What's it like to update or change your will or trust after a divorce w/ Attorney Patrick Slaughter

Transcript

hello good afternoon my name is stephanie garces donet welcome to pink mic legal confessions i have patrick here with me our old-time guest he is wonderful i can't wait to you guys hear from him he's a repeat guest on our show so make sure you guys say hello to him um as you know i'm the owner of garces law firm arlington heights law firm in illinois where we help people secure their legacies and not forget about their legacy especially when it comes to their children or divorce or life changes or unexpected absences which is what we're going to talk about today so i am here with special guest patrick slaughter he's an attorney very successful does divorce and immigration he uh actually represents clients going through divorce custody and some other family law matters uh patrick as always always a pleasure to have you on the show and i extremely um i just want everyone to know how extremely grateful i am for patrick's knowledge we were talking about um some immigration stuff before we started as a and also the divorce stuff so all of that's combined in here so if you have questions along the way he does have immigration knowledge so feel free to ask him questions about that so thank you for taking the time to speak with us today patrick really really uh appreciate that so um before we jump into patrick's background one of the things we're going to talk about today is there's been a lot of questions recently in my practice i'm sure for patrick as well is how um divorce usually comes up at some point in people's lives and so frequently they come to our office um to meet with us about their will their trust um their estate plan what happens to my kids if i divorce my spouse or i you know even people that aren't married they come and say well i don't want my father's uh my child's father to be part of the picture and that is complicated but we'll get to that in a second um so all this stuff is really the basis of today's conversation so that um you guys can get a better understanding of why this matters and why quite frankly you may want to tune into this because if you don't have questions about this you might know someone who does so patrick i'm excited to be able to have you on the show again to share your experience and insights as always so what's it like to update or change your will or trust after a divorce so before we begin patrick can you please graciously give us a background on you and what you do oh lord let's see um i'm a law firm called la fever and slaughter in knoxville tennessee it's in the northeastern portion of the state and we handle exclusively family law matters and family immigration matters and because of my immigration experience it seems that we handle a lot of international divorces and things of that sort uh now with covet everybody is determined that when bobby joe has been stuck with billy sue at home for way too long and he had alcohol in the mix and then you find out that little timmy's teacher really wasn't the problem the support rate has really gone up and a lot of there's a lot of unintended consequences that occur when people don't stay on top of these things and some of which we'll talk about but we deal with folks coming in quite literally mad as i'll get out i gotta watch my language i can't even read the words they say um matter to hornet because of things that attorneys sometimes do or don't do or should have done and it's hard to fix a problem once it's become a problem easy to fix it beforehand but afterwards can turn into a big hullabaloo and with about 50 of marriages ending in divorce you can almost bet that you're you or somebody you know is going to go through one so being prepared to deal with the things that can pop up uh is something you really want to prepare yourself for so that's kind of where i'm at i'm happy to answer questions about that or the things that i deal with when people are mad as i'll heck um but i i'll let stephanie lead me through she's way too kind to me she just makes me funny so you are funny because you know i'll never forget when we first did our first show you you mentioned to me something like i told you oh i don't know i'm kind of nervous like i don't know what you know what we should talk about you're like don't worry my audience you know they know who i am was like we're showing our socks you know on the show with dark socks i know i'm very happy about my dark winged duck socks are you still wearing socks right now because i certainly uh have flats on so i don't know i don't know i'm not going to reveal the answer to that i'll tell you that much all right you'll have to tune into the end to see if he has his socks on um so we're going to dive in so this is interesting topic i mean ask any divorce attorney and patrick i know you're going to agree with this is that during covet we have seen a rise like an astronomical rise in divorce rates i mean you know i know that we always can have you know our spouse we love them or significant other yes they're great but every so often people are like wow this copa thing really is testing my relationship it's testing my marriage and i had people say this to me more and more and i think i underestimated what they meant because now patrick's busier than ever and um our phones won't quit ringing i keep telling people are you sure you want to do that there's a rumor entitled in our office we deal with the meanest nastiest custody fights and and really uh huge asset divorces and a lot of other attorneys in town refer those to us and i'm like i'm not sure if that's because they like us or they really don't like this we get a lot of those cases so we get an opportunity to deal with all kinds of unique problems that sometimes you sit down and go i'm pretty sure this is somebody from the bar and this is some kind of bar exam question they're they're testing