Skip The Scavenger Hunt With A Will

Welcome And Why This Matters

SPEAKER_02
0:19

Welcome to Patty's Place, a place where we will talk about grief, dementia, and caregiving. I'm your host, Lisa. I started this podcast in honor of my mom, Pat, who passed away from dementia almost three years ago. So I want this to be a place where you know you can come and talk and have the difficult conversations and know that you're you're not alone. So grab your cup of tea, your cup of coffee, or if you're having that really bad day, a glass of wine, and come join us today. So today our guest is Adam Zuckerman. He is an attorney, MBA, Eisenhower Fellow, and founder of Buried in Work. It is one of the most comprehensive resources for estate planning, end-of-life preparation, and estate transitions. Welcome, Adam, to Patty's place.

SPEAKER_00
0:56

Lisa, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02
0:58

Yes, because this is always such a big topic that we, you know, as much as I was just saying, as much as I talk about this, I still haven't done all the stuff I should be doing. So because it gets you just get carried away when you're caregiving, you you lose track on it. So let's start with what are the components of estate planning?

Estate Planning Is Not One Size

SPEAKER_00
1:21

It depends who you're talking to. And and I think the thing that most people need to realize is that you're unique just like everybody else.

SPEAKER_01
1:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
1:29

When someone says this is what you need to do with estate planning, and they start rattling off a list without actually understanding what your specific scenario is, okay, odds are they're not going to miss the boat, they're going to miss the yacht. Oh. Um it might be that you have a family that's very well off with millions of dollars, and you may be looking at some very complicated trust situations. But you may also be in a situation where you don't have a lot. You don't even own your house, you rent, or you live in a senior living community. And what you need is is very much dependent on the situation that that you are in. Uh for us, we we actually wrote a book. It's called No Loose Ends, and we outline 10 things that we think that every core plan should consider, okay. Not necessarily have. And I'm happy to walk through those 10 things if you think it might be helpful.

SPEAKER_02
2:16

Oh, yeah, let's start with what are the 10 things?

SPEAKER_00
2:19

Okay. The first thing is you got to get informed. So we've got a long glossary of just estate planning terms, end-of-life terms. I think that one of the things that is most confusing for a lot of people is that this is a different language. You know, what is an A B trust? Most people don't know that. What is a ladybird deed? Most people don't know that. And lawyers are there to help. There's professionals, subject matter experts, daily money managers, PAL support people, a whole core of people that you can call on when you need it. But if you're not in the world itself, you're gonna hear a lot of things that can be really confusing. So first thing is just getting up to speed and trying to understand what you need to know. There's a free glossary that we have on the site if you're if you're curious.

SPEAKER_01
2:59

Okay.

The Ten Core Planning Pieces

SPEAKER_00
3:00

The second thing that we think that everybody should have is a last will and testament. And the reason why is that in the event that you don't have a last will and testament that's legally binding, executed the way it should be in the state jurisdiction where you live, means that the state decides what happens to your stuff for you. Doesn't need to be complicated, but it'll simplify things going forward. The third thing that I think people should be checking out are their advanced directives. Um, you don't necessarily need to go as far as writing a DNR, a do not resuscitate, you know, plan. You definitely don't need a pulse or a mulse. Those are are items that come into play when you're towards the end of your life, much sicker. But having that advanced directive in place that explains what you want to have happen to you in the event that you can't advocate for yourself is pretty important. Especially if you have people that are looking after you, you don't want them to have to guess what you wanted. So put an advanced directive in place and make it easier. Then going down that list even farther, and you can see how these get more nuanced as you go. There's the powers of attorney for financial matters if you're comfortable giving those responsibilities up to someone else or asking someone to step in to help. It's your HIPAA authorizations that give people access to your medical records, then your beneficiary designations, which is a really neat thing on all of your accounts that transfer. So your bank accounts, your financial accounts, your insurance policies. And then we start getting into really nuanced things that they aren't forms per se, but what happens to your emails? What happens to your photos on your phone, your digital legacy plan, who should be called? Those are your key contacts. Uh, what do you want to have happen to you at the end of your life, your final resting place, your funeral instructions? And lastly, something that's called a letter of instruction. So there's a lot that comes in here. And the the letter of instruction is if your will says legally what you want to have happen, your letter of instruction is the this is what actually happens in my day-to-day. If somebody needs to step in, this is what you actually need to know. Uh it's kind of like that Cliff Notes guide, if you're familiar with Cliff Notes to your life, that just lets somebody step in and do what they need to do.

