Estate Planning for Singles Without Kids

Jenni: Welcome to the modern family finance podcast, where we talk about all things, money, career, and life.

I am Jenny, your host and founding partner of modern family finance, a San Francisco Bay area based fee only financial planning firm that provides tech smart, advice to modern families. Today, we are going to dive deep into the important decisions that shape our futures, well being, and legacies. And we're tackling a crucial topic, which is how do you plan for your future if you do not have children, or children you can count on, or nearby family and friends to advocate for you. My guest today is Mia Owsley, a licensed professional fiduciary and the founder of Mia's Fiduciary Services. Mia is a true advocate for those needing financial management, estate planning, and care coordination, ensuring that her clients wishes are honored, even when they cannot advocate for themselves.

Jenni: So Mia brings a rare combination of analytical expertise and deep empathy to her role. She works alongside estate planning attorneys, financial planners like ourselves, and medical teams to provide wraparound care management. So Mia, welcome to the podcast.

Jenni: Well, thank you. I have to tell my mother what you said about me there. Let the audience know, I did not pay you to say that, but I'm going to put it on my tombstone.

Jenni: There we go well, talking about tombstones, right, so tell me what exactly is the work that you do and what is fiduciary services in your, fiduciary means a lot of things, I'm a fiduciary as well, but in your world, what does fiduciary mean?

Mia: term.

Jenni: Yes.

Mia: so, you know, my, my 32nd elevator speech, right? I think of us as professional daughters and sons. We take care of people, both their personal and financial affairs, and when they don't have family who can do it for them. So we pay their bills, we arrange their medical appointments, confer with their doctors manage household repairs, you know, when the, the washing machine breaks down or, the plumbing breaks. go through a rigorous training program and are licensed and monitored by the state.

Jenni: Great. I love that. Professional sons and daughters. So what prompts people to reach out to you guys for help? What kinds of folks are looking for this?

Mia: So our clients tend to be elderly people who are slipping into or already in dementia or they've suffered minor strokes and can't focus on numbers or organization and so they can't get their bills paid. We're often contacted by adults who are looking for help for their parents, right? Either the family doesn't have the skills to do the job they don't live nearby.

Mia: I had a gentleman in Southern California. who wanted to help make his mother's money last for her, but also wanted boots on the ground to ensure she was being properly cared for in her memory care facility. I had a woman in the Central Valley who wanted help for her parents in Alameda County. They were no longer paying their bills due to some level of dementia, but they still lived on their own. over the years, banks have become familiar with fiduciaries that are not the There are fiduciaries. They've become familiar with our profession. So they recommend to me their clients when they see that their clients aren't managing their money safely or well. The other would be Adult Protective Services has brought me in to help with clients who can't manage their affairs or, and who's, or who they see as being victims of financial abuse. And so over the years, I've developed relationships with many estate planning attorneys also who refer their clients to me.

Jenni: Got it. Okay. Okay. So let's talk about a little more about what you do, right? So many people have heard it is important to get your affairs in order. What exactly does that mean?

Mia: That's a, you know, that's a good one. So, this means to prepare basically in three ways. One, you know, who do you want to have inherit your money and property after you die? If you have family with special needs, either medical or psychological, do you protect them and ensure they're cared for when you die? And then, if you do not die, but become incapacitated instead in some way, how Who do you trust to make decisions for you, both financial and medical, the manner that you would choose? So, let's start with the first one. Who gets your stuff when you die, right? Most of our audience will want to create what's commonly known as a revocable trust.

