[Music] it's very satisfying to help people i just can't imagine a better job okay folks thanks for joining i'm sorry we're running a little late today um busy law firm busy practice but in any event i'm going to now share my screen with you and we're going to get right going into the seminar uh i'm michael ettinger of ettinger law firm i've been a lawyer since 1980 you can do the arithmetic 41 years but the last 31 years has been just elder law estate planning and in that time we prepared over 30 000 estate plans so i believe we have a good handle on the types of mistakes people make and how to avoid them so next few minutes maybe an hour or so is intended to be a litmus test for you folks to see where you stand what issues have addressed but what maybe needs a little bit of work so you can each get to where you want to go which is have all your bases covered in case something happens and by the time we're done in about an hour i believe you'll have a very good idea of where you stand and what if anything you need to do so let's get started a few housekeeping items edinger law firm is a statewide firm we have offices five offices across long island we have offices in westchester rockland up through the hudson valley albany and two in new york city uh here's the permits it's constituted these days there's me in the middle to my left uh my law partner lovely wife suzanne ettinger and our practice is limited to elder law state planning which is trust in the states wheels and probate estate planning estate tax savings strategies and medicaid applications medicaid trusts so we talk about elder law estate planning so the first thing is what is elder law estate planning and it breaks down into elder law which you hear a lot about but you don't really know what it is it's actually disability planning and disability planning has become far more important because we're living much longer than people used to you know we already live an average of 32 years longer than people did just a century ago and this is a result of advances in medical science better nutrition but with people living so much longer more and more people become disabled in fact they say the chance of any of us as i said becoming disabled about 50 so the law concerns itself with who's going to handle your affairs if you become disabled and for that we have health proxy living will somebody to make a medical decision including end of life pull the plug so to speak uh we have power of attorneys somebody to handle illegal and financial affairs we use trust for disabled persons we have guardianship proceedings for disabled persons and a very big part of elder law all the rules and regulations about medicaid if someone has to go into nursing facility what assets are exempt what are you allowed to transfer and how do you plan years in advance with a medicaid asset protection trust to protect your home and life savings i'm going to cover all that on the other law side and then estate planning is actually a nice way of saying death planning in law your state is whatever your assets are and estate planning is defined as getting those assets on your debt to whom you want when you want the way you want with the least amount of taxes and legal fees possible turns out everybody needs an estate plan because the mortality rate unfortunately is stuck at 100 percent so elder law estate planning is an area law which combines the features of elder law disability planning and a state plan which is death planning and here at edinger law firm we like to say we use trust to create order out of chaos and trust also avoid some of the pitfalls of will planning by saving time and money and settling the estate this is just an overview it saves time and money and settle the estate because there's no part proceeding per trust like a probate for a will it avoids legal guardianship if you become disabled we're going to talk about that it keeps helps keep your assets in the bloodline instead of going to in-laws in their families with the inheritance protection trust and we're going to show you how to protect your home and life savings from the extraordinarily high costs of long-term care either in your home or in a nursing facility and if i had to sum up all of elder law estate planning in one word the word would be control what you're doing with your planning is you're taking back control from the courts and government giving it back to yourselves and your family so let's look at the first of four reasons why trust protected better than wells and the first is trust protect you from guardianship proceedings if you become disabled wills don't so a will as we know takes effect on death so it's exclusively a plan for after you pass it has no plan whatsoever if you become sick homebound or disabled which you already said is about a 50 chance a trust instead is a plan for all three phase zebra life um you can be in charge while you're healthy and competent says who takes over if you become sick or disabled and like a will says who gets the assets and when they get them and how they get them active passed away so let's talk about guardians or proceedings as we know the chance of disability is about 50 i mentioned it a few times um well if you don't have a plan and of course the will is not a plan for disability new york state has written a plan for you you may have heard of it it's called guardianship proceedings so people become disabled all the time who have wills and because they don't have a plan new york state has written a plan for them you may have heard of it it's called guardianship proceedings now what happens is how do these guardianship proceedings start well what happens is uh somebody makes a report to department of social services that you're acting funny or you're being taken advantage of financially these are often started by hospitals and nursing homes that have the person in their custody and they want to make sure that the payment is guaranteed and judges are sympathetic to their plea but it can be started by any relative also a professional lawyer the doctor social worker accountants anybody who thinks that you're not in your right mind you're not handling your affairs and once it starts uh it's it's a major bureaucratic uh process so a notice goes out to all the family members that the guardianship has been commenced brothers and sisters will often want to or children who want to hire their