Tips for End-Of-Life Planning: Elder Law and Estate Planning with Laura Bromlow

Join us in Episode 13 as we lay out a roadmap for essential estate planning strategies for end-of-life decisions. From revocable trusts to guardianship nomination, Elder Law Attorney Laura Bromlow provides invaluable insights into creating a plan, caring for special needs relatives, and navigating complex family dynamics. In this episode, you'll learn about:

• The significance of revocable trusts, guardianship, and power of attorney in estate planning.
• How to nominate guardians and create disposition instructions for a seamless end-of-life transition.
• -The vital role of an elder law attorney in supporting families with unique needs, including special needs relatives, blended families, and surviving spouses.

Tune in now to learn how end-of-life planning works, what key parts you should include in your plan, and how it can benefit you while you’re alive.

Explore Probate Help on Sherri's Website: WillowWoodSolutions.com

WATCH ON YOUTUBE:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozJBufTz0MY

Timestamps:

7:29 What does elder law include?

11:34 Who can attorneys who specialize in elder law help?

14:56 Setting up a children’s crisis plan for care after parent(s) death

16:24 Elder law planning and probate help

19:10 What should be included in end-of-life planning?

21:20 Does durable power of attorney cover medical decisions?

25:37 What happens when you don't have an end of life plan?

29:21 What's the process to set up an end of life plan?

31:52 Tips for family decision making about end of life wishes

ABOUT LAURA:
Laura L. Bromlow is a Certified Elder Law Attorney through the National Elder Law Foundation. Her legal expertise spans Estate Planning, Elder Law, Special Needs Planning, Trust Administration, Probate, and Guardianship. 

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Disclosure: The information shared on The Probate Podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. We strongly recommend consulting with a professional for advice specific to your situation. If you need help finding a professional, feel free to reach out to us at www.willowwoodsolutions.com/contact.

