00:00Marty Griffin here with my friend Julian Gray. We met in this very room where we set up a plan
00:05for my family and my parents died. Then we met again, myself and my wife, for a plan for our
00:11life. What happens now, in many cases, the husband's older or dies younger and then the
00:18wife doesn't have a plan, right? Right. This is problematic, sir. Tell us why. Well, it's very
00:24common, Marty. You know, we see when married couples are both living, everything's great.
00:28One of those spouses dies. And let's face it, there's not a lot of things to do in most estates.
00:35You know, they own their assets jointly. They name each other as the beneficiaries of their life
00:40insurance policies and their IRAs and everything kind of just flows to the surviving spouse. And
00:46they get a lot of usually pretty, you know, actual advice from their financial planner or their
00:52accountant and helps them through this process. But what they don't realize is then when they're
00:57alone, you know, and they're a widow or a widower, there's some planning things they need to start
01:01doing then moving forward. And that's when they need to talk with us. If they don't, what happens?
01:06Well, what typically happens is we see elderly people who survive their spouse for maybe five
01:11or ten years and they end up needing long-term care down the road and it bankrupts them if they
01:16don't have a plan. It does. And so we really understand that, you know, we've all been through it with
01:21their own family members and friends. There's a grieving process we all have to go through when
01:25somebody passes. But when that grieving process is over, it's really important for the family,
01:31for the surviving spouse to sit with a certified elder law attorney and talk about what's next.
01:37What should I be planning for this large transition someday when the assets of the parents actually
01:44eventually go down to the next generation?
01:45If they don't, it will be bad.
01:50Well, it's just we all know life gets actually more expensive medically as you get older, right?
01:56We all know any statistics will tell you that the number one expense for people after they retire is
02:03medical costs, out-of-pocket medical costs. Because, you know, our bodies break down and eventually
02:08we need some type of round-the-clock care and that gets really expensive. And so there's ways to
02:13mitigate your exposure for that. There's ways to avoid probate, to reduce taxes, keep control of
02:20things. So it's just really important to get that going after the grieving process is over for the
02:25first spouse. Julian Gray here, give me a window of time. What's the window of after?
02:30Usually we have people come in to see us like six to 12 months.
02:34Oh, okay. So you can wait a bit.
02:35Yeah, yeah. It's not urgent. But I mean, it's just, it's something you want to keep on the radar.
02:39And people will start to have questions. You know, people are having conversations with other people
02:44differently when they're a single person versus a married person. You know, there's a lot of
02:47different conversations that go on there. So we sit down with a lot of widows and widowers and they
02:53say, you know, here's what I'm looking to do. And we give them a really good comprehensive plan and it's
02:58good for the rest of their life.
03:00Hey, I got to ask you this because you mentioned it.
03:03I know folks that have long-term care insurance. Good idea, bad idea? Indifferent.
03:09It depends. If you have it and it's paid for, it's usually a pretty good idea, you know,
03:14because it's going to give you that supplement to deflect your long-term care costs.
03:17The problem is that if you bought them 15, 20 years ago, the numbers make a lot of sense to
03:23keep
03:24them. That's generally speaking what I've seen. But buying them now is tough for people because
03:27it's hard for them to figure out what their total, you know, exposure is going to be for paying those
03:34premiums, which continue to go up. Now, there are a lot of new products on the market. I don't sell
03:38them. I'm not a financial planner, but I see them. And so it's worth investigating. But I think,
03:44in my opinion, there's a window of age and health where it's going to make sense. And after that window,
03:49it might not make sense.
03:50My father-in-law has it. It might end up saving them a big, big time, but he's had it
03:54for 20 years.
03:55Right. Right. Yeah. When those first came out, I remember seeing those 20, 25 years ago.
03:59And when people came in with them, I almost universally said, keep it because it's a deal,
04:04you know, but the insurance companies, I think, figured it out after a while. And they maybe
04:08didn't make such a good deal on some of the older ones. And they have to correct that on the
04:13newer
04:13ones. Julian Gray, grayelderlaw.com. Grayelderlaw.com. Thanks, my man.
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