[Music] at this time I would like to introduce mayor McCormick who absolutely supports every single Endeavor of our department of Senior Services mayor good morning how's everybody doing today all right is there a better town in New Jersey to be a senior in than Woodbridge Township heck no heck no you know want to know why people like Michelle Morgan the head of our department of Senior Services people like caristan Allison wisnoski people like Jody and Renee in the back at the table and Dawn on the administrator side people on the social worker side like Colette and like Kristen and like Julie people who run this great Senior Center here at the avanel Nights of Columbus like Hank people working the computer so we can see it like Leon so this is something I love when we do these seminars I love when they sell out I love when everybody comes to them I'm a former CPA so I was in this field for a long time Helping Seniors with Estate Planning and life planning and figuring out insurance and figuring out wills and things like that I haven't done it in a long long time cuz I'm kind of busy being the mayor and I forgot all the rules so I'm no good don't ask me on the way out hey mayor what do you think I don't know I forgot I forgot it's been 20 years since I've done it but I know how important it is you all have assets to protect you want to take care of your kids and you want to take care of your grandkids this is important to know what you should be doing and when you should be doing it so I'm glad that we run these seminars and I'm glad we have the team that we have so thank you all for coming out have a great seminar and have great rest of the [Music] [Applause] day I couldn't have said it better as the mayor said pre-planning is absolutely key in our field of social work we always have cases where we are confronted with where we're dealing with families and with older adults and the time comes and your wishes should be honored and what better way to prepare for your wishes to be honored by the topics we have to be presented today from your living will discussion on the wills as a difference to a living will and the surrogates office and a whole host of other topics at this time I want to introduce Allison wisnoski she is the division head to the our uh division on Aging she runs our social work division I'm very proud of her I'm very proud of my colleagues and it is because of them that we are able to put these kinds of seminars and conferences together because here in Woodbridge Township we believe that the more informed you are the wiser you can make decisions we are a community that grows together so Allison hi thank you m thank you Michelle hi everyone um so first and foremost of course I'd love to uh thank the mayor thank you so much for being here today and for all your support always and Michelle my director thank you for all your support and everything you do for us um of course I wouldn't be able to put this conference can you guys hear me no I know okay it's coming out okay I would not have been able to put this conference together without my staff my secretarial staff who's here today jod Dawn who's not here today but helped tremendously Michelle dispoto um Renee Santos my social work team who I'm very proud of and work so so hard for all of you so my social work team who I'm tremendously proud of and thank you so much for all your help and the hard work that you do for the senior community of Woodbridge Township Colette Curry Kristen Lorenson Julie Hackler and Melissa kblt who's not here so thank you all for coming this is a tremendous crowd and I'm so excited it's a very important topic and you have a good list of presenters ahead of you so now I would like to um give it back to Michelle to introduce the first presenter so our first presenter is Mary Katherine lanquist she has 29 years of clinical and administrative experience in geriatric specialized in dementia care supporting family caregivers training professionals and providing community health education she is currently the program coordinator of the Copa Institute for Alzheimer's disease and Related Disorders at Rutter's Health University Behavioral healthc Care Copa stands for comprehensive services on Aging the care to caregivers helpline en copes a consultation and education Services is also a part of what Mary Catherine runs Mary Katherine so good morning everybody and welcome I am so glad that you are here today because I love this topic I love to think about quality of life throughout our entire life right we always want to think about all the good things that we want to do well I like thinking about the good things we're going to do up until the day we die so if you want a good quality of life up until the end of your life give me a hand wve who wants that we all do right we want the best quality of life we can possibly have it doesn't matter what we're going through physically right and and we all know one day that we are going to die right that's like paying taxes you have to pay taxes you have to die so this is a great chance for us to stop and think about what is really important to us so we're going to talk about some legal things later but this is more we're starting with what's most important for you to stop and think about what your values are for yourself and how can you reflect on that and how can you write that down and let all the important people in your life know about that so that what you want for your life can be honored throughout your entire life and also everything we're going to talk about is going to relate to if you're supporting someone else maybe you have a spouse or you have a sibling or you have a friend and maybe they're depending on you for some assistance so all the things that we're going to talk about you can use to kind of help them have the type of life that they want throughout their entire life as well so you are so lucky to be here in this Township because your your team here really cares about you and theyve they've all given you your own free Five Wishes in your packet there so this is a great document it is a legal document and we're going to talk a little bit about that this is just the beginning of the conversation so when you go home you can look at it you can think about it and you can fill it out as well and then it becomes your your living Advanced Care directives so we're going to talk more in detail about what that means so hopefully by the end of our time here today you're going to be able to discuss the benefits of end of life conversations and Advanced Care planning you're going to be able to list the implications of not engaging in Advanced Care planning and I hope you're going to be able to engage with some of the tools that we have such as the post we're going to real briefly look at that that's another great tool that might help you and the five wishes to help you with your Advanced Care planning as well so first let me ask everybody who is here today has anybody completed an advanced care plan or a durable power of attorney or an instructive directive for yourself or for a loved one let me see a hand ra hand all right if you have a living will if you have Advanced Care directives if you designated someone to be your durable power of attorney let me see those hands and all right good so that's probably less than half of our friends who are here today we're hoping when you leave here today you're going to be armed with information so you're going to contact your lawyer you're going to contact your family and you're going to talk about these things because it's really important to have these things in place now we know that it is um not easy talking about these things and it it involves various things when we're talking about end of life conversations it means those things that may happen to us towards the end of our life it could be the last few years of our life it could be the last months the last weeks or the last days and then it can also be what happens to us after we die some of us think about that some of us might know now what we want when we do die and our families know about that but some of us maybe we haven't thought about that or we haven't had those conversations with our M ones as well so wondering from anybody who's in the room here today have you ever had to take care of all these things for someone after they died and you didn't know what they wanted yeah a few people yeah was was that was that easy or was it hard hard it's hard right when you don't know what other people want it's extra burden on the people who are still here so that's a good reason why we should be engaging in these conversations now as well we want it to be easy on us and we want it to be easy on other people as well so we can think about this related to ourselves and also someone who we are supporting is anybody in the room here today a caregiver if you're Prov care for someone give be a hand a few people right so sometimes the person we're caring for they might not be able to articulate to us or tell us what they want to so we're going to talk a little bit about that as well but we can um do some of these things for other people to help them get the quality of life that they want as well so the way I'd like to to start this conversation is not to think about dying right because hey that's a down right nobody likes to think about that I like to think about living that it's more a conversation about how can I live my fullest life throughout my whole life that's why I didn't wear black today everybody I wear my spring green because this is about life it's about living this is a happy topic thinking about the things that are important to me and what I want to accomplish in my life throughout my life is really really important so does anybody here have anything on their bucket list do you do you keep a bucket list no all right this is a great thing for us all to do so sometimes people have a bucket list when they're younger right of things that they want to accomplish throughout their life but everybody here has um great experience you've done many things you've accomplished many things but even when we are approaching the third or fourth Act of our life there are still things that are important to us that we want to accomplish so I'm wondering from everybody who's here in the room today and if anybody wants to call anything out does anybody have anything that they would like to accomplish on their bucket list or something that maybe they want to do by their next birthday bu somebody said everything everything you want to do consist the money if you don't have the money you cannot do it oh yeah so that's a really good point we probably all want to do a lot of things that it requires money right you don't have the money it's hard to do that you're absolutely right about that so but but from the things that you would want to do that might be within um your your reach what might be something that you might want to doel travel travel is always a big one right yeah it might even be something like plant tomato plants and have a garden yes oh did you say yes to planting tomatoes and having a garden yes all right anybody else have anything that they want to do on their bucket list I want to go to Africa go to Africa wonderful get out of the sun apartment and get a house oh yeah so if you're not happy with where you're living right maybe there's something that isn't going right in your life right now and you want to change that around that's a great thing and a great goal to have so it's really important for us when we're thinking about this topic to think about what is it that I want what are the things that make me happy what is important to me because when we identify these things then we can structure our life in a way that will support that we can have the life we want up until the very end and this is going to be different for for all of us right we all have different things that feel good for us and are important for us so you have a in your little plastic bag everybody has this hand out right here this little thing that you see in the corner birthday bucket list 50 things to do before your next birthday so you take that and you look at that you know when your next birthday is right so and you think o any those 50 things sound good to me and maybe you get a piece of paper or a journal and you right now things that are important to you that you might want to do before your next birthday and then you kind of shoot for doing one that seems really achievable so um is everybody able to find that the 50 things you want to do before your next birthday and if anybody doesn't have a copy you just see us in the back of the room and we'll make sure that you