Aaron Miller — Navigating Elder Law and Estate Planning with Aaron Miller

[00:00:00] Aaron Miller: Each state has different rules on Medicaid. So if you’re doing research, you know, looking something up in California doesn’t necessarily apply here in Texas

[00:00:08] Aaron Miller: Yeah, you just gotta be real careful with where you get your information.

[00:00:11] Aaron Miller: Like, we’re not talking about, you know, mom needs care today. You know, when you go on an airplane, they tell you if the mask comes down, you put your mask on yourself before you help the others around you. I think probably if you’re a young couple, get your estate planning done.

[00:00:26] Intro: Do you think money takes up more life space than it should? On this show, we discuss with and share stories from artists, authors, entrepreneurs, and advisors about how they mindfully minimize the time and energies. Spent thinking about money. Join your host, Jonathan DeYoe, and learn how to put money in its place and get more out of life.

[00:00:59] Jonathan DeYoe: [00:01:00] Hey, welcome back on this episode of The Mindful Money Podcast

[00:01:02] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m chatting with Aaron Miller. Aaron is an award-winning elder law and estate planning attorney dedicated to helping families with long-term care after starting his career in corporate litigation, which we’ll talk about a bit,

[00:01:13] Jonathan DeYoe: he shifted his focus to avoid the high cost of long-term care inspired by his grandparents’ struggles. We love those stories here. Family stories. So Miller Law Office has been named the best law firm in Plano, Texas for three consecutive years known for building strong relationships and providing services like Medicaid planning and family harmony protection.

[00:01:32] Jonathan DeYoe: Those of us in California will reference Medicaid as Medi-Cal. He won’t be up on all the details of that. It’s a different state, but the general planning stuff we’ll talk about. I wanted to have him on the podcast to have a candid conversation about elder care planning. Everyone in my industry talks about those core four documents about estate planning.

[00:01:50] Jonathan DeYoe: And Aaron is a trust attorney, they do the four core documents among other things. But I wanted to have him on the podcast specifically to, to provide our listeners some insight into what they can do to take care of [00:02:00] their elders or take care of themselves as they age. Aaron, welcome to the Mindful Money Podcast.

[00:02:04] Aaron Miller: Thank you Jonathan. I appreciate you, uh, having me today. Looking forward to our conversation.

[00:02:08] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m looking forward to it as well. So first, tell everyone where you call home, where you calling in from? Just tell us about yourself a little bit.

[00:02:15] Aaron Miller: Yeah. , I, currently live in, near Plano, Texas. That’s where my office is. , I’ve been living in Texas since the second grade, but, uh, migrated down south from, , Alaska, Washington State and Colorado when I was little, little bitty. . Dad chased jobs, I guess. , but grew up in Fort Worth, basically, , went to, uh, UT undergrad, Baylor Law School and, have been, uh, a lawyer since, uh, 2002.

[00:02:37] Jonathan DeYoe: Wow. And so you, you grew up, you said Alaska, Washington State, Colorado. , that’s the first two years of your life. You don’t, you don’t have memories from there.

[00:02:44] Aaron Miller: I remember Alaska a couple things. I remember, I remember yellow snow because we had a dog. . , I remember leaving Alaska on the airplane. So when we were, , on the plane, my mother, it was a very, very small plane. We were, we flew from Valdez, I think, to Anchorage.

[00:02:57] Aaron Miller: My mother couldn’t sit with me. She sat with my sister in the [00:03:00] back. So I was by myself, which was traumatizing to. A two and a half, 3-year-old. , but I remember dropping a penny out of my pocket and then looking out the window and seeing, I guess a floater or something. It looked like I could see it falling all the way down.

[00:03:12] Aaron Miller: , and saw , the inlet there, , the ocean and the, the glaciers and stuff like that. So that’s kind of all I remember from, , , Alaska. But yeah, we were about, that was about two and a half or three when we left.

[00:03:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Probably the most important lesson we’ll talk about today is do not eat the yellow snow.

[00:03:24] Aaron Miller: That is very true. That is very true. that’s something, uh, thankfully I did not learn the hard way, so.

[00:03:29] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. so you, did, you fly into, you know, out of Alaska, into, , Fort Worth and you grew up in Fort Worth.

[00:03:36] Aaron Miller: we went to Washington State for a bit. , I was actually in Washington State when Mount St. Helens blew, uh, the first time. , we lived in, um, I think it was Spokane at the time, and I remember , we had to wear a mask. I think, if I remember right, anywhere inside or outside for the first three days.

[00:03:51] Aaron Miller: Then anytime we went outside for the week after, we had to wear, , wear a mask ’cause of the ash. And, and for a long time we had [00:04:00] a, a mayonnaise jar full of ash. So my mother scooped up over , , the back porch. And that’s been since lost in the moves, but, , yeah. Yeah. So then we went to, , Colorado.

[00:04:10] Aaron Miller: , my dad worked for, , a friend of his, and then we moved to, , Fort Worth. And that’s, yeah, that’s essentially where I grew up.

[00:04:16] Jonathan DeYoe: I’m trying to get a sense of like where, you know, we, we learn money lessons at the needs of our grand-parents and grandparents, so, so when we’re very, very young, we don’t realize we’re learning lessons at that point. So I’m wondering, , as you grew up many states, what kind of lessons did you learn or did your parents teach you about money or even entrepreneurship as a kid or teen even?

[00:04:34] Aaron Miller: Yeah, so my dad had a lot of jobs. Sometimes he was an employee, sometimes he owned a business. , and a lot of his advice depended on. His status at the moment. So, when I was older, he owned a print shop with a, a friend of his and I worked for him. And, at that time, his philosophy was, you can sleep when you’re dead.