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Transcript

0:22

Hi there. My name is Sherri Lund, and I'm the host of the Probate Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here with me today. I'm with Laura Bromlow. She is an elder law attorney among other things. We're gonna get into that in a little bit. You're gonna wanna have your pen and paper handy, your favorite beverage because we're gonna be chatting today about elder law and what those implications are, why it's an important piece in our healthcare system and in our estate planning toolbox. And we're gonna talk about how that fits into people that are on this podcast, listening for probate issues. Laura, it's gonna help you lay out a plan. So we're always interested in making things smoother and more efficient for the family that's trying to tidy up the probate and make it faster so they can get back to living again. So Laura, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks Sherri for having me. I'm happy to be here. Let me tell you a little bit about Laura. Laura Bromlow is a certified elder law attorney through the National Elder Law Foundation. Her expertise includes estate planning, elder law, special needs planning, trust administration, probate and guardianship. Laura has a holistic and family-centric approach. She's also collaborative with other professionals. When that's appropriate, Laura listens to her client. She really sits with them to hear what their values are and what their wishes and priorities are, and then she takes all of that into consideration when she drafts their plans. Every person is different. Every estate plan is going to be different, and needs to be customized to the person, and Laura wants to make sure that's done well. Laura works with clients through these emotional experiences. So integrity and compassion are key qualities that she wants to exhibit. She works with guardianship, probate, and trust administration. Laura's been practicing law since 1997 and she's been in estate planning and elder law since 2012. She's active with her law license in Texas and California, and she's a member of the Texas Bar College when she's not spending time working and with family, she's on the tennis courts. So Laura, again, thank you for joining me. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Laura, if I met you at the park and we were chatting, you'd just gotten off the court and you were hot and sweaty, and I handed you a bottle of water and said, Laura, how are you? And tell me a little bit about you. What would you describe yourself as a person? I would say, Hey I'm a family person. I'm all about my family including my pets. So I'm an animal lover too, but I'm a mom of two kids, two teenagers, one's in college and one's in high school. I've been married for over 20 years now. And I come from an extended family so I'm an aunt. I'm a daughter, I'm a sister. All those roles that I play, and I am an estate planning attorney because of all those roles that I play. It has really become something that's important to me is to serve other families and to help them communicate and to avoid conflict. And so that's what I do with my life. Yeah. How did you get into, was there someone that influenced you towards law or how did you get into this? That's a fun, that's a great question. So the truth is I was working on a cruise ship and I was lugging up this heavy vacuum cleaner on this small cruise ship, and it was such labor intensive work. I just stopped and I said, I am not doing this. And the first thing that came to mind was, I'm gonna go to law school. And so I had my undergrad degree in elementary education.'cause I knew that I wanted to help, right? I wanted to be of service. And so that's what was always part of my heart ever since being a little kid. And so law is just the way that I found to do that. You mentioned on your bio and that I read integrity and Compassion. I know it's important to you because I've chatted with you for the past year. And I know that it's really important to your clients are really important to you and you go above and beyond to serve them, more than what other peers of yours would say is necessary. Yeah, I know that about you. So what is it that motivates you? What is it that drives you to help?'cause family is important, but obviously your clients are also important. Yeah. And I just approach my clients like they are my family, right? So I am either sitting across from my sister or my sister-in-law or my brother. Every time I sit down with a client like, this is what I would do if I were you. Knowing what I know about the law, having my experience that I have, you being the expert in your family. But what really motivates me is I come from a family of divorce. My parents were divorced when I was four. I saw conflict galore during my childhood. In my family, my extended family, there's so much conflict that goes on in my extended family that I've seen brothers that don't talk, including in my immediate family, not with my kids, but my immediate family growing up where some people didn't talk to their siblings and they ended up passing away. One of the siblings ends up passing away and they never reconciled because of the lack of communication, and it all boils down to communication. Yeah. But the lack of planning and therefore communication of the parents and the result that it had on these siblings relationships was one of just irreconcilable differences... and how much of that can be avoided? If we.. It can totally be avoided! And the more communication we do, communication is hard. I'm still learning it and my whole career is about it, and I still find myself going. Oh, I don't think I said that quite right. I don't think the person got what I meant from that! But that's what we're trying to do and that's what I'm trying to pass on to these families is to avoid that for when something happens to you, let's make sure that everything's in place so that your kids or your family can... it can be easy and they can be there to support each other and be.. You can actually be a conduit to bring those family members together if you plan well enough in advance. Yeah. And I would say that's something that's really important to me in the work that I do with families as well. Being an objective person outside of the emotions that are going on in the history and all the things that have brought us to this point together to be an outsider, to ask questions, to give space, to allow people to say what they need to say or to speak through, if that's necessary. Yeah, everything can change with language if the communication is open. But as long as we're closed off, it's just not possible. So I totally agree with you on that. Would you tell me what elder law is and how, if you would, please define it in a way. You guys are great at defining things in a legal way, but if you could pretend you know that we don't know what you're, what you do, what is elder law? Would you define that for me? Yeah. So elder law, it sounds like you work with old people. You're right. That's true. We're working with people who are facing maybe a long-term care need. When you talk about long-term care, you're talking about somebody who needs care, who needs additional help for day-to-day activities. So when you talk about long-term care, you're a care provider when your kids are little.. But also when your parents get too old to care for themselves, so that we're