get a copy so then you also have another little paper inside your packet and some list where you can write down your top things that are really important to you do you see that in there as well so where you can list the the top things so use that as your tool to help you think about the things that are really important to you as you move forward at this stage of of your life completely doable right we can all do that we can think about things that are really important to us so that's how we'd like to start and then when when we're thinking about having end of life conversations I'm just going to ask everybody um and you can raise your hand again how many people in the room are comfortable having end of life conversations some of us right maybe about half of us or so so most of us we're not comfortable with this right it's kind of a little bit scary so in some families we just don't talk about this the family takes care of it right might be one person who's designated in the family to kind of take care of everything so in some families things just happen in a certain way and the individuals don't get up to don't get the chance to make up their mind about it but it can be hard to have these conversations so so you're not alone if you're feeling that it's hard to kind of talk about this so let's talk about what some barriers are so so sometimes we don't want to talk about these things because talking about death is just plain hard right it can be really really not comfortable at all so and then lots of times this is a big reason we have a lot of fear right I'm afraid right yeah I'm afraid about what might happen we saw what happened during Co right and how things happened you know and everything that they kind of have had to face so for for some some people talking about death we feel like it might be bad luck or we're afraid that we might upset other people if we bring up the topic too so sometimes we might worry about being open about what we want because it might cause conflict with our other family members has anybody been in that situation before yes all right so sometimes you might want something different than what your family thinks you should want so we're afraid to kind of bring up these topics so other reasons other barriers to having these conversations that are very common for people are is that if if we have an illness we might or the person who are supporting has an illness we don't know how it's going to progress right okay doctors can tell us a little bit but they might not be able to give us exact details has anybody been in that situation before where you just have lots of uncertainty about how things are going to unfold with the illness we might not know about services that are out there like pallative care and hospice care we might not know what's involved with that sometimes people think that Hospice Care is just something that you get the few days before you actually die when in in reality you could be on hospice for a couple of years and Medicare is paying for it and hey we want that w we so we we want that so many of us don't know hospice is there for us it gives lots of great services and some people who go on hospice actually wind up getting better and get kicked off of so that's a good thing so you also have a handout in your little plastic bag packet that explains the difference between pallative care and hospice care so because we want you to know about this so you can access services that are going to help you and the people who are supporting you so take that home and read about that too so sometimes not knowing what's out there makes us afraid to kind of talk about these things and then also we don't know what's involved um for things like artificial nutrition and maybe we have some friends here in the room today who have supported a family member who was dying and they weren't eating anymore and the doctors asked you do you want a fe tube for your family member has anybody cross yeah okay you know that's a really hard thing to answer right or if the person your family member stops breathing the medical team might say to you do you want us to do CPR do you want them to be on artificial ventilation so there are all these things that we can do out there to sustain life and if you can't speak for yourself we want to make sure that your supporters know what you would want for yourself and the person who you may be supporting we want to make sure that you're doing what is in alignment with what they would want for themselves if they could make those decisions for themselves as well so sometimes not knowing what's involved in all these things causes some fear and it makes us a little bit reluctant to talk about these topics as well so um so those are just a few barriers that that many of us do face can anybody think of any other barriers that that kind of get in your way from having these conversations well um my sister H man just Cast Away November 15th was buried in Morganville on the 20th and he was veteran supposedly I don't know that for sure but my sister said so and he was buried under Medicaid and ended up in a CW box oh all right so things did not happen the way that very other Medicaid they end up in a c box and in morville they have a separate a separate thing where only people that bu under Medicade are oh goodness yeah well that seems very unfortunate so and so things did not happen the way you would have liked to happen with your sister when when she di for her man oh for her man okay so sometimes the these things happen right so there can be lots of things that kind of cause us concern so so that's why it's good that we can kind of talk about these things and get them out in the open now um so we can move ahead to finding out the best information to have the plan that we want as well so now a Aging in New Jersey this is this is really important for us to understand that today in New Jersey patients approaching the end of life are treated with more aggressive Medical Care than any other state in New Jersey this type of care is often unwanted and burdensome to patients and accounts for costs that are 20% above the national average now let's look at this from from two sides right the good thing about this is that we live in a state where we have access to lots of medical care that can extend our life that's good right because if you want it we've got it the other side of this is if you don't want all that stuff you might get it just because we have it and you went to a hospital and you didn't let people know that you didn't want that stuff so this is the beginning of the conversation for you to understand a little bit to think about these things and to get down your wishes so if you want all the treatments you can have it if you want some treatments here but not those treatments you can designate that and then you can have a higher quality of life for for yourself or the person you are supporting so what happens if we don't make known what we want lots of things can happen and it can be negative implications um we could be in extreme physical discomfort and if anybody here here has been in the hospital recently anybody had a hospitalization this year or did or felt sick you know you know when you're not feeling good it's hard to kind of think straight right can you relate to that when you're not feeling well it's hard to make major decision so if we're not feeling well we or we're in the hospital we might be in a lot of discomfort our brains might not be functioning at their optimal level so cognitively we may we may not be at our best we might have decreased awareness we might be drifting in and out of sleep so it might be hard for us to kind of stay focused to talk about these things we may not be able to speak my dad had um kateed artery surgery a year ago and it was a while that he couldn't even talk because everything was kind of impacted in in his throat we might have stress from medical interventions if you've been in the hospital you know how stress medical interventions can be life-saving but stressful for us we might be feeling depressioned and anxious when you're in the hospital the lights never get turned out there's all types of beeping and noise and all that stuff so chances are we're not going to be in the right frame of mind to be making decisions for ourselves that's why it's good that we think about it now when there's nothing going on there's not a crisis and we are clearheaded because all all of those things that we just talked about can really compromise our decisionmaking ability so that's why it's good that we talk about it and we get these things down now so now let's look at how we want to die versus how we die and this is from a study that was done so 80% of Americans would prefer to die at home when asked 80% of Americans will prefer to die at home now I want to hear some guesses about what percent of Americans do you think actually do die at home Z 20 40 10 all right good good good guesses there so 60% die in hospitals 20% die in nursing homes and 20% die at home so the point of us having these conversations that if you're somebody who wants to die at home then we want you we want to get this number up to 80% so that 80% of us can die at home if that's where we want to die if you want to die in um in a hospital we want you to be able to die in a hospital my best friend died when she was 58 years old of pancreatic cancer just a few years ago and she was very insistent she did not want to die at home I learned so much from her she said I want to die in a hospice facility and she was able to do that you know in the last few weeks of her life when she really deteriorated she went ahead she looked at the hospice facility she picked the one that she wanted and then she was able to die there so I'm not saying we should all want to die at home this is just one study that was done I'm just saying it's important for you to identify what your preference would be to write that down to have discussions about it and to let your supporters know question I have a microphone what happens I die at home okay I die today Pi me up ier what happen to me then they're going to somebody's going to pick me up and put me in the hospital anyway right well if you if you die in home I mean this is not my area of expertise but I think what happens is if you're on hospice and you die at home the hospice team comes and they navigate everything if it's a sudden unexpected Deb then I think the coroner has to come just to give like legal clearance to everything and then whatever you had set aside for your end um your your burial Arrangement those people would come and um take care of your body I think that's what happen ask one one here home underp call her Hospital's unit the nurse has to come out to beg her and called the um funer director good good thank you for sharing that so um our friend here her her friend um died at home she was in hospice the husband called hospice and then the nurse came out to pronounce her dead and then the funeral people came so but this is why it's good to talk about it because we might worry about that how can I die at home what would happen to me we have these conversations now so then we know what was happen so if we don't want to die at home that's great too if you're in the hospital things are taken care of and there but it's just good for us to decide or to think about what we want right now do we have one more comment over here I have a question I don't know if you're going to cover the right to die New Jersey the right to die state with terminal illness but it's very hard to find practitioners who will participate and many don't even know right thank you I did not have that in this but yes now in New Jersey we're one of the states that um that participates in depth of dignity or able to die if you want to if you have a uh a terminal illness you can um consult with um it has to be multiple doctors and they have to declare that you have terminal illness you will not get better then you are able to self administer medication so you can take your life when you want to so where you want to to have that as well so um so that's an option but you're right it's newer not every doctor is going to participate in that so anybody who has questions any more questions about this you can ask um Alison and Michelle and the team here you can call us at car care we have our tamplate in your flyer and we're happy to connect with other resources too you also have a nice little hand out in your folder that summarizes everything we're talking about here today and are on the back that you can look up more of this stuff as well so you're right we do have options and that's why it's good for us to talk about it so