[00:04:55] Aaron Miller: Uh, which is basically you, you just keep working until you can’t do it anymore. [00:05:00] other times it was, relax a little bit, . You know, the stories in our family around money was money, , doesn’t grow on trees. , you have to be very, very frugal with it and be careful with it.

[00:05:09] Aaron Miller: I didn’t get a whole lot of like, budget, , instruct, teachings ’cause they just really didn’t know about it. , one of the coolest things I remember actually about money was, , when I was a kid, my mother went back to, to college, , to get a degree. And when she graduated and she got her first real job afterwards, , what they did was they took the difference in her previous paycheck and the new paycheck, and we kind of split it up.

[00:05:34] Aaron Miller: And that was, uh, , money that we all each got to, to spend. , and I can’t remember what I spent mine on, but I remember that, that was a, an opportunity. So I thought that

[00:05:42] Jonathan DeYoe: Like, like one the first paycheck or on.

[00:05:45] Aaron Miller: Paycheck. Yeah. That was kind of like a, a reward for, , , you know, mom had to go do studying or something like that, so she couldn’t be there to cook dinner for, , a few years or once in a while.

[00:05:53] Aaron Miller: So it was, it was kinda like we were all participating in her education ,

[00:05:58] Jonathan DeYoe: That’s pretty neat. Uh, I’m wondering if you had a [00:06:00] sense of b besides the, you know, potential workaholism of, you know, work, work, work, work until you die. , if you had a sense of when your dad was working for a company versus had his own business, if there was a different sense of comfort around money with those two things, or if you have, if you have any memory of that.

[00:06:18] Aaron Miller: Yeah, I, you know, for me, they pretty much shielded me from it. We didn’t have a whole lot of discussions about it other than, , my mother was very frugal. my dad used to say, , you give her a penny and she’d make a Lincoln scream. , one of the first stories that, , I heard was.

[00:06:34] Aaron Miller: She first started, collecting coupon clipping coupons when we lived in Washington state. And my dad kind of poo-pooed it for a while until she saved enough money to buy him a pair of work boots. think he was a welder or something at the time.

[00:06:47] Aaron Miller: And so, , he always gave her a little bit of a hard time that, uh, his, his shoes pinched a little bit, but, . , I think that was kind of eyeopening for him. And so for a long time, , one of my jobs was after church. We didn’t subscribe to the newspaper, [00:07:00] but we would go and buy one from the vending machine basically.

[00:07:02] Aaron Miller: So my job would, after church, we walk, walk around the corner, go buy, , a couple of newspapers, , for the coupons every week. And so, and then we would go and clip those. , and, you know, shop, the coupons, all, all the, all the time.

[00:07:15] Jonathan DeYoe: I’ve never asked this question, but I, I, I have this experience myself of clipping coupons with my mom. have you as an adult, do you have a feeling about using coupons?

[00:07:25] Aaron Miller: I think they’re great. If, if I see one in the store, I’ll pick one up, but I don’t, necessarily go out of my way now to get the newspaper. I mean, I, I just don’t even buy a newspaper anymore. So, but yeah, I think that I, I have no, , shame about them. I think they’re great. I just don’t, don’t spend the time to go, go do it

[00:07:40] Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t

[00:07:41] Aaron Miller: it was, it was like a full-time job for her.

[00:07:42] Aaron Miller: I mean, she would

[00:07:43] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh, no.

[00:07:44] Aaron Miller: Two or three hours on a Sunday, uh, them out organizing ’em and, and preparing her, her shopping for the week. And, , what we ate that week largely depended on what was on sale.

[00:07:54] Jonathan DeYoe: yep. Us, US two. I actually take that into my adulthood and I think about, I don’t do it. I have a lot of [00:08:00] shame about it. I, I feel embarrassed about it. , and I felt embarrassed as a kid. , and I’ve carried that into my adulthood as, and I’ve, you know, I’ve worked through lots of it, it sort of, it hung on this idea of scarcity idea of not having enough.

[00:08:10] Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t, that doesn’t seem to affected you, so that’s good.

[00:08:13] Aaron Miller: no, I mean, I, I definitely get that. I, I definitely understand it. Uh, mine was different. I remember, . We didn’t have a lot of, like designer clothes or, , you know, real fashionable things. In fact, my mother would make our clothes, , for a long time until I got finally old enough to covet out enough.

[00:08:29] Aaron Miller: I guess she decided to, we’d go buy some, but, , yeah, she very, very, very frugal lady.

[00:08:34] Jonathan DeYoe: great

[00:08:35] Aaron Miller: Oh, yeah.

[00:08:37] Jonathan DeYoe: I wanna get into editor law, , before we do, can you kind of tell the mindful money audience, , your path? Like how did you get to there? You did some corporate law, you know, how did you get to being a state planning attorney?

[00:08:47] Aaron Miller: Yeah. Yeah. So, I went to law school a few years after I graduated from undergrad. I, I, I actually worked for a business in Austin for a few years and I. It just wasn’t mentally [00:09:00] satisfying. Actually, I went to undergrad with the idea I wanted to go to law school, but by the time I graduated, , there was a real glut of attorneys.

[00:09:06] Aaron Miller: I guess there still is, but at the time it was just really, really high and it was hard for people to find jobs. So I got a different job and then about two or three years into that, I was just , not being fulfilled. I needed something, uh, more and, decided to try law school. . Took to lsat did pretty well on that.

