Elder Law Attorney, Greg McIntyre, explains why he practices Elder Law and founded McIntyre Elder Law, a Firm with a focus on estate planning and elder law. Learn more at mcelderlaw.com or call: 704-749-9244.
Greg McIntyre: Hi, I’m Greg McIntyre with McIntyre Elder Law, and this is why I practice elder law and why our practice is named McIntyre Elder Law. I named our practice McIntyre Elder Law a number of years ago to focus us both internally and send a message externally that all we practiced is estate planning and elder law. That’s all. However, still people come in from time to time to asked me who my partner, mister elder, is, so we want, which I think it’s funny and they do, sometimes, but we wanted to just make sure that we didn’t get outside of our lane. Our goal is to be an inch wide and a mile deep in our knowledge area and our subject area and just stay within the field and be knowledgeable in the field of elder law and estate planning. So that is what our firm name is. That’s what our focus is.
Why did I focus on estate planning and elder law way back when? And I did love courtroom work, but this allowed me to do both. I still get to do litigation with guardianships, as well as contested probate litigation, which can be pretty intense and pretty tough sometimes, believe it or not, when people are fighting over money and estates. And so I’ve always actually enjoyed the courtroom work side of it, but I also enjoyed the strategy of planning to help people save their hard earned money and property.
I mean, I’ve had a grandfather, Papa Mack, who stayed in assisted living care over 14 years. It really took everything you had. And I never thought it was fair that he or anyone else in that situation who, because of no fault of their own and perhaps a lack of perceived planning or planning options or knowledge about planning, that people lose everything they’ve earned all their lives in the last few years of their lives because of the high cost sometimes assisted living, or nursing home care, or in home care.
There are other options out there and I wanted to find those options. In the quest for those options, I became a member of a national group of elder law attorneys. That’s Elder Council, which I’m very proud to be a member of Elder Council. That gives me a very deep bench of attorneys who help me solve problems and I help them solve problems if there’s things that we are working on or haven’t seen before. It just gives me a great network to communicate with and to work within. So very proud member of Elder Council.
And the more I started doing those things, the more it became imperative that I just focus in this area because I enjoyed it so much. And one of the hardest things I ever did was to cut out all the other areas of law that I practiced, because I loved my clients in those areas and I loved practicing in the courtroom and I loved those areas. But actually narrowing down that focus has allowed us to develop so many tools, opportunities, just new relationships and become the firm that we are today at McIntyre Elder Law, which has multiple attorneys and, I think, one of the greatest staffs that I’ve ever seen at a law firm assembled and just very blessed to be a part of that team also. I mean, everybody’s handpicked for the most part, gets along great. And our goal is to serve our clients and to go the extra mile.
So I’m Greg McIntyre at McIntyre Elder Law, and I practice elder law because I like helping people. That’s exactly why I practice. And it makes me feel great to help you and your family save your hard earned money and property because I think you deserve it. Give us a call if you have any questions. Our number’s (704) 749-9244 or you can go online and visit our website mcelderlaw.com. That’s M-C-E-L-D-E-R-L-A-W.com. Have a great day.
Wow! great show today on the Charlotte Today Show! Greg, Colleen and Eugene talk about Lady Bird Deed’s and how they can SAVE YOUR HOME. Get the LBD Map here: mcelderlaw.com/lbd or call: 704-749-9244 to learn more.
Speaker 1: Well, many people work their entire lives to pay off their home just to lose them in the end. How is this happening and how can it be prevented?
Speaker 2: For that, we turn to Greg McIntyre with MacIntyre Elder Law. Greg, good morning, welcome to Charlotte Today, we’re glad you’re here.
Greg McIntyre: Thank you very much, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let’s talk about this. A lot of people receive longterm care in their older years, whether it’s a nursing home or assisted living. How is longterm care resulting in people losing their homes?
Greg McIntyre: Yeah, so many people work 30 years to pay off a mortgage, they pay three times to the bank what they actually bought the house for. Then, because of the high cost of longterm care and they need it, maybe they have to roll to a benefit like Medicaid to pay for that care, that runs up a large lien that then ends up taking the house when it passes, say, to the children for example. That’s how people lose their houses all the time, all across this county and the state, and really across the country, frankly.
Speaker 1: Well, you say there’s a protective deed to go ahead to mitigate against that so what is this deed that we’re talking about?
Greg McIntyre: Sure. It’s called an enhanced life estate deed, it’s built off the framework of a traditional life estate deed, it’s nicknamed a Lady Bird Deed, so a Lady Bird Deed and that’s a hot buzzword in the estate planning and Elder Law world over the last few years.
Speaker 2: Lady Bird Deed.
Greg McIntyre: Lady Bird Deed.
Speaker 2: Okay, so how is this different from other deeds, can you explain it to us?
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely. A Lady Bird Deed would allow, say, a senior and/or spouse, senior or spouse, to own their home for the rest of their lives and then pass it on directly to whom they want to. Let’s say, for example, the kids. Outside of the will and estate process automatically, when the last one of, say, husband and wife passes away and Medicaid which has a look back period, three years for assisted living, five years for nursing home Medicaid, if you have to apply for that because of the high cost of care, then even if you put a Lady Bird Deed in or own the house within that period, it’s okay because it’s Medicaid policy in North Carolina to allow that and to allow the home to then flow through.
Greg McIntyre: They know they can’t back recover it and that has helped many, many people over, say, the last seven, eight years that we’ve been using them, protect the home, save the farm so to speak, and keep that in the family.
Speaker 1: Basically, it’s a pass through to my kids?
Greg McIntyre: Let’s say deed planning passes outside of the probate estate. North Carolina is not an expanded recovery state so where liens attach private creditors or the state have to go through the probate estate to put a lien on that property.
Speaker 1: Gotcha.
Greg McIntyre: It passes outside of that directly to the beneficiaries or the grantees, so to speak.
Speaker 2: Greg, you’ve put together this Lady Bird Deed Map, we showed it on the screen a moment ago, you’re holding a copy right there. How can viewers get a copy of that if they’d like one?
Greg McIntyre: Again, as you may know by now, I’m a very visual thinker so I put exactly what happens if you’re one of the 70% of seniors that need longterm care and have to roll to Medicaid. If there’s a Medicaid lien to pay for that care, how that can attach in probate, not get to, say, the kids. Then, how a Lady Bird Deed, and I’ve listed some of the attributes of the Lady Bird Deed, actually helps pass that outside of the probate estate directly to the children.
Greg McIntyre: To get a Lady Bird Deed Map, go to mcelderlaw.com/lbd. We abbreviated it. Mcelderlaw.com/lbd. Then the Saving the Farm Book, which we talked about before, we’re going to give away a free audio book, an eBook copy of Saving the Farm if you go get that Lady Bird Deed Map today as well.
Speaker 2: Saving the Farm, there’s a copy of the book right there. You wrote this really to help people with a lot of these issues, kind of what you’re talking about today, among other things.
Greg McIntyre: I couldn’t find a book like it out there that really spoke directly to the consumer, directly to seniors and their families, so I wrote Saving the Farm, a Guide to the Legal Maze of Aging in America. We’ve sold tens of thousands of copies of that book, given away a lot too, and we’re going to give away a copy of that today if you go to mcelderlaw.com/lbd to get the Lady Bird Deed Map.
Speaker 2: That’s the website to go to to get a copy of that. Greg, thank you so much for being here today. Appreciate, pleasure, thank you.
Greg McIntyre: Yes, thank you, thank you very much, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1: Protect your home.
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely, protect your home, sometimes it’s the biggest asset.
Speaker 1: I know, protect your home. All right, thank you. Well, coming up on Charlotte Today, it’s time to pull out the warm winter coats. How to help our neighbors stay warm this winter when you clean out your coat closet.
Speaker 2: To get a good night’s sleep the answer might be a bed in a box.
Speaker 4: Are you interested in featuring your business on WCNC, NBC Charlotte or Charlotte today? Reach out to our sales team. Grow your business at wcnc.com.
Lady Bird Deed Map!!! Here is the In Depth After Party where Greg explains a Lady Bird Deed and how it can protect your house. Get the LBD Map here: mcelderlaw.com/lbd or call: 704-749-9244 to learn more.
Greg McIntyre: Hi, this is Greg McIntyre with McIntyre Elder Law, helping seniors protect their assets and legacies, and we just finished up the Charlotte Today Show talking about Lady Bird deeds and the Lady Bird deed map. And I wanted to use this, this is the after show kind of explanation where we get a little more in depth and dig a little deeper into whatever subject matter.
And today we’re talking about Lady Bird deeds, a little known deed that packs a big impact. It could impact you and your family, let me tell you how. 70% of seniors over the age of 65, according to a 2005 US Department of Health and Human Services report, are going to need some type of longterm care during their lives, either in home, assisted living or nursing home care. Those are huge odds, those are absolutely worse than Vegas odds and Vegas is a big place, it wasn’t built on winners.
So, I don’t want you or your family to lose. So I want to give you this information that you may not hear everywhere. I’m an elder law attorney, that’s all we practice at our firm, McIntyre Elder Law, is estate planning and elder law. We are so serious about it, we named our firm McIntyre Elder Law some time ago, and I still have people come in and ask me who my partner is, Mr. Elder. There is not a Mr. Elder partner, that is the type of law we practice. So I’m going to tell you in elder law how we use Lady Bird deeds, they’re also called enhanced life estate deeds, which means that it’s built off the framework of a traditional life estate deed, but works a little differently.
If you are one of the 70% of seniors over 65 and you need some type of longterm care, do you have the means, do you have the money to pay for that care? Because he can be very expensive when you look at average cost of nursing home or assisted living care annually, and it can take sometimes everything someone worked for their entire lives and spin that down in the last few years of their lives for care. If that happened or if you find yourself in that situation and you don’t have longterm care insurance to pay, then you may roll to Medicaid to pay for that longterm care. If you roll to Medicaid to pay for assisted living or nursing home Medicaid, which is called special assistance Medicaid, that’s the program in North Carolina that pays for assisted living.
Longterm care Medicaid pays for nursing home care, special assistance Medicaid has a three year look back period. Longterm care Medicaid has a five year look back period and they’re going to look at all deed transfers you’ve made, all bank transfers, any asset transfers within that lookback period, and they’re going to make sure that those transfers fit the Medicaid spin down rules, it’s what you’ll see. And you can Google those rules and those are pretty straightforward, but one of the little known policies of North Carolina Medicaid is that they allow a Lady Bird deed to be placed on a home to protect your home, even if you’re within that lookback period. Otherwise, if we gifted the home or if we placed a traditional life estate deed on the home, it wouldn’t be allowable under those Medicaid rules, under that look back period. So you would have to transfer it back or the kids would have to transfer their interest back before Medicaid would pay for longterm care.
A Lady Bird deed allows you to protect your home and any surrounding property, any surrounding parcels and connecting adjacent parcels up to a property value this year of $572,000. So if it’s that or below, then you could put a Lady Bird deed on your home and still access that benefit and it would be fined under the Medicaid rules in North Carolina, even if it was within the lookback period when you placed that on the property. I would argue that even if you already own Medicaid and in endanger of losing your house, then you could put one on then. Timing is not important there, because Medicaid allows that by policy.