out um make some of this stuff up i don't even have cable tv at the house because of this stuff it's better than cable tv and that's kind of what i wanted to brief everyone on is that decade-long marriages are now ending and it's kind of sad and so the positive side bill gates and melinda 27. i was just gonna say you know last night i was joking um with my husband when we were watching tv and i said man i wish i was mrs gates no just kidding but like but hey i said it's cheaper to keep me at this point i'm my house but this is a good example i mean even the celebrities the high status net worth i mean can you imagine a divorce like that patrick i mean that would be i i don't know if there's a prenup or not but let's just pretend there is one or is it not there you go there you go for so so prenups for another day but no prenups do become relevant um sometimes most times in the state planning but but yeah so kind of like in general right like countless people are reconsidering like their decisions of hey should i remain married to this person and the person i have children with um and so this is spiking and it's crazy um because it's like even the birthright is spiking so it's like there's a lot going on in the world outside of the factory one extreme so coming from not only from someone who's been you know kind of around divorcees but like as an attorney uh patrick what's like a day in the life of like working with clients to get through their divorces i mean do you kind of get like the the the beginning to end feel or how does that work i mean like literally from beginning to end you find the facts up front do you find them along the way oh i find the facts that my client believes up front but there's a difference in what you know and what you believe so as the case matures you find out that some of those beliefs are well taken but a number of them aren't and that there's a whole lot of other facts that you know may be necessarily involved in the divorce but generally uh it's always a work in progress uh especially the kind of cases we have we have more complicated complex things um you know we were just talking with folks coming in from other portions of the country other portions of the world it's not unlikely to have a transnational asset that has to be discovered and dealt with you have international custody issues what happens when you know a couple divorces and one spouse decides to relocate back to their home of origin and that's outside the u.s how do you work out a custody arrangement that respects the rights of both folks there's a number of things that can complicate what would seem to be an ordinary or easy um situation it's just not the facts today the world's a lot smaller than it used to be we have lots more people coming in and leaving um and because of that it's not unusual to have you know immigration or international assets or things play into of course and you know somebody asked me how you hold property in jordan i don't know i'm going to have to go through a process to find out or what do you know what do you do with a divorce that's already been entered in egypt but isn't recognized necessarily by the u.s how does a court here deal with that um who has jurisdiction what court has jurisdiction if one party is in you know yugoslavia or what used to be serbia and suddenly they want to get divorced and there's a party here that doesn't want to agree to that these are all cases that we've had in some way form or fashion and you know we didn't know either going into it i think the attorneys that say oh we know everything i want to meet them because i'm not one of them well i appreciate you being camped about that patrick because i agree with you i mean i find myself like running into those issues all the time is immigration i know um we haven't talked too much about that in other topics but that we've discovered um through pink mike but but actually immigration issues and assets and all that stuff i mean even like across the state and it's worse across the country do you find yourself kind of trying to trying to keep up with everything because i know that the law currently changes all the time and it's like if you don't keep up you're behind you know like a freshman at mit you know when they go in they start learning all this complex technical stuff they're told that by the time you graduate what you've learned will be outdated that's the way i feel about things yeah right now it's kind of a wait and see approach regardless whether you're a democrat or republican whatever that is that doesn't matter the law is the law but the law is in a state of flux and some things are being enforced some things aren't and it's hard to give really good advice when things are always changing so a lot of it is let's find out yeah absolutely well and i think besides the fact like someone's immigration status or perhaps um where people are located and where their significant other is located has a lot to do with what you're going to advise but what are some of the other things you consider when it comes to protecting like just a general person like let's say they don't have issues with like who is what where but what are some other things you think about when you're considering uh protecting someone's assets as far as like as an as a divorce attorney i mean do you ever have like okay like i'm representing the person i have to do this for this person we have a ton of post divorce actions because something wasn't dealt with appropriately during the divorce the the number one thing that i think we deal with is somebody will come in and say hey my spouse died and their somebody else got their life insurance what do i get um you know or somebody was married and their husband died and their ex-wife was the beneficiary of the life insurance policy and they got the life insurance policy and they want me to fix it and i go that ship has sailed that's a contractual arrangement outside