SPEAKER_02
5:02

That's that's a lot. It's a lot. It is important. So, okay. So I guess let's start with okay. So if you get the will and you you have an executor of the will, that's the person that will carry out what the instructions were in the will. Is that how that goes?

SPEAKER_00
5:18

Yeah, that that's effectively right. So if you have a will, you get to designate who the executor is, and that means that they're going to be responsible for transitioning your assets after you pass away, or the assets of the estate.

SPEAKER_02
5:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
5:31

Um, it's a very detailed, technically oriented role. Uh, they may have to open up probate if you're familiar with that term. Um, but maybe not. It really depends on on where you live and how your assets and and your estate is organized. But the executor is something that your last will and testament will certainly allocate for. That person doesn't have to accept the role and responsibility if they don't want to.

SPEAKER_01
5:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
5:54

But the last will and testament also makes it so you can designate specific items to somebody or individuals or charity. And also lets you say, I would like these people or this entity to look after my children if you have minors or dependents in your care. Um, but a lot of people, you know, they actually don't like having a last will and testament that has details because your last will and testament is actually pretty neat. It gets filed in the local jurisdiction

Wills Executors Trusts And Privacy

SPEAKER_00
6:20

where you live. Uh-huh. So it's all public. Um, okay. And if you don't want it to be public, then you should get a last will and testament that then pulls everything into a trust, easy to set up with an attorney, and then all your information is is pretty private going forward from there.

SPEAKER_02
6:35

Okay. So what happens in probate? So let's just say, like, like my dad currently owns a condo. And so he actually put my name on the title with his because they think that he set it up with the lawyer. So it's that on the when he dies, then the condo goes to me because he said it's in the he has a will too, but he said that way it makes it easier so it wouldn't go into probate. So, like, what happens? How can people avoid probate? Say so, especially like with property.

SPEAKER_00
7:04

All right. So

Avoiding Probate With Beneficiaries

SPEAKER_00
7:05

there's a lot of different ways that you can avoid probate. The easiest way to avoid it is a payable on death designation. Okay. Or uh the beneficiary designation that we were talking about.

SPEAKER_01
7:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
7:15

And that's actually pretty neat. So uh I'll I'll step back for a second. When you sign up for a bank account, there's oftentimes a form that you can fill out, or you can go on their website now and even do this online where you say that in the event that something happens to me, I want the money to automatically go to this individual. That is different from having a joint account. So if you and I were married, Lisa, and we had an account together, and I get hit by a bus or I don't wake up in the morning, joint account, that's automatically your money, right?

SPEAKER_02
7:41

Right, right. Okay.

SPEAKER_00
7:42

But if I have an account that's only in my name and I designate you as the beneficiary to receive transfer on death, when the bank is notified, they will then transfer that money to you as long as they're provided with ample, you know, documentation that says that I actually passed away, a death certificate of sorts. Why that's really important is because that's a contractual relationship that I made with my bank. I am instructing you as part of the account details that in the event something happens to me, send this money over to Lisa. That actually gets processed before the will does. Oh really important there.

SPEAKER_02
8:23

Yeah, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00
8:25

So an example of why that's really important is that if we were married, but I actually set up that account and it was from a marriage that I had earlier, and my payable and death beneficiary was now my ex-wife because I never updated it. But in the will that I have, it says everything goes to you. My ex-wife would still get those funds because the bank processes that contractually and it was never updated. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02
8:49

Yes, yes, that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00
8:52

So there's a lot of little things like that that come into play that that people are just unfamiliar with that makes things really complicated. And when we were setting up the podcast and just chatting back and forth, and you know, you you said there's a lot of stuff that that you would want to do that other people might want to do, but there's just a lot out there. And that just list of 10 things sounds like a lot, right?