[00:09:23] Aaron Miller: Got accepted to a lot of law schools. I chose Baylor because, there’s a lot of, collegiality among Baylor lawyers. It’s a good school. It trains you how to be a litigation attorney. and so after that, I was a clerk for the Tech Supreme Court for a year. , loved that job until I actually, until I started doing elder law, that was my favorite job, , it’s one of the few courts in the country that’ll let their, law clerks, listen to their deliberation.

[00:09:45] Aaron Miller: So I could go in and look at a case and go, oh, yeah, that’s gonna be five four. That’s gonna be nine. Oh. You know, seven, three or whatever. just because I knew the personalities involved and knew how they looked at things. and that lasts for about two, three years afterwards. but loved [00:10:00] that job, went and worked for a, large, , international law firm in Dallas office of the large international law firm, realized they weren’t making partners, , , of that office. So went to a small litigation boutique. , we had a difference of philosophy on, on how litigation should go. And so I went out on my own originally was doing litigation and realized one day.

[00:10:21] Aaron Miller: I love loved being in the courtroom. I love talking with juries and preparing , doing the, cross examinations and, and doing the, the opening and closings. But I hated all the, the chest thumping Trying to threaten you. I’m so tough. I’m gonna beat you up in court. , and it never hardly ever went to trial. I. And I had really had a, a crisis of conscious, I guess the day that I realized I was excited that I ruined somebody’s Christmas because there was some documentation I sent to the opposing counsel.

[00:10:50] Aaron Miller: When I did the numbers, I realized it was gonna be due the day after Christmas. So they were gonna be working over Christmas break. and because of different rules, I couldn’t extend it. And I was like , [00:11:00] really excited. I was like, ha, I got one. And then I got to thinking about it. I was like.

[00:11:05] Aaron Miller: I don’t like being that person that really shook who I was. and I realized I’d been a really angry, , and bitter person. ’cause I don’t like being wrong about things. , and a whole thing about litigation is, no, you’re wrong about this. And I was taking it out, off, out on my wife, taking that on my kids.

[00:11:21] Aaron Miller: ’cause I couldn’t turn it off , when I, , went home every day. So. I got super disgusted, realized that I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing and decided to change everything. , I didn’t know what I was gonna do. , looked at different things, , and eventually found, , a program that helped, people who are doing trial work, , go into estate planning. And I first started doing estate planning for families with young kids, which I really, , am passionate about, I really love. , but I really, really fell in love with was elder law , estate planning answers the question, what happens if you get sick and die?

[00:11:52] Aaron Miller: Elder law answers the question of what happens if you get sick and don’t die? How are you gonna pay for care? How are you gonna get taken care of? One of the things [00:12:00] I always loved when I was a kid was, , we’d go visit my grandparents, they lived in, , Mesa, Arizona , at least during the winter months.

[00:12:07] Aaron Miller: And, for Christmas we would always go and visit the, uh, the old folks home. I’d recite bible verses. We would, uh, sing Christmas carols. , and what I really loved was listening to their stories and listening to the wisdom that, that they’ve accumulated in their life.

[00:12:21] Aaron Miller: Just loved listening to, to them talk. and. When I was looking at what I wanted to do and, and as I got more and more into it, I realized that there are so many people.

[00:12:33] Aaron Miller: Taking advantage of our seniors. There’s so much bad advice out there, and my family has been affected, right? So, I realized this was a real, a, a huge opportunity, , to help people and make a real difference in, in their lives. I used to tell people when I was at the big law firm, I made the world safe for the big five accounting firms.

[00:12:52] Aaron Miller: but now I can look at the people that I’ve helped, the families that I’ve helped over the last, gosh, since, uh, I started doing estate planning in [00:13:00] 2009. It’s just been, been really amazing to me. I really am grateful to the families that have let, let, me help them.

[00:13:07] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. so when you talk about. What happens if you don’t, if you get sick and you don’t die? Are we talking about physically or financially or both?

[00:13:17] Aaron Miller: mainly financially. Yeah. Yeah. But physically too, I mean, there’s, there’s different options that you have, whether you stay at home, whether you go to, you know, long-term care facility or independent living or, or full on nursing home or,

[00:13:29] Jonathan DeYoe: You talk about six options, right? I think you referenced somewhere in your website there’s six options,

[00:13:34] Aaron Miller: you’ve got at-home care, you’ve got, residential care homes, which are a newer thing. I think they were PI pioneered out in California, but you drive past it in a neighborhood, you wouldn’t know what they are. But they’re really cool because they’re like a facility, in that they have.

[00:13:49] Aaron Miller: caregivers on staff 24 hours, but it’s a smaller, community. So you might have six residents at a place. a lot of times they’re a lot more, cost effective, than maybe going to a different place. and [00:14:00] also depends on kind of what they can provide. But residential care homes are great.

[00:14:03] Aaron Miller: You have independent living, uh, that sometimes can, , give some sort of care if you need it, at least to a certain point. Of course, you have assisted livings, you have nursing homes, and then there’s LT a. If you get sick for, and you need long-term acute care is what that stands for.

[00:14:17] Aaron Miller: They’re, they’re kind of like a mix between a, a nursing home and a hospital. it. It’s different necessarily than rehab. I think it’s more, more intensive care. Like you don’t really need to go on full on nursing home, but maybe, you have like an open wound that needs to be cared for more so than a nursing home.

[00:14:33] Aaron Miller: it’s not super common, but, but in the larger areas, they’re, they’re there.