Mia: Some people call it a living will, you put all your assets, real estate, financial accounts, you know, your automobiles, boats, planes, trains, your business interests, you put them into this trust in order to avoid probate. And this arranges for the smooth transition of your wealth and your personal property to the people or institutions that you choose. Without a trust, you'd likely be required to go through a probate. Where this is where the state ensures your estate first pays all your debts and then splits the remains equally between legal heirs, whether you not, you know, whether or not you want those people to get your stuff. Second. You know, part two, if you have to protect your special needs child, or our queer kids who are under attack, you know, by government right now, you want to assure they can keep any public benefits they're receiving and plan for who's going to look out for their well being when you're gone. This can involve establishing maybe a special needs trust or other legal protections, you know, depending on your situation. And the third, right? If you get hit by the proverbial bus, but you don't die, you know, instead you're in a coma, right? You need someone who you have authorized beforehand to act as your power of attorney. Now, if your brain is working fine, and you give all your money to scammers, or drink yourself into oblivion and develop alcohol poisoning, no problem. The law allows people to make stupid decisions. But if you don't have real cognitive capacity, maybe you develop dementia, right, or you had a stroke, or you're in a coma, then if you don't have an authorized person to make decisions for you, state will put you under conservatorship. which means they assign someone to be your legal guardian and make these decisions for you. They may not make the decisions you want. They may not be people you want to have control over your life, right? This results in a loss of your liberty, and it's also a very expensive process to your estate. So, I highly encourage you all to to an estate planning attorney to get your affairs in order, prevent any of these negative consequences.

Jenni: Gotcha. Okay. So a lot of this work you might be doing with an estate attorney to sort all this stuff out. Now tell me like, where does your work come in? Like relative to getting your affairs in order.

Mia: So As a fiduciary, we step in and we serve as people's power of attorney or trustee for them when the, when you're making your plan as to who will run things and take care of the things for you. This is, we're there for when you don't have the family you trust or who have the capability to do it in the manner that you think is best.

Jenni: Gotcha. And can that be changed? Like, let's say I have an a kind of adult child that I kind of trust and, but right now I don't trust them, right. And it, but maybe in five, 10 years, I would trust them to do some of these things for me. Like how Tell us the flexibility again. So in that period of time, maybe I want, I want a professional fiduciary, but later I want to change that.

Mia: Absolutely. This is another important thing for people to remember, right? That what you do is not set in stone. So family are frequently not capable of managing finances or medical decisions. Maybe right now they're too young, right? Or they're, you know, or they live too far away to pay attention to the reality of your personal life. Your family could be struggling just to manage their own lives, and they might not have the capacity to take on your problems as well. Or, you know, another major reason people in licensed doctors fiduciaries is to prevent fighting among their family and heirs. It can be a strain, on family relationships to be the, you know, the one in charge of carrying out your parents plans. So, you know, professional fiduciaries have the experience with financial planning and management. well as with medical and insurance systems, right, that may affect you. You know, family dynamics when family is in grief or trauma over your situation can get in the way of rational decision making. Maybe you don't want to prolong your life, but your children can't stand to see you go. Maybe you want to be wrapped in cloth and buried at the root of a tree, but your kids want to keep your ashes on the mantel. Maybe you want to give all your money to charity, but your kids want to keep it for themselves and can't understand why you would give it away. So, you know, we professional fiduciaries, we're licensed and regulated and we're under strict laws to ensure that you And your possessions are cared for in the manner that you want, regardless of what others might want for you. And you ask about you know, can this be changed? So, yes. I have a client who, it took her, you know, she has one child that she wanted to favor over another. And it was, difficult for her because she thought, Oh, should I leave one of them 90%? You know, should I leave my, this child 90 percent who needs all the help and I'll leave this other child 10 percent because he's already got a life on his own and he can take care of himself. you know, he's being mean to me. Oh, but what if he needs money later? So maybe I should give him 15 or 20 percent and give her only 80%. Oh, but then what happens if I change my mind, if I find out he's really bad and I want to leave it all to her and she was, you know, you can, you know, when you wobble around like that. You don't get anything done, right? So, I got her attorney to create a sprinkling trust that allows the trustee some leeway to increase one child's inheritance, inheritance if needed. And by knowing that she could change it anytime she wanted, you know, it made it possible for her to make a decision.