SPEAKER_02
9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00
9:16

It's overwhelming. Nobody wants to do this stuff.

SPEAKER_02
9:19

No, it's so like question I have. So, like, yeah, okay, we have you could have a joint account or you can fill out a form in a bank. Does that person let let's say I decide I want, you know, a friend or somebody to be on uh payable upon death. Do they have to know that ahead of time or does it? Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00
9:38

No, no, no. That's what's great about it. So the bank may have to verify who the individual is to transfer it, right? But you get to put, I want this to go to somebody, and they don't have to be notified at all. Just like when you're filling out your will, your last will and testament, when you're creating a trust, uh-huh, you don't have to notify anybody. That's going to be up to your executor. And if you don't name an executor, the jurisdiction that you're in will appoint something called an administrator.

SPEAKER_01
10:02

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
10:03

Um, typically that's what it's called. Every jurisdiction is a little bit different to then carry out that process. But

What Probate Really Looks Like

SPEAKER_00
10:10

you you may watch TV. I watch TV, Netflix, other things. Right, right. And a lot of people are familiar with that, you know, instance where there's an attorney in a room that smells of rich mahogany with a leather desk with chairs, you know, and you walk in for that reading of the will.

SPEAKER_02
10:26

Well, right.

SPEAKER_00
10:27

That's that's not how it normally happens.

SPEAKER_02
10:29

No, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_00
10:31

You'll you'll have an executor, you deal with everything that that happens with end of life, the funeral, celebration of life, cremation, burial, you know, going into space now, you can ship ashes or cremated remains into space. Pretty neat stuff. Um and then as people are cleaning out the desk, they'll find the will. Where someone says, Oh, the will is here, here's the executor, and then a big pile of stuff gets dropped on that person. They have to figure it out. Right. And once they start reading through and they go and they meet in the local courthouses jurisdiction, there's offices that deal with it, then they start realizing what we have to do. And that probate press and question of what happens is is lengthy. And it's lengthy as a feature, not as a bug. So a lot of people say, Oh, probate takes so long, it's a pain in the butt. I hate doing this. There's a lot of forms I got to fill out. That's intentional. And the reason why is you want to make sure that the things that you have go to the right people or entities, and any debts that you have go to the right people that you owe money to. And if someone could just take all that money and do whatever they wanted with it or all that stuff, what they wanted with it right away, something bad could actually happen. So the process starts with starting the probate process. You have to put an announcement or a notice in a local newspaper typically, and then you wait for six months.

SPEAKER_01
11:50

Oh, okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00
11:52

And people come back to you and say, I'm a creditor. You know, you owe me this money. And then it's the job of the executor to go through the rules and say, This person gets paid this, this person gets paid that. Um, and then after you do that and you have your accounting of everything that that goes on in the estate, what's actually available, bank account, stocks, money, cash, whatever, then you start paying out and distributing the remainder of the assets to uh to the people where it's supposed to go.

SPEAKER_02
12:18

Okay.

Powers Of Attorney And Directives

SPEAKER_02
12:19

So let's talk about powers of attorney.

unknown
12:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02
12:22

For it. So you can have one person be both, right? Financial power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney, or you can have two two separate people.

SPEAKER_00
12:32

Yeah. Absolutely. You can have many people. And the cool thing about a power of attorney is that you can take it away anytime that you want. Okay. So I can give my sister power of attorney for me in medical, let's say, in the event that I get hit by a bus and can't talk. I want her to be able to step in. But if I get in a fight with her and say, no, I don't think that I want you to do it. I want somebody else to do it, I can rescind it immediately. I can also make it a springing power of attorney. So if you're familiar with coding or logic, you know, exercises, if this then that, oh, okay. My sister only has power of attorney in the event that this specific thing happens. Oh. So medical decisions, I only want them to do this. Financial, I only want their help with this specific bank account or selling a house. So there's different types: power of attorney medical, power of attorney, you know, um for financial. And they can be wrapped into other things as well. So the advanced directives that we talk about that empowers people, your power of attorney, your healthcare agent to take action on your behalf, that can also oftentimes be incorporated with something like your living will that gives them the power and then also explains what you want to have happen.

