They don't count your stuff. Your couches and chairs and lamps and tables. Now, they count the house that it sits in, but they don't count your stuff.
They don't count what you've set aside for funeral and burial. If you've prepaid for a funeral and burial, that doesn't count.
Basically everything else is going to count as being an available asset. So if you're single, the house that you were living in before you moved to the nursing home is going to count as an asset.
Now hear me clearly if you don't hear anything else, okay, wake up now is one of the things I want you to hear.
The nursing home doesn't take your stuff the nursing home doesn't want your stuff.
They don't want your house. They don't want the stuff in your house.
They don't really want the money in your bank account. They want you to write them a check once a month for you to be there.
So at the first of every month, the nursing home will send you a bill.
As long as somebody writes a check for the bill for that month, you're perfectly fine and you can stay there for the month. If no one writes a check for the bill for that month and you've never been approved for Medicaid, who's going to write a check to the nursing home for that bill? Then the nursing home can evict you.
So all they're asking you to do is pay them for the time that you're there.
So if you go to the nursing home and some people will tell you that you've got to sign over all your assets to the nursing home. I'm not going to ask for show of hands, however, many people have heard that because everybody who comes to my office has heard that. They've heard that you got to sign over everything, turn over everything to the nursing home when you go in. They can't legally do that. What if you're only there five days?
I mean, you can't give them your $300,000 house for being there five days. That just doesn't make any legal sense.
So what makes sense is that they're going to charge you $300 a day to be there. So if their bill is $9,000 for the month, it's just like renting an apartment. The apartment expects you to pay the rent for the month. They expect you to pay it at the first of the month.
And if you do pay it, you get to stay. If you don't pay it, they ask you to leave. So that's essentially how the nursing home works.
They ask you to pay for the time that you're there.
So as long as you're paying for that in some fashion, then you stay. If you run out of money to pay the bill, that's when you have to look to the Medicaid program to see if you qualify for Medicaid to help you pay the bill.
You also don't give your stuff to Medicaid.
Medicaid actually gives you money. They actually give the nursing home money if you qualify. So you're asking them to write a check is what you're asking Medicaid to do. You don't hand Medicaid your stuff. You apply for that program. And then if you qualify for that program, they write a check to the nursing home.
If you are one of a married couple and one of you goes to the nursing home and one stays at home, there's a big difference in what.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: You get to keep as far as assets are concerned.
[00:25:16] Speaker D: Remember, I told you, for a single person, you have to spend everything down to $2,000.
For a married couple, that's not what happens.
It's on page five of my outline, but I'm not sure where it is in your book. But it's called spousal resource protection. It's kind of probably midway through the outline.
If your spouse goes to the nursing home and you're staying at home, then the first big difference is the house is totally excluded. Medicaid ignores it. They act like there's not one.
As long as the community spouse, the one not in the nursing home, is living in the home. Medicaid simply ignores that home. They don't count it. They don't make sell it. They don't take a lien. They ignore it.
So that's a big difference if you're married.
The second thing is they look at all of the assets that either spouse owns, and then they use a formula.
[00:26:16] Speaker A: To figure out how many of those assets the spouse at home is going to get.
Basically, what the formula is, it's in.
[00:26:24] Speaker D: Your outline, is the assets are split in half with a minimum protected Amount of roughly $30,000 and a Maximum protected Amount of roughly $149,000.
So if you and your spouse have a House and $200,000, you go to the nursing home, your spouse gets to keep the house and $100,000.
The other $100,000 gets spent on the nursing home till it's gone. And then the one in the nursing home applies for Medicaid.
If you go to the nursing home and you all got $400,000, then the one at home doesn't get to keep half because that's over the maximum number. The maximum number is roughly $149,000. It's actually 148, 620, but let's round it off to 149. So the spouse at home gets to keep a house at $149,000, and then everything over that gets spent on the.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: One in the nursing home.
Now, if you go to the nursing.
[00:27:37] Speaker D: Home and you and your spouse have.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Your house, $30,000 in the bank, your spouse gets to keep it all because that's the minimum protected amount. So all you have to take away from that Is if you are married.
[00:27:51] Speaker D: And your spouse goes to the nursing home, there is no way to know what you're going to get to keep.
[00:27:57] Speaker A: Without going through this Medicaid formula calculation. You can't Rely on what happened to your next door neighbor or the person.
[00:28:06] Speaker D: Down the street or that Person that.
[00:28:07] Speaker A: You know at church who went into the nursing home, what they got, because every single couple has a different amount of assets.
Therefore, every single couple, the number that they're going to get is going to be different.
All right, you all are looking concerned a little bit.
Either I'm going way too fast or you're just not getting this, but I'm.