[00:14:37] Jonathan DeYoe: who makes the elder? I mean, is do I make my own elder care plan or do we wait, do I wait and then my kids make my elder care plan for me? Like

[00:14:45] Aaron Miller: You, you, yeah. You can do both. Right? I always tell people, you, you can do your own planning while you’re, while you’re, you’re vertical, or somebody else can do their planning while you’re, you’re horizontal. Um, either way it’ll be done. But if you’re, you’re vertical. Yeah. Yeah. I [00:15:00] mean, I personally think it’s better to do it ahead of time.

[00:15:02] Aaron Miller: , , you get to decide how things are done, as opposed to if you just leave it up to your kids, you know, they’re gonna make the decisions. They may not be the decisions that you would’ve wanna make, and. Frankly, they may not want to make those decisions.

[00:15:13] Aaron Miller: So yeah, there’s different ways to plan pre-planning or, or after the fact. And to me, it’s always better before

[00:15:20] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. you talk about, this idea of balancing. it’s horrible. But a loved one’s like dementia diagnosis and their autonomy. , like, how do you even do, I, my assumption has always been, oh, you have dementia is , we’re now basically controlling. You can’t drive, you can’t da, da, da, da, da.

[00:15:36] Jonathan DeYoe: You know, there’s a whole list of things you can’t do anymore. But how do you balance that so they feel more autonomous?

[00:15:41] Aaron Miller: so my mother had, uh, dementia. I. , and she knew it was coming and it was awful. It was awful because, , , one of the things she said was, I don’t, I don’t want to be a blathering idiot. That was her term. this lady was a member of Mensa and, , had a math degree [00:16:00] and just used her brain her entire life.

[00:16:03] Aaron Miller: And to have that taken away from her, . Was devastating to her , and to us to watch.

[00:16:10] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:16:10] Aaron Miller: to me, I don’t know, is it worse for the person that has it or the worse for the family? Because the person that has it, they see it coming, but at some point it doesn’t register to them anymore.

[00:16:20] Aaron Miller: But the family knows what they were like, and it’s almost like a living death because they’re not. Alive anymore. So for us, when, , my mother retired from the state of Alaska, , she was about, hmm, 63, 64 years old, and she had an opportunity to, get long-term care insurance for like 200 bucks a month. And, my mom and the dad said, you know, we really can’t afford it right now. So they didn’t do it well. By the time she was 67, she started having memory issues. , they had moved back to Alaska, , maybe 10 or 15 years earlier. And, um, around March or so in [00:17:00] Fairbanks, Alaska, my mother got locked out of the house

[00:17:03] Aaron Miller: and my dad had put a lock on the door and he put a sign that says the code is the year you were born.

[00:17:10] Aaron Miller: She couldn’t remember it.

[00:17:11] Jonathan DeYoe: Oh

[00:17:13] Aaron Miller: So, uh, thankfully the neighbor saw her and rescued her, but it could have been tragic, Fairbanks and February is not, uh, a pleasant time. And, um, so we made a decision to the family to move her down. she went to live with my sister and, my dad stayed in Alaska for a little bit.

[00:17:30] Aaron Miller: He kind of wrapped things up and moved down about three or four months later, but. she was good for a while. she, uh, participated in the family. She, lived with my sister in Austin and things were pretty good at first, but my sister’s kids were young and they, sometimes they, they’d play and they’d get loud and she didn’t like that and would get mad.

[00:17:53] Aaron Miller: sometimes she’d just get mad for other reasons, and she started hitting my sister and. We started doing that, we [00:18:00] realized, we gotta do something else. And that’s what we started looking at long-term care. We started looking at assisted living

[00:18:06] Jonathan DeYoe: What’s the process of finding a really good sort of facility? Because I’m assuming that’s where you go with that.

[00:18:11] Aaron Miller: What I did was, there are websites, , the, , CMS, I think it’s sent for Medicaid services, have a website and they they do ratings of assisted livings, nursing home, nursing homes, that kind of thing. based on their inspections and things like that. So that’s one way to look at, and we just went , and toured, , probably at least half a dozen places. And, you know, one place we went, they had memory care, but when we got there, we had, we went down into basically a basement and when we got there, it was so dark. The residents were, , I think they were pretty heavily medicated and they were just kinda laying all over the couches, not doing a whole lot, and that, that was to us, the, the worst possible scenario for her.

[00:18:57] Aaron Miller: Other places were great. They, had [00:19:00] activities for people to do just depending on your ability to do them. And so that’s what we, we put her as a place. It was not a close drive. , we were hoping for a place closer. They just didn’t, didn’t have any availability, but it was about a 25 minute, 30 minute drive from my sister, but it made all the difference in the world because my mother actually was happier there because she didn’t have the little kids running around.

[00:19:21] Aaron Miller: , making a lot of noise, and she made some friends, , in fact, they, they told us that, uh, she would wander into her friend’s, rooms and, and they’d just hang out and chat for a while. and they’d find, you know, sometimes she’d, you know, fall asleep there, but.

[00:19:34] Jonathan DeYoe: I I’m wondering if, uh, if your own experience did that inform how you go about working with clients in this process?

[00:19:43] Aaron Miller: Oh, absolutely. You know, I, I’ve always had compassion for, for my clients, , for the kids that are, that are going through this process. , , , it really just brought it home to another level. when you have a family member that you’re, you’re helping go through this, I know this is the most stressful [00:20:00] time in your life because , there can be a lot of guilt associated with that.

[00:20:05] Aaron Miller: , I know my mother, , she hated doctors, hated the idea of having to go to the hospital. , , and really. 10 years earlier would’ve hated the fact that she was in an assisted living or, or memory care. But, , we knew that that was the best thing for her. And, I know my sister particularly, she felt a lot of guilt, , because of it.