SPEAKER_02
13:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
13:50

And that's where it gets complicated. So the reason why a lot of people go to professionals, go to attorneys is because your advanced directives might be a specific form where you live, or it could be a general collection of a living will plus your healthcare, you know, agent form. And you just want to make sure that your state is going to actually respect and follow what you have in place. Because the last thing you want to have happen is you can't talk, you can't communicate, and then somebody else is making decisions or supposed to, and it finds out the hospital's actually not going to listen to them because they don't have the right forms in place.

SPEAKER_02
14:22

So what happens if some if that happens to somebody and they didn't put anything in place? So, like who does it who makes those decisions then?

SPEAKER_00
14:31

Yeah, it's a great question. So, you know how we talked about if you die without having a will, right? The state decides they have this platform in place. A lot of people don't have these documents in place. You know, there's some studies that say less than 50% of Americans over 50 can actually have these documents in place. So the that means there has to be a process, and the process typically goes down a specific order in the state that you're in that follows your next of kin.

SPEAKER_01
14:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
14:55

So it's not as if if you get hit by a bus and you can't talk, and I use that analogy a lot, that nobody is going to make decisions for you.

SPEAKER_01
15:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_00
15:03

Um, it's not that the hospital is going to decide this is what we're going to do, but there's an order that it goes through. And sometimes that order might be what you want. Sometimes that order might not be what you want. Sometimes that order can create chaos. If it goes down your list, if you're not married and you have two kids, do the kids have to agree? Or is it going to be one versus the other? And that's that's a question that is dependent on on where you are and you know a few other things that come into play.

SPEAKER_02
15:31

So what if you don't have kids and you're not married? Okay.

SPEAKER_00
15:35

And eventually it if you have no family members, no relatives, nobody steps up, nobody's available to contact, because maybe you have kids, but they work in Antarctica and they can't be contacted for some reason, right? Then it just goes down that list. And generally speaking, it it works out. It will definitely work out one way or another over time. Um, sometimes not in the way that people would want, but it'll work out. And the healthcare professionals are trained that you have to go down that list. If there's a do not resuscitate, they don't resuscitate, you know, in the room. If there's advanced directives, you tell them these are the advanced directives. But these documents come into play after somebody's stable, after somebody's been in the hospital or in care for a little bit, because you don't want to have like an EMT, like if we're married again and I fall down and you call the CO911, the paramedics aren't gonna roll into my house with their gurney or our house with the gurney, put me on and be like, okay, before we do anything, before we try and save his life, can you let us know a little bit about him? Right. Yeah, they're not gonna have documents that we can remove.

SPEAKER_02
16:37

Right, they're not gonna do that.

SPEAKER_00
16:39

No, they're gonna save you, they're gonna do everything that they can.

SPEAKER_02
16:41

Right.

SPEAKER_00
16:41

Unless when they come in, you say specifically, here are the documents, this is why you have to listen to me. Then they'll respect it. But their first duty is to the patient is not to go searching for paperwork.

SPEAKER_02
16:54

Right. Yeah, they're gonna save them unless you have the the do not resuscitate or that in the hospital uh for that as well. Now, if you're going to set up the power return, let's say the healthcare power returning, it does not have to be a relative, right? It could be anybody that you feel close to.

SPEAKER_00
17:10

And there's there are specific requirements in states. Oftentimes it's 18 or older, it's of sound mind, things of that nature. And that's why it's really important to actually do the research. We have on our website on Buried in Work uh free guides and web pages for every single state in the country. So if you're curious, like what forms are required, you can come to us and then we'll push you over to the actual forms so you can see what you need.

SPEAKER_02
17:33

So then this way you can talk to that person and say, this is what I want so they know for it. And then they would have access to the medical records or that.

Preventing Family Fights Over Care

SPEAKER_02
17:42

Now, what can somebody do if there's fighting within a family about the care and estate planning? Because obviously that happens all the time.