of the law absolutely and that's hard to do so you have that or you have pre-remitted children where you have somebody that was you know a child that was born after a wheel was put in place and you're trying to decide hey are they taken to the will or do they not these are all family law issues and if there's been a divorce decree that affects these things you have to figure out what can i do that still coincides with and respects and honors the divorce decree but also deals with this changing situation that i have in my life my recommendation is every time there's a change in any kind of legal status you need to update your will or your estate plan because if you have a child that will impact it if you get divorced obviously that will impact it if somebody dies obviously that impacts it and not just you or your spouse it's not unusual to have an uncle you know or an aunt die and the question is what happens we have a estate planning case right now we're litigating probate where you know a father didn't want his one child to receive anything but then that person passed away the mother received everything through a trust that was never funded but got everything else through a residual clause and now the son had mother changed his change her will uh well mother got actually mother got mad as heck about them decided to do it on her own and it was the benefit of our client and you know it's a really really it's a mess we're hoping we can resolve the mediation because to litigate that is going to be very expensive somebody's not going to be happy at all at the end of it and they might spend a good portion out of the estate paying lawyers and let's face it nobody really wants to pay loggers i'm so glad you brought that up um i've been doing probate cases myself patrick and i know i know for a fact like this is stuff that like you you brought up a great point like somebody went another way to change their will um maybe i don't even know how they did it like you know i get a lot of calls on that like people will say well you know i don't have to come i don't have to like really get a lawyer i could just go online that's a really popular thing to do and i'm like do you realize that's basically like saying i'm going to go on a on a you might as well go on a plane and jump down without a parachute because you're like you're hoping for the best but you don't even know if it's valid in illinois or whatever state you're going to be in you know what i mean it's crazy i usually ask would you like to give yourself anesthesia and conduct an appendectomy on yourself doctors may keep you alive but lawyers make you're not understanding the words on the paper then you might have a problem and that's absolutely yeah that's the issue a lot of these folks will try to do an agreed divorce between themselves and then they you know it's a it's a mess and they get them from a judge and everything gets thrown out and they're mad as hell and they call me back and like well if you'd call me initially it would have been this but now you're going to pay me a whole lot more to try to unravel the mess that you've created that trust me i would rather not have to unravel but if you've been a lawyer at the beginning then at least you're assured that you're going the direction you really want to go you're not just heading somewhere you think you want to go yeah yeah absolutely and i love the fact that you talked about when there's a change in in your life i mean i call them life events i'd like to say but sometimes people forget like they say oh i made a well for my kid my first kid and that was 20 years ago i'm like but don't you have like two more kits instead oh yeah but you know it's like that is a hundred percent the reason why you should even consider you know seeing an attorney who does a state plan to help you with that because if you don't update it now then when i always tell my clients later never comes when they say i'm going to do it later later never comes later never comes like if i think about that when you say something i'm going to do that later do you do it i mean it's like probably not my wife makes sure that i do i don't have a choice but i will say that you know especially now with the whole flux in the tax situation you know before marital protection trusts were kind of dried up because the exemption went up so high right but now i understand that's back on the table and you know suddenly it becomes an issue if you know i'm married to you know my wife and i don't want if when i pass away for any potential husband she might marry after the case to be able to spend the money that i'm giving her but it's you know if i just give it to her i will that can be a problem so we're gonna trust for her benefit as a way to get around that and now that probably will have better tax consequences than it did before because it is likely i believe i don't know this but it is likely that exemption is going to be lowered because i believe under president trump it was pushed up there really high so that's another thing that i think is going to generate a lot of business that needs to be attended to because of unintended tax consequences of these things yeah exactly and taxes are always the thing that you know it's very politically driven so depending on his office and if it's an election year there's just so many changes and stuff like that and and that's a great point and kind of another point as to why if you do get divorced or um or in the middle of some sort of change in your life you should definitely get some stuff looked at because at the very least our consultations are free and and i'm sure patrick years are likely free too maybe question mark no free okay well anyway we have a good consultation so like in general you want to make sure that you're giving people the information because to me i think sometimes people think i i did this one will i did this one thing and and even i had someone call me the