[00:20:24] Aaron Miller: But I, you know, there really wasn’t much choice. But for us, I, I, I felt like, but yeah, it’s, it’s a hard, hard thing for people to do.

[00:20:32] Jonathan DeYoe: did you and your sister disagree , did you have disagreements on things or did you work all that out, or

[00:20:37] Aaron Miller: No, we, we pretty much, we pretty much agreed, I mean, my dad was there too. , he pretty much turned it over to us, , because , he couldn’t take care of her, I mean. He, he was taking care of her back in Alaska, but he had to go to work, and so she would be by herself, which is one of the reasons why we brought her down.

[00:20:51] Aaron Miller: she just felt like she should do more. , it’s interesting. What I found is, , it’s usually the, the oldest daughter. , that takes care [00:21:00] of, , mom or dad. and if there’s not an older daughter, it’s usually the, uh, oldest, uh, daughter-in-law, that does it.

[00:21:07] Aaron Miller: not always, but, but most of the time that, that seems to be where it goes.

[00:21:11] Jonathan DeYoe: I wanna talk about the financial aspects here a little bit. So, so what happens to our assets when we get sick?

[00:21:16] Aaron Miller: it depends on how you’ve set things up,

[00:21:18] Jonathan DeYoe: Hmm.

[00:21:19] Aaron Miller: So there are three ways to pay for long-term care. you can pay for it yourself out of pocket. You can get some form of long-term care insurance, or you can have the government help pay for care. out-of-pocket is gonna give you the most, most options, you know, depending on what you can afford, right?

[00:21:36] Aaron Miller: , if you got the money, you can pay for it. Uh, most people can’t or they can’t do it for very long.

[00:21:40] Aaron Miller: that was the option that my grandfather chose, but not because he knew he had options. , when I was a kid, grandmother got sick. We, we actually happened to be visiting , , one day. , they lived in Monroe, Colorado. they were farmers their whole lives and we were there and the last night before we were supposed to [00:22:00] leave.

[00:22:00] Aaron Miller: , my grandmother had a heart attack and my dad held her in his arms and thought he had lost her. , she went to the hospital and this was back before, you know, you have a heart attack. you’re in and out in three days. She was there for like three or four weeks. I don’t, I don’t remember exactly, but she came home and. She was fine at first, but then she started developing some memory issues herself. And so she would do things like, put her slippers in the freezer or she undid the heating air return vent and put her purse down in there. , or put her keys behind some book, some books in a bookcase. And so, .

[00:22:33] Aaron Miller: Eventually it got so bad that my dad got a call one day from, my grandfather, and he said that he had to put her in in a home. And that’s where she spent the next 10 years of her life. And because no one talked to her about the different options, he had to, , go , and pay out of pocket. So every month he’d write, go and write a check or give him some cash or whatever.

[00:22:55] Aaron Miller: And basically what happened was he lost all of his savings

[00:22:59] Jonathan DeYoe: [00:23:00] Yeah.

[00:23:00] Aaron Miller: about. Three years after she passed, he had some health issues. at the time my dad still lived in Fort Worth. My uncle, lived in Arlington, which is right next to Fort Worth. so they moved my grandfather down. but my dad, my uncle, and my aunt, their sister, I.

[00:23:15] Aaron Miller: Uh, they didn’t know about any of the options either. and they reached into their savings, reached into their retirement to help pay for care because they didn’t know what else was there. So, you know, private pay is great if you’ve got it. , some of the other options, my favorite option is long-term care insurance, uh, long-term care insurance.

[00:23:37] Aaron Miller: would have helped my mother. cost of care is different everywhere there there. is uh, Genworth, I don’t know if it’s still available. They have an app you can get on your phone, , just to look and see. And if you really want to give yourself a heart attack, you can project what it’ll be in, you know,

[00:23:49] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, don’t do that. Yep, yep.

[00:23:51] Aaron Miller: my God. , you know, we were paying for memory care in and here. It was about $7,500 a month. And thankfully she had inherited some money from my [00:24:00] grandfather, so she had the money to pay, but if she would’ve got that long-term care insurance, she wouldn’t have had to spend it.

[00:24:05] Jonathan DeYoe: I know that you’re not an insurance sales person, but I want to, I want to just see your thoughts on this. ‘ I literally had this conversation with clients probably every month. they have a long-term care insurance policy they purchased five years ago, 10 years ago.

[00:24:15] Jonathan DeYoe: I. They just got their letter from the, carrier saying, you know, rates are going up 33% this year, 33% next year, 33% the year after that. So they’re, they’re looking at a hundred percent increase. I’ve seen it so

[00:24:26] Aaron Miller: yeah,

[00:24:27] Jonathan DeYoe: I try to explain to them that’s because the cost of care is higher than they anticipated and you’re living longer and they didn’t really plan it well, so maybe you should keep it.

[00:24:35] Jonathan DeYoe: So what do you recommend in that case?

[00:24:38] Aaron Miller: It, it’s hard because like, like my parents, you know, it was only $200, but, you know, they couldn’t afford it. I think to the extent that I. If you could make it at all possible, then I would, you know, keep it. and there’s new stuff. A as you know, I’m sure there’s new stuff out there. So , when I use the term long-term care insurance. I’m talking about all of it. , but I know, like from your perspective, that’s a, that’s a term of [00:25:00] art. That means a very particular product which may not be available, anymore because, like you mentioned it,

[00:25:05] Aaron Miller: they didn’t really accurately predict the, the demand for it and the costs, that it would be, so there’s a lot of people in policies that are, , the rates are going up because of it. But, you know, the newer stuff out there, the hybrid stuff that’s based on, , whole life insurance policies or annuities or stuff like that, , I think are great.