SPEAKER_00
17:51

Yeah, and and that's really a situational, you know issue that that is it's difficult to opine on. So there's the framework that people are operating within. So if you look down your healthcare power of attorney or you look down your next of kin, what you're trying to do is make things as easy as possible for your family members so they can act on what you were clear about, not what they want. So when you choose a power of attorney, you need to be able to have a conversation with them if you if you can and you're comfortable doing it, saying, This is what I want. If this happens to me, are you okay carrying out my wishes?

SPEAKER_02
18:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00
18:30

And if they say no, I'm gonna disagree with you, then you find somebody else.

SPEAKER_02
18:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00
18:35

So if you don't do anything, there's two siblings, they have to figure out and come to a harmony for the medical providers to oftentimes step in and make a decision. So the first way to avoid the conflict is to set up a system where there is no conflict at all. Right? That's the best situation. Create your system that avoids the conflict. And then if there is conflict, you just want to have it. So these are my wishes. And fortunately, unfortunately, you know, it puts your family members in a situation where they may have to engage outside help. Hospitals, other providers oftentimes have individuals like your chief medical officer or individuals that specifically serve in that role in the in the facility to help family members, you know, think through. They won't necessarily advise this is what you should do, but they can help, you know, mediate those those conversations a little bit.

SPEAKER_02
19:27

Yeah, it doesn't always happen like it does on some of the medical shows, right? Or they jump in and all that it doesn't. It can get kind of nasty.

SPEAKER_00
19:35

Sometimes the in the medical shows it does get nasty. I remember watching, I love the medical shows on TV. So I watched The Pit, and there was a great episode where two siblings were were at odds. Um in the show Doc, which is on Netflix now. I feel like I'm like a Netflix spokesperson right now. There was an episode where somebody's ex-husband disagreed with the current person that the person was dating and who who actually did the hospital listen to, and they had to each present their case.

SPEAKER_01
20:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00
20:07

Like it's it's narrative, it doesn't always happen. Um, but the the thing that I'd say is create your system that makes things really organized. Like we actually have a product, and I don't want to like sell product, but it's called Clear Kit. So it's your comprehensive legacy in the state administration resource kit where you put all of your information in it. It won't make your will for you, it won't make your trust for you, but it'll say, I have a will, I have a trust, I have advanced directives, here are my bank accounts. So in the event something were to happen to you, your family members, your executor, your loved ones, they have one place that they can go to get the information that they need as they're going through probate, as they're helping you out, uh, or after you're gone. So they don't have to go on that 500 plus hour scavenger hunt trying to figure out what accounts are open and where you where you wanted your your items to go.

SPEAKER_02
21:00

Yeah, and it is important that you have it all in one place too, and that you tell that person uh or people so they know what to do and also have that conversation to be able to say, this is how I want it, this is what I want to happen. And I am grateful that both both my parents uh they they had that conversation. They did uh their living wills and everything. And so I knew exactly what they wanted. So it made it easier when we brought hospice in from my mom when they were asking those questions. My dad and I were on the same page because we knew this is what she wanted.

SPEAKER_00
21:30

You know, there wasn't anything. That's exactly right. You know, it an analogy or metaphor that that I use oftentimes is is this. If you were coming over to my house to make dinner with me, and we plan on you showing up at seven o'clock, we're gonna make food. Like, what's your favorite food to eat?

SPEAKER_02
21:46

Oh, well, uh anything Italian is good.

SPEAKER_00
21:48

Okay, we're making chicken parmesan.

SPEAKER_02
21:50

There we go.

SPEAKER_00
21:51

From scratch. You come over at seven, I got a bottle of red wine open, I got the chicken cutlets, I got the mallet out, we're gonna pound it out, we're gonna season it. It's gonna be Just this is just perfect, right? We're gonna have a nice night. It's gonna be super easy. We get the recipe there. But if you're coming over and you know we're having dinner, but I leave a note on the door that says, Hey, I'm running late, figure it out, right? That's gonna be a heck of a lot more complicated for you to figure out what's in my kitchen, where the ingredients are. You might not know that like eggs are in the fridge that are in a pantry somewhere else. And the recipe that we're using, I'm actually not wanting to use that recipe because I found a different recipe in a different book. You we'll have dinner. You'll get through it, we'll get through it. But it's going to be a lot more complicated for you coming over and cooking without a recipe, without knowing where everything is. And that's literally what this whole process is that's affecting so many people in the country, is they think that people are going to be able to come over and figure out their kitchen and make the chicken cuplet and the parmesan and everything really easily. But that situation is a lot more complicated when it's somebody else's house and somebody else's information.