own lawyers adult children the judge will appoint a court evaluator to meet with mom it could be dad but in this case it's mom point-of-court evaluated to meet with mom determine the nature and extent of her disability prepare report to the judge jesse's going to want to meet with mom to make the judge's own determination so you can see it's multiple court proceedings processes uh and time and expense you know we're talking uh potential with tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses and you would think that the court would pick one or more the adult children as the legal guardian but it doesn't often work that way first off the judge may feel that the son or daughter has a conflict what's the conflict if they spend it on mom it's coming out of their inheritance so some a lot of the judges feel they don't want to pick any of the adult children sometimes there's sibling rivalry more than one of the children wants to become the guardian and the judge says well they're they're not agreeing so i'll pick somebody from outside the family the judge has a panel of experienced legal guardians to choose from and of course it's easier for the judge to work with an experienced legal guardian than an inexperienced one and finally the judge may have a friend of the judge the judge wants to appoint is a paid position so you're somewhere there on the pecking order but again remember that word control you have no control over the process now you may have written a power of attorneys saying appoint my son and daughter as my agent under the power of attorney but surprising to most people who find out about this is in new york the court can cancel your power of attorney and appoint someone else's guardian not only can they but they're required to under the statute if the court appoints a guardian they have to cancel the power of attorney because the guardian is under the court supervision and the power of attorney is not so in order to not have two people doing two different things one the one under supervision one not the statute requires the judge to cancel the power of attorney so uh power of attorney doesn't stop a guardianship and so our problem is now the court chooses who the legal guardian would be and not only maybe but it often is a stranger now you have a stranger handling your affairs now what if you recover from disability people recover from strokes heart attacks serious operations so now when you recover do you think you can take back control whenever you feel ready not so fast there's a court order putting a guardian in charge to get back control from the legal guardian you have to go back to court and have a trial and prove to the judge's satisfaction that you're able to handle your affairs so the judge cancels the order puts you back in charge can you see yourself here in your late 80s maybe in your 90s in court on trial fighting to get your own assets back he knows opposing you sometimes the legal guardian why would that be because you might guess it's the end of the payday not a happy place to find oneself and we're talking about proceedings that are expensive time consuming very stressful because it takes a long time and you don't know what's going to happen the other issue is asset protection now in my book on elder law estate plan is a chapter on saving assets on the nursing home doorstep even on the nursing home doorstep we can usually save about half the assets by a strategy that's known as half the wealth planning it it's called also called the gift and loan strategy we can always save at least half on the doorstep provided we can move assets out of mom's name so let's say mom's going to the nursing home she has 700 000 i could usually save at least 350 000 by gifting it to the children as long as they use the other 350 000 to pay for mom's care but what if a legal guardian is appointed a legal guardian cannot take 350 000 mom's assets and move it to the kids for safekeeping because a legal guardian can only spend the money on the person or guardian for so how do we get around that problem well first off we have to ask the legal guardian to make an application to the judge to protect the assets so our first hurdle is will the legal guardian do it some will some won't um but i learned a good lesson a few years ago we prevailed on legal guardian to make an application to the judge to save half of mom's assets she had to go into nursing home by gifting to the children and the judge turned down the application the judge said in my opinion the money's mobs should be spent on her care and if there's anything left that goes to the children so what happened there was we got the judge's values because the judge was in charge we didn't have control so that's why it's so important for us to take back control because conflicts arise between what the family wants and what the guardian wants that's what the guardian wants that counts so we don't want to find ourselves in that position and in fact you know we like to say uh today planning for disability is more important than planning for death because you don't plan for disability there might be nothing left after you're gone so how does it trust avoid guardianship unlike a will the trust takes effect while you're living which is why they call it a living trust they also call it a revocable living trust because you can undo at any time so it takes effect while your living stays in effect if and when you become disabled so let's say your name is mary jones we set up something called the mary jones living trust we point you mary trustee or manager of the trust now for trusted work you have to put your assets into the trust we do that by re-titling assets so let's have a house somewhere here in new york we'll prepare a new deed and we'll leave the house for mary jones too mary jones trustee of the mary jones living trust stated whatever the date of the trust is get that deed recorded returned to you then we'll show you how to change name investments on your bank accounts every everything except iras i'm going to talk about those later but generally all of your assets get retitled now everything says marry trustee the married trust then what happens well nothing happens you buy and sell the same as before your father income taxes before everything's exactly the same as before except like tens of millions of people around the country your assets say married trustee the married