other day saying i want to disinherit my you know son or daughter or whatever and then and then they said well i might change my mind and i said well you know if you do change your mind you need to change your mind like before you've you know passed away because if you don't change it so that sort of thing matters i think people they get mad at each other they make a will and then they're not mad anymore it's like you just have so many reasons to check in yes things happen i had an aunt pass away old last week as a matter of fact well towards the beginning of last week from covet and you know she was fine she went in the hospital and a month later she you know she passes away it was completely unexpected and everybody's well that's coping we're getting covered under control there's all kinds of life circumstances you just never know how long you're here but even outside of the whole what happens if i die you know what happens if i'm not able to make decisions about you know do i want to go on a ventilator or not or do i want these different things to occur you know you you can have these ideas you can express them to your children whoever you want but that doesn't mean a doctor in a hospital can go through with with what they're saying so absolutely you need to be prepared to just kind of deal with all of that and to save your loved ones the trouble of trying to figure it out um i'm lucky my mother and father are getting a little older but they've both you know gone through some other attorneys besides me to make sure that everybody knows what to do and i'm grateful for that because i don't i wouldn't have any idea yeah well and it's nice to talk about that um patrick because the powers of attorney i always tell people like that it's not something that because there's a big there's a big myth i feel like sometimes with trust for example people or even wills people will say oh that's for rich people like i get that all the time and it's powers of attorneys are not for rich people powers of attorneys are for humans we're all human so you know if you're human then that you should have one and it's so funny because i always tell people regardless of your income regardless of your background for the reasons you just stated the powers of attorney they're powerful documents i mean those are documents that the physicians uh have to comply with assuming it's done correctly and no you should not get it offline because those are not accepted sometimes they'll reject them just offend and then there's other things like in in tennessee we have a thing called a power of attorney for child care which is particularly important for folks who have questionable immigration status who are concerned about being deported or removed from the country that would allow them to appoint someone to care for their child if they were removed at least in the state of tennessee and there's some limitations to that power of attorney but it can serve other things other than just hey this is what's going to happen power's returning to really strong things we use them in our practice to help clients uh give us discovery information sometimes it's easy if you'll sign a poa for us i can go get the information for you and i know what i'm looking for and you don't have to struggle with it absolutely you know or you know you want to sell a property where your children are located you're not like i live in florida a good portion of time i live in tennessee a good portion of time i can sign a power of attorney to have someone else execute real estate sales documents or things of that sort there's a lot of things you can do that way but you're not going to think of them yourself and you're sure you're not going to be able to get the right kind of document offline because you don't know what you're looking for prescribe myself medicine for you know a girl situation i don't know what panipro saline does or any of those other ones uh it's easier to talk to somebody who can read the language and knows what they're doing and just give you what you want or you can take your chances but when you do you may not be happy with the result yeah and i think i think i was thinking of the difference between like the med like a medical thing like you know if you were to operate on yourself you're going to see that that's not a good idea immediately with documents you may not see it right away but as soon as you need them that's when it comes up and it's too late to change them and so um absolutely we actually use powers of attorney quite often for real estate transactions as well because i do have a lot of clients that are out of the state out of the country they can't make it here i had a client that was in a military base um i think somewhere in like the middle east and we got a power of attorney from there so a lot of power behind those documents um for anyone that's listening because again regardless of income regardless of your background you should certainly have one because in the event of again of of a health issue or even um you know if you're unable to make decisions on your behalf there's also the financial power of attorney that we use in illinois that's where the banks the banks just turn you you know turn you away if you don't have it you could be like you know i'm my dad's daughter or whatever and they'll say good for you but you don't have the power to be here so they make you go home so people get really frustrated you get calls on that all the time so if you are interested in that feel free to check in with us because you know at the very least at least a consultation will let you know what what these documents do um so one of the questions we got while i was sitting here someone had asked um do you have any recommendations on the timing of when the discussion about updating my will or trust should happen when someone's um having their soon tbx when you're getting rid of your divorce basically first off if you have a