Now, the reason Medicaid can take the home is when the home passes title, it has to pass title somehow. Well, that’s through the probate or estate administration, with or without a will, that process at the courthouse. A Medicaid lien can attach to the house if there’s one out there or any other lien, and then it forces the sale or auction of that house and the family loses the house. That is an unfortunate situation. So to combat that, a Lady Bird deed passes the property outside of the probate estate directly to the heirs, that’s how deed planning works, that’s how deed plannings work for a long time, even with traditional life estate deeds. So, a Lady Bird deed is a unique deed that our firm has used for years to help families, specifically with a longterm care issue or are in danger of losing their homes due to longterm care costs.
That’s my cue to start wrapping it up. So, we’ve used that to help them protect their homes and keep farms, land, homes in the family for the next generation. So I would rather, I know, I have six children. My wife and I would rather pass our hard earned money and property to our children, rather than simply losing it or giving it up to the state. I play plenty in taxes, I promise you. So what we’ve done is we’ve created a Lady Bird deed map. I am a visual thinker, I have mapped this out for you. What this is, is this shows that if you’re part of that 70% that needs longterm care, if there is a Medicaid lien that pays for care, how it attaches when it passes through the will and probate process and does not get to the kid because it’s sold to satisfy that lien. But a Lady Bird deed, and we’ve listed the attributes here, passes it directly to the loved ones.
You can get this free Lady Bird deed map by going to mcelderlaw.com, that’s M-C-E-L-D-E-R.com/lbd. You can go to Mcelderlaw.com/lbd and get that free Lady Bird deed map that I’ve created for you today. In addition, if you go to mcelderlaw.com/lbd, we’re also going to give you a free ebook and audio book version of Saving the Farm, A Guide to the Legal Maze of Aging in America. I wrote that look because I didn’t see a lot of books out there like it, that spoke directly to the client and the senior and their families and told them how to navigate that. And it gives you a lot of information, we interviewed experts in their field in different areas of senior care, paying for long term care, benefits, all packed in the Saving the Farm. Very proud of that book. I’m probably more proud of that than most of the things I’ve done in my life besides marrying my wife and have six children.
So, check out that. I’m giving a free copy of that away on the mcelderlaw.com/lbd link, and you’ll get the brief estate planning map. Thank you so much for watching today. I hope you and your family have a good holiday season and I hope you save your farm, your house. Saving the farm is a metaphor, obviously, but everybody really has that legacy they worked to build for themselves and hopefully that can benefit your family. Have a great day. See you soon.
The information in this article can help transform your situation and life.
I’m Hayden Soloway of McIntyre Elder Law. My guests today are Woody and Franda Aud. They’re going to talk to us about their experiences with McIntyre elder law.
My name is Woody Aud and I just recently retired from the financial services industry. I met Greg at a financial seminar dealing with elder law and financial planning several years ago. I was impressed with the message he had, and the things he could do to help clients. When I retired, I started referring folks to him with regards to veteran’s benefits because I had great confidence in him.
The main thing that Greg helped us with was with my wife Franda’s aunt, who recently became ill. I’ll leave it to Franda to tell the particulars on that.
Hi Franda, about your aunt, Frances, could you tell us a little about what Greg did for her and you?
My Aunt Frances survived two husbands, she never had children. I have two cousins and a brother and we’re the only family she has left. She’s 93 and her health started to go down rapidly. She had poor circulation and issues throughout her life but would always snap back. Unfortunately, this time that didn’t happen.
We were forced to find some type of care for her. She was in a facility following surgery, and the money was running out, and she needed twenty-four hour care. You know how expensive those situations can be. As my husband said, he met Greg at a seminar, but it didn’t dawn on me to call Greg at the time she was going through these things. Thank goodness Woody remembered.
We came to the office and Greg was able to guide and help us get Frances qualified for long-term-care for Medicaid, because her assets were very small. She did not manage her assets wisely. I guess with losing both husbands she was on her own and wouldn’t ask for help.
Like most seniors, we put most of our assets into our home. Once that’s paid for you feel like, at least I’ve got a place.
Right,you feel confident at that point. But we were concerned about her home, and when we came to Greg, he got us to do the Ladybird Deed to protect her home. That was a blessing.
A Ladybird Deed is not available in all states. Fortunately, North Carolina is senior friendly and does accept Ladybird deeds. So, you’ve protected her home and she’s qualified for Medicaid.
Yes, and that went through very quickly. If we had to do that on our own, we would probably still be trying to get her qualified.
Woody mentioned about it being a crisis situation. Planning in advance, which is less expensive, can help protect many more assets. If you are in a crisis and are already in a nursing home and the money is flying out the door, it’s unbelievable how expensive it is, but we can stop it and help preserve those assets.
We were very glad we had Greg to help us. It was a blessing.
We appreciate you coming in and sharing this. I think this can help others ask the questions we didn’t know to ask, and benefit from your experience.
To find out more about Ladybird deeds, crisis planning, long-term-care for Medicaid, or any aspect of elder law, contact McIntyre Elder Law at 704-259-7040 or visit mcelderlaw.com and sign up for the free newsletter.
I’m Hayden Soloway of McIntyre Elder Law. My guest today is Samantha Yelton. She’s going to talk to us about her experience with McIntyre elder law.
Samantha, we met at the world series, you were looking at the booths, and McIntyre Elder Law had one set up.
I had previously thought about contacting an attorney to help me with protecting my mother’s assets, and I just happen to see the booth and of course elder law caught my attention. I went over and Greg was there. He introduced himself and I spoke with him. He told me what he was able to do. I gave my phone number and it went from there.
Tell me a little about your mom?
She’s in her late seventies. My father passed away about two years ago, so she’s by herself, and I was just trying to prepare for her future.
What about you?
Well, I’m a mother, I have one son and I’m a home care nurse for Hospice Cleveland County. I really enjoy my job. That’s something I’m passionate about is helping others.
Since you needed information about your mother, what did Greg suggest you do for her. What kind of work did she need done to prepare?
I’d gone to him to find out more information about the Ladybird Deed. It was something I’d heard about in the community and through working for hospice. The term had been thrown around and I wanted to see if it was something we could use to help protect her property, in case she ever needed to go into a nursing home. Also, she had a health care power of attorney and durable power of attorney, but I felt they needed to be updated since my father’s death.
What was your experience of working with Greg and getting the Ladybird Deed completed?
I came to the office and I told him what I wanted. He provided information and told me step by step what I needed to do. There were things I needed to take care of on my end as far as getting titles transferred into my mother’s name. Once all that was done, Greg and his team took care of it. They were very knowledgeable and professional. It was a good experience.
To find out more about Ladybird deeds, healthcare power of attorneys, durable power of attorneys, or any aspect of elder law, contact McIntyre Elder Law at 704-259-7040 or visit mcelderlaw.com and sign up for the free newsletter.
Financial Planner, Robin Woodell, with Emerald Financial talks about the importance of financial planning, how it differs from legal planning and how important it is for professionals to work together on behalf of the client.
Greg McIntyre: Hi, I’m Greg McIntyre with the Elder Law Report, and we’re here today with my colleague Brenton Begley, another Elder Law attorney. Say, Hey Brenton.
Brenton Begley: Hi.
Greg McIntyre: And we have a special guest today. We have Robin Woodell with Emerald Financial Group is here with us and she is a financial planner and she will tell you a little bit more about her certifications and what she’s qualified to do for you. But a lot of times I find that people aren’t really clear where the line is between working with an attorney and working with a financial planner and I’ve had people come sit down with me. “Hey, what should I do with these investments? Hey, what’s the best product? What’s the best insurance?” And I said, “I look at insurance products, some of them like long-term care insurance, like a legal planning tool because it allows you to have protection over assets and another source of funds to come in and pay for in home assisted living or nursing home care. But I am not a financial planner. That is not what I do for a living.” So anytime I have someone who needs help on my end in our uptown Charlotte office, I refer them to Emerald Financial Group and Robin Woodell to handle those types of questions. What we do is legal planning. What Robin does is financial planning and those are two separate things and I want to be clear on that and here to help clarify that and help us gain some clarity on that is Robin Woodell. Robin, thank you for being with us today.
Robin Woodell: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely. So can you tell us what the letters behind your name mean?
Robin Woodell: I am a financial planner as you said, and I think it’s a good place to start because most people are often confused by all the different financial topics. So forget the fact that they get confused on the legal versus the financial. Even within the financial field, they get confused on who should they go to and the topics and the titles and what does that mean? So basic understanding of that is a financial planner is a, if they do it right, is a full comprehensive 30,000 foot view planner. So when you have a person who says that maybe they’re a broker, typically that means that they manage money and that’s their focus. And they might dabble in a couple of other things, but that’s their focus. You might have someone who claims to be more of an insurance person. So their specialty is insurance, but they might dabble a little bit in the investments.
So we kind of all overlap. But then you have a financial advisor and the financial advisor is really does some aspects of what we do. Yeah. So the financial advisor really helps to advise on anything financial, so they may be able to help you with some the protection on the insurance. They may be able to do some money management, but it’s really advisory. So it holds a higher level of fiduciary responsibility. So when you add in the title financial planner, our goal is to take everything from a 30,000 foot view and show you how it works and how everything flows together and fits together as a puzzle from the time you start saving and protecting your family all the way to and through retirement. And that’s a big difference because it’s not about product, it’s more about what your needs are and projections because then when the plan is done, we can then become the advisor to help fulfill those needs by providing whatever we need that’s available.
So that’s kind of a basic breakdown on the difference between a financial planner versus anything else. And what I’ve come to learn from being in this industry is there really aren’t as many of us that are comprehensive planners as there are people that do projections on retirement or do one specific thing. So don’t be confused. Always ask when you sit down with someone, what exactly is the scope of your business? How do you work with clients and what does that look like? And then you get a better feel for what that’s like. So now I start working with people like you guys. So I feel like my teammates and the team to be able to really help my clients involves financial planner or advisor, some type of state planning or Elder Law attorney and at least to CPA. Sometimes if there’s debt involved or college planning, we bring in another expert there.
But the reason is because we all know enough to be dangerous about the other fields. Right? To be able to advise at what we do. Like you guys do. So you talked about how you know enough to be able to get people to the right place. The same for me. I don’t do the legal drafting, I don’t set up those documents. I don’t have the degree and the designations for that. So I do everything that’s money related and then everything else I pass over to people like you guys so that my clients can get all the legal stuff set up to be able to take care of how we funded it.
Brenton Begley: Robin, that’s a good point, that kind of teammate approach. Yeah. What we do is we help you protect the assets, but we don’t necessarily grow the assets and we don’t really tell you how they fit into the big picture, right? We can help you figure out how they fit into the plan to protect those assets, whatever you got. But sometimes you may not even know what you have.
I know many times I’ll sit down with a client and they’ll say, “I have this much money.” And I’ll say, “Okay, well what’s the character of that asset?” And I’m like, “Is that a 401k an IRA, an annuity? What is it?” And sometimes they just don’t know. They have no idea. Maybe they know it’s an IRA, but they don’t know whether it’s a traditional IRA a [inaudible 00:05:40] IRA. So how does a financial planner specifically fit into that mold in trying to help people figure out what they have and what it means to them?