trust nothing actually happens until mary dies or if she becomes disabled at the moment we're talking about disability so what happens with our revocable living trust that mary becomes disabled in the trust she wrote and i'm in charge now but if i become disabled i am so and so to step in who do you think she picked who would you pick one or more the adult children right so in this case she picks her son we're going to say bob sir trust says uh bob if i become disabled bobby's the trustee how do we know she's disabled we get a letter from the doctor saying mom is unable to handle her illegal and financial affairs bobby automatically becomes to trust me now he's in charge now what happens mom's on the nursing home doorstep he's going to come see ettinger law firm like people do all week long and he's gonna say he repaired my mom's stress 25 years ago now mom has to go into nursing home tomorrow um can you help us save or protect anything just as a matter of fact yes under the medicaid law you can save half by gifting it out under the trust you have rights to gift any amount so uh you can move the 350 000 and spend the other 350 350 000 of mom's care you're going to save half the money it doesn't have to go to court doesn't have to ask a judge permission can just do it himself because he's in control again there's that word control so and speaking of control you know as i said people recover from the stroke disability heart attack when mom recovers she can take back control because it's only between her and bobby she doesn't have to go to court and ask a judge for permission to get her own assets back which permission may be denied i've had that happen so much better situation now you recall a few moments ago i said that the court can cancel a power of attorney but fortunately for us the court can't cancel the trust so the trust because the court can't override your trust it guarantees you're going to get the people you choose to invent a disability it's ironclad so are there what about assets outside the trust well for that uh if there are assets inside the trust we have something called the elder law power of attorney now not all powers of attorney are created equal people come into my office all the time saying oh i already have a power of attorney and they put it down on my desk and it's four or five pages well the power of attorney news here at edinger law firm is 14 pages what do you think's on those other 9 or 10 pages all the provisions you need if you become disabled so i i call the standard form power of attorney the general lawyers use i call that over-the-counter medicine this elder law power of attorney's prescription strength and it's just like medicine what happens if you need prescription strength but you only have over-the-counter medicine you know what happens it doesn't work it's not strong enough same thing with the power of attorney so the key with this elder law power of attorney is this is the one we need to move assets the standard form the standard foreign power of attorney allows gifts up to 500 per year well look if mom has seven hundred thousand and then only give away five hundred dollars she's gonna lose all the money five hundred dollars a year it's not gonna help me at all so the elder law power attorney instead has an unlimited gifting power this says bobby you can move any of my assets so mom has uh 700 000. i could save 350 000 by gifting it to the children this allows us to make those gifts and those gifts can be made tax free this is the unlimited gifting power is the key to allowing half the ass to be protected on the nursing home doorstep so the second reason we prefer trust over wills is because with a will you have to go to probate court now i know the will is witnessed it's notarized all formalities are met but still the executor has no power until the judge is determined that's a valid will thank you how do you get there well you have to meet with a lawyer more than once for the lord to get the information in order for the lord to prepare petition and in the petition uh the lawyer has to a legend prove that at the time of signing the will you're a sound mind memory and understanding you're not under any fraud or undue influence a few other proofs we have to get that completed petition serve it on the airs potential errors now we have to get proof of service back to the judge so into this process maybe uh you know a couple months two three uh if uh we're efficient some firms can take longer but this is all we do so i'll it's a couple to three months now we submit it to the court and you the clients are calling us and saying what's happening with the probate we want to list the house for sale we want to uh get the uh we need to need to pay the bills we can't get to the bank accounts we want to change the investments they're the market is falling they say well we have to wait for the judge to rule and the client says well wanting to call and find out when we're getting in and say well you know uh that usually doesn't go over very well and in fact it doesn't make a difference if we call or we don't call the bottom line is when it's submitted to the court you'll get it when you get it it could be two weeks it could be two months could be two years you have no control over it again and it's very very stressful because nobody likes to be in that position where they don't know what's going to happen and that they can't make any plans because executive can act until approved by the judge you could possibly face lengthy delays which we have in many probate cases and getting access to the money another asks can control you don't have control costly time consuming and stressful again when i say stressful it's the uncertainty that causes a lot of stress people worry what's going to happen what's it going to happen what am i going to do in the meantime and another issue with wills is their public records because it gets found in court anybody can go down and look up how much he had who he left it to in fact in the court the file is even where they live so here's the benefits of your revoke of living trust it avoids probate proceedings entirely for trust assets so you want to get your assets in the trust we help you do that saves time legal fees and quarter costs let's talk about time so it's not unusual to settle a trust in maybe a couple of months instead of a probate which can easily be a couple years