SPEAKER_02
23:05

Yes, it is. It is because you walk in and you're like, Oh, oh my God, what are what are they doing? What's here? I don't know where this is, you know.

Caregiving Money Problems And A Hard Lesson

SPEAKER_02
23:14

Uh, like with my dad, for example, you know, he still like files everything old-fashioned way. You know, here, file this, file this bill, you know, and okay. Uh and and like I am on his accounts, his banking accounts, but I'm not on his credit cards, which is fine. But I still have to pay his credit cards right now because he he he was in the hospital for quite a long time and now he's in a nursing home for rehab. So, like I they can't. If I go to the bank, they can't tell me what the balance is on the account. They'll take my check, but they can't tell me how much the balance is. It's like those simple things. You're like, I just want to pay his bill, you know?

SPEAKER_00
23:51

Yeah. And it it's so complicated. We were helping one one widow or turned out to be a widow in in Maryland. Her husband was in the hospital. Um, this is right when we got started, also. We we had a checklist that said, make sure that you know when all your important bills are due. Because that just gets confusing. Like maybe an autopay, maybe not.

SPEAKER_02
24:11

Right.

SPEAKER_00
24:12

And her husband was in the hospital, he wasn't paying his bills, and she realized that the life insurance premium that they had been paying for decades was overdue and it was going to completely turn out in two days. So she called the insurance company, she got an extension for a week, she mailed them a check overnight with tracking. The husband died a week or two later, and she got a $403,000 payout. Now, if she wasn't on top of it, and she almost wasn't, but if she wasn't going through figuring out what credit card bills needed to be paid, what mortgage payments had been paid, hadn't been paid, what insurance payments had been paid, haven't been paid, she would have lost literally $403,000. And that's the type of thing that we're trying to help people understand is that these are easy solutions. If you know what to look for, the challenge is learning what you actually need to look for.

SPEAKER_02
25:11

It is, and it's very overwhelming because if the person's also in the hospital at the same time, you're trying to learn all of this on the medical side, but then yeah, you're still trying to keep up on the financial side of things. Because and it's not always easy because they'll say, Well, I'm sorry, you're not on the account. I can't talk to so and so. And you're like, you know, like I wanted to cancel one of his bills, and they're like, Well, we need to talk to him. Okay, so literally I'm sitting there with him at the nursing home going, Okay, let's call this so you can, you know, so we can cancel this, you know, for you with that. It's just very overwhelming.

SPEAKER_00
25:46

It really is. It's overwhelming, it's frustrating, it's inefficient. And the last thing that you ever want to do, the last thing is when somebody is in a hospital or in hospice, when you know time is short, is trying to call people to hear them say, Can you put so and so on the fold so I can ask them a few questions? Yeah. So that's the only thing that is worse than that is everybody that always says, I'm sorry for your loss. You don't care that my father died. No, you're a customer service person, and I respect your job and I appreciate your help. But Citibank or Bank of America, like, do they really care that my dad died? No.

SPEAKER_02
26:23

No, right?

SPEAKER_00
26:24

Just I wish there was a button that you could go skip the nonsense. Let's just get to the stuff.

SPEAKER_02
26:29

Well, and the other thing too is with my mom and she had dementia, and they'd be like, You have to put her on the phone. I'm like, she has dementia. She doesn't understand what you're saying. I have the power of attorney. And they were like, No, we still need to talk to her. And I was just like, Yeah, you got to be kidding me, you don't understand. And I'm like, Well, yeah, but you'd let a con man get away with all this other stuff. But here I am trying to do the right thing. You know, you get so frustrated with it. Uh with it. Now, I had to have to ask you this one thing that I saw on your

Pet Trusts And The Hidden Details

SPEAKER_02
26:57

website. You have a pet, a pet trust. What is that?

SPEAKER_00
27:01

Okay, so you you may read in the news like so-and-so wealthy individual left blah, blah, blah, money for the protection and support of their of their pet.