you do know what your options are as well so um why is it good for us to talk about this lots and lots of benefits but the main benefit is it closes the Gap in the desired care and the delivered care we want what you want to be what actually happens to you all right we don't want that what you want gets ignored we want to make sure that you have every best shot of having what you want it can improve the quality of life for you and your relatives too you know when you're lying there and you're you're sick I remember this from when my father-in-law died um the family was fighting over his bed as he was dying so because he got sick very suddenly he had pancreatic cancer too but he just took a he turned on got very sick and nobody nobody could believe it he actually wanted to die right away he didn't want any treat him but his family was fighting with him because they wanted to live so there was lots of fighting over him and he said please stop I want peace so when we talk about these things and have these things kind of said it can kind of prevent the family from fighting or having conflict because we said what what we wanted so that's really important it can allow you to maintain a sense of control all right when we're in the hospital and we're really sick we're not feeling well things can be taken out of our control if we write down our wishes that is the guiding plan and that can help us maintain that control as well and that it can also decrease our worry about the future so anybody here worry about the future give me a hand wve we probably all do right but if if we think about it and if we start to write it down then maybe we're not going to worry so much about that all right it could be one last thing we can say Oh I thought about that I PL into place my family knows I can rest a little bit easier T yeah but anyway I feel that does not stay they just let you die well well um the comment is I feel that hostice does not save you they just let you die and yes the purpose of hos is to be there to support us when there is no hope that we will recover they are there to make us comfortable and to help us have the best quality of life so that's what their their purpose is now there are lots of hospice organizations out there all right there are there are four profit hospice organizations and there are not for-profit organizations hospice organizations so like everything else you kind of have to shop around to find one that kind of fits with what your philosophy is um there's one around us um where they'll send a harpus to your house they have volunteers who are bringing you soup every week they'll send them Aus to to your house so so so they're all different and you can talk with your team at the senior center to kind of help you locate one that might be good for you as well but that's the point you're not going to get better and hospice is there to make sure that you have the best quality of life when you or the person you're supporting can't chew or eat food anymore hospice is going to be there and they're going to help you figure out what's the best way to get my family member nutrition that tastes good for them they'll help me with all different types of of of chalk food or or puree food puree food so they're there to help you a person gets bed store they're there to heal that bed store so that person isn't in pain so they give you a special cushions they give you special moisturizers for the skin sometimes our mouth gets dry they give special things to put in your mouth to kind of bring you comfort as well so hospice is there to make your life better at the end as well so now what happens if I am supporting someone who really maybe they have some memory issues right or maybe they um all of a sudden had a heart attack they were fine yesterday they had a heart attack they had a stroke now they're in a hospital they're in a coma they can't talk and the doctors are starting to ask me all these questions do you want a feeding to um if they code again do you want us to do CPR and resuscitate them and what if we don't know what they want what do we do then we can use something which we call substituted judgment and that means that we stop and we think about that person what we know about them how they lived their life what their goals are and then we think okay this person who I know in this situation what do I think they would want for themselves how would they answer these questions and we can talk with other people in the family we can talk with our our religious leader sometimes we like to talk with them to find out and get some input on that as well so that we can exercise substituted judgment to help us make decisions for someone else when they can't make those decisions for themselves so but if we all start to have these conversations now when we're fine and we're coherent and we can make our wishes known then we have to worry about this L but just in case you are in this situation you can think about what would the person want if they were able to answer for themselves and you have some links on your handout at the end some links that can kind of explain this more and help you think about these things as well and then we're also there at care to caregivers we're there to support you if you're supporting someone you can call us and we have a peer supporter and they'll listen to you and help you figure out all these things um in a situation that that you might be in as well so now now a couple things and maybe people are going to talk about this a bit more later but this is just a basic document you can get this off of the State website and this is the healthare proxy so this is when you app point someone to make Health Care decisions for you in the event that you cannot make your own health care decisions because you can't talk or you're not coherent at the time or maybe you're in surgery and you have to have a decision made if you can't make that decision your healthare processing makes that decision so this is a basic form that you can fill out on the State website but what we're sharing with you today your your bonus gift for coming here is you have your own free Five Wishes which also covers this it's a much more comprehensive document so I'm just letting you know that there's there's another way to get that out there as well so um you can also download a basic instructive Advance care direcor from the State website and you can fill in the little blinds here and this is document too and this can get attached to your medical record and you can give it to your family members as well so those are the two very important documents but we're also going to talk about how the five wishes encompasses all of those things in a really beautiful way that honors you and let shine through who you are and what's really important to you so um does everybody see that in their packet there there five wish book why don't you pull that out and get that ready we're going to look at that a little bit together but it go Section just to introduce you to it it's blue on the front it looks like this on the front so you are the luy recipient of your own three five wishes if you want to get some for your family members you can go online and you can order them they're not that expensive if you want to do it electronically online you can even fill it out online as well you don't have to put it on the paper form I think it's is something like I don't know 32 different languages so which is great as well you can get those all online as well so we're going to just watch a quick video here about a a couple who um who use the five wishes and they're going to let us know how important it was to them's going to help us get in the video I never forget when my mom you know got sick and we were in the room and the nurse asked us her who would she would like to want to make the final decision when it comes to that and my brother who's the oldest was right there by our bedside and I was there by the door and she said t and my knees kind of buckled for a minute and I thought about it but I knew she knew that I would not let her suffer uh a lot of time family members we want to see our families linger because we want to have time to maybe make up you know for things we didn't said things that we didn't do but we have to honor those you know uh and and the fact that we to do that in a beautiful way and you know five wishes will allow us to say okay this is how you do it because a lot of times people when it's taboo they don't know what to do and now having this document saying this is how you do it is going to not only encourage and edify but also Empower people to have a conversation that's why I'm so excited you know about five wishes and and being a part of this board because we get to now change the narrative in communes of C so that that's one one coule experience with that she went through with her mom right anybody go through this with a parent to have to make decisions for them right yeah it's hard so us taking the time to do our own Five Wishes can really help us make sure that things go the way we want to go when that time does come for us as well so we're going to look at now it's called Five Wishes because it's divided into five sections all right so so so the first section is if you want to open that up and we're going to look at that a little bit the first wish is for who do you want to make these really important decisions for you all right the person I want to make Health Care decisions for me when I can't make them for myself so and that's on page page four so open up to page four now remember remember I showed you before you can use the healthare proy form from the State website and that's a legal document this is a legal document too so why we love the five wishes is because it wraps it all into a nice little packet here that is so beautiful and comprehensive and what I love about it it really takes into account the spiritual side of ourselves right I don't know about you but for me the spiritual stuff is really important especially when I'm thinking about in this earth I want to make sure all that spiritual stuff is included too so that's why this is such a great document so now it's important for us to think about when we're deciding who our health care agent is going to be the health care agent is different from who you're designating to take care of your legal Affairs all right those are two different things so you have a a hopefully a durable power of attorney a power of attorney is when someone else can have the power to execute legal things for you adorable is that if you can't speak for yourself that person can do it when you are incapacitated but that's completely different from um who you're designating as your healthare proy so and sometimes it's good not to have the same person doing both things say you have a couple children maybe you have one who's in healthare maybe one who who's a nurse or somebody who's just better with the medical stuff you might want to have them be your healthare proxy and then you might want to have somebody else who's in your family who's good with the finances to take care of your legal and your financial affairs all right does anybody have any questions about that what questions do you have about that what I have a living will a living will is a five wishes this is just a different kind of living will it's a it's a kind of a more expansive living will where you can designate speci speciic things that you want so if you have a living wheel when you go home pull it out or right and read it over we're touching on some additional topics here today maybe some things that we're talking about here today you might want to add your existing existing living will or you might want to say hey I want to update my living will and I'm going to do that by filling out the five wishes once you do that this is your legal docum in um New Jersey this is a legal form yes um yeah on the back in section five it tells you all about that what you have to do and you can change it at any time as well so so that's the first thing to think about is who do I want to speak on my behalf so if you haven't designated that person you want to start to think about that and then you want to know that that because you wanted to be somebody who's going to be in alignment with what you want um I once had had a a person tell me that they did not make their adult children their healthare proxy because this person was very insistent that she didn't want to be on life support and she said that she felt her children would have a really hard time honoring that because her children wouldn't let go of her and they would want her to be here and they would keep her on life so because of that