Mia: Because

Jenni: Got

Mia: I didn't want her to not have anything in place should something happen to her because she was ill and having troubles. It's like better to have something in place knowing that you can change it later, whenever you want,

Jenni: it. Okay. While you still have capacity. Yes. Yeah. So I'm just thinking about in the context of like the clients that we work with are generally, you know, folks kind of in their thirties, forties and fifties. They, but they might be unmarried, but in a relationship, but unmarried, they might not have children of their own.

Jenni: They might have, or they might have their own family, but they're worried about elderly parents. So kind of in that context, you already kind of. You've already given some examples, but can you give me some examples of how having a professional fiduciary could help in these situations? In these situations versus an elderly person who's on the verge of dementia and calls you in an urgency, you know to get help

Mia: People call us this is when we get called by state planning attorneys who people are coming to them to get their affairs in order. And so they have to name who's going to be that trustee, who's going to be our power of attorney. You know, we don't have any kids to do it, or our children are only seven and eight years old, so they're not going to be doing this. And that's when, you know, the attorney attorney will help them realize, okay, this is when you need a professional fiduciary. Recently I had a woman me and she said, you know, my daughter's not ready to do this, but I think she will be, just like what you said, she'll be that way, ready, you know, in about five or six years. That's fine, you know, we don't have any skin in the game to say, no, this has to be us forever and ever. This is, we're here when you need us. you don't need us anymore, you know, goodbye and, you know, have a nice life and we wish you well. You, we make decisions based on what we need at the time.

Jenni: Gotcha. Okay, cool. Let's

Mia: people make decisions

Jenni: yes

Mia: need at the time.

Jenni: At the time got it. Okay let's keep going down just I think the more examples we provide the easier it'll be to help understand like when this is This is a help, you know when fiduciary. So What happens if a person actually loses the ability to manage their stuff, you know, due to dementia, stroke, or any of these things, but you don't actually have anyone designated to take over?

Mia: So this, that's a complicated question and as it, A good attorney would answer, that depends. Any family member might try to manage affairs, and may do so well or they might, right, they might abuse the power and use that money for themselves. This is a really important, you know, question to deal with for our queer community because they're far more likely to not have family support. or even neighborly support, right? It's, it's possible friends or neighbors might notice and try to manage things for themselves, but this is another place where financial abuse can occur. So, but let's say no one's taking advantage of the situation, but instead calls Adult Protective Services and says, hey, this person's losing their memory, and Not paying their bills and their power and water got turned off, you know, or the bank wants to foreclose on their mortgage or something like that. Adult Protective Services would bring this to court and the person would end up under conservatorship. you don't have, if you haven't named somebody to make decisions for you, that is what will happen. they become, you know, if you think of a ward of the state. Your award of the state if you don't have any money and the public guardian becomes your conservator, you know, our audience is more likely to have some funds behind them and not be eligible for that public support. then the courts appoint a licensed fiduciary to serve as their conservator.

Jenni: Gotcha. And that's where services like your firm come in.

Mia: Correct?

Jenni: Gotcha. Okay. Can you give us some examples of how you've helped clients navigate like a financial issue, such as you know, somebody who does need help managing debt or selling a home or what have you, like give us some examples of how you've helped clients through these things.

Mia: Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, we sell homes for our clients frequently. Probably one of my best examples would be Back in mid 2018, I was helping a client she was recovering from an accident and was working with her home care agency. One day the care provider said, you know, I think you could really help another client of mine. I take her to the bank and the bankers say she really needs help, you know, she's broke and can't pay her credit cards. So I went to meet with a 93 year old woman who had never supported herself. She owed about 40, 000 on two cancelled credit cards. She had a bank balance that was always in the negative until her monthly Social Security check came in. Her only asset was her house in the Berkeley Hills. So she hired me as her power of attorney. And I said, well, you really have two options because you need money, and that's either sell your house, but you don't want to move, so let's get you, you know, a reverse mortgage would be good for you. Okay. wasn't so good, altogether gone, but she felt there was some reason a reverse mortgage wouldn't work. It was like tugging there in the back of her mind. But nonetheless, we went through with it. We got to the point of finalizing the reverse mortgage documents. When the lender discovered she already had a reverse mortgage. And, but you know, she had lost all her paperwork and I had

Jenni: Oh my gosh.