[00:25:22] Aaron Miller: , to the extent that if, if maybe the cost isn’t, , is too high. Then if it’s possible to maybe lower the payout, so maybe you don’t need it to pay the full cost of care. you know, maybe your, your income is high enough that you just need it to pay, you know, maybe half, at least from my perspective, don’t get rid of it.

[00:25:41] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah. I, I think it’s, I think it’s reasonable. I think, I think that’s the one insurance that I, I don’t know the statistic, but it’s like 50% of the people that have it use it

[00:25:49] Aaron Miller: yeah, yeah. I, I don’t know the statistic either, but you know, there’s a real good chance you’re gonna get sick and need some sort of care. I, I have some people under, you know, the, the traditional policies, it was usually or lose it. So if you, you know, got through the [00:26:00] end of your life and you never needed it, well, some people, well, I paid all this money, didn’t need it.

[00:26:04] Aaron Miller: It’s like, you know. You, you have homeowner’s insurance. You’re not upset that your house didn’t burn down last year. Right? Uh, it’s not like it’s wasted money, but,

[00:26:11] Jonathan DeYoe: there are policies that exist, and I, I’m not an insurance salesman either, but I understand how they work. , there are policies that you can have riders that sort of return a premium, so you lose, you lose your inflation benefit, but you get your money back kind of thing.

[00:26:22] Jonathan DeYoe: That, that’s,

[00:26:23] Aaron Miller: Yeah. Some of the newer stuff. Absolutely. And I think that’s really, um, helping, you know, get a lot of people over that, that mental hump is, okay, well if I don’t use it, at least I haven’t wasted that money.

[00:26:33] Jonathan DeYoe: can you talk about, I’ve, I’ve heard a lot of people in eldercare talk about ways of sort of protecting our assets or organizing our estates to, but before the issues come up to really benefit us and maybe give us access to other funding.

[00:26:47] Aaron Miller: Yeah. So that leads to the third way to pay for care, and that’s government benefits. , there’s two primary benefits. , there’s Medicaid and then there’s VA benefits. A lot of people think Medicare covers it, and it really is, is very, very limited. It’s, [00:27:00] it’s basically up to a hundred days and it’s more of like a rehab if you like, I don’t break your ankle or something like that.

[00:27:05] Aaron Miller: but Medicaid is, a lot of people think it’s for poor people. And it’s really how the middle class pays for care in the United States. it does have some limitations in some things. different states have different rules, but basically if you have too much money, you can’t get qualified. that’s both income If you have too much income and have too much assets, and so one of the things that you can do is, find, an elder law attorney in your area, and they can help walk you through the requirements of Medicaid in your state. I. A lot of people think, I don’t want Medicaid. That means it’s a, it’s a terrible nursing home.

[00:27:39] Aaron Miller: And that’s really not the case necessarily the fact that a nursing home accepts Medicaid or not doesn’t mean it’s a bad nursing home. It just means they’ve decided as a business decision to take, take Medicaid.

[00:27:51] Jonathan DeYoe: Can I ask one quick question? When you say nursing home, that that fits in all the homes? It could be assisted living, it could be memory care, it could be any of these things. Right. But you’re using, okay. [00:28:00] No. Okay.

[00:28:01] Aaron Miller: No. some states do have some benefits that will help pay for assisted living New York comes to mind that they have a lot of, really good care, But most states, I. it’s a full on nursing home benefit for Medicaid, Texas, for example.

[00:28:16] Aaron Miller: they do have a limited Medicaid benefit, but it’s not huge unless you’re in a nursing home. really the best way to plan for that is, is talking with the elder law attorney and they can help you pre-plan. So, in, and I think most states, You can do a special Medicaid qualifying trust, Medicaid, , irrevocable trust.

[00:28:33] Aaron Miller: So it’s a trust that you do, ideally five years before you, you need it. , and that way that you can’t get penalized for giving any money away recently, you have it, it is available to you in an indirect way so that you can still, benefit from it,

[00:28:50] Jonathan DeYoe: and that’s, that’s five years before you need the money for care.

[00:28:54] Aaron Miller: yeah. Yeah. Now California, I understand, has some different rules.

[00:28:57] Aaron Miller: and you may not need it in [00:29:00] California, but it also understand the rules are changing, but. The rules have been changing so how to find an elder law attorney.

[00:29:06] Aaron Miller: There’s, there’s a group called National, academy of Elder Law Attorneys, Nala, , they have a list of attorneys. , you do have to be careful ’cause just because you’re a member of that doesn’t mean they actually do it on a regular basis. Some people are just interested in it, so they, become a member.

[00:29:19] Aaron Miller: But, um, somebody who’s got experience, doing, uh, pre-planning, is awesome.

[00:29:25] Jonathan DeYoe: what are, what are some of the MO with the biggest mistakes you see that people make?

[00:29:28] Aaron Miller: Oh my gosh. I have a client who we were trying to get Medicaid benefits for who a year ago cashed out his IRA and Put it in gold. I actually bought gold with it. And the reason why that’s a problem. Every state’s different in Texas, uh, IRA is not accountable asset.

[00:29:50] Aaron Miller: If it’s kicking off, RMDs required minimum distributions. And if it isn’t, if they’re not old enough to get that yet, there’s another way we can get it. Not accountable. [00:30:00] So basically we take it off the table entirely. So by doing that, he took a non-accountable asset and made it accountable.