[00:28:32] Speaker D: Going to assume you're getting it and I'm just going to Slow down a taD.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: So assets are the Big Issue.
The second Big Issue in qualifying for Medicaid are gifts and transfers.
[00:28:48] Speaker D: This is the one that everybody wants to know.
When you apply for Medicaid, Medicaid has a question on the application that says.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Have you given away or transferred or.
[00:29:04] Speaker D: Sold something for less than its fair market value within the last 60 months.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: Five years. If you have, then Medicaid adds up the amount of gifts, transfers, things you sold for lesser value.
[00:29:22] Speaker D: They add all that up and then they will not pay for your care.
[00:29:26] Speaker A: For as long as that would have lasted.
That's the penalty that they impose. They impose a period of ineligibility based on what you gave away.
[00:29:37] Speaker D: The more you give away, the longer the penalty period.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: What is a gift transfer?
[00:29:48] Speaker D: Some things are obvious.
[00:29:50] Speaker A: Give your grandchild $10,000 because you love.
[00:29:54] Speaker D: Them, that's a gift.
Move into your daughter's house and you.
[00:30:02] Speaker A: Spend $40,000 to add on a room.
[00:30:05] Speaker D: And a bathroom to your daughter's house to live there.
That's a gift or a transfer because you're adding on to someone else's house.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: So some things are not quite as obvious.
[00:30:20] Speaker D: Your house is worth $400,000 and you.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Sell it for $300.
Get rid of it.
[00:30:28] Speaker D: That's $100,000 transfer. That's penalized by Medicaid because those are the things that Medicaid looks financial history for five years.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: How will they know what you've given.
[00:30:45] Speaker D: Away to produce your financial records for five years?
[00:30:50] Speaker A: They go through them. And if there's a withdrawal of $20,000, they're going to ask what you did with it.
Okay, show us the car title.
[00:31:01] Speaker D: So you've got to prove, if you've.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Got cash withdrawals, checks to cash, you got to prove where that money went.
[00:31:07] Speaker D: If it was a gift or a transfer, there are a few things that are exempt transfers.
[00:31:14] Speaker A: Medicaid doesn't count as transfer. I'm not even going to go into those because that'll take us down a rabbit trail.
[00:31:19] Speaker D: And I don't want to go there.
[00:31:20] Speaker A: Because I've got some other things I.
[00:31:21] Speaker D: Want to talk to you about.
[00:31:27] Speaker A: The Medicaid program is a complicated one.
I honestly don't know how people ever.
[00:31:34] Speaker D: Apply on their own and get approved because it's just complicated.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: I know people do, but it's always a good idea to get advice. If somebody for whom you are a caregiver is going to need nurse income.
[00:31:51] Speaker D: Care, it's usually better to get advice.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Before you're there in the thick of.
[00:31:57] Speaker D: Things and you're having to write a check for 9000 or $10,000 a month.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: For care and you see the bank balance dwindling and you're wondering, oh my gosh, will we ever qualify for Medicaid? What are the rules? What have we done that might qualify? Better to know in advance if there's possible. And I know sometimes it's crisis and things happen. You don't always have time to plan ahead. But if possible, it's best to get advice ahead of time in the midst.
[00:32:26] Speaker D: Of the crisis situation.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: A couple of things I want to.
[00:32:32] Speaker D: Talk to you about that don't have to do with long term care about.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: To shift gears a little bit.
[00:32:38] Speaker D: These things really apply to everybody, but.
[00:32:41] Speaker A: Particularly for people who are declining.
The first thing I want to talk about decision making.
If you have never thought about what.
[00:32:56] Speaker D: Would happen to me as far as.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: Decision making is concerned, if I can't.
[00:33:01] Speaker D: Make my own decisions anymore, have I.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: Given somebody that authority to be my decision maker? And that's generally through a durable power of attorney. If you've not done that, would strongly encourage you to think about it.
[00:33:14] Speaker D: No matter your age, no matter where.
[00:33:16] Speaker A: You are in life, none of us.
[00:33:17] Speaker D: Have the assurance of tomorrow as far as good health.
So if you become incapacitated and you've.
[00:33:24] Speaker A: Never given anybody the power to make decisions for you, then no one illegally has that authority.
[00:33:31] Speaker D: The only person who can give another.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Person authority is you.
I get a lot of phone calls.
[00:33:39] Speaker D: Mom has had a stroke.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: She's in the hospital. We can't pay her bills. Don't know what we're going to do.
[00:33:46] Speaker D: First thing I ask, does mom still have capacity? No. Did you hear what I said?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: She's had a stroke. She can't talk, she can't communicate.
It's too late at that point for.
[00:33:57] Speaker D: Mom to give you a power of attorney.