Mia: I didn't know she owed over 800, 000

Jenni: goodness. Wow.

Mia: doesn't have to pay that while she's living in the house, but what it meant for her was that she couldn't get any money out of it. So, she finally agreed that she really did need to sell her house, she'd have to move. And she moved into independent living, she didn't need assisted living. Now, I calculated in order to, her debts and the upcoming, you know, capital gains taxes on the house and take care of her housing, you know, and any medical care for the rest of her life. 93 years old, she'd have to sell her house for at least 1.

Mia: 3 million. So I found a realtor who said that we could do better than that. And we ended up getting, selling it for 1. 5 million. So Which luckily allowed her to live a couple of years longer than planned. And she just recently passed away just shy of her 100th birthday. She had 2, 800 left in her bank account. And it cost 2, 700 to cremate her and have her

Jenni: So she truly did. There's a whole book like the whole book of die with zero. She truly got it straight up, right. To die with zero.

Mia: right, what did we say? We all want to die with our credit cards

Jenni: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mia: all of that. Ha

Jenni: She did.

Mia: example of a, you know, would be when Adult Protective Services asked me to help an 85 year old woman who was entering dementia and she wasn't paying her bills, including her mortgage, and her condo was going into foreclosure. I worked with this woman and APS to, you know, figure out even where her mortgage was in the, in my first month working for her, the mortgage had been sold three times and And the mortgage companies don't like to tell you over the phone where it's gone. So, just tracking it down to pay it off was difficult.

Mia: We finally got access to her bank funds and paid off her mortgage, insurance, property taxes, brought them up to date. And then we noticed that her estate plans, I looked at, I found a, she had everything you're supposed to have. She had a trust, she had powers of attorney, she had the will. But everyone that she had authorized help her, they had all passed away. Her trustees, her powers of attorney, her, her lawyer himself. So there was no one authorized to care for her. And because she no longer had capacity, she had to go under conservatorship. So, I've been her conservator for two years now helping, helped her to live at home as long as possible until she, you know, couldn't do it anymore and really needed to go into memory care.

Mia: And so, staff and I worked to, you know, sell her house for the best that we could do and make sure she had enough money to pay for a real, a nice memory care facility

Jenni: Yeah, and, and do you also help select the medical the memory care facility and, or like facilities for people when they get to this point, if they're not able to do so?

Mia: absolutely. You know most people they don't ever want to think about it. They don't want to leave their homes They figure I'll just have somebody come here and take care of me Except you know when they discover that to have 24 7 care

Jenni: Cost a lot of money.

Mia: cost about 40, 000 a month,

Jenni: Yeah. Wow. Okay.

Mia: you can, you know, but if you went into an assisted living facility of some sort, you'll, you know, you'll probably cut that down to, you know, 10, 000 a month, let's

Jenni: Still a lot, but, but at least a little more manageable.

Mia: yeah, by that time, I mean, I'm usually the one who has to make the decision, they're not capable, but I try to give them as much input

Jenni: Gotcha.

Mia: right? So, I definitely, you know, I show people around and. They make choices and I say, yes, we can, you can afford that or no, you don't have the money for that.

Mia: I'm sorry.

Jenni: Okay, so like you've given me two great examples of kind of a person in a situation where they are on their own, really, and you've had a U. S., U. S. fiduciary has had to step in and do a lot of this for them. What, what about cases where you have, like you mentioned, you know, people. We're serving clients in their forties and fifties.