she didn't want to put them in that situation she appointed a friend who she knew would CL so because her kids would not be able to do that so that was just you know one illustration of somebody who thought about who's going to be the best person to make these decisions for me and she didn't pick people who was going to be really hard for them to carry out what her wishes would be yes don't you need the person's permission well I would definitely ask the person yes because you want to pick a person who's agreeable right I would want to pick a person who I felt comfortable with and who I could sit down and review what's in my living will my Advanced Care directives my five wishes and I would want them to say yes I will honor that for you and I will do whatever you have spelled out there by all means just don't pick somebody and then don't tell them really go over all this one more question on this just you were fixing your shirt there all right so so so that is the first thing and you know it's things like um if you want to donate your organs you know you want that person to kind of know about that and if you look through on page five you'll see all the things it kind of talks about you know what if you have to go to an assisted living or to a nursing home you know you give them permission to make decisions on that decisions to request take away or not give Medical Treatments you tell them exactly what you want or what if you want to be moved to another state to be closer to other family members you can give them the power to do all those things as well and then if as you see on the bottom of page five if I change my mind about having a health care agent it tells you what to do I just rip up this copy of five we that I have tell my doctors and my family members I would to canel my current living will write the word revoked on it and then you can do another one so we can always change our minds because hey we know things happen right you know sometimes something happens with with with a relationship so then wish two is for us to think about my wish for the kind of medical treatment I do or don't want so now this is why I love this one so if you look at Pages six and Pages seven look at how comprehensive this is right um at the at the top of the page what you should keep in mind as my caregiver the first thing I do not want to be in pain I want to be comfortable wish three says what can be done to make me comfortable we are going to get to that so some people might say um I I I don't care if I'm in pain I want to be cognitively aware so they might say don't give me painkillers because it might make me not cognitively aware so there're all right with living with the pain but some of us might say I don't care what you have to give me I don't want to be lying in a bed in pain so give me whatever so this is a chance where we can kind of designate that I want to be offered food and fluids by mouth if it is safe for me to eat and drink really important I want to be kept clean and warm I do not want anything done or omitted by my doctors or nurses with the intention of taking my life so and it gets more specific on here too so take your time set aside some time and just read through this if you have more questions talk with your doctor about it talk with your team at the at the senior center call us at care to caregivers and we can talk with you more in in depth but if if I'm close to death and this is on on page seven if my doctor and another health care professional both decide that I'm likely to die within a short period of time and life support treatment would only delay the moment of my death what would I want and you can check on here what you want I want to have life support treatment I do not want to have life support treatment if it has been started I want it stopped or I want to have life support treatment if my doctor believes it would help but I want my doctor to stop giving me life support treatment if it is not helping my health conditions or symptoms so we can kind of specify what is important to us so and there's other categories on that page too if I'm in a coma and I'm not expected to wake up or recover do I want to be on life support do I not want to be on life support do I want to be on life support until the whole family can get there and they can say their goodbyes and then then I want to come off it's really important for people to kind of know about that so if I have permanent brain damage and I'm not and I'm not expected to to recover gives little scenarios there or other conditions too so and then there's a section at the bottom of page seven where you can write down anything that is really important to you as well so um my mother this was goodness gracious almost 20 years ago she fell and hit her head and had a massive BL brain bleed and wound up on Li so um thank goodness for some reason we had been talking about this and the course was an accidental um de so but we kind of knew what she wanted so um you know my dad opted she had brain surgery they put her on life support but we knew there was no hope for her but we kept her on life support she did not want to be on life support she was a nurse and she knew what was involved and she was very clear about that we kep her all my support and told all the would get there and we could surround her we could pray and then we withdrew withdrew the light support so we did like a combination of things so but it was a peaceful time because we knew what she wanted we took whatever was available to keep her alive until as a family we could come together and say our goodbyes and then we were able to let her go so so that's why this document is important let people know what your wishes are so let's move on to section three section three is about my wish for how comfortable I want to be and that's on page eight so the first thing is I do not want to be in pain I want my doctor to give me enough medicine to relieve my pain even if that means I will be drowsy or sleep more than I would otherwise so some of us might not want that some some of us might want to suffer with the pain in order to not be drowsy or sleepy that's a personal preference we all have different pain thresholds right think about family members who you know we have different um different desires for that if I show signs of depression nausea shortness of breath or hallucinations I want my caregivers to do whatever they can do to help me I wish to have a cool moist cloth put on my head if I have a fever I never thought about that but I'll be darned I want that do you want that too yeah we kind of want whatever we want to keep keep us comfortable I want my lips and mouth kept moist to stop dryness so all very specific things I wish to have warm baths often I wish to be kept fresh and clean at all times somebody might want that somebody else might say hey if I'm dying do not even think about giving me a bath I don't want that so another thing on here I wish to be massaged with warm oils as often as I can be that sounds pretty great to me but I think if I went near my husband if he was dying with warm oils he would like kind of say get get away from so so just all really really different things like like like yes oh I can find this left oh my oh 10 minutes right I I know for myself I told my kids do not like to hear about this I love talking about this stuff all the time and they're like Mom would you stop it please but I'm like listen if I'm ever in a coma because I people I swear to you this right now when you're in a coma you can hear what's going on and you know what's going on I heard people who have been in comas have come back and they've told me that so I told my family if I'm in in coma I told them the songs I want to hear I said get the people from church to come and I want them to sing this song around my bed all right so I told them that and I said if I'm in a coma would you really like head over your a window CU I really love to feel the sun on me the sun coming through through the window that's really really important to me if I'm in a coma if I'm dying I love to feel that sun coming through I'd love it even more if you can open the window and I could hear the birds and I could feel a little breeze Blowing by on me I prefer for my end days to be in that environment than in a hospital with and so that's really important to me those are things in and um hopefully I'll have a dog at that time um current dog hopefully I'll be up a little B longer he probably won't live that long but if I had animals I want the animals to be right there laying in the bed with me so that's really important to me that's what's in mind so think about what's really important for you and these are things that you want to put in your five wishes so you can see this is a bit more expansive than what you would put in like a typical Advanced Care directive or living will this is really kind of Broad and I think it kind of encompasses the whole person which is why we really love this document um wish four which is on the bottom of page eight My Wish for how I want people to treat me I wish to have people with me when possible I want someone to be with me when it seems that death may come at any time and again that's different for all of us we recently supported a family and her husband lives in a nursing home and the end was imminent they had hospice and they knew that he was going to die within a few hours but they also knew that he would want to die without anyone being there because that's who he was so they left and they went home and he died like at 2:30 in the morning and they knew he died that time so but they felt that they were honoring his wishes by not being with him you might want someone to be there with you right your family member might want you to be there with them so that's why it's good to kind of think about that and to let other people know about that as well I wish to have my hand held and to be talked to when possible even if I don't seem to respond to the voice or touch of others some of us like to be touched when we're not feeling well some of us don't like that this gives us a chance to kind of specify that I wish to have others by my side praying for me when possible some of us might like that some of us might not like that I also have in mind if my husband is still alive he will not be sitting in the room with uh the news on 247 I will awaken myself from a com and go over and turn off the TV so but just think about these what's the Ty of envirment that you want when my when my best friend died and she was in hostage it was really important to her that there was soft music playing and she the lights were very painful for her so she had those I those little battery powered lights you put the little batteries in and little twinkle lights those were the only lights she had on in the room so she was able to say this is the type of environment that I want this is who I want to be there so this this document really helps us kind of specify all these things and and I love this one at the the last one on wish for I wish to be called by my name please call me and maybe we have a nickname you know or and we want people to call us that or if we're in the hospital maybe we don't want to be called Mrs Smith or Mr Jones by our healthare workers maybe we want them to call us by our nickname you know because that's going to be comany of so this document allows us to kind of specify all those things and then section five is where we kind of wrap it all up and that starts on page nine and um there's a chance at the top there's lots of things you can cross off some things that aren't important to you um I wish for all my family members to make peace with each other before my death if they can yeah isn't that a dream right yeah we all wish that right um I wish for my family and friends to think about what I was like before I became seriously ill I want them to remember me in this way after my death so this gives us a chance to kind of think about what do we want to happen after we die I already know what I want at my whatever service they want up giving me um I'd like to have one of those green burials too you know if possible just put me in the ground and let and let me walk that's important to me um might not be in my family but that's really important to me so this is a chance where you can say what do I want after I die do I want to be created do I want to be buried somewhere do I want my ashes to go somewhere do I want a party do I not want to what I what do I want people to say where do I want it to be it's chance to kind of get input into that as well so um I love this one too I wish for my family and friends to get counseling if they have trouble