SPEAKER_02
27:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_00
27:11

And some people, you know, they love their pets. It's actually a really neat stat. Um, when people hit 60, 65, one of the most common things that they edit in their estate plan, if it's already been established, uh-huh, is accounting for pets that they own. Because everything else is might be in place, but their pets typically change.

SPEAKER_02
27:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00
27:30

So a pet trust is not a trust that the pet controls. It is a trust that is designed to provide for the welfare of the pet as long as the pet is alive, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02
27:42

It does because I see too many things. I see too much like uh on the shelters, uh, on their websites and stuff. That that's exactly what happens that the owner got sick and no one will take them. Like my my parents had a dog, it was really my mom's dog. And when we had to, when she had to go to memory care, I took the dog, you know, because I was like, I'm not gonna get rid of her. I mean, I love the dog like it was mine, you know. So I kept little Annie, you know, but I see that too often, you know. So people should do that.

SPEAKER_00
28:11

There's there's so many things that that are little minutiae details that really matter. So if somebody gets sick, what do you do? You have to think about plants in their house, emptying out their fridge, taking care of pets. Do they have dependents? We actually have a checklist, you know, what to do when somebody dies that goes through a lot of a lot of this stuff. But this is what I mean by the statement of it takes so much time, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours sometimes to administer an estate. It's because there's all these little things that you have to do. And if you're following a checklist, it makes it uh a lot easier. But one thing that we talked about was when you're in the hospital, you don't want to necessarily have your mom, your dad, the whoever you're visiting on the phone because they they might not be able or in the right mindset to have the conversation. But there's the other side of that too.

The Stories Families Never Ask

SPEAKER_00
29:00

So a lot of what we've spoken about are the legal related logistics that people should try and stay on top of. Get organized, organize your estate information, and leave your heirs the gift of legacy, right? The gift of organization. But there's that other side. It's the stories, it's the things that really matter that people also should be thinking about. So when my dad was in the hospital, yeah, we talked about some account passwords and things like that. But the more important things with the conversations that I had with him about him, about family, about life, that I'm never going to forget. I don't remember what account I asked him about, but I know his answers to the questions that we talked about. So if you can take the time to step back and understand, yes, getting all your estate information is really important too. But also, you know, you want to connect with your family members because when somebody passes away, when when they go down that dementia path, you lose that opportunity. And that opportunity of time is something that you can never get back.

SPEAKER_02
30:00

That's very true. Very, very true. And I know a lot of people have a hard time talking about these things, but it it is important just so you know what somebody wants for that. And and you also can get those stories and understand why maybe they've decided this is what they want or not want. And it does make it a little bit easier as you're going through things.

Buried In Work Resources And Goodbye

SPEAKER_01
30:22

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02
30:22

So your website is buriedinwork.com. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00
30:27

Yep. It's it's a little bit of a pun, buried, obviously buried. And then if you if you look at the logo, there's actually a coffin, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or casket.

SPEAKER_02
30:36

There you go. And so anybody can go to the website and get all this information, checklists and different things, contact and find out what's going on in their state and things like that for them.

SPEAKER_00
30:46

Yeah, we've got over uh 180 different information hubs for different topics. Our goal is we want to give people as much free information as they as they can possibly need. If there isn't information that we have and somebody says, hey, can you help me with this? We typically hire someone to go out and create that content. We build it for them. And then we have products on top of it and services that that connect people with service providers if we can help out. But we we've been having a good time helping a lot of people across the country.

SPEAKER_02
31:14

Well, and that's really important because sometimes it's like you don't know where to start. So this is a good place people can start. And we'll make sure we'll put the website on uh on the link as well so people can go to it and at least hopefully help them get a little organized and make sense of all of this as they go through it.

SPEAKER_00
31:31

I appreciate that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02
31:32

So, well, thank you so much for joining us right here on Patty's Place. So hopefully you've enjoyed our conversation and this helps a little bit. You don't feel so so overwhelmed. So hopefully you enjoyed your cup of tea, your cup of coffee, or that really bad day, a glass of wine. And please join us for another edition of Patty's Place.