Robin Woodell: Right. Well, one of the things we did, as I mentioned, when you look at a 30,000 foot view, we do very detailed fact finding. So the first meeting we have with people, we talk about what have they done so far, what are their goals? We have a very specific financial planning process that we take them through to make sure that we understand their goals and we know where they are currently. So some of that involves education and some of that process when we go through an actual financial plan involves more detailed education. So by the time they’re done, they have a lot greater understanding of where they are then when they started, and oftentimes we have, when we do a plan for people, we have quarterly touch-base calls. That’s part of the what you pay to be able to get that and that means that we can work through and organize and priority what are the things we need to tackle.
So when you break it down for somebody, for a client, it’s a lot easier because when I see they see the whole picture they’re overwhelmed. So you break it down and you handle things one at a time, then it’s a little bit easier to process. And they start to understand because they’re hearing over and over from you every quarter. This is why we do this. This is why you have this. To your point, one of the things you said triggered a thought for me, which is, the reason people don’t always know what they have is because they’re taught and we’re trained to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate. But if you’re not planning now on how it’s going to affect you in distribution, then that really can put you in a rough place when it comes to how your taxed with social security, how your taxed with Medicare as it comes back out again.
So when we educate people, we teach them and we set them up within their plans and how we process things going forward to have a nice balance of all those, which means they now have an understanding of what they have and what it does and how it’s going to affect them in retirement. So I think that it’s great if you’ve been saving for years and that’s wonderful, but there comes a point where you want somebody else involved to help you deal with the end effect. Because like you said, they’re not always aware. They’re just saving, which is admirable.
Brenton Begley: Right. That’s a big deal. That thought of, “Okay, I’ve accumulated this much money and that was my only goal,” not to have any other goal in sight. Greg, I know that there are a lot of times we see that as sometimes being an issue with our type of planning where we see a client who has done a great job of accumulating wealth, right? And then they come to us and they may need some type of planning because they have nothing in place and we need to figure out how to deal with that level of wealth that they have. And [crosstalk 00:08:32]-
Greg McIntyre: My favorite is when people have accumulated lots of wealth. However, they have maybe written their own legal documents or tried to download and Frankenstein, mish-mash them together off the internet and I think that sometimes we as individuals, I’m guilty of this to go wrong and not understanding that the utilization of professionals that stay in their lane and just concentrate and are good at what they do are important. Because sometimes as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as somebody who’s trying to save for college for the kids and everything else, and I think I can do all this stuff myself.
To be able to utilize professionals to do what they’re good at is extremely important because I look at it kind of like an upside down pyramid where there’s all this wealth up here but it’s teetering on the point of these legal documents and maybe even financial plans that have not been well thought out or have not been well drafted. And that can be problematic because you can get yourself into situations where heaven forbid, because of illness or injury, you’re incapacitated or incompetent and no one can manage any of your assets because you failed to put in place a valid general durable power of attorney and record it that would give your spouse the ability to operate that if that’s what you want or another trusted individual or advisor.
Then you’re literally dead in the water, so to speak as far as what you can do and then perhaps somebody is going after a guardianship for you. We do a lot of those, guardianship for people, but we’d rather plan ahead and put in place the basics first. Let’s start there and then let’s look if comp more complicated trust planning and those items are the right fit for you. Let’s do that in a comprehensive way. Let’s work with other professionals and I like to call it the dream team where you remember Michael Jordan and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and they all went and how did that work out for-
Robin Woodell: We’re showing our age now Greg.
Greg McIntyre: Yeah, right. How did that work out for the rest of the world when all the best professionals got together and went and played everybody on the planet? I mean, they won every game by probably 30 to 50 plus points. Okay. And brought home the gold. Well, that’s what your professionals working together can do. Working whether-
Robin Woodell: And it’s a little-
Greg McIntyre: What’s that?
Robin Woodell: It’s either you work a little now or you work a lot later. So if you’re not planning with a little bit and doing the basic things now, then it’s a whole lot more work for them later.
Greg McIntyre: That team, that dream team can work for you such as insurance… Your financial planner, handling insurance investment, longterm care planning on a financial side, your attorney handling, making sure you have proper documents in place to control your assets, to control your healthcare, if something happens to you to make sure that’s protected, to make sure the kids go to college, to make sure spouses cared for, to make sure you can control your harder money and property for the rest of your life. And well beyond to make sure you don’t get in a situation where because of lack of planning you lose everything you’ve worked for your entire life in the last few years of your life because you failed to put in place protective legal documents or planning and or longterm care insurance.
Those are important. And that’s how working together as professionals, we help clients, right?
Robin Woodell: Absolutely. Absolutely. [crosstalk 00:12:38].
Greg McIntyre: It’s about us working together and the utilization of professionals. And my frustration when I sit down with these Uber smart wealthy folks who have just… And sometimes those are the worst offenders who have failed to plan.
Robin Woodell: In reality, I find that business owners, a lot of the business owners I deal with are so creative and they’re so good at doing what they do, but they lack doing the planning because number one, they get really busy and they run like crazy. You guys know. Anytime you own your own business, you never turn off, you never turn on. And so they get to a point where they’re so busy that if they don’t take care of it and start doing some simple planning early on, they never make time for it later.
Greg McIntyre: Their life, it just kinds of runs over them and they don’t have time. [crosstalk 00:13:23]
Robin Woodell: Absolutely. And that’s a danger. And because everything they build can come crashing down. And so that’s where the team is so important.
Brenton Begley: [crosstalk 00:13:29]. They’re self-sufficient people, and you forget when you’re that type of person that, “Hey, you need help from other people.” I know I’m bad about it too. Being an attorney, I’m just like, “Well, I’ll figure it out. I’ll just read something.” But in reality, I had to step back and seek help from someone like you, Robin, to get some advice. Because I don’t know how to grow my money the best. I didn’t study that in school. It’s really not just wealthy people who have this issue too. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions with people who may not have a certain amount of wealth, and don’t use professionals because they think, “Well, I’m not rich enough for that.”
Robin Woodell: That’s a good point. Absolutely. We talk about that all the time. There are a lot of companies out there now in the financial realm that are limited and not by their fault on what they can handle and assets under management. And things like that. And there are some people, if you don’t have $250,000 of wealth or more in liquid assets, they don’t mess with you because they’re not compensated for it. So you can sort of understand why they don’t. But then I feel like they’re-
Greg McIntyre: [crosstalk 00:14:37] I remember when that switched and under some new laws and rules after [Dodd 00:14:42] Frank, and the necessity for the financial planner to also be a fiduciary. I have the fiduciaries meet at least once a year with the client it became, for people who did a lot of [inaudible 00:00:14:54]… Some companies literally cut off everybody $250,000 and below.
Robin Woodell: Yep. They did. Liability and what it takes and because of that law. And so I think one of the things that, to Brenton’s point that we have found very important, we have built a team of people with people of all ages because we want to be able to service anybody that wants our help. So we have the ability to start people from scratch. We have the ability to start with you, if you’re somewhere in the middle and we have the ability to work with the high net worth that really need the full fee-based financial planning. Not everybody that comes into us will want to do a financial plan. Maybe they’re not to that point yet. To Brenton’s point, maybe they’re just setting things up and they want help and they’re anxious to get there, but they don’t have it yet. So we help them build the building blocks and we put those in play and we tell them, “Listen, if we’re doing our job right, you’re going to need the plan, but we’re going to help you build the building blocks now to get to that point where we start talking about the more in depth things.”
Greg McIntyre: So you shouldn’t feel like you’re left out. If you feel like you haven’t built your nest egg yet or you haven’t-
Robin Woodell: Not at all.
Greg McIntyre: … or you don’t have enough, you can help people use that money and those savings in that retirement more efficiently. You can help it last longer. I know that and I send [crosstalk 00:16:05] people to you to do that all the time, of all wealth and levels. At all levels of wealth. Same for legal planning. We were talking this morning… I was talking this morning at our morning meeting that we were really built off of bringing high level legal planning and services to average everyday Americans like myself. Okay and really not leaving anybody out. I don’t want anybody left out, but we do from any level of wealth and any level of need, there’s rarely anyone we can’t help from anywhere along that range up to very, very complicated high wealth estate planning. Yeah.
Robin Woodell: As encouragement, if you want to be one of those high net worth people, that’s what you start planning for. You start planning with your basic documents, you start planning with your investments and you talk to someone. I mean, as you guys said, it’s not just wealthy that come to financial planners. They had to get there.
Greg McIntyre: That should be the title of this episode, which is the Road to Wealth.
Robin Woodell: There you go. There you go.
Greg McIntyre: Assembling your dream team or something. Right?
Robin Woodell: Absolutely.
Greg McIntyre: Yeah. So, I wanted to go over something really quickly. I had something up here that I wanted to show. If you’ll give me a second and I will share it and not to put you on the spot Robin, but can you see our screen Robin?
Robin Woodell: Yes, I can see it.
Greg McIntyre: Good Okay, so I have your LinkedIn page up.
Robin Woodell: Nice.
Greg McIntyre: When I Google you, this comes up first. Okay. When I click the website this comes up for Robin Woodell and Emerald Financial and I know that you have some really great interest and just in reading your bio, that you’re a financial planner and entrepreneur. I don’t know if I put financial or entrepreneur first because I know you’re a great woman business owner.
You are a wife, a mother, a lover of travel, and most importantly a lover of Christ. So I wanted to show that because I have found that that is exactly who you are.
Robin Woodell: Oh, thank you.
Greg McIntyre: It’s a good description. I really enjoyed coming to the Carolina, We Rock, women rock festival, this year at the [Big Chill 00:18:55] in Charlotte. That was a lot of fun too. And I thank you for the invite. Absolutely. And I know that you’re involved in women’s issues and other causes and charitable causes in addition to being a financial planner. I also know that you went to the university of Memphis for vocal performance.
Robin Woodell: I did. We were just talking about that earlier.
Greg McIntyre: You were an opera singer, is that right?
Robin Woodell: I was an opera singer, a professional opera singer for eight years. I traveled around the world.
Greg McIntyre: That is really cool. That is awesome.
Robin Woodell: Yeah, it definitely brings different perspective from someone coming from the arts field into this and it’s funny because I was always, even from a performance standpoint my directors and conductors always liked me because I was always very methodical and that’s not typical of an artist. So I had the creative side, but I was always very methodical on how I built a character and how I followed through with instructions. They loved it because I was always where I needed to be.
So it’s a little unusual, but I have found that my arts background has given me a more creative way in working with people. So because I didn’t come up in taking the business and the finance classes in college, I got all those licenses later on in life. So I added it on top of what I already, all my other experiences with creativity and arts and teaching. I have a little teaching degree as well, so it kind of funny. So all of those things have come into building this practice and I’m very big on education. I’m very big on doing outreach and education programs and seminars for people. And I think a lot of the of my history is what brought me to that. So I’m very passionate about being able to give back to people now in a more tangible way. Whereas before I was just entertaining.
Greg McIntyre: I just came up with another title for this episode.
Robin Woodell: Oh goodness.
Greg McIntyre: If you want to make your money sing Robin Woodell.
Robin Woodell: There you go.