looking at that. We're looking at people who are advanced in age or they have special needs, and so they need some sort of care. There's a lot of things that elder law can mean, so it can mean helping people with benefits. Maybe either apply for public needs based or other public benefits. Would that be like Medicaid? Medicaid, Medicare can be part of elder law, those kinds of things. SSI, SSDI... Okay. These are all...social security you're talking about? Yep. SSI is supplemental security income, SSDI is Social Security Disability Income. One is a needs-based benefit, but the point being that there's lots of different benefits, whether they're governmental benefits or whether they're private benefits. So an elder law attorney could help with those things. They could help plan for those things. So one of the things you'll hear about is Medicaid planning. So if you're facing long-term care where you might need somebody to take care of you over a long period of time because now you're getting advanced in age, or you have a special need, we can look to Medicaid possibly to pay that long-term care bill. And instead preserve the assets that you do have and let Medicaid pay for that bill. But there might be some planning that needs to go on in order to do that. Another long-term care benefit that a lot of people don't know about for the elderly is a veterans pension benefit. So there might be VA benefits, but the one in particular that I'm familiar with is the VA pension benefit, and that can help for long-term care. So those are some things. Other things that elder law attorneys can do, maybe elder abuse, I don't do that, but there are attorneys out there that handle abuse cases and they will go after people who have financially or physically abused the elderly. So the other area that can include elder law would be planning, so planning for incapacity, right? So when we talk about estate planning, we talk about incapacity planning, but also death planning. Well, here with elder law, we need to think about planning for medical decisions. Who's going to make them, what ones do you wanna make in advance of you becoming incapacitated? And maybe putting financial powers of attorney in place as well. So who's gonna make decisions for you? Your finances if you can no longer do it. Right. Elder law can also include areas where somebody has not planned and now they become incapacitated and they need a guardianship." A family member or a friend steps forward and says, Amy or whoever can't do this for herself any longer. I need to help her. Hey court, appoint me as a guardian." So that can be part of elder law as well. Lots of different areas. Lots of different areas. Which is the one or two that you primarily focus on? So I focus on incapacity planning, estate planning encompasses that. And then I also can help with the Medicaid or VA pension planning, although I tend to work with other colleagues when it comes to those things. And then I also handle probates or guardianships. Okay. And can you give us an idea of the type of clients that you work with? What are some. Yeah. Examples. Yeah. A lot of times I'll be contacted by an adult child of an elderly person or somebody who's getting along in age. So a lot of times this person looks like, maybe my age and they have children of their own minor children, or college age children or something. But then they've got parents who are getting older. Maybe one of them's died and now they've got one parent left that is falling down or having health issues. They're moving 'em into their house, maybe. They're moving 'em closer to their house, something like that. Or they're trying to find a long-term care facility for this individual. And so they come to me and they say, "oh my gosh. I need to make sure that I've got things in place for my mom, like what happens??" Sometimes they'll call me and they'll say, "oh my gosh. I just went through this probate process with my mom and dad who just passed away in the past five years, and it was horrendous. Mom and dad did not plan, and I wanna make sure that doesn't happen for my kids. What can you help me do to avoid that for my kids?" So that, that's a common theme in my practice. Sometimes I'll be contacted- I really love helping blended families, so families who are on their second or third marriage and he brings in kids from a previous marriage and she brings in her own kids from another relationship or something. And now, We wanna make sure that these kids that don't necessarily know each other for their life don't get along. Hey, that was dad's money, why are they getting part of it? Or mom's money and so forth. We wanna make sure that we are very clear, first of all, with the clients, but then I always offer a family meeting at the end of the estate planning process because I wanna make sure everybody has sufficient information to know, Hey, mom and dad sat down and did a plan. Y'all may not like it, but they did it and we expect you to honor it. We can give as much information as the clients want or don't want, but there is a purpose to even meeting for five minutes and saying they did a plan, you're gonna follow it. Communication for those blended families is huge. Another population that I love serving are families that have individuals with a special needs loved one in them. For example, I met recently with a client who has two children. One of the children is a typical child. The other one is a special needs individual. And there's a lot of questions that come up like that. Do I have enough money to take care of this individual with special needs if something happens to me? So we're gonna talk about that and what other professionals we can get involved to help them make sure that they've got enough money. It might be life insurance that we need, right? And so we're gonna also say who's gonna be taking care of this kid if you're no longer around? Who's gonna be in charge of their money if you're no longer around? How are they gonna make sure that they continue to get their public benefits that we talked about if you do leave them money? So that's a special needs stress. A lot of things that go around that and I really enjoy working with those families to make sure that's all set up. And then finally I work a lot with families who have minor children. And this has become a real passion of mine because I have kids, right? And so when I started getting into this practice area, I thought, oh my gosh, there's so much that could happen and that I need to think about for my kids. And what's interesting is I thought about it... I did what most attorneys do for that. Like I would do a guardianship nomination for my child or something like that. But then my daughter turned 14 and we were redoing our estate plan, and I said to her, you're old enough now for me to ask you who would you want to go live with? Who would we want to finish raising you if something happened to mom and dad? And we're living in Texas at this time. We have no family here. All my family is in Alabama or St. Louis, right? We had no family here. She goes, "oh my gosh, mom, who? What would I do if you guys didn't come home? Well, I'd call the police" and I go, oh my gosh, no police, they'll put you in foster care. That's the last... lemme get a plan in place. And so I came up with the children's crisis plan, which is super thorough, and especially for those of us who don't have family nearby, we wanna have very clear plans