[00:33:59] Speaker A: If she can't communicate with me, there's a whole different procedure that we'll have to go through.
[00:34:04] Speaker D: It's called guardian servitorship.
[00:34:06] Speaker A: That's in your handout, which is a legal process through court, which takes a couple of months.
[00:34:12] Speaker D: We want to avoid that if at all possible. So right now, think about what would happen if you're in a car wreck.
[00:34:19] Speaker A: And you become unconscious.
[00:34:23] Speaker D: Who's going to write your check, take.
[00:34:26] Speaker A: Care of everything financially for the doctor, and tell them what kind of treatment you would like to have.
If somebody popped into your mind, that's the person that you need to think.
[00:34:39] Speaker D: About giving power of attorney to.
[00:34:42] Speaker A: If no one came to mind, then.
[00:34:44] Speaker D: Perhaps you should not give power of attorney.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: And I say that a little bit.
[00:34:49] Speaker D: Jokingly, but not really, because you have.
[00:34:53] Speaker A: To think that this person have control.
[00:34:57] Speaker D: Of what happens to you and your.
[00:34:59] Speaker A: Stuff when you don't know what's going on.
[00:35:03] Speaker D: So you have to be able to.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Know that if you give that person.
[00:35:06] Speaker D: That authority, that they're going to use.
[00:35:09] Speaker A: That authority to take care of you and do what's in your best interest.
[00:35:13] Speaker D: Because it's easy to misuse the power of attorney.
[00:35:16] Speaker A: Nobody's looking over your shoulder when you're using a power of attorney for another person.
[00:35:21] Speaker D: Nobody's checking up on you. Bad things can happen before it's ever discovered.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Don't do it lightly, but consider doing it.
[00:35:32] Speaker D: If you've given power of attorney to.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Somebody before many years ago, get it.
[00:35:37] Speaker D: Out and look at it.
[00:35:38] Speaker A: Make sure that that person is still.
[00:35:40] Speaker D: The person that you want to have it. You have an alternate person named.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: I've seen many a power of attorney that names one person with no alternate. That first agent dies, and then there's nobody to serve.
[00:35:53] Speaker D: So be sure. We always want alternates or successors, at.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Least one to the first person you name. I don't encourage you to name two people to act at a time.
I'm Baptist. We decide everything by committee. If you've ever been on a Baptist.
[00:36:10] Speaker D: Committee, there's a lot of prayer being.
[00:36:12] Speaker A: Said about being on that committee, because deciding things by committee is very hard.
So it's important that you're not giving your decision making to a committee of two, because it's 50 questions.
There's nobody to break the tie.
It's real important that you think about one person act at a time, and I know that's hard.
[00:36:41] Speaker D: You've got two kids. You don't want to treat them differently.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: It's an honor it's a responsibility.
So just choose one. The other backup. Let them know it's not because you love the person more, just because they happen to be closer, or they're in the medical field, or they're in the financial field and they've got the skills to do it. Or your daughter stay at home, five kids doesn't have time to be your agent. Maybe the other child has more time. Maybe your daughter's in the military and they live away, so it's not practical for them to serve. So usually there's one or the other. I always tell the story.
My mom picked my sister to be.
[00:37:22] Speaker D: Her agent, her power of attorney, not.
[00:37:25] Speaker A: The elder law attorney, but the teacher.
Why did she pick her?
[00:37:34] Speaker D: She lived next door. It just made the most sense.
[00:37:37] Speaker A: She was there with my mom. She took her to the doctor.
[00:37:41] Speaker D: I lived an hour away. So it was just much more practical.
[00:37:45] Speaker A: For my sister to be the person.
What did my sister do every time there was something that had to be done? Connie, what do I need to hurt?
[00:37:57] Speaker D: I teased mom, but it really didn't.
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Hurt my feelings because it made sense for her to choose Deborah instead of me.
[00:38:04] Speaker D: She did not choose my brother, bless him.
[00:38:06] Speaker A: He'd give you shirt off his back, which is the problem. He would give you the shirt off his back, so he was not the.
[00:38:13] Speaker D: Right person to choose.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: So my sister ended up being my mom's agent.
Living will, that's another thing that we recommend that people do. That's the end of life document that says what you would want done in the event of a terminal illness or injury.
[00:38:31] Speaker D: If you feel strongly one way or.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: The other about whether you would want to be sustained on extraordinary treatment. Ventilators, feeding tubes, those kind of things. It's real important to get it in writing that family, your doctor, knows what you would want done.
If you've not done these things in advance, it is very possible that your.
[00:38:52] Speaker D: Family is going to have to go.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: To court to become appointed your guardian or your conservator.