is it important to save time i think it's much more important than people realize i have an expression i like to use i call it the social cost of probate um there's a social constant social cost is uh profit is like putting your family in business together not just your sons and daughters your sons and mothers and daughter-in-laws everybody has a stake in it there's usually significant amounts involved if it takes a couple years a lot of things go wrong in a couple years uh and especially if you're putting them all in business together and money is involved which is why you'll notice that a lot of times after the will is settled brothers and sisters they never talk to each other again if you notice how common that is this is a bad system it's a bad idea to tie up the family financially everybody together for that long so if i could settle in this state in two months instead of two years don't you think we're going to keep a lot of families together that's exactly what happens because it settles quickly everybody gets their money and they go their separate ways we keep the family together and this is what it's all about you know it's all about keeping the family together nobody wants to break up their family open inheritance but it happens all the time because it takes too long uh legal fees we get a fee up to three percent in a state to probate a will get up to one percent to settle the trust let's take a 500 thousand dollar state if i have to probe it i get three percent what's three percent of five hundred thousand fifteen thousand if it's a trust the same people say money i get one percent on debt to settle it if they hire us which is five thousand so fifteen thousand to probate five thousand to settle the trust same people same money but you're saving ten thousand dollars because you don't have to go to court so you save a lot of money save time and court filing fees today you can go over a thousand dollars or not to pay those either because you know court proceeding but it avoids court control of your estate and i'll tell you a story about something happened last year and you'll see why this is so important i had a client his father died here in new york the client lived here in new york uh as well the executor of the son and the father had a house in virginia uh in any event the son who was named executor on the wheel went ahead he listed the house in virginia for sale found a buyer signed the contract of sale and then he sent me an email saying mike could you probably the estate so we can go to the closing i said brian what did you do you you can't list the house for sale you certainly can't sign a contract to sale until you're appointed by the judge it's in virginia it's going to take a couple years so meantime the buyers are living in a hotel in motel actually out of suitcases they thought they were moving into the house so we had to pay all the buyers expenses undo the transaction and now the client said to me well uh two years i guess i'll rent the house i said brian you can't rent it because you can't sign the lease agreement either so now he's carrying an empty house in virginia for two years and matt because his father had a will now his father had a trust do you know he could actually sell that house the day after his father died not that he wants to do it the next day but um there's no delay there's no court proceeding he doesn't have to get appointed he's automatically the trustee and he can list the house for sale and go ahead and sell it um so one case we do it immediately in the other case um you know maybe a couple years which is why we like doing this type of work we're giving clients back the control that they thought they had so upon that the backup trustee can act immediately without the need for the court appointment and who doesn't want that not only that because there's no court filing the trust is private nobody knows how much you had who you left it to who you left out except the people named in the trust the only people's business is you have privacy and it's not just me saying it back in 1991 arp commissioned the study of the probate system in all 50 states and the published report called a consumer report on probate here's the conclusion of the 91r report they said that probate has practiced in the united states today is out of date inappropriate and all but the most exceptional cases and advice of membership at the time was uh 33 million members to stop using real start using trust it was a 91rp report to start a living trust revolution and since 91 tens of millions of people have set up the trust for that second reason avoid the expense and delay have a probate court proceeding from my loved ones after i'm gone just makes perfect sense oh and finally if you're leaving somebody out or leaving less than they think they're entitled to you don't have the will contest to worry about because trusts are very hard to contest uh just before we leave the subject um there's something called the multiple probate problem let's say on a place here in the northeast and one of these pastel colored condos in florida the will has to be probated in both states so not only do you have two two probates and two sets of lawyers but we can't start florida till we finish new york so um we want to avoid the two probate problem we do that by setting up or i should say deeding the property i can put florida and new york both into our trust and avoid the two probates something good to know uh now let's move on so we like trust avoid probate save save time and money keep controlling the family and you have privacy as well number three trust protect the inheritance you leave from children's divorces lawsuits and creditors keep your assets in the bloodline for your grandchildren wills i don't do that um before i get into this is called the inheritance protection trust i'm going to get into that in a moment but i'd like to just uh mention for a moment second marriage planning here's our happily married couple their second marriage um but uh second large planning is a minefield of planning you have to have some experience dealing with it or you're gonna end up with a potential disastrous plan because the problem is how do you balance the need uh let's say you're the husband husband dies first how do you balance the need of him providing for his children for his prior marriage versus um taking care of his second wife in this case