of: 16:11

this child is to go to this neighbor or this friend until my mom or my sister can be here to take care of him or her. And so that's another thing that I'm really passionate about. That's awesome. So how do you see what you do impacting the people that are on this podcast that are tuning in to hear about probate and estate settling because obviously you're on the planning part of it. How do we dovetail together? Yeah. So you know, first of all, I do handle probate, and so I do get those clients and what I see in those clients whose families, their loved one didn't plan very well, right? And they end up in a probate situation and they are overwhelmed because they have a life, and now they've got a new job. They've got basically a new full-time job. They've gotta take care of this estate of their deceased loved one. And first of all, they're like, Laura, help me avoid this for myself. But then I'm like, you need someone like Sherri to come walk beside you... I can take care of the legal work. I can file documents, my paralegals and I, we get together and we do all that stuff, but they need someone to come alongside them. And so that's where I would think of you, Sherri, and I would say, you know what, you need somebody who is gonna help you like, maybe they left a house behind and there's stuff in there and you don't know what to do with it, sherri knows the people that can help come in and clear out the house, make sure that all the plumbing is done correctly and get the right people in for all of those types of things. And so we definitely need each other in this process because my clients, it's not just about the legal work, it's about all the other stuff that they've got- their bills that they might have to go through, sorting through the mail, figuring out what is actually a bill and what's an advertisement. Sometimes my clients are like, I don't know if I really need to pay this or not. And I'm like, no, they just got your name off of a public listing because probate is public. And so then you start getting these advertisements and so that's how, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other thing that I would add to that that is more and more evolving all the time is when people are wanting to plan that mom and dad need to go into assisted living or some sort of independent living move out of the homestead. And so that opens up the conversation of we need to plan an estate. We need to think about their long-term care and then how are we going to distribute, disperse the things that are in the house and get the collections appraised and all of that stuff. I see that really as an opportunity to have the time to process the estate. Really, you're pre-settling the estate and then mom and dad can be a part of that conversation, whoever is alive and able can say, yeah, I would like for that to go to the disabled veterans or whatever. Very much yeah. Yeah. So tell me, Laura, how does elder law address end of life decisions. What are some of the directives? A will, is probably the thing most people talk about. Some people talk about trusts, but there are some other important end of life documents that I'd like for you to touch on. My estate plans are very comprehensive. There's lots of documents and they all have a purpose, right? So you've got your revocable living trust or will, those are the basis of your plan. What the will is really dealing with is, this is where I want my stuff to go when I die. What I think is a bigger part of this planning process is what happens if I'm incapacitated? I'm still alive, I still need to be taken care of. My estate should still be used for my benefit, but I can no longer handle it because, I'm incapacitated. So we put into place a revocable living trust. Helps with that...Could you define incapacitated for me? Sure. And there's lots of definitions for that, right? There's the court definition, the legal definition when it comes to a guardianship. And then there's a definition that you might put in your legal documents. And they might be similar, but the one for a guardianship, where a court has to decide whether you have capacity or not, that's gonna be based on case law and doctor's opinions. So you're gonna have to have testimony or legal documentation from a doctor saying that someone is incapacitated in order to get a guardianship through a court. And are you talking about mental capacity or physical capacity or both? Mental. Okay. Yeah, we're talking about legal mental capacity to make decisions for yourself. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Great questions. And so this bigger piece of the capacity: revocable living trust, it takes a place of a will and takes a place of powers of attorney. And so that's one document and we could talk about that for a really long time, so I'm not gonna get into that as much. But just know that a revocable living trust or a will are your base of the plan. And then you always need to have a financial power of attorney. This is who I'm appointing to make decisions if I'm incapacitated. And in that document you're gonna say what incapacity is? Okay. Or you're just gonna appoint somebody immediately right away. So one or the other. But, so you appoint agents and you're gonna say, Hey, I want my daughter, Katie to do it. And if Katie isn't able, then I want Jack to be able to do it. And if Jack can't do it, then I'm gonna have my cousin