competent divorce attorney they should be asking you those questions on their own because typically to dissolve a marriage whether through trial or through mediation and let's be honest most of them are handling mediation you need to be prepared to address what those property interests are so during your divorce if you're getting ready to get divorced you need to ask okay what what insurance policies are there out there and who are the beneficiaries of those and how are we going to deal with that are we going to leave it the way it is or we're going to change it or we're going to give somebody the freedom to change it that can be important because a number of folk the number of states have case law that will require if someone owes an alimony obligation to maintain a life insurance policy to secure that alimony obligation in case they pass away to make sure the beneficiary spouse is paid those are things that need to be discussed during the divorce um also things with children you know if you have grown children and you are intending to do certain things it is better to commemorate that in a marital dissolution agreement or some other kind of court order because once you're divorced people can do what they want if it's not really outlined or detailed plainly enough so as part of our divorce process we always go through okay where the what insurance policies are there what retirement policies are there are we dividing policies by qualified domestic relations order do we want to include a survivorship clause in that i'm teaching a class to lawyers about this tomorrow and that's the most commonly made mistake on lawyers behalf is they won't include survivorship so when the spouse who receives the benefit passes away the other spouse stops receiving a benefit they may have become accustomed to getting so that can be a problem uh just making sure that these things get done a lot of times people are so excited to be divorced that they forget there's other stuff that has to happen and you know more attorneys i am one you know and if it's a simple estate yeah i can do some of those things but if it's more involved i'm going to refer you to an estate planning attorney because let's face it it's definitely you do with that more than i do i can get you divorced i'm good at that but when you want to start talking about you know expensive kinds of trusts and pour over trusts and this marital protection trust i know what they are i would trust somebody else to not to create those documents before myself because i want to contract them out to somebody so you need to be prepared and realize that when you're going through divorce your life and everybody in your families is changing and it's better to have that change evaluated by somebody who can help you to figure out where you want to go forward rather than just leave that to happenstance absolutely and i love the fact that you said that your attorney should be asking you that especially from a divorce standpoint you should not be waiting to the last minute because i think sometimes people think okay i have to get this done first and then i'll deal with that later but again like i said before later never comes so you have to do this from the beginning because again a lot of times when the divorces happen i think people underestimate how much leverage they have at that time to try to get something in the decree or kind of sorted out that we can then firm up and actually help protect you know around what they've created at the estate planning stage so sometimes um you know i've had people come to me on the opposite side patrick where they say i'm going to get divorced i think maybe but i just want to update you know we have an estate plan and i would say to them well you realize that you know if you're going to get divorced so you think you may consider doing this like now because in general you know it's very difficult sometimes to create stuff with a couple that's married however like maybe unhappily married and are gonna divorce because i now i'm thinking okay i've advised this person to go see a divorce attorney are they gonna do it i don't know and so it becomes a little bit complicated because it's like in the reverse so um you know i think that happens with children a lot too i'll see people folks will come in i'll represent husband and wife doesn't matter which one and they will have things that they want to be for the benefit of their children but one spouse isn't necessarily in agreement with that and there's not for most jurisdictions most judges aren't going to say well i'm going to force you to do this for your grown child the grown child doesn't have a standing or doesn't have any reason to be involved in that case so you know what do you do for those children in that kind of situation well you can through negotiation i don't know you can do it at trial but you can create a trust for the benefit of those children suddenly you know you have ways of dealing with things in a divorce that can protect people down the line when they don't have the same obligations that they do currently and then there's questions about whether you're using marital property or separate property to create these things it's easier to do that on the front end than to wait until somebody dies and if your child realizes well you're out of luck because you were born after that marriage again 20 years ago and then that's an issue or like in tennessee um you know you can write your spouse out of a will but she still has a right to claim against the will and still receive certain benefits and if you don't have that kind of information then you can do something that seems to make a whole lot of sense to you but it doesn't have the impact that you think it will or it can do just the opposite um you know if you'd left something uh for a spouse it would have allowed her not to claim against the will get a year's maintenance pay legal fees it would have been cheaper