Greg McIntyre: So yeah. I know that you’re a dynamic individual. I appreciate you being on our show, the Elder Law Report today, and always enjoy working with talented professionals like yourself and Brenton thanks for being on the call today as well.
Robin Woodell: [crosstalk 00:21:11]. Thanks guys.
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely. Hey, have a great week and I’ll talk to you soon. Okay. Or weekend, weekend. Bye now.
How can a Geriatric Social Worker help you and your family? Find out from special guest and Geriatric Social Worker, Valerie Juleson. Ms. Juleson has a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University and educates us on the different types of social work and how she helps families cope with aging issues.
Intro Vocalist: (singing)
Greg McIntyre: Hi, this is Greg McIntyre, and Brenton Begley.
Brenton Begley: Hi.
Greg McIntyre: McIntyre Elder Law, helping seniors protect their assets and legacies. And we are here today. We have a special show for you today. We’re going to spend some time with a social worker, who has a Master’s in Social Work from Columbia University, and she’s going to share some of her knowledge and wisdom with us today about what social work is, what a geriatric social worker does, and just how that can help you and your family. So without further ado, Ms. Juleson, thank you so much for being here today. May I call you Valerie, Valerie Juleson?
Valerie Juleson: You absolutely can.
Greg McIntyre: Okay. So Valerie, thank you for being with us today. You and I have worked together on a case in the past. You are a witness in a case in the past in a guardianship hearing and, which worked out wonderfully for the client. So, before I was an attorney and before I got into doing a lot of work with social services, and in that courtroom in juvenile court, and then moving on into being an elder law attorney, and working with social services and social workers in adult Medicaid and private social workers that work for facilities.
Greg McIntyre: I didn’t know the difference. I didn’t understand that there were so many different types and varieties of social workers out there, and I would be willing to bet that a lot of people out there do not know the difference either, and don’t know that different types and varieties. And mainly, when I hear the term social work, or when I deal with clients, they just think if they’re working with a social worker, all social workers work for social services and that they’re there to simply help them. And while I’d love for that to be true-
Valerie Juleson: Me too.
Greg McIntyre: Social workers work for a number of different entities, in different capacities.
Valerie Juleson: And have different priorities.
Greg McIntyre: Sure. Sure.
Valerie Juleson: Just like doctors, lawyers, dentists, everybody is different. Everybody’s unique. One thing I will be doing is emailing you some of the questions they should ask before they connect with people. I can’t make anybody’s choices, but I can give them the right questions. And I think that’s very important, whether you’re hiring any professional person to act with you.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: You have to interview them, and to interview them correctly, you need the questions.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: My brand of social work is a little different. Let’s think of it as macro or micro. An LCSW is a clinically trained-
Greg McIntyre: Licensed clinical social worker, LCSW, right?
Valerie Juleson: Right. You see a lot of them working for facilities, hospitals-
Valerie Juleson: And they have a very narrow definition of where they’re supposed to work with you. And if you take them out of that, it is against their job. I mean, they cannot, no more than you’re…
Greg McIntyre: Than I’m going to handle a speeding ticket.
Valerie Juleson: It doesn’t mean you don’t have your training, it just means that’s out of what you are going to do.
Greg McIntyre: So it’s talking about focus. I hear you.
Valerie Juleson: So I’m not saying anything against those that do this, they’re very good in their lane, in their zip code. Okay? And so if you don’t ask the right question, you’re never going to get the right information. So first of all, what are the, who pays? Why are they doing this? What experience do they have? Who have they helped in the past? Do they have references, et cetera, et cetera. Okay? So all of that is, mine is a little different. What I am trained to do this macro, not micro, macro.
Greg McIntyre: So what does a geriatric social worker do?
Valerie Juleson: The closest thing a good geriatric social worker and there’s all varieties of geriatrics.
Greg McIntyre: Geriatric means-
Valerie Juleson: The elders.
Greg McIntyre: Working with someone who-
Valerie Juleson: And their families.
Greg McIntyre: Elderly. And their families, right.
Valerie Juleson: So, if you are working with them, the best way for people to understand that, it’s like a general contract, or your GPS on your car, you need to get to Place A.
Valerie Juleson: And so in order to, typical what I would work with is multiple businesses, when I was in Connecticut. I would have a situation, my husband was in real estate. You see, new real estate agent, I would have after ’07 when the market crashed. And we developed this because we weren’t seeing want-to-sell, we had have-to-sell. So Mama took care of Grandpa, and Grandpa is befuddled, and she just fell and broke her hip. They’ve got no planning. They didn’t even think of planning.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: So I’ve got to know who to call. I’ve got to call you. I’ve got to call a family, I’ve got to call a realtor I can trust. I’ve got to call someone who can come in and clear that house. You had one of those lovely ladies on one of your shows.
Greg McIntyre: Sure. Thomas Palazzo, estate services.
Valerie Juleson: So, I have to have all these resources. That’s what I mean by a GPS.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: I have to know where the things are and I have to have checked them out, because they’re responsible for me.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: Because while your grandma’s in getting her hip fixed, I’ve got grandpa, who’s befuddled. I’ve got to hire home care to take him to where he’s going to live in supported housing. So visually, even if he doesn’t remember, he knows it’s not a dangerous place. And he makes some buddies.
Brenton Begley: Right. So if I’m kind of, the wheel’s turning in my head here, so I’m starting to think, if I’m telling someone, hey, you need some type of long-term care, we can help you get qualified for it, we can help protect your assets, we can get you Medicaid, that sort of thing. They would also want to work with someone like you to figure out some of the logistics, maybe, or even to point them in the right direction of how they can figure out some logistics if they came to us first, right? So where to go. Right? What-
Valerie Juleson: Bingo.
Brenton Begley: What place is the best place, how, and they’re going to, what it’s going to look like when they actually make that transition.
Valerie Juleson: Yeah.
Brenton Begley: Right.
Valerie Juleson: And we’re not telling them who to hire. I always have at least three referrals that I’ve checked out and I’m the one who they’re responsible for, because if they mess up, they’re going to correct it or they’re off, they’re not getting another referral. They just wouldn’t be on my honor roll.
Brenton Begley: Good.
Greg McIntyre: I hope we’re on the honor roll.
Valerie Juleson: You are. Okay. And so, when you have an honor roll that you can trust, it’s good for all the businesses. We are all mature enough to know the predators have already recognized the exponential growth in this vulnerable population.
Brenton Begley: Right, right.
Valerie Juleson: People are trying, and I’m including you, to put together a team that is protectors. That’s as simple as I can tell you. We have a vulnerable population. We will have predators, we will have protectors. We just want to give them the choice.
Greg McIntyre: Plus you think that-
Brenton Begley: Sorry, can you talk about that a little bit? That the, you mentioned the growing vulnerable population. Can you talk about, I guess what-
Valerie Juleson: [crosstalk 00:07:39] One in five is now over sixty in the Charlotte area. I have some numbers here, but people watching, I could send them numbers, but the truth is one in five is already. The demographics are already over sixty.
Greg McIntyre: Moving toward one in four.
Valerie Juleson: Moving towards one in four.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: So this has the Baby Boomers changed to Silver Tsunami.
Greg McIntyre: The Silver Tsunami is what they call it.
Valerie Juleson: Silver Tsunami. The Baby Boomers changed industry from the time we all got here. I’m one of them. Okay? Change the industry. Your business will be one of the front loaders of helping people get protected. The hardship is most people are in denial. Most people are frightened. You have all this knowledge and, you so want to give it to people, and you’re traveling in a Maserati and they’re in a Model T.
Brenton Begley: Right.
Valerie Juleson: How do you get the information absorbed? You’re working with people who have resistance, fear, delusion that their money’s going to protect them, or hopelessness that they have nothing that they can do. So, that is where we need a team of listeners, whether I was supervising students at senior centers, doing information, but they can only take a teaspoon in time-
Brenton Begley: Right.
Valerie Juleson: Then the whole reality, all at once. So I’m taking a couple of your books and putting them in the senior center.
Greg McIntyre: Well, thank you.
Valerie Juleson: And then I will talk about the books. But it is an inter-layered absorption, and it’s so hard because you can just see they’re at risk.
Brenton Begley: Right.
Valerie Juleson: And then they’re-
Brenton Begley: I felt a lot of that denial, that fear, that reticence to make decisions. Greg, you felt that too, right? Speak to that a little bit on our side of the fence here, how we have really, in our experience with the client, how we experienced that.
Greg McIntyre: Sure. And so our philosophy is, we’re going to give options, we’re going to first, first we start with people’s goals. We’re going to say, okay, what is your goal though? Because I need to identify your goal first. And then, we’re going to present options. There may be one option, two options, three options to achieve that goal. And then I will give my advice, my recommendation of [crosstalk 00:10:23] what I think, right? Then I start with a goal and then I back off to, okay, well to achieve that goal here, what, in my experience are your options to achieve that goal. If it’s stay in control of my home for the rest of my life and protect it, or stay in control of retirement assets or other assets, or it’s hey, I want to be covered by long term care insurance.
Greg McIntyre: Right? I might make a referral for that. So, so it’s a holistic approach. And then you have to deal with, you mentioned we’re traveling in pretty fast and if somebody else might be traveling in a Model T, but that’s because they don’t do what we do every day.
Valerie Juleson: Right.
Greg McIntyre: So we have to bring them quickly up to speed, to stay with your analogy, right, with us so that they’re right along with us and understand. So, we try to do that as quickly as possible, and sometimes, I can tell you something over and over again and it may take a while to get through. So we use things like drawing on handheld pads, screens, that shadow on our televisions, on the bigger television like this behind us. In fact, we’re fitting, we already have one of the conference rooms fitted for that in Shelby, in this office that Brenton’s in, and we’re getting ready to fit another large TV there with it too. So Brenton can just simply throw all his notes and everything up on that screen and then draw things out.
Greg McIntyre: I’m a very visual person. So we have maps that we will design for estate planning, or how lady bird deed works, or trust and the differences, that quickly point out the differences. And I know that if I can boil it down, sometimes it’s complicated to make things simple.
Valerie Juleson: Yes, it is.
Greg McIntyre: It takes a long time to make things, to understand how to make things simple. But I know that if I can take the complex, and boil it down as simply as possible and visually convey that, and maybe some bullet points that explain the differences, that’s a much better way to interact with anyone. It doesn’t matter if they’re a senior or not, but somebody who doesn’t do what you do all the time. But especially someone who is getting up in age, so to speak, right?
Greg McIntyre: And our grandfather, who may be a bit befuddled, as you said, right? So, it’s easier to explain those things to them in that way. So we’d really explore it, play with different visual tools and maps and technology. And that’s innovation, to try to make things as simple as possible and convey those points within an hour-long consultation. Sometimes, there’s a lot of time and experience that goes into that, to be able to pull that down. Wouldn’t you agree, Brenton?
Brenton Begley: Oh, yeah. I mean it just takes explaining it, over and over and over again, hours and hours of doing it, to really get to a point where you can put it into bite-size chunks. And Valerie, I’m sure you’ve had that experience too. Just trying to convey things in the simplest way possible to get the spirit of it over to them.