[00:30:06] Aaron Miller: in which case because of how we now have to get him qualified. Basically. We’re gonna take half of that money. We’re gonna spend it on his care. We’re not gonna be able to still protect half of it, but, , we can’t protect the whole thing like, like we could. , , if he hadn’t touched it.

[00:30:22] Jonathan DeYoe: Also from a financial planning perspective, you can actually own gold inside your IRA and not pay the taxes to put money out of your IRA. So there’s like a double hammy there, like, I dunno what

[00:30:30] Jonathan DeYoe: he’s thinking anyway. Doesn’t.

[00:30:33] Aaron Miller: well, no, he’s not gonna hear this, but, to me, that’s one of the reasons why I do things like this is I really want to educate people, because in my family, nobody talked to them about, I. What’s there? How can you get hurt? What are the different options that you have?

[00:30:47] Aaron Miller: And so my grandfather just spent his life savings paying for my grandmother’s care. He didn’t know This gentleman, he didn’t know.

[00:30:56] Jonathan DeYoe: I mean, if you’re in the situation where your parents need care, they [00:31:00] don’t have money or assets, you don’t know how to access, you know, money or assets for them, you go to the state controller, where do you go to find information? To see how I get support to help my parents.

[00:31:11] Jonathan DeYoe: So I’m, so I’m not paying that because I don’t need to.

[00:31:13] Aaron Miller: Yeah. I, I, I think probably the best way, honestly is, is an elder law attorney because they know , the programs and the things that are available, it’s confusing. I remember actually when I was in law school, we were looking at, benefits from my mother’s, father. So my grandfa, my maternal grandfather, and they were asking me about things like Miller Trust and I’m like, I don’t have any, I mean, same last name as me, but I don’t have any idea what it was.

[00:31:36] Aaron Miller: ’cause I was, I was still in law school. In fact, it would’ve been till five or six years afterwards that he even had an inkling what that is. . I talked a little bit about Medicaid. Another benefit, , potential benefit is for veterans.

[00:31:47] Aaron Miller: we colloquially call it aid in attendance. it can help actually help pay for assisted living and member care at home care. It’s not a huge benefit. I forget exactly how much it is, right? I, I wanna say you can get Anywhere from two to $3,000 a month, which [00:32:00] can be great. It just doesn’t go for nursing home very far.

[00:32:03] Aaron Miller: but that’s just a benefit that not very many people know about. the reason why I bring that up now is there are some people who call themselves veterans benefits consultants, who basically do things that make them a lot of money

[00:32:16] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah.

[00:32:16] Aaron Miller: and don’t really help the veteran as much.

[00:32:19] Aaron Miller: Oh.

[00:32:19] Jonathan DeYoe: I have a client who discovered that, that, they have money, they’re doing well. He had a stroke, you know, very, it is tragic. ’cause then, then everything goes sideways in their lives. But, but was a veteran and they went to Veterans Administration and they found this benefit and it was huge, huge difference for the family.

[00:32:38] Jonathan DeYoe: Um, so yeah, gigantic benefit. So go to, go to elder law attorneys if you have questions, uh, locally, You know, if you’re in Texas, go to Aaron. Do you, do you practice in other states or just Texas?

[00:32:47] Aaron Miller: I’m actually technically licensed in New Mexico. just got that a couple years ago, but mainly Texas.

[00:32:52] Aaron Miller: there’s, um, actually I’m impressed that, that your person talked to the VA and somebody actually told ’em about it because the VA is [00:33:00] probably one of the largest bureaucracies that’s ever been in existence, and they don’t, you know, this person doesn’t know what the, you know, they don’t know all the benefits and so,

[00:33:08] Jonathan DeYoe: his wife did the research

[00:33:09] Jonathan DeYoe: and

[00:33:10] Aaron Miller: there you go. Yeah.

[00:33:11] Aaron Miller: Yeah.

[00:33:12] Aaron Miller: And, and, and now you say that you do have to be careful. , VA is a national program, so that’s Okay. each state has different rules on Medicaid. So if you’re doing research, you know, looking something up in California doesn’t necessarily apply here in Texas and, and vice versa.

[00:33:28] Aaron Miller: And, and so yeah, you just gotta be real careful with, uh, where you get your information.

[00:33:32] Jonathan DeYoe: don’t just Google it. Talk to the attorney in your

[00:33:35] Aaron Miller: Well, yeah. And, and, and I, I know that’s a little self-serving, but it’s really the best way to get the right information. particularly if you got somebody that knows what they’re doing.

[00:33:43] Jonathan DeYoe: Yeah, so there’s, there’s an enormous amount of noise out there. I ask pretty much every guest to simplify it for us. , if you’re working with a young couple, , you said this earlier, like you, you like working with young kids, , they got a new baby, you know, , their parents are still alive and they haven’t done any planning between them.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Jonathan DeYoe: What’s the first thing they should do? Should they do their own estate or should they work with their parents on elder planning? Or what, what’s the first thing they should take care of?

[00:34:08] Aaron Miller: all things being like we’re not talking about, you know, mom needs care. Today, right. you know, when you go on an airplane, they tell you if the mask comes down, you put your mask on yourself before you help the others around you. I think probably, if you’re a young couple, get your estate planning done, and then we can go and get momed.

[00:34:26] Aaron Miller: Now, if I say nursing home, but also if, if we’ve got a diagnosis of dementia or something where we have to move very, very quickly, things would change. But, yeah, I, I think. get your own stuff first, and then let’s talk about, you know, and,

[00:34:39] Jonathan DeYoe: Do you ever actually do like ha have mom and dad and, son and wife and their baby in the room together and do the whole thing? Do you do like the whole package for the

[00:34:47] Jonathan DeYoe: family? Have you ever done

[00:34:48] Aaron Miller: we, we don’t, usually do ’em all together. We could, um, usually there’s some, at least there’s some potential conflicts there.