Jenni: They're okay, but their parents are now in their eighties plus and needing help, like starting to get ill, memory starting to falter. The, the child is doing the adult child's doing the best she can, or he can, it is a lot of work, right? Or, and they live far away. So how, can you give me some examples of how you've worked with families where there is a capable child adult child, but like due to time or distance or whatever, simply cannot, like, they need help to do all this.

Mia: Yeah, and that, that's very common. Often if family is living far away and we've been contacted by family members who live out of the area, right? Sometimes they live in different countries. Then they, they will often manage the parents finances and pay bills and don't have any trouble with that. And they hire me to. You know, might be a care manager, make sure that they're taken care of that when the washing machine breaks down, you know, I find the repair person or, know, make sure they get to their doctor's appointment, make sure they're taking their medicine

Jenni: How do you do that? Like, are you going, do you have somebody going there to check to take the medicine? Like this, I guess I'm trying to understand the depth of your services here.

Mia: We're in a very high risk a lot of liability because have, you know, so much control over what happens to people and so much influence, right? So we don't, don't take their pill and put it in their mouth for them, but we fill up medicine containers and say, here's the medicine you should take Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday at this time. And that's what we do. You know, if people are still of generally, you know, decently sound mind, most of them can take it, right? When people, when we have clients who don't have the ability to do that, it's either, I had some clients who I would call them twice a day. I'd call every morning to say, okay, it's time to take your morning medicine because, you know, to hire somebody to go there and be a caregiver to give it to them, they, you have to pay them a minimum of four hours and, you know, you're looking at.

Mia: 120, 150. you know, instead it would cost 20 on our end for me to call and say, okay, it's time to take your medicine and then call back again at night and say, okay, it's time to take your, you know, your nighttime medicine. If people aren't capable of doing that, then they really are not capable of living on their own When we assume responsibility for a person, we're assuming liability for that person, too. So, there's no clear line as to when somebody has to have care, whether they can afford someone in home or they have to live in assisted living. those are decisions, you know, we work with our own attorneys to help decide. When do we have to enforce this as, you know, how do we, we encourage our clients to make the right decision so that they're not being forced into anything. But that's how it works in a sense. We, we do what we can to make it easy for them to continue living at home and still take their medicine.

Jenni: Got it. So am I right in saying like, I mean, you're not kidding about your job title as being professional sons and daughters. What it sounds like is like, just like a son and daughter would do everything from calling mom to make sure she took her pill to fixing the internet to obviously kind of these more heavy duty things serving as, you know, durable power of attorney or healthcare power of attorney.

Jenni: Like you do the whole gamut of these things. Is that correct? Is it the,

Mia: Correct.

Jenni: what do you not do? What is off? What would you not do?

Mia: I suppose it depends, you know, on which fiduciary you are. Some fiduciaries do more than others. Some will only focus on financial management and planning. Right? And others of us also do the healthcare portion and care management, we call it. But, you know, for example, we, to protect us from the liability, right, we have to a certain amount of distance. We'll hire transportation companies to drive our clients places, for the most part. 

Mia: You know, we look to see if it's something, you know, easy. Oh, we can just go out and reset the breaker box.

Jenni: Right.

Mia: you know. You don't have your HDMI cable plugged in, you know, or something. if not, then we, we call up Comcast. You need to come fix your box or deal with the service. Right? So we, find the professionals to do the jobs that need to be done. I mean, I don't know how to, I don't know how to repair a washing machine.

Jenni: Right.

Mia: I don't have the intricacies of, managing finances. You know, I work with, you know, like yours, right?

Mia: Financial planners to make the decisions, but, we work together, but I make the decision after talking with you, you know,

Jenni: Cause you're ultimately the decision maker. Right. Okay.

Mia: So we're,

Jenni: That makes a lot of sense.

Mia: serves that position for my mother, right? She's the one who takes care of our mother,

Jenni: Gotcha.

Mia: decisions for herself anymore.