to have left him or her something rather than go through that process or with property a lot of times you know i want to leave something to my kids okay that sounds great so now there are tenants in common on the property that nobody can decide who owns and they're gonna have to pursue a partition action to separate that and force it to be sold and how that's gonna happen you know there's by talking to a professional that understands how things actually occur once or something in real life yep it could be easier to plan for that than have this honeymoon idea that oh when i die my children are just going to keep the house and it's going to be divided between them it never happens that way absolutely patrick i can't tell you how many times people will say well i was told and i'm like i don't know who told them this but i was told that it's better to have nothing because the laws make everyone an error i'm like that's not that's not the point and that's not necessarily true i mean depending on you know the family dynamic i mean i've had people say oh this person is when we go to sign documents or or even during the consultation they'll say oh yeah i have a i have a spouse i'm like well are you legally married well no it's like we need to know we need to know that though you know so um and actually i just want to recap because we had a couple people that just joined us so my name is attorney stephanie garces i'm the owner of garces law firm um i have a law firm practice that does estate planning real estate and see work as well so we help parents protect their legacy individuals really just prepare for the unexpected so today on pink mic legal confession live we have patrick slaughter he is an awesome uh divorce attorney with a lot of knowledge so he is uh kind of letting us know a little bit more about how you um can navigate through a divorce what you should think about and quite frankly what it's like to update or change your will or trust during or after a divorce which you should still be considering in the midst of getting divorced like patrick said people get so excited that yes i'm gonna get this divorce i'm gonna get this money you really gotta think about your legacy don't leave it up to chance so if you missed our last episode by the way it was about child advocacy how to fight for your education of the of your children um during covet 19 and all the craziness that's going on so you can watch it on my facebook page in my youtube page as well so just if you're looking to catch up on that it is there so you can join us on tuesdays at one o'clock central time so we're always here to share tips and help parents and guardians and families understand things that they wouldn't have known when they started watching us so um kind of going back to what we were saying patrick so um it's this is kind of a funny question because it came in earlier and i was trying to make sense of it so someone is asking do i have the right to take my soon-to-be ex out of my will and should i do that before and after in a divorce so it's that's like a loaded question because we were just talking about this the truth is you have the right to do with your will whatever you want to exactly because if there's obligations imposed by a court then if you violate those obligations uh once you're deceased you're probably not going to care but your relatives are going to have to fight a legal battle um because someone can make a claim against your estate let's say that you have an alimony let's for like it with your your wife and you make a million dollars a year and your husband makes a hundred thousand dollars a year and as part of your divorce settlement you've agreed to pay him a hundred thousand dollars a year in alabama for whatever reason he didn't have a good divorce attorney i didn't represent you so you're paying this an alimony and you know you pass away well if you've changed your will and made sure that he doesn't get anything like we would probably tell you to do if it wasn't a court order um then he can come back and sue your estate to say hey this is an unfulfilled alimony obligation and i want my portion out of that estate and then you know your heirs they don't want to agree with that and chances are they won't then they're going to be going to court and paying lawyers to fight over that so you can change your will anytime you want to you know nobody's going to be the wheel police to come in with the blaring red signals well no you can't do it you can do it but you need advice as to whether you should do it just because you can do something doesn't mean you should and that's how you find out by talking to you know a estate planning lawyer probate lawyer find out those answers before you get yourself in trouble or you can say well i want to die it's not going to matter to me they can deal with it um that's wonderful you're being remembered i guess i got to get a t-shirt that says wool police on it because that that's what i'm going to wear during my conversations they just want you to know you know like only an attorney would think that's a funny joke otherwise people are not laughing um but you know what you know what about that i love that you said that because like i i i can't stress that enough like i was kind of complaining earlier how people call me in the reverse but you know it's help yourself like with the liability right because if you're looking to get divorced and you're thinking about it and you're like i also want to disinherit my sometimes it's better to talk to the divorce attorney and also this and the estate planning attorney at the same time and will guide you in the order to make sure that by the time the divorce happens and then by the time the will's ready and all that it all aligns because it's almost like um it kind of reminds me of when you have a cpa that you're working with for your taxes but then you want to put money into uh you know the marketplace and you're