Valerie Juleson: Yes, and I loved your explanation because it’s a classic goal, objectives and steps, whatever profession you’re in of helping, that is the classic blueprint-
Greg McIntyre: That helps too. And Brenton, this is just, it’s a great discussion. I wanted to talk to you about, too, so we’ll do it here. That is a great way to, somebody might say, oh, well I don’t want to do that, right? Or I don’t like this plan, I like this plan, or I don’t like any of the plans. But then, you can go back and say, okay, well, your original goal is this. Your goal is this, this is how you get there, and then it puts it on them to figure that out, right. Does this jibe with my goals, does it help?
Greg McIntyre: And really, I am less advising them at that point. I’m still laying out options, but they really are in control of the choices and then they can figure out, hey, to accomplish those goals, if I don’t go this route then I am kind of giving up control over here.
Valerie Juleson: That’s right.
Greg McIntyre: Or I’m getting, right. Yeah.
Valerie Juleson: But I’m going to give you a hint.
Greg McIntyre: Give me a hint.
Valerie Juleson: Okay.
Greg McIntyre: Tell me better. This is why I need the licensed clinical social worker.
Brenton Begley: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Greg McIntyre: Also, why many families benefit from employing a geriatric social worker like Ms. Juleson. And I want to get into her experience and knowledge and education. Columbia is not an easy school to get into. I know that it’s not. How about that? I have a cousin, a first cousin that went to Columbia, for a while, and it’s on the backside of Central Park. Isn’t that where it is?
Valerie Juleson: Yes, yes.
Greg McIntyre: It’s right on the backside of Central Park in Manhattan. But before you get there, you were going to give me [crosstalk 00:15:18] some advice, a hint.
Valerie Juleson: I’m going to give you a hint. Before you walk in.
Greg McIntyre: Okay.
Valerie Juleson: Before I walk in to see a family, or a person, I have a very easy thing that they fill out because if I’m talking to Grandma and she has been proud of her cooking, okay?
Greg McIntyre: Okay, sure.
Valerie Juleson: I’m going to put everything in the relationship of this is the recipe that’s going to work, honey. These are the ingredients we need to have, and we’re going to mix them together this way.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: Because I’m using her pride. I’m using where she feels confident to take a new step.
Greg McIntyre: Okay.
Valerie Juleson: Okay? You have been a military man-
Greg McIntyre: So you’re relating them. [crosstalk 00:15:57] You’re getting in their world, yeah.
Valerie Juleson: Your words have told me, you are protective, you’re a fighter, you’re a scrapper.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: Which, I heard your words, you’re a military man.
Greg McIntyre: I would agree with that, your interpretation.
Valerie Juleson: Okay. Therefore, I’m going to say the same thing, tailored to your temperament.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: If you go in there, and sell as a scrapper, and a military man, and a protector to Grandma, you’ve lost her.
Greg McIntyre: Right. Because I’m not relating to her on her level.
Valerie Juleson: It’s bilingual.
Greg McIntyre: It’s just people.
Valerie Juleson: It’s bilingual. I cannot talk to you in Japanese and expect you to answer me. What kind of, I can go on and you’ll go, I don’t have any idea what she said.
Greg McIntyre: Yes.
Valerie Juleson: Have to hear before you talk. You have to know who they are. If that is not your forte, then you get people who are good listeners and give you the report on how to direct it.
Brenton Begley: Certainly, I think that has a good point. And you have to tailor the plan to who the person is and their goal, they’re going to tell you that. And also, really, the first part of a consultation with us, I’ve always experienced this, is always, it’s just listening. We just sit down, say hey, how can I help you? And we listen. Right? And the thing is, what I hear almost every time is: this probably doesn’t matter, this is probably not relevant, ongoing, on and on. And I just tell them, no, I need to know everything because all of it matters, all of it’s relevant. Because if anything is going to tell me who you are as a person, what you value, right? And that’s going to show me what your goals and what your needs are.
Valerie Juleson: [inaudible 00:17:38]
Brenton Begley: And that’s absolutely how we want to tailor it. And that’s, we don’t want to stray from that at all. If we’re talking to the children, we’re talking to the spouse, we’re talking to the social worker, right? We’re talking to the facility. Anyone, we want to make sure we convey that.
Valerie Juleson: Right. The most important thing when I would work with the family, particularly, I’d be working with adult children. And there’s nobody at this table, I don’t care what your degree is, where you went to school, who knows more about your granddad than you.
Brenton Begley: Right.
Valerie Juleson: In this setting, you’re the expert, we’re the students. Please, tell us. There is nothing you can say that is not valuable to us in helping you reach it, because that’s the expert at the table. Even if your granddad got befuddled, you are the expert. I’m not, I don’t care where I went to school. Pointless, if I can’t listen.
Greg McIntyre: Right, so tell us about Columbia and what that education means. MSW, Master’s in Social-
Valerie Juleson: Master’s in Social Work. It’s a little different. It’s macro. My program, there are some wonderful people I’ve worked with who are clinical, and if a family needed that work, you’d say, more in conflict, I would get a clinician to work them through their private business, that would not be where I’d want to go.
Valerie Juleson: Okay? I can do short term, very goal-orientated, goal-setting, objective steps. That’s on my mind.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: Somebody who has that gift to do long-term clinical social work, I admire them, it’s not my skillset.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: Macro is, I work with the hospitals. I work with businesses, multiple-level businesses on how we best address this. I just wrote one proposal for Charlotte because they’re going to do a lot of money in housing. Okay? So I just sent them a proposal. I write proposals on, how do we address this? There’s so many dis-coordinate pieces. It’s like I took a jigsaw puzzle on the table, threw it on the floor and said, now go fix it.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: We, the businesses that can make a difference are you, the geriatric social workers, the people who are, design the real estate, every place there’s a change-of-life evaluation happening, hospitals. We need to write a unified program. If we don’t, the predators already have.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: They’re already on every level, and figuring it out. Shame on us, who are the protectors, who haven’t done the same.
Greg McIntyre: Right. So, thinking, in the sense that I’ve worked with you before. You were part of a guardianship case and the family hired you to go look at a facility for them, to talk with the family, to, yeah.
Valerie Juleson: More than that. The family did not know where or how or what to do.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: So they, themselves were chasing the wrong tasks.
Greg McIntyre: They were trying to bring grandmother back in the family, control of grandmother back from the state, right? And let the family be instrumental in her care and in her life.
Valerie Juleson: It was a dramatic worst case, best case.
Greg McIntyre: Yes.
Valerie Juleson: Okay? It was a very dramatic worst case, best case, what can be done, and I think when we walked out of there you were like, whoa. But basically, all of what I do, or 90% of what I do, is homework before I walk in.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: Just like you.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: It’s all done when I walk in.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: And then I listen.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: And usually, you don’t have to get hardcore. Sometimes you do, but you don’t usually have to.
Valerie Juleson: And so that was just a unified, it wasn’t me. It was all of us. You were there.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: And you were the law, you were the muscle if they got ugly, okay? And you were. And you were sitting there, and you were the or else. Okay? And that’s the role you’re comfortable in.
Greg McIntyre: But well, but it doesn’t need to, it doesn’t, hearings like guardianships don’t have to be that. In fact, when you have done your homework beforehand, when you have a license, whether you have a geriatric social worker that goes out, that looks at the facility where grandmother will be staying, that interviews the family, that comes in and really gives an objective report.
Greg McIntyre: That can put a family on par with social services, who also has a social worker that’s going to come in and also give a testimonial, which may or may not be biased, right, in a certain way, to achieve a certain objective.
Valerie Juleson: Right.
Greg McIntyre: So it really gives the family more options, and power, and strength, and I guess, more of a foothold in the hearing.
Valerie Juleson: And it’s objective.
Greg McIntyre: Sure, sure. We want to keep it objective and [crosstalk 00:22:55] there are bad things.
Valerie Juleson: And I’m not getting a paycheck from anyone.
Greg McIntyre: So, exactly. So I think that in that hearing, you brought a lot to the table because of that. And that’s very powerful with your background experience and education as well. So, let’s say that I’m a family, and I have a loved one who needs care. Let’s say they need long-term care or, are we trying to figure out, I don’t know, whether care is needed or what to do. And I call you and I say, you were recommended to me, can you come in and help direct us. On a macro level, what are you going to do when you come in?
Valerie Juleson: When I come in, and the first thing I’m going to do, hypothetically, with your grandparents, okay, first thing I’m going to do is really talk to you and hear what you have to say, and if there are other people involved; maybe you’re concerned, but it’s your wife who’s doing the primary care for her parents.
Greg McIntyre: Sure.
Valerie Juleson: So I’m going to hear, what does a typical day look like? What are the challenges? Where is it showing up? Then I’m going to say, what is going on medically? A lot of times, we can have a UTI that looks like dementia.
Greg McIntyre: Oh, sure you could.
Valerie Juleson: It could be a medical problem, it could be a vitamin B12, we could have anemia, we could have a whole set of medical. So when was the last medical assessment done, okay? So we need to check medical. We need to check, maybe someone in the family needs the support. Maybe the grandparent is befuddled, but we, you know, we can set up the remedy that is even greater.
Valerie Juleson: Grandpa’s wandering, he thinks, or grandma, thinks she has to meet the bus. There are GPS bracelets that will ring in your house the moment grandma goes off the property.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: You don’t want to limit them, they love their garden. You can’t lock them in the house. Once they leave the property, your phone is going off in your pocket.
Greg McIntyre: Right.
Valerie Juleson: See, there are technological things, there are medical things that we need, if you, we have to crop our picture and see, where do we zoom in the most obvious and easiest to attack. We start with that. Okay? And can we adjust it? Maybe there are things we can do if there’s more priority, and the family’s priority, to keep grandma at home, then we’ll look at a modular. Maybe she can’t live alone anymore because she’s going to burn the house down. But maybe we could put a modular, where it has medical, it’s called a MEDCottage, but there’s something in the backyard for grandma’s setting. And she- [crosstalk 00:25:42]
Brenton Begley: Speaking of home-
Valerie Juleson: If she doesn’t have to spend her whole thing.
Brenton Begley: Right. Speaking of home, too, I have an in-home signing that I’m going to, right, today, and so I do have to leave you guys but Valerie, it was very good to meet you and you know-
Greg McIntyre: We’re going to wrap it up. I have had a great experience interviewing Valerie today, and I’ve had a great experience working with her as a geriatric social worker in the past, so Valerie, I think, would be excellent for any estate planning or elder law attorney out there to work with, and to refer families to, as well as for families to individually call when they’re not sure what to do, because Valerie has the experience to help that family through specific situations. So, I think it’s a good time to bring it to a close, as well. Brenton, thank you very much and I want to make sure that we put Valerie’s information on the screen. Valerie is a geriatric social worker with a Master’s in Social Work. I could talk to you all day about the differences in social work [crosstalk 00:26:48] because there are so many differences out there and different types of social workers, and your phone number to reach you-
Valerie Juleson: Is, it’s (704) 497-6714. It’s probably best to reach me by email because I am, if I’m in a meeting, or I don’t recognize the number, I will not always pick up.
Greg McIntyre: Okay.
Valerie Juleson: Okay. The email is vjuleson@gmail.com.
Greg McIntyre: So, vjuleson@gmail.com, and I will put that information out there. I love the back of her card, Brenton, it just has her initials.