with my death I want memories of my life to give them joy and not sorrow so it's a nice way to kind of leave some some good assistance for people after we die as well and then when you look on page 10 and you look on page 11 it tells you exactly what to do once you're completing your five wishes as well you get a witness you you sign it you get a w um witnesses there and you get it notorized and then it is your legal document and then you want to and it tells you what to do with it too you want to keep it in a place you want to share it with friends and family so so they know about it as well so that's the five wishes that's your introduction let's let today be the beginning of the conversation about this all right on the hand up that you have there lots of other things other links that you can check out that will help you have these conversations too there's one other thing I just quickly want to mention this is a different type of form that can be filled out with the doctor it's called the PO form p o l s you have a copy of one in your as well this is about exact medical treatment that you would like to have once your dioses with a serious illness or a family member is diagnosed with a serious lifethreatening terminal illness this is a document you fill out with the doctor or the the the nurse practitioner healthare provider about what treatment you want and how long you want it I'm going give you an instance like a say the the grandfather has cancer and there are some treatments out there but he really doesn't want to take those treatments he was the side effect but he has a granddaughter who's getting married in June so he might say to his doctor I want you to do whatever you can to keep me alive so I can go to that wedding in June and dance to the wedding but then after the wedding a month later I would stop all those treatments so this is more directive with your health your providers about What treatments you do and do not want you take this form to your doctor your doctor will have it too and they'll sit down and talk with you about what your options are for the treatment for your specific illness for your family members and then you can decide on what you do and what you do not want so again any more information that that you want about that um I'll be here for the next 15 minutes you can ask me in the back you can call on that care to caregivers and I'm here to support you with that as well you want to keep these conversations going we don't talk about this once and then not talk about we talk about this for years I talk about this with my kids so keep the conversation going and then we want to be respectful of differences we all have different thoughts and belief based on our our fa tradition our own personal values and our culture as well so let's be respectful that even people in the same family might want different things and be respectful of that as well so um so um we're running out of time here so we're going to skip this question but please um there's a little form in your your package if you want to fill that out so let us know what you thought about this presentation here right now you can leave the back you do leave and if you have any further questions about this of our counselors about this we're there to support you as well and our telephone number is on all our handouts in pet as well I think we're done right our time so um so thank you everybody for being here thank you for for participating everybody live your best life up until the end and we hope that you used the five wishes to support you and making know like you want for your best life throughout your life thank [Applause] you wonderful wonderful presentation thank you Mary C cine um to me no one better to talk about such a difficult topic so in depth than her uh she was wonderful I would like to introduce Diane hogland who is the partner in charge of the transactional group at hogland Longo D and duas Diane hogland has extensive expertise in the areas of estate planning probate guardianships and elder law as well as residential and Commercial commercial real estate transactions Diane also speaks regularly throughout New Jersey to Civic professional and religious organizations on estate planning she is a participant in the middle six County surrogate speakers program which provides information to senior citizens groups on probate elder law and estate planning Diane also does presentations at the annual pre-retirement and state planning seminar for Middle County Employees Diana's legal councel to New Brunswick tomorrow a nonprofit organization chairperson of the Central Jersey spinal Court Association and a member of the women in business Committee of the middle six County Regional Chamber of Commerce thank you Diane for coming here today thank you for having me so so thank you for having me um I'm here to speak to you about Estate Planning and whenever I come to any uh estate planning seminars I always tell everyone that regardless of your age or your wealth there's three documents that everybody needs to have and there's I know uh other speakers have uh spoken to you about it but there's the living will which is the healthcare directive um the power of attorney and the last will and testament so the first document that I'll speak to you about is the uh Power of Attorney and there's two different types of Powers of Attorney so there's the general and there's a limited power of attorney um a limited power of attorney are they saying they can't hear me yeah okay okay so um okay so the first document I'll speak to you about is the power of of attorney and there's two types of Powers of Attorney there's the general and The Limited um The Limited power of attorney deals with a specific asset such as a specific bank account a specific uh real estate property um the general power of attorney gives an attorney in fact control over all of your assets uh your real estate stocks bonds bank accounts retirement accounts your car filing of tax returns um access to your safe deposit box um the ability to make gifts for estate planning purposes um so a power of attorney there we go uh a power of attorney can be in three forms uh there's the durable the springing and the lapsing um the lapsing power of attorney lapses when you become disabled or incompetent the springing power of attorney Springs into a factor becomes a effective upon your incapacity uh so the the problem with using the springing power of attorney is that you have to prove that the person is incapacitated so you need to get either a doctor's uh certification or you need to get a court order so sometimes uh having this bringing power of returning kind of defeats the purpose of a power of attorney so what I normally suggest is the durable power of attorney the durable power of attorney uh is effective as soon as you sign it it continues to be in effect uh if you were to become incapacitated um so generally we would I would recommend the general durable power of attorney um so when you choose a power of attorney uh you're giving that person a lot of control you're giving them control over all of your assets so you want to make sure that you trust the person that you're you're giving that power of attorney to um so you can give that uh they can't use the power of attorney until they have it in their hands so um you can give it to them right away if you trust them to to just use it when they need it or you can put it someplace safe in your house and and let them know where it is in case they ever need it um so in order to be uh effective uh it needs to be notorized either by an attorney or by a notary um so the alternative to not having a power of attorney um if you are ever to become incapacitated uh and you don't have a power of attorney then one of your family members would have to apply for guardianship uh so the problem with filing for guardianship is that you have to file a complaint with the Court your family member has to file the complaint uh they have to hire an attorney um the court then needs to uh appoint an attorney for the incapacitated person um it requires a court appearance it requires affidavits from doctors to prove that you're incapacitated um as a result it it could cost several thousands of dollars if you uh have to go through with a Guardians sh um so it's also important to have a power of attorney even if you're married uh and your spouse and you own everything jointly with your spouse you still need a power of attorney your spouse uh cannot get access to your retirement accounts for example they also cannot sign the deed on your behalf if you were to sell your house uh your spouse cannot sign the deed so even if you're married and own everything jointly with your spouse it's still important for you to have a power of attorney um so when you're storing your power of attorney um again you need to keep it in a safe place uh for the most part copies of power of attorney are acceptable but you do need an original Power of Attorney if your your attorney in fact is going to sign a deed on your behalf they need the original to attach to the deed that they are giving to to the buyer of your house uh so you do need to make sure you store the original power of attorney in someplace safe all right um so I the the next thing I'll talk to you about is the way you title your assets um so a problem can arise if for instance you decide to put your child on a bank account with you as a co-owner um as opposed to just giving that child the power of attorney so the problem is is that when you make your child The Joint owner of an account that is your child's account as well so if you have more than one child for instance and you pass away that account would just then go to that child as opposed to going to all of your children equally which is what most people want to have happen um so again the power attorney in that instance is very important uh there's there's also different ways that you can hold real estate you can hold it as joint tenants with right of survivorship that means uh if one person passes away the surviving person um becomes the 100% owner of that property um the other way to hold prop or real estate property is tenants in common meaning that you you own uh an equal share if one of you were to pass away it does not automatically go to the surviving um owner of the property it would go through your will or it would go through in testacy if you do not have a will um if you if you own property um with your spouse um then it is um presumed that you own it as tenants by the entirety which is similar to Joint tenants with right of survivorship meaning that when you pass away your spouse will automatically become the full owner of that property um they don't need to have a deed transferred into their name uh it's just a presumption that it automatically goes to your pass yes if I have an investment and I join ownership with my grandson would that be negated by the follow no no so what what however you hold your bank account um will override whatever you have in your will so if you own uh a bank account jointly that property will or that account will automatically go to the Joint owner it will not go through your will okay um oh we'll we'll do this person first and then we'll come to you I think right can you tell me something about life State yeah I was actually just going to speak about that all right um did you have a question checking account do they get the whole checking account only 50% of it no the whole thing the whole so her question was if someone is a joint owner of a checking account do they only get 50% when you die and the answer is no they get the entire the entire amount in the account okay so um so there's so there's was a question question about a life estate so you can you can um retain a life estate in the property real estate property and name your children as remaindermen for example um that means that you own own the property during your lifetime they can't kick you out they can't sell it without you signing the deed um but when you die that that property will go to your children um so that way um you can you know create a beneficiary of your uh of your house by doing a DED transfer um the other thing is is that you now own a smaller percentage of that property based up based upon your age and um uh you know the interest rate they'll determine what the percentage of your ownership will be in the event for example you have to go into a nursing home of course that transfer has to be 5 years before you apply for Medicaid if that's what you're doing it for um so I think I'm I'm going on to the will unless do you have any questions about the power of attorney or we'll start yeah over here does power