there's a balancing act um so let's say you want to take care of your spouse first but after your spouse you want the money to go back to your your assets to go back to your children prior marriage you're going to need something to allow her to have the use of the money but not have her raid the trust and give it to her family so you can name a co-trustee with your spouse after your debt to protect your children's interests now there's a number of things you can do we have to address what happens to the house can the surviving spouse sell the house and buy a condo uh and have the condo go to your kids instead of the house that type of thing might be too much for the surviving spouse to handle the house or maybe they don't want to live there by themselves a lot to talk about so i just want to raise the issue i don't want to solve the all the problems but i will tell you uh in my experience and i wrote a chapter in my book on second marriage planning in my experience you have to talk to somebody who has done a lot of second marriage planning what you need to know if you're on a second marriage is what are my options what do other people do why did they do it and then once you know what your options are you can pick but if you don't have the options you can't pick and that's that's the real issue getting getting the options finding out what the options are so just want to mention that as a side now we're going to go right into something called the inheritance protection trust and let me explain what the problem is with inheritances most in most wills read as follows to my children in equal shares per service now the first therapies is latin but what it means is heaven forbid my son or daughter dies before me i leave their share to their children i'm sure this sounds familiar to you if my son or daughter dies for me i'll leave their share to their children did anybody hear say if my son or daughter dies before me i'll leave their shirt to my son-in-law our daughter-in-law nobody says that but look what happens in the real world in the real world most children survive their parents so let's say you have a son i'm gonna call him bobby and in your will you leave bobby five hundred thousand dollars paradise bobby gets the five hundred thousand unfortunately three years later bobby dies who gets 500 000 from him his wife oops your daughter-in-law can she get remarried sure your 500 000 is a complete stranger well she probably will remember people live 32 years longer than it did just a century ago so this is not the way people plan to see an estate planning lawyer because naturally we have some better tools in the toolbox and the better tool here is something called the inheritance protection trust so instead of leaving to bobby we leave it to a bobby trust we say bobby we're leaving this 500 000 to the bobby trust will you appoint you bobby the trustee you're going to be in charge and under the terms of that trust bobby you can do whatever you want with the money you could buy sell trade spent you could spend the whole thing we're not ruling from the grave but this trust has three benefits you'll see why people do it first it says bobby if you happen to get divorced what's the divorce rate in new york maybe half spouse can't touch it separate property protected by the trust so it already makes sense but it says more it says bobby if you get sued who gets sued today in this country everybody creditors can't touch it not his name not a social security number lawsuit proof and the third thing the main thing the stress says is bobby when you die whatever you didn't spend is still in my trust so direct whatever the spend goes to your children others my grandkids what if he doesn't have children then he goes to brothers and sisters nieces and nephews always passes by blood instead of by marriage gives your money and your family for generations to come so um bobby's the trustee can spend whatever he wants so you're not ruling from the grave protective gets divorced protected gets sued and protected from going to endless and their families and actually he could afford protection against bobby himself so uh there's also a a chapter in my book on this you know uh protecting your assets for for spent thrift children a lot of children uh either are not experienced in handling assets that are under knowledge or ability they could be immature they could be suffering from alcohol or substance abuse problems they could be learning disabled special needs they could be influenced by a spouse that controls them so you may want to protect them against any of these problems by naming somebody else's the trustee in charge of their money and use the money for their health education maintenance and support or you could name somebody else as a co-trustee with them and this could even be your lawyer if you don't have somebody uh that would fit the bill and then the code trustee helps them and make sure that they don't you know lose all the money so it goes to bobby uh when he dies uh it goes to bobby trust they should say when he dies he goes to the grandchild um if there's no children it goes his brothers and sisters then nieces and nephews stays in your blood now a lot of people tell me i'm going to go back to screen they say well you know we're really fond of mary our daughter-in-law here and you could say you have an option here i'll tell you most people don't exercise it but some do the option says uh if when bobby dies he's still married to mary and they're cohabitating they have to be living together because people could be married but living apart um so he dies first they're married and living together give half to my grandkids at the time keep the other up and trust for mary give her the income for life and on her death give the kids a second house so now mary gets remarried husband number two doesn't get it because it's in a trust for her and she only gets the income but to do something for her grandkids still get all the money but they get into installments half when that dies happens mom does so you leave half or another percentage in trust income only for your daughter-in-law's son-in-law and then onto your grandchildren when they die so instead of the will with stops at death the trust goes 30 40 50 years after you're gone protects that inheritance from divorces losses and creditors and passed by blood instead of by marriage so who doesn't want that