Jenni: Gotcha. Okay. Tell me about like health care. I mean, you know, helping clients navigate complex medical issues. So we've talked a bit about like nursing homes and things like that, but how about even medical treatment? Right. Or things like that. Like how do you step in and make those decisions either if there was a capable adult child, or if there was.

Jenni: It's not, and the elderly person was on their own, or whatever, incapacitated person. Mm hmm. Mm

Mia: The important words, you know, to think of there is advocacy, right? That's what we know how to do is advocate for people. So the complex medical issues come up in two ways. Either a doctor says, Oh, you have this Illness and

Jenni: hmm.

Mia: treated and so we say really. are the options? What kind of ways can it be treated? You know, my client, you want to do surgery on my client, but she's 85

Jenni: Yeah.

Mia: and I don't, kind of frail. Maybe this surgery isn't the right thing. What other options do we have, right? So we explore these and make decisions the client. But the other issue is, right, this is where, you know, this is where our Our queer children and families and our queer allies and friends come in, right? Let's say they're going to go to an assisted living facility and how are we going to ensure, how do we ensure that they're going to go someplace who will give them the medicine they need

Jenni: Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Mia: the gender that they want treat them in the manner and provide an environment that respects their life you know, the, the being is a represent themselves.

Mia: And so that's what we do. We make sure that basically that people can live the life they want with the resources they have.

Jenni: Yeah, got it. I mean, I mean I think

Mia: we can't send you to Tahiti if

Jenni: Yes

Mia: money. It's, you know, but you know, we can find a, you know, a VR experience for you. So you can

Jenni: Right got it. Yes,

Mia: on the islands.

Jenni: very nice. Okay, Tom

Mia: and Mai Tais at, you know, at home.

Jenni: in your nursing home Okay, tell me like

Mia: alcohol in nursing homes. So

Jenni: Yes. Yes. Tell me like how, how you guys play a role in terms of navigating family dynamics, right? Because you like, whether it's financial, like mom, how do we manage mom's finances or what do we do? Like one person wants to take mom off life support or one person says she needs to go to memory care.

Jenni: The other one says not. I'm sure this happens all the time. How, how, what, how do you play? How does a fiduciary, can they help in this situation?

Mia: Well, you know, families struggle when a loved one needs help, right, and there's disagreements. But they have, they might have problems, obviously, before

Jenni: yes.

Mia: happens, so, you know, being objective is the key word here, right? We're, we're a neutral third party, so. Families are often in such disagreement that courts has to step in and appoint a fiduciary.

Mia: And we don't carry that family's emotional baggage. We have enough of our own,

Jenni: Yeah, mm

Mia: So we can treat everyone the same and with the respect that they often can't give each other. And then they'll feel guilty, like, oh, we couldn't take care of our parent, right? We You know, they had to hire you, but it's really by the time people come to us and are looking to hire us, they've usually passed that point of feeling guilty.

Mia: They've, they've already know what they need. they've probably talked to their family and their families, oftentimes family is really happy that their parents have done this. It's like, Oh my God, we can't take care of this for mom. So we're glad that you're there for her.

Jenni: hmm,

Mia: And I usually, I ask all my clients when they come to us, you know, like, why are you hiring us?

Mia: Why aren't you hiring family? Or, you know, what's going on? So that I get a sense of their family dynamics ahead of time. And if they're really wavering on that question, right? I don't try to convince them and say, well, you really should hire us, you know, we're

Jenni: right.

Mia: than your family. No, rather I ask the questions that help them face the reality. own concerns and give them options. You know, most importantly, I let them know that they can always change their mind. So what, when they're alive, we don't generally have a problem with family members being upset about us.

Jenni: Mm hmm.

Mia: That problem comes after they've passed away and we're administering their estates.

Jenni: Well, let's talk about that. Tell us some of the biggest challenge you face one minute administering A client's trust and maybe even kind of insights that as our clients are setting up their trust They can think about so that their children it's like it's like a parent's worst nightmare, right to have to have Children fight over their stuff after they're gone.