Susie do it. And so you'd have an order, a list of succession, like if this person and.. So forth. So that's for financial. So a financial, durable power of attorney. Then you also need a medical power of attorney. This is the person, and they might not be the same people, right? This is the person I want making medical decisions for me.. Right...if I can't, so this would be, I'm unable to speak more likely than not, if I'm just outta my mind, and I'm not making sense. Then yes, they're gonna look to my agent under my medical power of attorney. Okay. Same thing. I'm gonna have at least three people listed if possible, in case they can't reach one, they'll go to the next one. The other documents that I would have in place would be a HIPAA authorization. And a lot of times some attorneys just put the medical power of attorney with a HIPAA authorization. It's a short form, HIPAA authorization all in one. I like to have the medical power of attorney with the short HIPAA authorization, but I also like to have a separate HIPAA authorization that allows the people that I list in that document to go talk to my doctors and view my medical records if they want to. And so I'm gonna name all of my agents in that separate HIPAA authorization. I'm gonna do a directive to physicians to those clients who want that, what the directive to physician states is that,"hey, in these situations I do, or I do not want life sustaining treatments." And so you're familiar with the Terry Schiavo case out of Florida? A long time ago maybe it's been 20 or 30 years now. But Terry Schiavo was a young woman who was in a car accident. She was married at the time and she was left in a coma on life sustaining treatment. Her husband and her parents totally disagreed as to whether she should still be on life support or not. Husband said, Nope, she wouldn't wanna live like this. Pull the plug. Parents said, keep her on it. We see signs of life. This went to the Supreme Court and about I think it was 10 years later, maybe 15 years later, finally it was decided by the Supreme Court that the husband won and that, so they pulled the plug. Wow. A directive to physicians, an advanced directive, could have preserved that relationship. It just almost brings me to tears because they're both grieving this woman. And they, all they had to do was put this document in place. So a directive to physicians is also important. I would do also guardianship nominations.. So what can happen is attorney in place, and right now I'm healthy. I'm totally with it in my mind, and so I'm appointing my husband as all these things. But when I develop dementia, I become combative. My personality totally changes and I might say I'm withdrawing that power of attorney and you can't do anything and I'm not incapacitated! And so I force a guardianship on my husband. So now he has to go to court and now, so I put a guardianship nomination as part of one of the documents so that my husband could take that to court and say, she's out of her mind. Here's, please appoint me as guardian now because she's trying to revoke all these powers of attorney. Yeah. The other thing I do, I like appointing an agent for disposition of remains instruction for disposition of remains. And so part of what I, so I'll do those little documents, but part of what I don't do, and I always advise my clients to do is to meet with someone to do an advance plan on. What happens to their body after they're gone? Do they wanna be cremated? Where do they wanna be buried? What kind of ceremony do they wanna have? They can set that all up in advance as well. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. You and I were talking earlier, before we started recording about the high percentage of people that plan on making a will. They know that they need to have a plan in place, but sadly, only about 34% of us actually do. What are some cases that you could describe for elder law that that go into probate, let's say, that don't have a plan in place, just to paint that picture of what that could look like if we don't have a plan in place? Basically, if you don't have a plan in place, the state has one for you, right? So Texas statutes, we have laws in place that lay out, so this is when somebody dies, for example, that when you die, it depends on how many times you've been married, what kids you have from which marriage, and it's not always intuitive where the stuff is gonna go, where your stuff is gonna go, right? That is for sure. Now, if you're like, if you're like me and you've been married 25 years and you only have kids between you and your spouse, it's gonna go to your spouse, there's no issue there. But if you're like my parents and you were divorced and you have his and her kids, and you die, half of your stuff is going to your spouse and half of it's going to your kids. And now your spouse who may not get along with your kids are gonna be fighting. They have to own this house together or they have to, split this stuff. It's not intuitive. It's not necessarily what you would've wanted. And so I see this a lot in my planning side, where I'm dealing with Blended families. And it's so interesting. Sometimes the spouses have totally different ideas of what they would've wanted, and so we've gotta talk through it. It's like marriage counseling. But you've gotta talk through it. And so I have seen this, I've been contacted by an adult child