Brenton Begley: Ah (affirmative).
Greg McIntyre: That’s really cool.
Valerie Juleson: I’m just part of the team.
Greg McIntyre: You’re part of the team.
Valerie Juleson: Because it’s going to take a whole team. It takes the doctors, it takes lawyers-
Greg McIntyre: You certainly are one smart lady because it’s not easy to get to Columbia University.
Brenton Begley: Right.
Greg McIntyre: Is it, Brenton?
Brenton Begley: You’re right.
Greg McIntyre: You think? Definitely a respected college. Hey, thank you Brenton, for being on, and guys, if you need to contact Valerie again, it’s Valerie Juleson, geriatric social worker, MSW, Master’s of Social Work, phone number (704) 497-6714, vjuleson@gmail.com, great way to contact her and ask more about social work and geriatric social work.
Greg McIntyre: I’ve mentioned there are a lot of other social workers out there in North Carolina. I know a lot of them that would love to be doing what you’re doing too.
Valerie Juleson: I actually had, before I left, retired here, I had a whole group I trained.
Greg McIntyre: Really?
Valerie Juleson: Because I needed-
Greg McIntyre: I bet you there’s a lot of social workers that will reach out too. Care, too.
Valerie Juleson: I hope so, because it is unique. It is very rewarding, and not under anyone’s thought.
Greg McIntyre: Well, I thank you for doing everything you do. I’ve known families you’ve helped, and it means a great deal, so thank you.
Valerie Juleson: Thank you.
Greg McIntyre: Thanks, guys. Thanks, Brenton. And we’ll see you next week for the Elder Report.
See the newest innovations we are bringing to estate planning, elder law and the legal industry. We are always striving to bring clients great service in new and innovative ways. Learn more at mcelderlaw.com or call: 704-749-9244.
Speaker 1: I wanted to do a quick update on innovation. We pride ourselves, I pride myself on being an innovator in what we do, and not using technology for technology’s sake, but using it to help improve education, improve customer experience, client experience and our delivery of services.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we’ve been working on lately, that I’ve been working on, is really our maps. Just visually mapping a state plan, and one of the first maps I created, and this is the latest version of it, is the estate planning map. Which you can get by going to mcelderlaw.com/epmap. Mcelderlaw.com/epmap. But what I’m working on is creating an entire virtual EP map. That you can go on the website and really go through like a game almost, in a virtual walkthrough experience, see videos on each concept, on the map and walk through your own estate plan.
Speaker 1: This is going to be so cool. I cannot wait, and then you can drill down when it comes to the part on the map that talks about trust and how trusts work, trusts work and how they can avoid probate. Drill down to the trust planning map, which will tell you the differences and different kinds of trust. And then when you’re talking about protecting your home and any surrounding property with a Ladybird deed, it’ll tell you what a Ladybird need is.
Speaker 1: You can drill down to the Ladybird deed map that is specific on that, and that’s going to be kind of a virtual computer experience that … And you may say, “Hey, it’s elder law, to me, is your audience online? Are they able to navigate that?” That’s always been offensive to me, because I’ll tell you, my parents are on Facebook. A lot of our clients have emails, almost all of them have emails and check it, and they can go on our website, or integrate it with our social media, where they really respond and interact with our education, and we enjoy that, comment on things.
Speaker 1: This is just going to be a really cool experience I can’t wait to bring you, that will allow you to contact us on each part of that journey on the estate planning map, and interact with us, or chat with us realtime live, right there within that program. So that’s going to be easy to use. It’s going to be point click. All you have to do is go to mcelderlaw.com, And I’ll give you a link to that right off that page to do it.
Speaker 1: It’s not ready yet, but I’m starting it, and I’ve already built out the maps. But now we have to take that virtual and digital. What you may not know about me is, when I started out, I actually worked in the private workforce out of the military, I actually worked for a firm called 3D Village in the Research [inaudible 00:03:01] Park just outside of Raleigh. I was working out of [inaudible 00:03:03], and we did 3D walkable worlds.
Speaker 1: So we were going to be your canvas, and take millions of photographs from every angle of every building, and then go back and 3D model to scale that city. So you could walk and you could interact with advertisers, and our tours there and things. Just virtually, get our kids from a classroom to do that. To navigate Manhattan, or the Citadel, we’ve done work for the Citadel, or Charleston, or Chapel Hill.
Speaker 1: We got to a point where we’re doing a lot of colleges at 1.2, and they would send those out to their alumni and prospective students, so they could virtually walk the campus right there. This is going to be nothing that advanced, but it is going to be a visual walkthrough, and it’s amazing how the mind works and how things happen, and this has just become a bigger thing in my mind that all fits together, and is going to allow people to interact with their estate plans. It’s basically, you call it a choose your own adventure, right?
Brendan: That’s right.
Speaker 1: Why do you call it a choose your own adventure?
Brendan: Yeah. Because you’re going to be able to really see how it all works. And then once you see how it all works, you’re going to be able to basically, see what’s going to be best for your own goals. And it kind of reminds me of one of those choose your own adventure books. If you want to slay the dragon, go to page 226, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: [inaudible 00:04:37].
Brendan: So those old books that used to be able to get, I don’t know if they’re around anymore.
Speaker 1: They are. In fact, my kids have a bunch of them.
Brendan: Oh really?
Speaker 1: When I was recently in Manhattan, at this huge bookstore in Manhattan over toward NYU, they had a whole lot of those choose your own adventure books. And I got some for my nine year old Maddie who loves reading, and likes choose your own adventure books.
Brendan: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so they’re still around. I’ve got a ton at the house. You can go on Amazon, I’ll tell you how technology evolves. Amazon Alexa has a whole free library of choose your own adventure books. So you come to points of the story that Alexa’s telling you, and it asks you which way you want to go. You Tell Alexa, and then it takes me down a different story path. The kids love it. It’s about taking bedtime stories to the next level.
Brendan: Yeah, yeah. that’s pretty cool. Really that’s going to be how we interact with estate planning. On the website it’s going to be, you’re going to be able to click on things. It’s going to show you your kind of, if you travel down this road, what your estate plans is going to look like.
Speaker 1: And we thought about, there are people out there that might extend that to selling a trust, or a will, or an estate planning package right from within that product. Right from within that service, that estate planing map online. But why might we not want to do that? I know I do not want to do that yet, because there’s just too many variables. Why do you think?
Brendan: Yeah, I think the best reason why is because technology is never going to kill the consultation, because you got to get in front of an attorney, and you got to have us really look at everything and tell you what’s going to be best for you. Because you might not need a trust. The will might not be the best thing for you. You might need a trust. Maybe you don’t need an irrevocable, maybe you just need a revocable, and we’re going to be able to sit down with you and go through all that. All those contingencies and really answer all your questions. What we don’t want you to do is to go on there, and get just enough information to make the wrong decision. Right? But we do want you to educate yourself.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. I’ve just been so excited about this tool. Sometimes I get excited about things that totally flop. I get excited … I was talking last night to my brother in law. One of my sisters, Jessica, and her husband are in town. They’re going to watch a play that my sons, one of the leads in, Flowers for Algernon, or Algernon, which is a cool book and movie. Maybe you’ve been on Netflix and watched the movie.
Speaker 1: But he’s in that play, and they’re in town to watch him. I was talking about how many things that I’ve done that have flopped, try to find what works for clients and for bringing services. But I guess you can’t be scared to fail. You can’t be scared to innovate, and you’d have to do that to find out what does work. We know the tried and true method of sitting in our office and just waiting for clients to come.
Speaker 1: That’s been how we’ve always done it as attorneys, but we want to do more at McIntyre Elder Law. I can’t help but want to do more, and bring what’s in my head to you in a creative and user friendly way. I’m giving you an example of something that works like crazy, and I bet you most people would say it wouldn’t, would not have worked. And that’s this. This is an infographic that shows how the eDOCS Access Program works. I made this infographic a long time ago, and eDOCS access is a system that we went with when we first formed McIntyre Elder Law years ago, that is a virtual storage place.
Speaker 1: That is bank level security encrypted technology, where any estate planning documents we draft for you, we place in that vault, and when we do that the system emails you, and you’re able to click in the email to set up your own password. But only you. if you want family members like children to also have access to that, it sends an email to them too and they create their own password. That way you and them are able to log in and always have copies, always be able to email straight from that system, always be able to print those off at a nearby printer.
Speaker 1: If you are traveling and have a health care situation, your healthcare power of attorney is accessible right there, and could be shown on a device right to a facility, or a hospital or staff at a hospital, by your loved one. So it’s just a way to always have access to your most important documents, and we’re very liberal in what we allow. We do not charge for that service, by the way. We provide that free of charge for our clients for life, and we’re very liberal. If clients also want us to upload their other important documents, we routinely do that, within reason, so that they have access to those there as well.
Speaker 1: We just believe in client service, customer service, and we want to go above and beyond to help you in any way we can. People would have said, and have said, “Well, does that really work with seniors?” Again, I find that disrespectful. I find that most of my clients that are seniors do have email addresses. Certainly the kids do, some the kids are out of state, and allows them to be plugged in to what’s going on, and to those useful estate planning documents at all times. Instead of having to go to the safety deposit box, or somewhere where you’re going to have them.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Brendan, thanks for being on the call. We will continue to innovate. I cannot wait to get all of this together as one cohesive virtual program that allows you to walk through and interact with us, interact with your estate plan right there.
Speaker 1: Imagine being able to interact and play really almost a video game on your estate plan. Ride along where you get to make mistakes, or explore options, and there are no penalties, and you can gain knowledge and information. Watch videos, educational videos on each concept, and really get your mind a nice visual, verbal, and even written concept of what these things are, how these concepts were, and how they can help you and your family. So thank you Brendan, for being online with us. I appreciate that, and see you later guys. Peace.
Can a trust help you avoid probate, taxes and protect your assets? Brenton and Greg discuss different types of trust and their uses and benefits. Learn more at mcelderlaw.com/trustmap or call: 704-749-9244.
Greg McIntyre: Our assets and [crosstalk 00:00:04] and you may notice, I’m not in a suit and tie today and I have a bike with me. I guess I could put on my bike helmet. I was out riding bikes or riding a bike on a Saturday and I was thinking about trust. I mean I’ve worked so hard to [inaudible 00:00:23], to stay in shape and to try to live a long life and to work every day and take care of my family. My wife and I both work very hard to take care of our six kids and what are we doing it for and how can we keep those things? How can we have quality of life and then also pass those items that we work for and that we get during our life to our next generation to benefit the children and hopefully the grandchildren to help send them to college? I know law school that I went to was not cheap, so Brenton was law school cheap for you?
Brenton Begley: No it wa not. Fellowship wasn’t cheap.
Greg McIntyre: Correct. Yes. Believe in the same breath, I’m glad that I work for it and I’m paying that off. I don’t think that getting a lot of money at 18 years old would have helped me. Although being saddled with a lot of debt is not fun either.
Brenton Begley: Right. Man, if I got a lot of money at 18 I probably want to be driving a Maserati right now and not a Chevy, but what I will say is that at 18-
Greg McIntyre: If you still had the money.