looking to get advice there so you're going to go contact a financial advisor and sometimes you guys have meetings together it's kind of the same thing i mean right patrick's i mean at the end of the day someone that's precautious and really is worried about like what's going to happen to my money or my children like you should be talking about divorce and the estate planning all at once to discuss the liabilities and like you said yes the will police is not going to come and tell you not to update it but be careful updating it just on a whim without fully being advised of really what the best way to do that is so uh for that person that's a question thank you but go ahead a lot of times it comes down to tax consequences from from estate planning as well you may not realize it but you know if i know there's talk about doing away with the step up in basis that that loophole that's been there well if that happens then you know there's a tremendous tax liability that's created that could be avoided some other way there's also gift taxes and death taxes in some ways there's all kinds of things that are out there and unless you know you may not like your ex but i think you and your ex both agree you don't want to pay the government so if there's a way to avoid you know that money more money is going to the government because you didn't adequately plan for your demise through estate planning why wouldn't you take advantage of that you want to leave your kids as much as you can so maybe it's better to look at a trust maybe it's better to look at arranging things ahead of time or especially now when you have elderly parents i have elderly parents um you know if they keep assets certain kinds of assets then they end up having to go into some kind of assisted living facility where they don't have assets to cover that you know the government can look back four years and start coming back taking money back calling money back from where you didn't miss where they didn't necessarily you know plan for that and gave money away so you have elderly parents that look like they care you need to start looking at that now don't wait until you know they're already yeah in the facility because it might be too late to do something with that and again this is just all goes back to trying to keep money away from the government at least from my opinion yeah and you know what i'm glad you brought that up because elderly parents and elderly individuals and uncles especially you know one of the more complicated um of of the people of the elderly population are the ones that either a have a lot of children and don't have anything in place or or the opposite i think is equally can be as complicated when they don't have any children they don't have any errors that could be quite complicated too because um you know i represented uh patrick a couple of elderly folks that don't necessarily have a son or daughter that they either get along with or perhaps just no kids at all and i always wonder um you know with them like at what point do they decide to come and see an estate planning attorney and if you're if you're listening to this you know someone like that consider it sooner than later like have them at least meet with someone because you know one of the things with the elderly population along with like really anybody is like your health it can decline at any moment so um that is the importance because as attorneys we can only do things when someone is healthy you know competent outside of that um if they're not we've we just can't even work with them because they can't even retain us and so that's just something to keep in mind and people um kind of forget about that sort of thing uh part um and i always like to tell people so we'll focus a lot on like families and stuff and children but the elderly population is equally as important for people that might need our services so i'm glad that you mentioned that patrick along those same lines anything anybody selling you a kit a do-it-yourself kind of thing you need to run like heck the other direction i know it's real in vogue to sell irrevocable trust kits once upon a time that people would you know it was a cookie cutter kind of thing there is no cookie cutter solution to any kind of family situation there's just nothing oh there you go that's going to let you say hey here's this little kit of 20 papers that i can sell to anybody that's going to work for everybody it doesn't work for everybody so don't think well because i saw this online at two in the morning that says hey i can pay three hundred dollars and have this kit and it's gonna take don't fall for that i hope nobody actually knows what they're doing again even if you get the kids you're going to read it and not know what half the language means because face it lawyers we use fancy words so we can get paid a lot of money that's why they're in there but we all will get paid hey somebody's actually going to teach you what those things mean to make sure you're accomplishing what you want i don't give no don't give the secrets away patrick don't give a secret um no but when you say a kid i was thinking about like gardening kids you ever bought a gardening kit i mean it's like like there's some things you can diy like a garden kid's one of them but no your estate plan with like your money that you've worked really hard for your entire life not being protected because you don't want to pay for an attorney that is not wise that is a poor if there's any decision that you make in your lifetime with money that is a poor decision like because because again you know i have had um clients on patrick that have said to me i went online and i have x amount of assets and it's a significant amount that you would think this person certainly has the funds to pay or perhaps it's the opposite they don't have the funds to pay maybe they have a ton of assets but they still go for the online option it's not about cheap and