who this is a common contact for me.. And it ends up usually being someone that I don't end up helping, but I may refer out, but I will get contacted by an adult child who says, mom needs to do her estate plan. And I go meet with mom, and she is losing her memory a little bit. She keeps telling the same stories, but it's very clear that she knows what she wants to do. However, it might be because the daughter who contacted me is close by. And so that's reminding mom, oh, this is what we said. I.. Who knows, right? We don't know. Right? And so I have to assess the situation is does she need a guardianship or can we do some planning? The problem comes in most of the time where the daughter that contacted me, which is a case that recently came up and her siblings do not get along, and they're not on the same page, right? And so then I'm really stuck with what I can do to help mom, because if the family members aren't getting along, I'm not gonna create more of an issue for them by siding with one of the kids and helping mom do something that kid wanted me to do. Yeah. I'm just not gonna get involved with that. So I would refer them to, maybe a mediator. I would refer to a doctor. A therapist, something like that. Let's get some common ground going here. And unfortunately mom let it go too long, and so these families are divided. And so it causes really big issues for the estate down the line. Currently, while mom's alive, like we don't know who she would've wanted to live with, we don't know how she would've wanted to spend her money or how she wanted to spend the rest of her life if she was in that state because she didn't put it down in advance. And so I see that a lot of times. Right. So when you have someone, whether it's a spouse I know someone that's a spouse of someone who's showing signs of dementia now and. They're starting to question these long-term situations or they have been given a terminal illness. They know that they qualify for hospice, and so they wanna put their affairs in order. What are some things that would be helpful for them to have on hand when they contact you and when they're overwhelmed and they want to get this stuff. They don't wanna talk about this stuff at all, but they know that they, it's better to talk about it than not. So to alleviate some of that stress, what could they just have nearby when they ring you up or meet with you? So the way I handle it is I will take like a 15 minute call. They don't need anything on hand. When I do this 15 minute call and I explain my process, but basically my process is I send a questionnaire, and on that questionnaire it's gonna ask 'em for a list of their assets, a list of their family members, just so I can get a basic idea of their situation before we meet. And then I have a list of priorities. What's most important to you, what's not important to you, and those kinds of things. So it gives me a really good feel before I even walk into the room with the person, where they're coming from. And then my whole process is around helping them get organized so that, it might feel a little overwhelming. It does, but I, it does. I can speak from experience..But I'm getting 'em to the point where, oh, okay. It is simpler than it feels. At first it feels big, but because of my process, my hope is to make it to where they go, oh, all of my assets fit on that spreadsheet. I know what I've got, and now the next person in line knows what I've got. And I'm gonna leave that for them in a place. And so that's how I direct them. Everything is about helping them get organized so that when it's time for the agent to take over or their executor or whatever to take over, it's easy to find. Yes. And I would say it's so much better to be trying to grapple with those things when you're not in grief. Yes....when you're not trying to figure out how to care for everything else. And you're still in shock over what just transpired. And to break these up into smaller bits. Yeah, it's so worth it. Yeah, for sure. What is something that if someone, let's say a daughter right now is listening and she's wondering what to do for her mom. She's just not sure if she should reach out to someone now, or if she should give it a little more time. What would you say to her, person to person, to help her make her decision and make it well? Yeah, I, I think first of all, that it's never too early to do an estate plan, right? So having a conversation with someone, it's never too soon. It's never the wrong time until it's too late. I'm doing an estate plan right now for my niece who is getting ready to have her first baby, and they're very young. They don't even have any children. We're gonna do their plan because it's not too soon. It's not too soon. So what I would say to that person is most estate planning attorneys will do a 15 minute call so you can get to know them or something like that ahead of time. What is their process? Really get to understand who the attorney is. Are they like practicing in all kinds of different areas? And so they're doing a little bit of divorce, here, and they're doing some, I don't know, criminal law here and some elder law and estate planning, or are they devoted to this area of law? I think it makes a difference. Okay. So you wanna know about their practice. You wanna know if you're gonna be comfortable talking to this person, and you'll get that from a 15 minute call. Yeah, So I