[00:34:55] Aaron Miller: but we have had, um, usually it’s where mom and dad will buy, buy it for their kids.

[00:34:59] Aaron Miller: [00:35:00] And, you know, we have to explain, you know, that’s great, but the kids are gonna be my clients. So if they cut you out, then, you know, it, it’s definitely common to, to do, Either do it that way or sometimes we’ll, we’ll have the kids come in and, and they’ll go, okay, we gotta get you, we gotta get you in front of mom and dad,

[00:35:13] Jonathan DeYoe: just for a wrap up, I like to, I like to come back to personal, if you listen to a podcast, you know that this is coming. If you haven’t, then you don’t. So there we go. what was the last thing you changed your mind about? I.

[00:35:23] Aaron Miller: That is a good question. I don’t know. I dunno if this is the last thing, but the biggest thing I changed my mind about is at least professionally is, wills versus trust. So, uh, will is a document that says who gets your stuff after you pass away. To be effective, it has to go through the probate process.

[00:35:40] Aaron Miller: A trust is a legal agreement between three, three parties. Typically mom and dad are gonna be all three of those parties. The grand tour, the person that creates the trust, the trustee, the person that runs the trust and the beneficiary. That’s the person that the trust is created for. To a certain extent.

[00:35:53] Aaron Miller: I, I still believe this, but I don’t really care if you get a will or a trust depending on what your goals are. But what I’ve [00:36:00] found is people who buy a will think they’re buying a trust. And what I mean by that is they think they are avoiding the probate process. And if they understand completely that they’re avoiding the probate process, the kids may not.

[00:36:14] Aaron Miller: So, I’ve had this conversation. Mom and dad had a will. Why are we talking about probate? and unfortunately, it’s a thing that people forget. And, and real quick, I’ll tell you this story. I had a, a lady, a client who called me, Mom had just gotten off, just gotten a call from the title company and the title company realized they were getting ready to sell the house.

[00:36:35] Aaron Miller: They were closing on Friday, and her husband was on the title to the property. Well. He died about 10 years earlier. And so what happens is you have to probate a will within a certain period of time. In Texas it’s four years, otherwise you get treated as if you’re not having a will. and in Texas what that meant [00:37:00] was.

[00:37:01] Aaron Miller: half of that sale of the proceeds was going to go to his kids because his kids was from a previous relationship. They weren’t her kids. And the kicker was he had a will and it completely cut out his kid. Everything goes to the wife and she’s like, I, I’ve got a will. Why do I need to, why is this kid gonna get half my money?

[00:37:21] Aaron Miller: Because she didn’t probate it. And so, uh, I, I’m much more in favor of a trust now than I was before because it just makes life easier for the family.

[00:37:31] Jonathan DeYoe: I think in California, the, what’s the, there’s a, it’s courts, but it’s like, it’s not the criminal court, it’s a.

[00:37:36] Aaron Miller: Yeah. There’s probably a separate core for it. Yeah.

[00:37:38] Jonathan DeYoe: I don’t remember the name of the court, but, but it is so backed up in California we say do the trust to avoid that. ’cause you have no idea when they’re gonna see you or

[00:37:46] Aaron Miller: and it’s a lot more expensive. Yeah. Real. Uh, one more real story real quick. my wife’s grandmother lived in California. Had a trust. but she had some technology stock that for some reason didn’t get put in the trust. So if you have a trust, it’s really important you get it funded.

[00:37:58] Aaron Miller: technology stock [00:38:00] was, you know, up here when she died. I, I don’t know the exact numbers. I wanna say it was worth like $300 a share. I. Takes three years to go through the probate process. It drops to about $3 a share. And my father-in-law said, yeah, there was about enough money to pay the lawyers at the end of it, and that was it.

[00:38:16] Aaron Miller: So you have a trust, make sure it gets funded. But if, and definitely if you’re in California, you need to have a trust ’cause it’s, it’s a lot and takes

[00:38:23] Jonathan DeYoe: It’s a lot It takes a long time. Aaron, I wanna say thank you very much for coming on. We’re gonna make everything in the show notes. How do people find you if they have in information questions, where do they find you?

[00:38:32] Aaron Miller: Yeah, uh, they can go to our website, uh, Aaron Miller law.com. A-A-R-O-N-M-I-L-L-E-R-L-A w.com.

[00:38:40] Jonathan DeYoe: And if someone was to reach out to you and they’re from the state of California or the state of whatever, Minnesota, can you point them to resources?

[00:38:47] Aaron Miller: Oh, absolutely. So I know attorneys probably in just about every state. plus they can also go to the, NALO website, national Academy of Elder Law Attorneys website, and there’ll be a list of attorneys there too. Yeah. But we can definitely help.

[00:38:59] Jonathan DeYoe: Aaron, thanks so much [00:39:00] for coming on and very much appreciate the information and thanks for educating us about Elder Law Very

[00:39:03] Aaron Miller: Absolutely. Thanks Jonathan. I appreciate you having me.

[00:39:05] Outro: Thanks for listening. Full show notes for each episode, which includes a summary, key takeaways, quotes, and any resources mentioned are available at Mindful Money. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. And if you’re enjoying the content and getting value from these episodes, please leave us a rating and review ratethispodcast.com/mindfulmoney. We’ll be sure to read those out on future episodes.