and now number four trust protect your home life savings from the extraordinarily high cost of long-term care wills don't do that this is something called the medicaid answer protection trust and this is because most people can't get long-term care insurance it's either too expensive they get turned down for medical reasons as 25 percent of people right there or they aged up you know late 60s 70s too expensive nobody buys so for most people this medicaid asset protection trust is the answer you put your assets into this trust and it helps you qualify for medicaid benefits now the medicaid asset protection trust is called an irrevocable trust so let's explore the differences between revocable and irrevocable trust they're mostly the same both trusts revocable and irrevocable avoid prohibited them they both avoid guardianship if you become disabled they both keep assets in the bloodline protect the inheritance from divorces losses and creditors but revocable trusts offer no nursing on protection because you could take it out at any time so if you have to go into a nursing home and say well mary you can get it take it out and give it to us if you could get it they forget starting at 70 give or take a few years depending on health issues sometimes um people sort of irrevocable tries because the irrevocable trust creates two roadblocks medicaid and nursing homes can't break through the first roadblock is you have to name somebody else's the trustee because the trustee could take it out but fortunately you can pick your son or daughter as the trustee medicaid has no control of your adult children she named your son or daughter or both of them as trustee what does this mean well you still own the trust you're still the beneficiary you still have the exclusive use and enjoyment of those stress assets but they're the manager they act like a figurehead for you the second roadblock in the medicaid trust is you must limit yourself to the income only and in fact they're called income only trust and it means what it says if you put in a cd the income is the interest you only get the interest if you put in stock the income is the dividend you only get the dividends but if you put in your house it doesn't earn income you get the equivalent exclusive right to live there use and enjoy that property during your lifetime what happens these assets they stay in the trust and they go to your heirs free of the expense and delay of a probate so who's setting up these medicaid trusts and why are they doing it middle class people generally 70 give or take a few years have a lot of assets you're not going to spend like your home reverend says move to protect your home what happens if you own a home own a home and you end up needing long-term care they put a lien on the home and and afterwards they sell the home and the money goes to goes to the county happens all the time people lose their houses every day for the cost of care so it's an irrevocable trust but don't be afraid of this word irrevocable it's irrevocable because you the person who set it up if you're a couple the two of you you can't revoke it yourself it's lost it's irrevocable we have another rule on the books in new york that says that if all the parties name the trust agreed on do it you can revoke it on consent of all the name parties well all the name parties are you and your adult children if everybody signs you can undo it and and if one of them one sign we even have a workaround so you can always undo it you just have to get everybody to sign somebody else has to be the trustee and you only get the income so the effect of the trust it doesn't really affect your lifestyle because you still get all your income get your pension your social security your ira distributions your interests your dividends so that doesn't change and that's usually what you're living on it makes sense for assets you're not going to spend like your home for sure i can spend your home and a lot of people tell me that they have an estate let's say take the number five hundred thousand a lot of people say uh mike not ira ira is exempt okay we'll get to that but the non-ira money you'll see a client has made a 500 000 investment a lot of clients say well we don't need that money to live on we're living on our income it's extra money just in case some other clients say well we're not spending the 500 000 we're taking the interest of dividends fine trust gives you the interest of dividends but you realize if you have a net state that you don't need to live on you're actually saved keeping it for the long-term care industry what do you think happens client guess 87 88 have to go into nursing room they still have the 500 thousand over the business office at the nursing home they're jumping up and down because your private pay in any given facility in new york about three quarters of the residents are on medicaid is medicaid paying the nursing home 16 18 20 000 a month of course not are you getting the same care to everybody else well sure they just online with your money and it's totally unnecessary for more than 30 years your let's take your 500 000 put into the medicaid asset protection trust anytime after five years you need care they can't touch it and you know if it sounds like a no-brainer it is there's no drawback to the medicaid trust you have exclusive right to use and enjoy your home keep all your exemptions senior veteran star trust can sell the house the money's paid to the trust trust goes out and buys a condo you don't start the five years over again it's all done inside the trust and you don't give up control because you know that's important to us um because you reserve the right to change the trustee at any time so you're falling out with your son or daughter um we will send them a notice you put somebody else in so that keeps them on the straight and narrow what happens is if you ever need care either at home or in a facility medicaid only gets the income the principal is protected it's flexible i said the trust can sell the house and buy a condo can buy and sell and trade stock if you like to run your stock portfolio you put in the trust now that it's in the name of the trust and the trustee which is your son or daughter both of them signs what's called the third party authorization with your broker merrill lynch schwab whoever it is this is we authorize mom and dad to continue to trade on the account and