of expiration for how long stay in effect well so it should stay in effect until you do a new one if you do a new one unfortunately there are banks that will only accept it if it is uh 10 years old or less so uh even though that's not the law that's what banks require um so I always tell my clients to be aware of that and if it's over 10 years old you may just want to do a new one just just to not have a problem with your your bank bank otherwise otherwise yeah it's valid until you revoke it or until you do a new one okay thank you how about Medicare and Social Security if you have a durable power of attorney for someone can you do you have to send that to the government if the government recognize that um I I've heard that they they have their own Power of Attorney form that they require that you sign with them I've also heard Banks even though that it should be valid and they should use it they don't and they require you to sign a specific power of attorney for that bank account and for for the government um excuse me uh we own a home my wife and I and our son is severely disabled we have power of attorney to the guardianship say God forbid something happened to my wife and I that my daughter has to go through a separate guardianship to get control the house uh is he incapacitated or okay yeah so she she would have to apply to become his Guardian you could you could at this point apply for her to become a co-guardian if you want to do that before you pass away I've had people do that I yes just wait for the mic the bank told me that if you take out a c you can designate a beneficiary and that is like a life policy you have beneficiary and it would not go through the will right that's correct so whenever you have a joint account or you hold or or you have a designated beneficiary for a bank account for an IRA um it goes directly to that beneficiary it does not go through your will yes payable on death is the same thing payable on death and beneficiaries okay okay so I I'll start talking about the last will and testament um and and the importance of having a a a will um so the problem with not having a will as the surrogate's office we'll probably speak up to later but uh you your family member will have to apply for administration um so it ends up that if you have to do that it ends up being more expensive than if you just went and had a will done um the the administrator will have to pay a premium on on a shity bond um the bond is going to be based upon the size of the estate so the larger the estate the larger the insurance premium is going to be um so for that reason alone you should try to have a will just so you can avoid uh the necessity of your family members having to apply for administration um so the other issue is that if you have a will you can determine who you want to be the beneficiaries um otherwise uh there's a New Jersey statute that determines who your beneficiaries of your estate will be if you die in testy um so one ex one example is if um you have a spouse and children and all of the children are from that one spouse if you die without a will the spouse will get everything um if you have a spouse and children and it's a second marriage and you have children from a prior marriage then the statute determines how much your spouse gets and how much your children will get so for instance in that case the spouse gets the first 25% of your estate not less than 50,000 and not more than 200,000 plus half the balance and the children get the balance of your estate so um there there are times when you want your children to get more and there's times when you want your spouse to get more so uh for that reason for second marriages when you have children from a prior marriage it's good to think about those things and to prepare a will so that your estate gets divided up the way you want it to be divided up as opposed to the way um statutes um as opposed to the statute um so I'm just going to go through the will and then I'll I'll take questions after that if that's okay does that make sense okay um so um another benefit to a will is that you can protect minors or disabled children um you can prepare a separate trust for uh special needs children it's called a Special Needs Trust um you can um create trust within your will in your will for younger children for grandchildren um you can set up a trust for those children um so that they can uh um they can get have the money held in trust for them until they reach the age of 25 or 30 uh you can split it up half at 25 the balance at 30 you can split it up the any way you want uh you know depending on the maturity of the child um you can select an executive and then it will provide that the executive can serve without bond therefore they don't have to go and get that premium that I spoke about um you can select your beneficiaries as I went over before um and then as I also noted you have to be aware that if you do hold assets jointly or if you name beneficiaries in any of your accounts those assets go in accordance with those designated beneficiaries or in accordance with that joint account they do not go through the will so you really need to be aware of that particularly when you put your children on your bank accounts for for convenience that could cause a lot of heartache and and and family problems so just be aware of that um so uh as far as you know the original will you it's very important that you keep the original will only the original will can be probated administratively through the surgus office um if you lose the original will please go back to your attorney and and go sign another one even if it's the exact same thing it's really important to have an original will um if you only have a copy you cannot probate it through the surrogates office um and and probating through the surrogates office is very easy it's $100 or so to probate an original will um if you don't have an original will then you have to hire an attorney to file a complaint to have the the copy of the will probated uh so again thousands of dollars if you don't have that original will um when you uh when you do uh prepare uh your your new will and your new power return jne please destroy the old ones um if if you don't they may find the old ones and stop looking so yep you know you need to make sure you do that um so it if you have a very old will uh prior to 1980 um uh there only two witnesses were were required after that they allowed self-proving will uh so if you have a very old will um it should be updated just so that it becomes self-proving so that you don't have to find the witnesses if it's only witnessed by two people one of the witnesses has to come in and sign an affidavit with the surrogate's office to approve the will um if you have the two witnesses in a notary it's self-proving nobody has to show up at the surrogates office or or sign any documentation um so there's some you there's not a lot of tax planning that's really required anymore the the federal estate tax exemption is really high at this point there's not a lot of people that have to worry about that um there's no more New Jersey estate tax that used to be more applicable to most people but there is no more New Jersey estate tax um in New Jersey there's the New Jersey inheritance tax so that is for um people that are not Class A beneficiaries but people who are class A beneficiaries do not have to pay inheritance tax so Class A beneficiaries are your children your grandchildren your spouses um but anyone other than that has to pay the inheritance tax uh brothers and sisters for example have to pay uh 11% they do do you get the first $25,000 Exempted after that it's 11% um everyone else is is 15% so nieces and nephews for example have to pay the 15% um I if I can take questions now if you have any questions about wills C am child have to pay taxes uh so the federal estate tax limit now is $13 million so there's not a lot of people out there that I know of that have to worry about that um in New Jersey no so there used to be a New Jersey estate tax that children would have to pay if your estate was over $2 million um they got rid of that a few years ago so children there there's no more New Jersey estate tax so children do not have to pay any tax inheritance or estate taxes in New Jersey grandchildren are also exempt from inheritance tax I don't think I heard the cover you sorry but if a husband and wife have everything in both of their names one of the spouses pass away that will I believe does not have to be probated because everything was in their names is that correct that's true yeah so uh it for the most part if for uh spouses when the first spouse dies there's a good chance you don't have to probate the will because everything is held jointly um the the one instance is usually if you own a car sometimes people just have to probate the will to change the title in the car um then then you don't again yeah I just have two questions number one for you're talking about trust okay now um if someone was the executive and trustee do they get paid for doing that and do they have to um pay taxes too on that yeah so there is a commission that you get as an executive um and if you do take the commission you do have to pay income tax on it okay there are there are also commissions allowed for trustees and that's all regulated by Statute the percentages my second my second question is for the S office right if a person is let's say say a daughter or a son or something okay and um a person a father or mother dies okay and uh you don't really need to have a a will the will is already there all you have to do is um uh give them certain information to prove that you're who you are and write a letter and pay the amount is that true no I don't so each individual person has a will uh there's no joint Wills so when their their first parent dies that will gets probated um when the second parent dies the second parents will gets probated so you do have to you do have to uh probate no if um one both people die okay the mother and then the father dies later M um all you have to do is one is pay it two uh prove who you are and have the death certificate of the person who died but you don't need a will you don't have to give them the will because the start off S get can answer that question yeah I don't think I understand the question but I think you do you do need to when someone dies you have to present to the surrogate the original will and the original death certificate and the surrogate will then issue you the uh executive's certificate if you die without a will then you have to apply for administration when when you were describing second marriages you use the term children of a few times right is there a differentiation between minor versus adult children and any I'm sorry was that the no if they children regardless of uh minor versus minor versus adult yeah okay is there any requirement about adoption of the children from the first marriage by the spouse of the sa so if if you adopt a child that is your considered your biological child then and they inherit just like your biological children and if you don't have there was no formal adoption is there then there're can they're a stepchild um yeah they they do not inherit uh through intestacy like like biological children do so they be requ orated benici so that would be a good reason if you wanted to leave part of your estate to stepchildren that that would be a good reason to have a will about the age of the will my husband died in 1998 and the lawyer said because everything was in both our names there's no he said to put a the D his will and his death certificate in the envelope okay so it's still in both our names legally but his will I have no idea how old I is well um so the only reason to uh he probably told you to keep the original just in in case something came up that you found that was just in your husband's name in the event you had to probate the will and how to transfer that out of your husband's name into your own so the will to be 40 years old right you can as long as it's original you can probate it as far as I know the I have my Will and then you have yeah so your will does not get probated until you pass away yeah yeah I don't she's not finished yet so you were saying the old will isn't legal I I didn't say it's not legal it just it's burdensome if you have a will that was done before 1980 and it only has two witnesses on it and not and it's not notorized because you have to find the Witnesses in order to probate the will uh you know that that's a long time ago most people have updated their Wills since then um but the point is that in order to easily probate your will it should be witnessed by two