Brenton Begley: Right, if I still had the money yeah I would have blown that. Yeah, but at 18 if I had my college law school paid for that’d been nice too. Well, yeah I mean it would be nice to have school paid for because obviously you don’t want to get saddled with debt, student loan debt. Not a lot of people know this, but you can’t just discharge student loan debt in a bankruptcy or anything like that, you know?
Brenton Begley: So for me though, if I was going to get that money to have my student loads paid for, I couldn’t have just gotten at 18 all at once because I wouldn’t have used that for my education. Like I said, I would’ve used it to buy, I would’ve blown it because I was 18 years old. Xbox games, Hot Cheetos, whatever.
Greg McIntyre: [inaudible 00:02:30] Hot Cheetos.
Brenton Begley: That’s right. That’s right. So when you think about leaving property to people, right? You work hard all your life, you leave property, assets, money, whatever it is. You got to think to yourself, okay, well what’s going to happen when I leave this to this person? Will they be able to effectively use this? Is it going to be a burden or is it going to be of benefit? In fact, the person that you leave it to could have special needs, right? That could be a problem.
Greg McIntyre: So trust come to mind to assist in this situation. That’s what we’re talking about today. How can trust help you and your family achieve your goals? First we want to talk about new goals and common goals come to mind, such as I want to send the grandkids to college. A discretionary trust that is for their health, education, and welfare. Until say they turn 25 or achieve certain milestones and then we start distributing part of it 25, 30, 35, and 40 or we say for instance, for example, 10% a year over the next 10 years once they turn 25 after we’ve helped get them through college or could be trade school educations. Once we’ve gotten them a little older, wiser, and more educated, then they will make better use of that money and it can really, really help them throughout their lives.
Greg McIntyre: That may be a concern of yours that we can help with. We do a lot of trust drafting like that. Also Brenton was referring to special needs individuals, people who might be on SSI, which is asset dependent and also comes with it, a Medicaid health care component that will all be disrupted and kicked off line if they receive money from you. A special needs trust is designed to receive that money and still allow them to receive the benefit. A third party trustee can spend money on them for things they need, that their Medicaid healthcare benefit doesn’t supply. There’s special rules with special needs trust and they’re complicated. However, very, very beneficial. That’s why we write a special or supplemental needs trust into every will we draft as an option for an executor use because when am I children going to become disabled?
Greg McIntyre: I hope never, but I don’t know what the future holds with illness or accidents in their future or my future. So think about that when you’re leaving money to an heir as to if they have the option for them. You may have a special needs person in your family that you want to plan for and we can use special needs trust either built into the will or stand alone outside of the will because that might not be where you want to pass that property to receive life insurance money, other monies, money you want to put in that trust now for that individual to care for them for the rest of their lives.
Greg McIntyre: So when we talk about trust, we’re talking about an array of different types of trust. A revokable living trust. Brenton, I find revocable living trust can really help when we talk about goals. To keep say, especially for individuals who are married to a family in trust to make sure that a spouse is provided for and to make sure that money and property is protected for the next generation, or at least past outside of probate to the next generation and not past through probate in that. However, a lot of times I find myself planning for higher wealth individuals with revocable living trust. What do you think about that?
Brenton Begley: Yeah, here’s the thing with higher wealth individuals, they have more wealth, right? So there’s a couple of things you got to think they’re maybe they want their wealth distributed in certain ways where it’s going to go to certain people and maybe they have children that are minors or grandchildren that are minors that they don’t want to give it to all at once. Here’s the other thing, recently we’ve been enjoying this gift and estate tax that has really not affected most Americans lately, right? So our gift and estate tax is really, really high, meaning that you have to have a lot of a lot of money passing to even be affected by it. So the threshold is high. So right now for an individual it’s $11.18 million. That’s how much you can give during your life or at your death before you’re ever even touched by the estate tax. Okay, so double that for a couple. Okay.
Greg McIntyre: You sent me an article earlier today.
Brenton Begley: Exactly.
Greg McIntyre: There’s talks right now in the legislature at the national level of really reducing that estate tax down and then having a graduated estate tax that starts, I want to say around 43, 45% of what’s passing. That means almost half of everything you pass would be taken away and given to the government up to 77% I think it was.
Brenton Begley: Right, right.
Greg McIntyre: 77% tax at the top end on what you’re trying to pass on to the next generation. So trust and really help with them. How can they help?
Brenton Begley: Right? So the trust are going to do a couple of things for you that you can do a lot of tax planning with trust. If you do it the correct way, you can effectively eliminate any estate tax that is going to really, really deplete your estate. There’s ways that you can double your estate tax exemption, right? Really with the right type of tax planning, you can really mitigate that tax, especially the tax that’s going to affect you. Like these talks were saying, I mean 40% of your estate being taxed, that’s huge. I mean [crosstalk 00:09:01].
Greg McIntyre: I want to say it’s crazy. It’s a lot. It’s hard to fathom that that will all go away. Or hald of what you have will go away.
Brenton Begley: Right, right.
Greg McIntyre: Trust can help with that. Trust can help far extend that exemption.
Brenton Begley: Certainly, certainly. I mean there’s lots of things you can do with trust when it comes to tax planning. I mean trusts are a very flexible vehicle and if you plan the right way and you understand what your goals are, you can not only eliminate tax, but protect the assets in many other ways.
Greg McIntyre: What about, okay, we talked about revocable living trust and they have a lot of tax benefits. Avoiding probate. There’s a lot of benefits for that. Achieving your goals long term with your money and property. What about an irrevocable trust? I hold here an example of an irrevocable trust. We call this one a Medicaid asset protection trust, MAPT. It’s an a big mason jar. It’s got money. There’s some monopoly houses in there. There’s a little spicket so that the income beneficiaries can receive that and pull that out even during your life. So how does this work in a nutshell?
Brenton Begley: Right.
Greg McIntyre: How does this work and how can it benefit people?
Speaker 2: Irrevocable trust is the other trust, right? So two main types of trust. Trust revocable, irrevocable. Irrevocable by the way, you can also have tax benefits, but irrevocable trust specifically the Medicaid asset protection trust is going to do two main things. It’s going first help someone qualify for Medicaid and two, it’s going to protect those assets that are in the trust from being looked at by Medicaid or being taken by Medicaid after Medicaid pays out. Because by the way, Medicaid, if they pay that money, they want it back. Right.
Speaker 2: So the way the Medicaid asset protection trust works is that it’s irrevocable. So you have to have a third party trustee. So if it’s a single individual, it has to be someone other than them. If it’s a couple, has to be someone other than them or their spouse who is over the trust as trustee and that trustee manages the funds, they protect the funds in the trust, whatever is put in the trust, but they are given power to distribute income during the grantors, the creator of the trust life for their benefit. Okay. Up until the time that they need Medicaid. Then once they get Medicaid, the asset that they put in the trust can no longer count against them and the assets that they put it in the trust are going to be protected from Medicaid or any other creditor or entity from taking those assets.
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely. I mean this is the best safe that we could draft for you. For you to place your money to make sure that no long term care stay if Medicaid has to pay for it can ever come back in the cupboard and it will be yours, that it will be your family’s for the rest well that it will pass to your family and not through the probative state or be subject to a Medicaid recover. So provides ultimate protection. Okay. We draft many types of trusts who would love to talk to you about how trust can help you and your family both stay in control of your assets and also protect your assets for the rest of your life and for generations. If you’re interested in seeing if trust planning is right for you or your family and having that conversation, we’d be glad to have that conversation with you and your family.
Greg McIntyre: Give us a call 704-749-9924 or visit us online at mcelderlaw.com and also I’m going to tell you I have the trust planning map that I have right here and a new trust planning workshop that we worked on that we’re going to start giving regularly. Just done trust planning. Check out the trust planning map.
Greg McIntyre: If you want to get the trust planning map, okay. You want the trust planning map for yourself to see a lot of the differences between irrevocable and revocable trust. Go to mcelder.com/trustmap. Mcelderlaw.com/trustmap and I will show you. So if you are interested in the trust map, go to mcelderlaw.com/trustmap. See it highlighted there mcelderlaw.com/trustmap. Enter this information and it will take you directly to the trust map and we’ll give you that free of charge today. So Brenton, thank you for being with us today. For those of you who don’t know Brenton as an Elder Law attorney with McIntyre Elder Law, and he has an LLN specifically in tax, so his focus area a lot of times is taxation and high wealth clients and he can help with really extending and maximizing that tax exemption and trust are great tools to do that. Right Brenton?
Brenton Begley: That’s right. Right the best tool to do it.
Greg McIntyre: Thanks for joining us from home today and I’m going to hop back on the bike, man.
Brenton Begley: Yeah have fun. Be safe. Get back on it.
Speaker 2: Please don’t wait till it’s too late. Call McIntyre Elder Law.
Sometimes when a loved one passes personal items need to be inventoried, evaluated and sold. Sometimes cleanup is required to ready a property for sale. In some circumstances cleanup is required prior to a loved ones passing. Our guest, Colette Ross with Timeless Collage and Estate Services joins us today to talk about Estate Sales and Property Cleanup.
Greg
McIntyre: Greg McIntyre with
McIntyre Elder Law helping seniors protect their assets and legacies. And I’m
here today with an interview. Okay. I love interviewing people who have
services that are valuable to seniors and their families. So I’m here today
with Colette Ross. Thank you for being here today.
Colette Ross: Thanks for having me.
Greg
McIntyre: Yes, and she’s with
Timeless Collage & Estate Services LLC. And guess what that is? I don’t
know. You tell us what is Timeless Collage & Estates Services LLC?
Colette Ross: Timeless Collage & Estate
Services LLC is an estate liquidation and estate services company. We serve
clients in Charlotte and surrounding areas like you mentioned. In order to
assist them with the organization and preparation for moving out, selling, or
cleaning out their personal property.
Greg
McIntyre: Understood. Okay.
That was very good. You’ve said that a couple of times.
Colette Ross: Just a couple.
Greg
McIntyre: Yes. So all right,
so moving out selling. So it could be helping people move out before someone
passed away. Is that right?
Colette Ross: Sometimes that does occur if
indeed…and a family is in need of downsizing services and assistance with
that process. For example, if somebody latter in life is moving into assisted
living, we help with resolving the personal property within the home prior to
their move to assisted living to allow to alleviate the burden labor.
Greg
McIntyre: Does that include
auction services, things like that?
Colette Ross: We do not auction, although we
do have associates that do if indeed the estate warrants are auctioning. But we
perform onsite tax sales.
Greg
McIntyre: Onsite sales.
Colette Ross: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: So estate sales.
Colette Ross: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: Right, right. And
you’re serving Charlotte and the surrounding areas. Correct?
Colette Ross: Yes.
Greg
McIntyre: So I see situations
or hear of situations all the time and I think it’s sad and I’m not sure why it
occurs, hoarding. Have you run across things like that?
Colette Ross: Well, the generation that is in
the latter part of their life today is result of the depression era. And those
folks tended to have not thrown anything away. So hoarding in itself,
[inaudible 00:02:23]
. Low and behold is actually a psychological illness that
people suffer and yeah, it does happen. And there are folks who have an
overabundance of items. Sometimes they don’t even know what they have, and the
families are so overwhelmed that they just don’t know what turn.
Greg McIntyre: Really?