you can run to the same as before um there's a five-year look back for facility care and starting july one a new two and a half year look back for home care uh well this is going to be a surprise for people who need help at all uh and don't want to lose all their money because you know if you spend all your money you can't afford to leave in your home so you need your money to be able to afford to live there and so you're going to want to shelter that money and qualify for medicaid benefits for home care so you can stay in your own home they'll give you maybe on average up to eight hours a day but with that two and a half year look back if you don't have the trust in place and in home care you know i can build together for two and a half years so uh we're to the wise the medicaid trust is becoming far more important now that they've had to look back for home care the trust is flexible so remember i said you can only get the income but if you need the principal let's say one day you decide you need fifty thousand dollars from the trust to take your whole family and your lawyer on a round-the-world cruise doesn't that sound lovely you know um well you can't take out the fifty thousand um but you are allowed to make a gift of any amount to your son or daughter because when i apply for medicaid they're gonna ask me what did you take out of your name and put into the trust but they're not allowed to ask what the trust gave to somebody else so you need fifty thousand gifted to your son or daughter from the trust now can they give it back to you well no they can't give it back to you because again when i apply for medic i'd have to show all your investment accounts all your bank accounts for the last five years if they see fifty thousand came in they're gonna say where did that come from and they came from the trust your son they can't give it back to you but you give them 50 000 do you think they could take that 50 000 go pay the travel agent for the trip well it's their money they can do whatever they want with it so there is a way to gift it up and use the money that way iras 401ks 403b 457. all those plans are deferred to 872. they're exempt from medicaid they can't go after your ira they can't they can however get the rmds it's the required minimum distribution you have to take out um you know maybe a few thousand a year they get that uh maybe two three thousand a month to get that but if the nursing home is 16 000 they can't go into the r and get the rest they can only get their rmd requirement distribution the principal is protected from medicaid also protected from probate because iras as you know and the like have a designated beneficiary goes right to the person name it always pays to get started let's say you put your house in the trust you have to go into nursing home in four years you only have to pay for the one year that's left get a credit for the four years that went by so it always pays to get started so that's the medicaid asset protection trust uh just a word about estate tax planning for larger states the vast majority of our clients do not have six million dollars i don't want to scare anybody but some people have six million or more what is your estate all their assets including any life insurance if it's six million it's on a six million dollar state this is new york state taxes your family owe 500 over 500 000 york estate taxes but if you have a spouse and you set up two trusts one for the husband one for the wife you can double the exemption to 12 million what does this mean well at 6 million you say 500 000 10 million save over a million depending on the size of your state and you have to do this before the first spouse does i just want to mention it for those who are fortunate to be in that position so what's our conclusion well it's right back where we started estate planning creates order out of chaos and let's look at how we do that avoids guardianship on disability keeps controlling the family gives you asset protection options in one case without a trust uh you're in a bureaucratic multi uh appearance and court proceeding situation uh spending tens of thousands of dollars the other you handle it immediately on your own without any judge telling you what you can do or can't do without a legal guardian so we like to avoid guardianship sometimes we say disability planning is more important than death planning it was probably in debt you keep controlling the family um you don't have that probate could take up to two years to save time and money and you're instantly in charge and your repairs are private i mean there's no comparison between these two situations protects the inheritance of the apron children's divorces losses and creditors pass it by blood to your grandchildren instead of in-laws and their families who doesn't want that kind of control and finally the ultimate protect your home and life savings from long-term care costs makes you eligible for medicaid for home care if you need it nursing home facility if you need that so uh a word about our law firm's unique planning process it's already begun with this seminar we offer a free initial consultation i'll tell you how to get that uh first uh we ask you to bring in your existing plan will trust power of attorney what not we review that is it legally adequate we'll tell you if it isn't or if there's flaws in it or if it's outdated the law changed and then is it personally adequate are these the people you want in charge is this the way you want to leave your state we'll give you a copy of my book elder law state blind will tell you which chapters apply to your situation maybe an hour is so worth a reading uh if we think you need work we have a fee schedule say well based on the work you need not based on what you have because we don't charge based on your estate we just charge based on work uh this is how much it'll cost to get this work done what we're recommending and we'll tell you uh we'd like to see again for a second free follow-up consultation to have your questions answered so you come in for the second pre-consultation we answer any questions you have about what we proposed the first time about what you read in the book and the second meeting we draft this game plan together with you and we do that by asking you who do you want to charge who's your backup who do you want to make medical decisions how do you want to stay distributed all at