people and notorized it's called a self-proving will and as a result you don't have to find the witnesses to sign affidavits in order to probate the will talk about the de to the house the deed to the house is recorded um so even if you lose the original deed it's not a big deal it's recorded we can always find it do a search and we'll find the deed I got that certificate and his will which would be 50 60 years right yeah it's it's probably not needed anymore but it does it doesn't hurt to keep it yeah I think there's someone in the middle there okay so my question is you talk about children with second marriages so if there's no will to say the husband dies of the current marriage the current wife doesn't get all his property that would be divide among his children is that corre um so you're saying if her husband dies and he had children from a prior marriage correct it gets split so there's a percent that the the wife gets and there's a percentage that that the children get and it's according to statute um so if that's not something that you want then that's a good reason to have a will because you may want them to have different percentages than what the statute States the statute just you know comes up with a formula if people don't have a will they have to figure out how how should we divide it if if someone doesn't have a will they have to they have to have a rule on how to divide ity so this that's the statute in New Jersey um the statute provides how things are to be divided if you die without a will um I believe probably every state has an intestacy statute but every state is is different as to what their laws are so what I told you is based on the New Jersey statute I have a question if you do not have a will where do your no so it goes by Statute uh the stat the statute will tell you how your estate will be divided uh so it will go to your spouse it will go to your children it depends what your situation is but the statute will will give you if there is no guidance if there is no children um it'll go to um brothers and sisters it'll go to nieces and nephews then it'll go down to cousins if you don't have brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews so um they you know you'll have extended family getting your estate if you don't have a will one question or is there way Beed in your will that they do not get tax on it Charities do not have to pay inheritance tax they're also exempt yeah are you saying that a divorced person can still get proceeds from no no the the ex spouse would not get you said no no I was saying uh if you have children from a prior marriage and you're you're married for a second time um does the current spouse and the children will will split up the estate in accordance with what the statute says I have a question in New Jersey do the beneficiaries of the will receive a copy of the will or now uh so the executive will send a proof that the will has been probated and they can offer to provide a copy of the will and you do have to give them a copy of the will if they ask for it but you don't have to send it to them automatically but they are but but it also is a public record so they can get it themselves if they want it hi um my hband died in 2016 and I didn't change my name I kept it so his money went to me and now a few years a few years ago my brother died and my sister and her husband they had the lawers on there I didn't have no money then so my sister and the husband they got the lawers they put free my brother's money and me my sister and my other sister they got the law we all share my brother's money and um my sister became the executor of my brother's money and and um my son he wanted he wanted to be the executive instead of the primary whatever but but the lawy said that my son is not a sibling so he didn't get it he's pissed off at me and whatever now so now my other thing is I have a special needs daughter that's in Burlington County in the town of willbo she speaks to way she can ask things but she not going to have a conversation like you or me so I but time to time I might talk to the group of them but I don't know what she has or whatever shetit to and and then the other thing is that the other thing is that my um my husband died and and um we had share the house together between him me and my three kid we come back maybe maybe I'll speak to you after uh yeah I have two questions one is it necessary to provide a to the exor that that you have no you you do not need to give a copy of your will to to the executive uh you can if you want it's up to you um you can just let your executive know where the will is some some place safe in your house um do not put it in a safe deposit box unless they have access to it uh they won't be able to get to it um so I recommend that you put it someplace safe in your house a fireproof box just you know that type of thing okay my second question is um that you mention has to be right is there any document that go for like say for example I'm sorry what is there a what has to go for grp right right how about the living is there any have a document that no no so only the will gets probated if you have a revocable living trust you don't need to probate that document okay um so I my last document that I think has several people have gone over before is the living will um so the state of New Jersey allows a person to execute an advanced directive or a living will so that includes a proxy directive and an instructive directive so that means you're appointing someone to make your health care decisions for you when you do not have the capacity to make your own health care decisions um it's also an instruction directive because it's instructing that person um on what you want done uh so when you when you're picking that proxy uh you need to pick someone who will will make those tough decisions for you uh if you think that person's not going to be able to make that decision for you as the previous speaker said choose someone else um you want to make sure that you know your wishes are carried out um you should not pick your doctor that creates a conflict of interest to to pick your doctor um and then in uh so I I provided you with the uh Advanced Directive form in the folder that was uh uh given out to you um so in the next section it it then asks you are there circumstances where you do not want life sustaining treatment to be given um so if you state state that you do not want life sustaining treatment in certain circumstances then there's three different circumstances where you may not want life sustaining treat treatment so you can pick one of them you can pick two of them you can pick all three of them um so the first example is if you have a terminal illness um such as cancer you're at the end stages of that disease if you don't want life sustaining treatment you would initial next to that um the second example is if you become permanently unconscious if you're in a coma two doctors have stated it's permanent you're not going to to come out of that coma again if you don't want life sustaining treatment to be given you would initial next to that section um and the third section is not necessarily a terminal illness but a degenerating type of disease uh like Advanced dementia L Garrick's disease Parkinson's uh it's any kind of degenerating type of disease where at some point um the benefits are being outweighed by by the detriments um if you initial any of those circumstances they then go into further detail about whether you want to be provided CPR in those situations and whether or not you want to be provided fluids and nutrition um it also then goes on to whether you want to be an organ donor or make anatomical gifts you can put that you only want it for transplant ation purposes only if you don't specify it could be used for Med uh medical research or education or transplantation um so to be valid the the living will can either be witnessed by two people or it could be witnessed by a notary or by an attorney um so either two witnesses were notorized it doesn't require all three like the will does um the only issue is that you cannot have the people that you designate as your representatives be your Witnesses so it has to be someone other than your representatives um so the advanced directive becomes effective when you are no longer have capacity to make your own decisions um you should give copies of that advanced directive to your primary physician and to the healthc care Representatives that you've chosen um so if you do not have a living will it doesn't mean that you'll be kept alive live forever but it it just means that your family members may not know exactly uh what your decisions would be they may keep you alive longer than you would want um so I think I'm at the end of my time um I got the zero so um I don't know if you want me to take any questions um I would say okay did you [Music] living uh you should not choose your doctor as your healthc care representative oh they could be yeah you can have the same person be everything if you want can I thank you Diane Diane will be in the back if you would like to speak with her after the next presenter all right so our next presenter is clarabel Cortez she became the middlex county surrogate in March 2021 she is the first woman surrogate and the first Latina constitutional officer in middlex County History accompanying her is George Stillwell a probate Clerk and Outreach coordinator who has been in the surrogates court for 5 years welcome thank you for joining us good afternoon everyone can you hear me okay I'm a native New Yorker I love New Jersey New Yorker so I'm going to use my New York voice ma um let's give this a second by a show of hands how many of you have a will hey great so the majority and I'm sure you're walking away with a lot of information which is fantastic but I want I want to tell you what happens if you don't have a will if you do have a will also what happens in our office because when you transition your family will have to come over to our office to prate your well uh and I always tell everyone to change her will he has the right he or she has that right to challenge that will um um so what I tend to do the recommendation that I give to my family members is have a conversation have a conversation and let them know what bues are I think you covered a lot that communication is key but what happens when they do challenges most of the times don't will travail yes normally uh it it's out of my hands at that point it goes to the superior Superior court and we will Probate Judge there that will bring both parties into into the courthouse and he will listen to both cases of course someone would have to facts and proof If you think that the will is not accurate if you think that someone those UND influence um it does happen we have several cases that are being challenged right now but I don't want to scare you all I can say is if you have a will chances are that won't happen and also it will avoid any conflict if you don't have yeah and also that by having a will it's it's making it easier for your loved ones to move forward with any type of faets that have to be handled in your state yeah exactly so I'm going to talk about this a little bit more but believe it or not 63% of New Jersey residents die that's a number and the other reasons I know someone was inquiring about the fee I'm going to cover that a little bit but next talk about a bond what happens when there is no will yeah so if if there is no will and there are assets in the state that have to be taken care of you have to go through what's called Administration and with Administration we need a list of all the assets that have to be taken care of that were in the decedent's name but did not have a beneficiary so it could be a car house bank account stock Ira any anything like that and by the state of the Jersey you are bonded because there is no will and that that's just a state law unfortunately and many people come in um many children come in U asking why they have to do it and unfortunately it's something that has to be done if there is no will so that's another important thing about how a will is because you you bypass this completely and um you your family stayes so much more money than as to having to do this Administration where bond is going to have to be um completed and that is that is pretty pricey depending on the value you state so before I move on I do want to highlight some of the packets that we have in the back I think a few of them already yeah in the back we have the living will kids um I know a bunch of you yes and it's a lot of great information here I know a lot of the speakers here already provide a lot of information definitely