That's something you want to avoid if at all possible. It's expensive, it's invasive, it's time consuming.
Sometimes it's necessary when somebody's making bad choices and you can't get their behaviors under control.
Mom's given her account numbers out to.
[00:39:18] Speaker D: Everybody over the telephone, and she's being scammed.
[00:39:25] Speaker A: It may be necessary at that point.
[00:39:27] Speaker D: To have something other than a power of attorney.
[00:39:29] Speaker A: It might be necessary to be court appointed as a conservator where you can.
[00:39:34] Speaker D: Actually take over the bank accounts and.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Move them out of Mom's name into.
[00:39:38] Speaker D: Your name for her. So sometimes it's necessary. But we want to try to avoid.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: Those court process at all possible.
[00:39:47] Speaker D: We want to use those as the last resort.
[00:39:49] Speaker A: We don't have another alternative.
Everybody in the room needs a will. If you've got any sort of estate, and a state can mean $50, I'm.
[00:40:02] Speaker D: Sure we all in the room have more than that.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: But it's important that you with some sort of direction or directive about how.
[00:40:12] Speaker D: You want your assets to be distributed.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: At the time of your death.
You want to be sure that your will is updated. If your will is more than five or ten years old, I very much encourage you to pull it out of whatever box you've got it hiding in and at read it through to see if it still says what you want.
Lots of wills that couples have written everything to their children, but they've got.
[00:40:38] Speaker D: One of their moms and dads as the executor of the will because back when they wrote it, the kids were all minors and mom and Dad have long since passed.
[00:40:48] Speaker A: So they look at it and go, oh, no idea. It still said that, but they just hadn't gotten it out and looked at it 20 years.
[00:40:57] Speaker D: So be sure that you keep your.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Will up to date with your life as it exists.
Another way to do estate plan is a trust.
[00:41:05] Speaker D: Don't want to go too far down that rabbit hole. Most people come to me to talk.
[00:41:10] Speaker A: About trust and end up not with trust.
I do trust all the time. I write them, but it's not the best thing since light bread. I'll tell you, trusts are good tools. If you've got a purpose for trust, it's time for me to quit talking.
I'll finish that thought.
[00:41:30] Speaker D: TruSTs need to have a purpose. You don't want to do a trust because you read it on the Internet.
[00:41:36] Speaker A: You want to do a trust for a reason.
If you've got a child with a drug or alcohol addiction, a trust may.
[00:41:46] Speaker D: Be the perfect tool to provide management.
[00:41:48] Speaker A: Of what you're leaving that child.
[00:41:52] Speaker D: If you've got a child with a.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: Disability, that child can't manage their own assets. Of course we want to look at a trust to provide some protection for that child's assets. If they're on government assistance benefits, we.
[00:42:06] Speaker D: May need to even look at a.
[00:42:07] Speaker A: Special needs trust to be sure that we're preserving whatever benefits that child has.
Back when my daughter was younger, she's 29 now, but back when she was young, I had a trust for her because she was a minor, but once she got married, she's old enough to marry. She doesn't need a trust anymore for somebody to take care of the assets that I'm leaving.
[00:42:33] Speaker D: So you want to be sure that.
[00:42:36] Speaker A: There is some purpose for doing a trust.
[00:42:38] Speaker D: If you come and tell me.
[00:42:40] Speaker A: Well, I've heard a trust is better than a will.
[00:42:43] Speaker D: A trust is not better than a will.
[00:42:45] Speaker A: It's different from a will. When you're doing an estate plan. And I'll leave you with this. This is where you read the end first.
[00:42:53] Speaker D: I'm an avid reader, so I'm always.
[00:42:56] Speaker A: Want to look at the end book, see what happens. But with an estate plan, the first.
[00:43:01] Speaker D: Thing I want you to tell me.
[00:43:03] Speaker A: Is what you want the end result to be. Do you want everything you have divided among your three children?
[00:43:09] Speaker D: If that's the end result, then we.
[00:43:12] Speaker A: Want to talk about how you get there.
[00:43:16] Speaker D: Do you get there with a will?
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Do you get there with a trust?
[00:43:20] Speaker D: Do you get there with naming them.
[00:43:21] Speaker A: As beneficiaries on things? There's all kinds of ways to get.
[00:43:25] Speaker D: To this end, but the important thing.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Is that we're getting to the end that you want.
Whatever path you want to take to get there, whether it's a circuitous path or a straight path, an easy path.
[00:43:42] Speaker D: We can figure out a path to.
[00:43:44] Speaker A: Get you there, but you got to tell me what you want, this end result.
So if you can do that, then we can get you an estate plan in place. Whether it's a will of trust, a combination of things.
So I leave you with that.