Mia: It's, it's really it's sad to see. I mean, As I said, when, when people come to us to hire us, they are, they usually don't have those problems. They're already kind of past it or dealt with it, right? The kids already know what parents have planning and issues have been worked out ahead of time. So we step in, we're appointed by courts when families are warring, right?

Mia: And take legal actions against each other. we are never. I don't think we've ever been without a case where, you know, some family member hasn't petitioned the court to kick out another family member and replace them. You know, we, when that, when it's that situation, oftentimes the, the relationship doesn't change between those family members and us, right?

Mia: Because we're causing the same thing that caused them consternation that they had before. When really, I mean, the real problem is that. Families are greedy about their inheritance or they're angry over how mom and dad left their inheritance, know, or they want to micromanage and run it themselves because they feel that that's their job, right, as the kids. And if the animosity got too strong, fiduciaries can resign and, you know, ask the courts to appoint somebody new you know, somebody who will. perhaps maintain a more cooperative relationship with the family. I mean, they're not, this doesn't happen to us all the time, but you do have to have a real level of patience and a sanguine personality to do this kind of work. I think probably one of the best pieces of advice I could give people when you're making your estate plans, it's really difficult advice to follow, I know, talk with your family about what you're doing. And what your intent is so that they're not surprised if they have questions, if they have concerns, you deal with it as a family, you know, ahead of time that really resolves so many issues later on.

Jenni: Okay yeah, I can see, I mean, you, like, everything you're, everything that you say you do is like, Oh, I think there's a lot of need for this, right? Even if you think, again, I'm thinking from the context of an adult child, dealing with elderly parents more than anything else, right? Because hopefully it'll still be many years before my clients are in a position where they're worried about their own dementia.

Jenni: But how does, how does one work with you? Like, what does that look like? Let's just give the example of somebody who's got a parent out of town or they're just on, you know, like they would like some support helping with their parents care for you. How does it work?

Mia: Sure. So, yeah, that's one thing to look at. With the client I had who he lived in Southern California and, you know, his mother lived here in the Bay Area where I live. We communicate with each other by email or text, you know, we talk to each other on the phone. We got put together on her bank accounts.

Mia: So, you know, we. Both had access to her finance to certain amount of finances, and we did some financial planning for her to, you know, we wanted to protect her the money she had. And so we set up a third party, a trust for her that was an irrevocable trust that she never had access to. And the two of us were the trustees, right?

Mia: So we were, know, trying to help protect public benefits that she might be eligible for. And then, you know, I would work with the memory care facility and the assisted living place before that. you know, directly. And if there were issues that came up, then I would contact him and let them know. We produce a monthly invoice, right?

Mia: That's detailed similar to an attorney's by here's every single thing we did that you're getting charged for by, you know, every six minute period. But there's detail in what happened. It's not the same thing as a client attorney confidentiality, right? So we can say, called Jane X, the director of the memory care facility, you know, asked, you know, what, you know, was the nature of the medical emergency that morning? Why hadn't I been called, you know, set up a protocol to ensure I knew about, you know, this ahead of time next time, stuff like that. So this goes on, these details go on our invoices and people who hire us to take care of their parents see those every month, and so they know what we do. The

Jenni: so Jim, sorry, go just back to the pricing structure. So people know it's like you guys have like a setup fee, right? And then after that it is like an out, like based just an hourly kind of fee. Is that, is that correct? Okay.

Mia: Like most fiduciaries, we charge hourly. Though for very large estates that require complex financial management, fiduciaries can often charge a percentage of the estate. , we've always, everything we've done has always been hourly, yes.

Jenni: So, I mean, you really do do everything, right? So, I mean, again, professional sons and daughters. What would a son and what would a good son and daughter, what would a filial son and daughter do? And you're doing that obviously, like people put a lot of trust in you guys, right? Like it's, you're playing a really big role thank you so much. This was awesome.

Mia: Right. Thanks Jenny. Bye. Bye

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