take it home read it discuss it with your family members but there's something in there that I highly recommend whether you have a will or not I hope you do consider getting a will so you can be your family members at these but the personal record of this is critical here you can list all of your bank accounts you can list the insurance information it's on this and but it you will this will take away the guest work for your family members I I we had a case not too long ago where the family member had to wait a month or two until the mail arrived so they could figure out where's mom banking where's her Ira take away the GU work yeah and and in our office if you don't if if your loved ones don't know your assets or or have an idea of your assets we also have a process that they have to go through just to get an order to then go to a bank or go to you know wherever they have to go wherever they think there's an asset and that is very time consuming so by having this personal record this does help so much and kind of just give a a a math as to where they would have to go next and that's a great Segway to what I was just going to say um I call this series mapping your legacy and it's because you want to live a legacy behind you want them to still hopefully like you after you you um but imagine I can I even imagine I've been very I'm very blessed my parents are still alive but I'm having these conversations with them and being first generation Hispanic American while I was born in the US my parents are immigrants they don't want to have that conversation but it's not just isolated to immigrants I think it's everyone no one wants to have that conversation passing away but it's necessity there's a young lady in the back that has a question yeah you wait bring the to you I have a feeling the camera guy is going to appreciate the audio I have only one son and my retirement life insurance bank accounts he's the beneficiary of everything but I don't have a but the house is not you know or does he automatically get after my death so if I understand you correctly you have a house that house is still under your name yeah but all the other my my account my mag so this this is going to go back to um what George just spoke about so there's no will she had a house your son's going to have to get bonded for yes yeah yeah and depending on the value of the house the bond could be anywhere from3 to $6,000 so that's an additional cost that have to take no I'm planning to do it but my my concern is just retirement if I die even I retire living He a benefici so he inherits money from retir account to my job and and whatever the money I have in my bank account so do they have to be included when I'm doing the house when I'm transfering doing the and I transer the house to him you know after my do I have to include all the other stuff in the whe no so when in regards to making a will it's I always say it's not like how it is in the movies where it's like you get this you get that it's it's more of everything in the state so like you said the house is in your name you're I just getting a will because you're going to have your your children are going to have issues once you pass away and they're going to probably have to get administration and get opted so so in regards to that I suggest seeking legal advice um maybe speaking to your accountant um and and kind of see what the next steps are in regards to that but I think it will benefit you I think she has one time said you have one son correct yeah but state law still requires us to bond him cuz we have to protect any any debt as well so again will we'll take that away yes ma'am to her what she was asking for example I have a will and I have a I have a car and not have beneficiary driven assets but she has benefici by her IRA beneficiary driven so whoever she named for that corre would not be have included those that's separate asset you really need to figure out what what benici driven what agreed yes and also this is where this comes in handy too right so it's great that you have an IRA it's great you have a bank account and you're you have a pay which was used earlier but you have to let them know where to find that right so it doesn't have to be list because it's does that answer your question yes yes wait for both original will that my father had then all of a sudden the and the um trusty he was appointed well by my dad okay now both through with a new will that was drawn and it was very very close to the original will and then the signatures if you look at all signatures of that second will it looks just like very very much like before my dad died but after he died a new world was made up what signatures that still stand but there was not very much differ in that second whe I I'll take I love for to in here as well so are you telling me the will was created after he died very minor things were changed very very little things were changed but very very much like when he was but this second will put out well I mean if I corre use that signature but it was say the is very much sa but very little but the will Isen after his death is not valid yeah we we would we would never be able to take that if the will wased after his so we're wrapping up almost second I promise we're almost done and enjoy the Sun the so I think we covered a lot already about basically why it's so important to have a will we covered a lot of this already it provides a peace of mind it gives you the ability to appoint an executive what else is um so in in regards to just avoiding disagreements by having a will most likely the family came together and already spoke about who's going to be the executor and who's going to be in charge so that's why it and that's why CL has also stated that it is important to have those conversations um I'm I'm only 28 years old and I have conversations all the time with my families and all my family and they think I'm crazy because I'm the one speak gave out at this AG but I see it all day long and how important it is to kind of start now and in the in the end it's going to benefit everybody so that's why in regards to making a will it's so important because it does just give such a easier transition hold on one second I'll be right with you it gives such an easier um transition that it that it would be if you didn't have a will exactly and I think one of the speakers also mentioned this earlier the first speaker is stating your wishes for example I I was brought up Catholic U as I mentioned first generation hisan American and in my family everyone always gets buried um my wishes are not that I want to be premi so these are conversations my15 that's my magic number but you know that being said you have to tell your family what you want so have these conversations put it in the whe and you don't want to the guest world for that I can emphasize that enough and I have some great information for you that's coming up to guarding legal services so H TI have your phones out so you can take a photo them okay yes ma'am I just want to ask her question question if you don't have the money and you want a will what do you do that's coming up so I have I yes ma'am I love that Beau um we to an attorney for a joint trust and we're told we did not need will with everything with trust to the two of us told that's to get TR but that was in of a will told I mean there might be one or two items that are not part of the trust and I'll let George um so in yeah so in regards to that the attorney is probably right just just might be an instance where if not everything was in the trust you might have to come for that's usually in regards to um the the cars so cars but if both names are on then that's fine yep yeah then you're good to go yeah then you're all set to go cars are one of the biggest things where where people will come into our office and have issues with getting the title change um so that so that would be one thing but if if a trust is what you guys did then most likely it's all it's all exactly all right so there's one more question here then I want to go on to theal Services how much time do we have left Fant my husband we had we had a house he died in 2016 in the papers he put my three children on it so so my son lives in South Carolina my daughter that don't talk to me and my other daughter has my house through my divorce but she lives in here in uh bar New Jersey so they're waiting for me when this my final whatever which I don't like talking about so when it's my time you're supposed to get a the house at the at the the my question is question is um what it have to do if my time gone we don't get involved in that that you would have to see like we don't in every regards to aspects like that we don't get involved in in that any type of legal advice we just can't get it yeah yeah can't it and I'm going to give you some resources here that can help you with that because yes that that sounds out of is not whe house it sounds like there was a divorce husband passed away already the ex-husband the house is still in F Island yeah so there's a lot of components there um and also New York law is different than New Jersey law probate is a lot different thanor oh for one thing my daughter is not staying that at my house my granddaughter might go there from time to time but but my daughter my daugh that got the house divor she's living in Lao but she let my ex sister-in-law my house iice that so I'm going to move on I'm sure you all want to go out in the sunshine so someone touched on this quickly but I'll just recap definitely inform your family members is don't send scavenger unless you play one last practical joke on them you know definitely if you have uh safe I don't recommend it the same way one of the earlier speakers said that it's because then they can't have access to it but we had a lot of issues with that we yeah so we have people that have had a will in a state deposit box and they do have to come into our office just to get an order to then move on and go into that save deposit box so it it is a whole other process um but if that's the only place that you could possibly put it and you have nowhere else to put it then at least let the exeutive know or you know or provide a key usually two keys make sure that the exeutive has a key to the box and and that the bank also they on the list auth Bo so great resource here uh the young lady over here mentioned the fees what you don't have to create a will definitely I don't know if you can see this you could take a a photo of it definitely reach out to the cent of New Jersey F Services they are a great resource I'll get out of the way but um give them a call and depending on your income CU they do go by by income they're state funded they could help you create a will they could um help you with vast directives anything that was discussed here today so just in case you can't see it from the back the number is 732 249 76 once again that's 732 24976 does anyone need to repeat that okay one more time 732 24976 it almost sounds like Bingle all right let's party another day I'll [Music] love okay so that's one resource another resource it's the middle sex Bar Association so I cannot emphasize this enough the same way that you would not go to a Cardiologist for a foot problem make sure that you go to a um an estate attorney for anything that you need for your estate we've seen a lot of yesu do you have any stories you want to share real quick um not really but just at the end of the day an State Attorney knows and is up to date with all of the laws of mingle will and what is valid for our office yes they're they're going to know everything there is to know about yeah I I know one second I'm sorry recently we actually had a case that was a year ago where a family member needed to sell a house they were stuck in Probate in New York they needed to help they St over here in in New Jersey and they hired a real estate attorney okay that makes sense if you're selling that house but if you're probating and there's assets you need to go to the state attorney and unfortunately this person passed away probably as well and it took them 8 months to get everything taken care of when it probably would have taken them two months if they would have gone to the so make sure that this person specializes in the state Hall and this number for the bar association is 732 82853 once again 732 82853 give them a call and they can give you a list of attorne that's here M County specialized in state yes what was your question okay worries thank you so anything that we missed um no I think that's it I think just I hope we aren't scaring you but to kind of you know awareness of making a will and making sure it's done the right way