once over time that sort of thing and we prepare a detailed three-page written proposal for the piece quoted um so it's the same thing you mentioned last time but now it's in writing then we say what would you like to do a lot of people say you know it sounds good let's go ahead we'll say fine uh now edinger law firm breaks with tradition and we do something that's my knowledge no other firm does um the way i was trained and the way all lawyers do it is when a client wants to go forward we present a retainer agreement client science agreement and they usually give a check called the retainer for about half the fees um a number of years ago i analyzed that myself and why i was trained that way and i came to the conclusion the reason we were trained that way is because it's good for the lawyer but i questioned whether it was good for the client i came to the conclusion that it's not good for the client because when you sign a retainer and you give the check you're actually giving up control and you know how important control is to me i like the client to be in control um you know sometimes it takes a long time or the lawyer doesn't do it right or you're not happy with the lawyer but you don't have any control you already paid them so instead we reinvented it and we have a fee proposal the fee proposal we sign it but you don't sign it and the proposal says based on you're saying so we're going to go ahead and prepare all these documents trust inheritance trust health proxy living will power of attorney come in for that third meeting you know we're going to review all the paperwork and sign the documents and after everything is done you pay at the end but our fee proposal says unless and until you write us a check you have no obligation to the firm which means what you can get up and walk away anytime you don't always anything you're in control and what we realized was if you're in control obviously it's the best place for you to be if you're the client and we're here to serve you and that's the best place for you to be then it must be the best place for us to be you know this has worked very well we have over 30 000 satisfied clients in the 31 years we've been practicing and um works very well um we have happy clients who doesn't want to have happy clients our credit cards are accepted here at ettinger law firm you can pay the fees at once and three monthly installments now after you're done we don't say goodbye another issue is that the vast majority of firms thank you very much goodbye i doubt of anybody listening today and watching today ever heard from the lawyer that prepared their will well it doesn't work very well um we want the plan to work now you sign the will you hope not to use it for quite a few decades who's gonna who says it's gonna work when you need it you know when you wrote it decades earlier it may not work when you need it so we didn't want that to be our planning strategy so we trademarked the process in 99 in washington it's called the ettinger elder law state planning process and we designed to make sure that your plan would work when you need it so we'll keep you up to date with law changes and other matters through our weekly award winning actually newsletter ettinger elder alert we call the alert because it comes by email and also was nice with that internet elder but once we could publish an article of interest something you need to know but the key is is every three years ethninger law firm sends you a letter time to come in for your free review uh see if there's any changes in your health your assets your family birthdays marriage divorces so you know people come in after three years not too many people need to change after six years naturally more people need to change but the reason we do it is statistically it's been shown that very few people can get past 9 or 12 years without thinking major change who's in charge who they're leading to something else happens you do an amendment now amendments they say once every 10 years that's legal legal work you pay for it but still we're talking hundreds not thousands the point is when you go to use a net mature plan it's designed to work when you need it not when you wrote it i hope many decades earlier we've saved thousands of people countless thousands of problems with this and nice thing is when something happens to one of our clients we know who it is because uh we have that review every three years another thing we do we don't charge our phone calls emails are questions because we want to hear from our clients we want to know their concerns we don't want them not to call us or be worried about something because they're afraid they're going to get a bill so you pay once and you have a sun retainer and you know it's valuable to have an experienced elder law firm on retainer because when you have a problem you need the right answer and the right answer i don't have to tell you it's hard to come by so you have ettinger you've been at it for 31 years filed over 4 000 medicaid cases thirty thousand a place estate plan we've settled thousands of states you're gonna get the right answer because we have the experience and the knowledge and we're happy to share it with you so by using this program your plan is never more than three years old designed to work when you need it now when you signed it i hope many decades earlier so now i'm going to invite you uh to schedule a free consultation not at this moment i'll just tell you how it's a lot of terms charge for the consultation we don't charge it's a 500 value but we don't charge for it um because we want to keep you in control but we have more experience in a lot of firms that do chart so uh it'll be with myself or one of our experienced elder law attorneys we don't have any experience fun they're all highly trained all capable i'll use the same standards here you can do this at our offices you can do it by zoom you can do it by phone you're going to get an invitation tomorrow to schedule your appointment with our link on calendly so the calendar will come up and you pick the time you want and and there you go you make your own appointment you can also call my director of client relations been with the firm for more than 26 more than 26 years so patty brown can answer any of your questions as well she's at the 800 number you can email her p brown trustlog.com our text precedes the number on your screen [Music] you