think that's important to have it be somebody that you can get along with. And I would just encourage them to just reach out to someone to have the initial consultation, and that consultation is usually free of charge. And you don't wanna waste people's time or anything, but at least have that 15 minute call to see if you're ready to move forward. And for her mom, it's time. It's just, it's never too early. Yeah, I don't know if that answered your question, but No, I think that it did. I think sometimes people need a little reassurance. They need to hear that it's not too early, and I find that with myself too. People may not be ready to deal with probate. They may not even wanna file a petition or they don't even have an attorney yet, and so they're resistant to call, but I'm telling them, a phone call will just help you ask your questions and process some things. You don't have to start doing anything right now. You can get an idea too, when you're talking to a professional, I think whatever profession it is, whether they're really looking out for your interest or not, because some people are just so dry about what they do and they're not giving you any outside of the box options or thoughts. Because I'm sitting across from my brother or sister-in-law when I'm sitting down with my clients, that's who they are to me... I'm gonna be looking at the whole picture, and so you wanna make sure you're dealing with somebody who's looking at everything and going, oh, you could probably use some support like Sherri! You probably use one accountant if you don't have one, or whoever the professional is, right. And that's why I'm glad to know you because I know that you know a lot of those people. And so if it comes up and I'm going, oh, sister, you need something that I'm not sure of the right person, and I can get you in touch with someone who does know all of those people, right? Yeah. Yeah, I think that's really important and the and just the relief that can come. The other thing I would say is that when you're overwhelmed, it's easy to feel desperate. It can feel like we're drowning and drowning people are grabbing at all kinds of things, and they can make bad decisions and decide to work with people that are not in their best interest. They're vulnerable and they're trying to find help. And so lining yourself up, making those phone calls, having those consultations with people when you're not in that desperate situation, you will be able to know who you gel with, who aligns with your values and who you can work with. Because you're gonna be in this- the estate planning is done over a period of time, but not anything like probate. So when you're in probate, it's a long deal. So you do wanna know who you're working with, for sure.\ So Laura, as we wrap up, can get in touch with you. I know you're on LinkedIn. Your website, you wanna share your website. Yeah. My website is bromlowlaw.com and they can always email me. I prefer email better than phone because I can get you to the right person at the right time. So email would be laura@bromlowlaw.com. Or my client services director is dina@bromlowlaw.com. And so those are the best ways, but number 2 8 1 6 6 5 3 8 0 7 if they want it. And then I'm also on Facebook. And I don't know if you know about AVVO AVVO.com that's another website where you can find lots of attorneys. I'm on there, so you know I'm all over the internet. Perfect. Sometimes people are listening but we will also have it in the show notes for people that want to go back and access it there. Perfect. Laura, is there anything as we wrap up that you feel like you is on your heart to say that that maybe you didn't get a chance to express? No, I'll probably just reiterate probably something that I've already touched on, which is, you know, we all have those people that are most important to us. We have that inner circle and those people that are precious. And when I think about like my mom getting older, I just had a really hard week and I just dropped my daughter off at college for the first time. And it was really hard. I cried a lot. But the reason is because I love her so much and I want her life to be so beautiful, and you get worried. And when I think about how I can leave behind an intact relationship between my son and daughter and their extended family. If I can give them that gift by planning ahead of time, that's what my practice is all about. Like I wanna see them, I wanna be able to look into the future and go, oh, I see their two families joining together at the holidays and just, you know, and I'm in their memory right at this point, but I left them with that beautiful relationship because I didn't cause any extra drama for them by not planning. Yeah. That's right. That's a beautiful thought. Yeah. Great. I'm glad that you were able to express that 'cause I think it was really lovely to end on. Thank you. Thanks. So Laura, thank you so much for your time. I know you are one very busy person. I appreciate that you carved out this time today and look forward to sharing this with our listeners on the podcast. So thank you, Listener, for coming on today and for being here. All of Laura's information will be in the show notes for you and I just wish you well. I hope that you hear Laura and I both wish you well and on your journey, if we can be of any assistance to you, please don't hesitate to reach out. Take care. Thank you, Sherri.