Colette Ross: Absolutely.
Greg
McIntyre: I mean, I have met
with clients who are talk about family members who just have gotten into
hoarding behavior and that is a psychological illness that comes about. Plus, I
think people get overwhelmed over time sometimes. And just need someone to go
in and make sure everything’s cleaned out and organized and sometimes that the
valuable items set aside, so they can be sold. And that can be when someone is
going into care?
Colette Ross: Absolutely.
Greg McIntyre: Like nursing home or assisted
living care?
Colette Ross: Sure. Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Greg
McIntyre: Or it could be after
someone passes away. How do you do with an estate?
Colette Ross: Sure. At which point that
family member, the heirs or primary who’s responsible will call on us to ask
for us to help with that process. Being a third party and not having the
emotional involvement that families do with the attachment to memories of items
in their homes allows for us to be able to have to expedite the process.
Greg
McIntyre: In partial, right?
Colette Ross: Right. Still, with compassion
but, on a level where we can [inaudible 00:03:50].
Greg
McIntyre: Sure. So you can get
the job done.
Colette Ross: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: I just think that’s
going to be hard either working with the individual, or the family, or just
that’s a hard job all the way around. And I admire what you do.
Colette Ross: Well, thank you.
Greg
McIntyre: Yeah, absolutely. So
what are some things that we need to know about, the estate planning services,
about estate sales, or the clean-out services that you provide. What do you
think?
Colette Ross: Initially in regards to estate
planning, the key word planning. Planning in advance and having conversations
with families, educating them, and letting them know that these services are
available for them so that they can plan for professional [inaudible 00:04:37]
side in advance. Make decisions about property and what they choose to do with
it. If there are family heirlooms that we’re going to choose to allocate
amongst their family members, you [inaudible 00:04:48] in advance.
Greg
McIntyre: So how do you set
those things [inaudible 00:04:50]. You’re going in at someone’s home and being
asked to separate their things. And are you working with the family closely to
say, “Look, cousin Mark wants this, daughter want this, son wants this,
and this is for the sale.” Is there a lot of that? I mean, how does that
work?
Colette Ross: There is a lot of it, but we
asked for the families to manage that prior to our services coming about. So we
have those conversations and say, “We prefer that you call on us when
you’re ready, take your time, make sure you’re ready. Divide your property. And
then when you know that only the items that are available for resale or
disposal are on the property, it’s time for us to come in and assist.” And
give them ample time to get through allocating in the attachment or even going
through a will and seeing to it that each number has retrieved the items that
were left for them or that their family desired for them to have.
Greg
McIntyre: Sure.
Colette Ross: And then following them getting
through that process is when we would come in and finish by organizing the
estate for resale.
Greg
McIntyre: So will actually
helps you.
Colette Ross: Absolutely.
Greg
McIntyre: In dividing up the
property.
Colette Ross: Absolutely.
Greg
McIntyre: Right. Even in the
home, right?
Colette Ross: It helps families, absolutely.
If I were to judge the families who have had a written will and have had that
advanced planning versus not, I’d say that the peace of mind that’s offered to
families who have planned in advance is absolutely crucial and alleviate so
much stress.
Greg
McIntyre: That’s phenomenal,
that’s phenomenal. We also have on the show today, Brenton S. Begley. BS.
Begley [inaudible 00:06:33] attorney. JD and LLM, LLM and tax. Great attorney,
Brenton
Begley: All sorts of initials.
Greg
McIntyre: All sorts of
initials. I’d like to [inaudible 00:06:44] what those initials stand for behind
people’s names. I was doing that the other day when I was looking at the
different people’s cards. How about that?
Brenton
Begley: Yeah, all of the
initial beside my name just mean I owe a lot in student loans. That’s all that
means.
Greg
McIntyre: That’s correct. The
more initials by your name, the more student debt you have.
Brenton
Begley: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: That’s a good point.
So she mentioned, Colette mentioned, Ms. Ross mentioned wills, and how those
help a family. You know, I wondered if you might speak to that as far as how
wills can help a family. The importance of free planning also comes to mind,
that personal property memorandum attached to the will with directions for the
executor to follow the wishes of the, you know, that are written in the
attached personal property memorandum. That comes to mind here and can be so
helpful in that situation. I wonder if you could speak to that.
Brenton
Begley: Right. So probate, you
know the process by which the cedent, person who’s passed away their estate
gets distributed, right? You need to have some guide there. Without a guide, I
mean, it’s very, very difficult to determine who gets what, especially when you
have all these little pieces of personal property, right? So when you have a
will, you want it to direct where your assets are going to go. But that can be
hard and just type into will. It can be hard to sit down with an attorney for
hours and inventory every little asset that you have, right?
Greg
McIntyre: And then you forgot
something. So you have to come back in and then-
Brenton
Begley: Oh man, yeah.
Greg
McIntyre: [crosstalk 00:08:21]
something. And then you acquire something else and you have to switch it out.
Brenton
Begley: Yeah, exactly. And so
what you need to have is some ease in that process. What you need to have is
what we provide. For example, as a personal property memorandum along with the
will. So you can write in that personal property to go to whoever you wanted to
go to. It’s literally a worksheet along with the will. So if you acquire
property later on, if you have certain, knickknacks, or certain heirlooms,
maybe something you just want to leave you to a certain person that you haven’t
yet named in the will, you can just write that it in. It’s very easy. You
Describe the property and you just write it in there. And you say who you want
it to go to. It’s very- [crosstalk 00:09:11].
Greg
McIntyre: Number at the bottom
of the page?
Brenton
Begley: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: And then you sign
each page and [crosstalk 00:09:17] several pages.
Brenton
Begley: It’s incorporated too
by referencing the will. So the will references that personal property
memorandums. So it’s a part of the will, just like any other page and the will.
Greg
McIntyre: Agree. Yeah, that’s
phenomenal. Brenton, do you have any questions of Ms. Ross, and how [crosstalk
00:09:40] services fitting with what we do and clients of ours and just seniors
and their families in general?
Brenton
Begley: You know I think a huge
thing that you provide is the cleaning service. I mean that’s amazing. Can you
speak to the extent of what you guys are willing to clean? Because that’s one
concern that I mean because at some point you’re going to have maybe a
professional carpet cleaning service or something like that come in if it’s a
hazardous situation. But can you speak to the extent of what you guys do as far
as the cleaning?
Colette Ross: If indeed there are additional
services needed like carpet cleaning or if there is hazardous waste that our
teams should not be exposed to, then we would have to call on resources in
order to do that. But in regards to the extent of cleaning, our services
completely turnkey from start to finish. It could be heaps of thousands in
attics, garages, or outbuildings, and completion of our service. Generally
within seven to ten days, the home will be cleared and cleaned and ready for a
real estate walkthrough.
Greg
McIntyre: That’s excellent. So
you’re talking about in an estate, having a home clean and ready to sell within
seven to ten days.
Colette Ross: That’s right.
Brenton
Begley: And who do you need to
talk to you to be hired? Who hires you? I mean it’s the executor of the estate
or administrator of the estate, right?
Colette Ross: Whomever is the primary. It might
be, for example, if the owner has downsized or moved to that assisted living
facility and they are still of sound mind, they have the ability to call on us
and ask for our service. We would then offer that consultation at their
property and see to it that we find solutions for whatever it is that they
need. If we’re able to conduct a personal property sale, that is always option
one. Our goal is to try to regain the revenue from the investment that they’ve
made throughout the years. So their accumulation of things, we do our best to
regain some of the revenue of their investment to try to bring it back to the
estate because their personal property maybe very abundant. If indeed that’s
not an option, we would discuss the option of the clean-out services to see to
it that ultimately their goal of selling the real estate can be met.
Brenton
Begley: You know you mentioned
something about if a client were to move to an assisted living and need to hire
you, they might not be able to because they might be incompetent. Right? And
that situation, Greg we’ve seen that type of situation a lot.
Greg
McIntyre: Yeah. So how do you
get past the part where you’re functioning as someone else? Can a family
member, could a son, could I as a son do that for my mother or a daughter?
Could a daughter do that for her parent, and hire estate cleaning and planning
services, and estate sell services for mom while mom’s alive? If someone was
incompetent, how would they do that, Brenton?
Brenton
Begley: Right. So I think what
Ms. Ross would look for is, are you the power of attorney?
Colette Ross: [crosstalk 00:12:57].
Brenton
Begley: Right, right. Or do you
have the authority to sign off on, on our services?
Greg
McIntyre: And what kind of
power of attorney Brenton?
Brenton
Begley: That would be what we
call on the street financial power of attorney. That’s a general durable power
of attorney. Right. And that durable part’s going to be very important because
that means that the power of attorney survives incompetency, incapacity, or otherwise
inability to act for [crosstalk 00:13:22].
Greg
McIntyre: disability or lapse
of time. That’s right. Yeah. And as opposed to a healthcare power of attorney,
which gives someone the ability to make healthcare decisions. This would
require that financial power of attorney, that general durable power of
attorney that survives incompetency. You’d want to make sure that’s recorded at
the register of deeds as well. And so that’s very important. All things that
you can benefit from those types of estate planning services to make sure
you’re ready by seeing someone, a professional, like an attorney at McIntyre
Elder Law. So thank you very much for being here. If someone wants to get in
touch with you, how do they do that? I know I have one of her cards here. It’s
a very nice card. How would people get in touch with you? What is your website?
Colette Ross: Sure. Our website addresses
timelesscollage.com. There is a link on our website on the last page where they
can send notification of requesting services on contact.
Greg
McIntyre: Is that the contact
form?
Colette Ross: Yes, exactly. On the contact
form.
Greg
McIntyre: Look, they can
contact you right there.
Colette Ross: That’s right. Or reach us by
either of those phone numbers that are listed.
Greg McIntyre: Right, which are 252-268-9764,
right? I’m just going to put that one out, okay.
Colette Ross: Yep.
Greg
McIntyre: So, that’s
phenomenal. You can learn more about that company there, a little about us,
about Timeless Collage & Estate Services LLC and what clients are saying.
There’s some client, certainly a testimonials there. As well as more about your
business and you can even find out about where upcoming sales are going to be.
Right. So you can look at where upcoming sales are going to be if you want to
take part in a sale or come to a sale. Is that right?
Colette Ross: That’s right.
Greg
McIntyre: That’s phenomenal,
that’s phenomenal. Well, I wanted to say thank you so much for being here today
and being on the Elder Law Report.
Colette Ross: Thank you.
Greg
McIntyre: And I appreciate it.
Anything that we can do to help you, you let me know. Okay.
Colette Ross: Thank you, absolutely.
Greg
McIntyre: And I’m going to
look forward to working with you in the future.
Colette Ross: Likewise.
Greg McIntyre: Absolutely. Thank you Brenton for
being here today.
Colette Ross: Nice to meet you.
Brenton
Begley: Good to meet you top.
Greg
McIntyre: Bye now. And I would
close out by saying, if you want to talk about estate planning services as
well, limited, I’m sorry, general durable powers of attorney, the financial
power of attorney, or talk about getting your wills in place, your estate
planning documents in place. You can reach us by calling 704-749-9244 or going
to mcelderlaw.com. Thanks. Have a great day. Bye Brenton.