fast it's about uh what protects you what is not going to cost your family an arm and a leg because i always tell people with estate planning you are doing it for yourself but you're really doing it for your family because they're the ones that have to deal with things once you're no longer here or if you're incapacitated like they're the ones that deal with that so do it for your family if you love your family spend the extra money you you i promise you will not um regret it because something in place is better than nothing right patrick i mean at the end of the day something is better than nothing well generally i would say yes i have had cases come to me though where you know they lived in 15 different states they have houses and three or four and they got this little irregular irrevocable trust kit that they created and filed in illinois and all the properties you know some of the community property isn't and they're looking at me want me to figure that out i would much rather them have gone to an estate attorney to figure out how to set it up appropriately beginning is trying to unwind that a divorce as damn near impossible and sure costs a lot of extra money so i'd say talking to an attorney and figure it out it's better than trying to figure it out and you're on your own and it'll save you more money down the road just in the long run either you or your heirs will save more money by setting up correctly the first time exactly um and just another question that came in this maybe this is something we can discuss or we might have already discussed it but is there a way to give your spouse a partial amount of your wealth or assets and preserve the rest for your family yes i mean yeah there is a way to do that patrick production that'll do it a trust for the benefit of your children uh you can set up a trustworthy benefit of anybody really yeah um but there's certain protections and certain benefits of doing it for a spouse or a child um you know if you've got that child who you love them but you know they can't hold money for nothing you can just spend three press you can do all kinds of stuff to prevent people from running through money inappropriately or you know let's say you have some minor children and you want to make sure that hey you know they don't get the money until they turn 30 years old because what 18 year old you want to give several hundred thousand dollars to there's ways to do that to make sure that the money's not spent unwisely and it's there to you know care for them but you're gonna have to set that up through an estate planning document it ain't gonna happen just because you know you wished it to yeah and even like well you know as attorneys we can also draft it so that it's certain ages like some people will say well i don't want my kid to have you know all of it at 18 maybe only 10 percent and then 20 percent when they're 20 and then 25 percent so on and so forth and so that can be drafted so don't worry about that but again you're not going to find it online because the online people they're just doing boilerplate uh you know and they're saying a prayer that that you don't have to use that ever but really it's what it's what it is so um thank you patrick for kind of enlightening us and so if anybody wants to contact you patrick where can they contact you uh smoke signals carry your pigeons anything's working right now our office telephone number is 865 637 6258 865-637-6258 and with primarily family law and family immigration law issues in tennessee mostly eastern tennessee east of nashville i've gone to memphis a few times i like memphis food's great i like memphis i've been there i wouldn't pay me to drive that far it's too far i'll do it if you want a baby too but i don't think i'm worth it i was pretty good lawyers in memphis i converted to but anything on the eastern half of this day we probably have a case there we have that one there awesome awesome great great um and so also uh in case there was a question that came in real quick i want to address so when i asked if if i have a baby when should i get my will done immediately because i'm a child now so so feel free to let me know i can help you where you can contact me is you can always call our office which is three nine five 773-373-9599 two you can text that number as well to set up a consultation um and we'll be happy to assist you and so i wanna thank all the viewers for the questions um and patrick for joining me as always always a pleasure um being with you i feel like you teach me something new every time so i appreciate that oh come on um well you know what you're wise that's important because they they appreciate it i i encourage promise though for next time don't wait to speak to anyone for the the um for the viewers that are asking questions i know you're asking when can i do this one now i mean there's no better time than the president and at the very least the consultations we do are free and you and actually you could do them from the comfort of your own home so we do do virtual consultations for those of you not wanting to come in um especially with covet restrictions maybe you want to stay at home we totally respect that um but again you just want to think about when is a good time the time is now there's no better time to wait uh so there's no no official end to the pandemic right now but protecting your children's future and your future is is definitely a timely issue so um thank you again for your questions and contact us so we can help you and your legacy so i invite you here to join us next week tuesdays for pink mike leo confessions which is at one o'clock on tuesdays and um invite friends family anyone that is interested in this you can always watch it later as well and we hope to see you again next week so again patrick thanks so much for your time and i hope you have a good rest of your day too oh you too thanks for having me of course take care thank you everyone