Latest / WCHS Network Podcasts / 07/11/24 Ask the Lawyer with Tom Peyton: Auto Insurance Claims, Contract Fraud, Trusts, and Legal Movie Myths

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07/11/24 Ask the Lawyer with Tom Peyton: Auto Insurance Claims, Contract Fraud, Trusts, and Legal Movie Myths · WCHS Network Podcasts

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I'm Bill Cooper sitting in for Jeff Jenkins today who's still doing the morning news
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on Metro News. Jeff will be back god next week of course for the
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program. You can put the power of Peyton on your side this morning and
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give us a call. Is ask the lawyer Tom Payton from the Peyton Law
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Firm. Threes are a four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. Threes
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are A four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. You can text over
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any questions you have as well, if you would like that three zero four
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nine three five five zero zero eight three zero four nine three five five zero
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zero eight you give us a call this morning. You can control the conversation
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if you would like, so we could answer questions that you would like to
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have answered once again. Three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight
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three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight Payton Law for one line,
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Payton Law Firm dot com. That's P. E. Y T in
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Peyton Law Firm dot com. You have a property damage issue, like we've
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got a bumper bender, so we've got a big dent in the corner of
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our bumper, but nobody, you know, my wife and I were both
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out of the car, just stepped out of the car when it happened.
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Nobody's hurt. Uh. But folks out there have a lot of frustration at
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times with trying to get they're property damage fixed. And if your car is
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totaled or you need repair paid for and it was someone else's fault, it's
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very difficult to financially have it make sense for you to hire an attorney because,
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for example, with my scenario, let's say that for some reason,
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this other fellow is insuring company says, well know, Tom, and we
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think you were stopped in a spot you shouldn't have been, and so we
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think it's your fault or more your fault than it is his fault, and
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they refuse to pay. Well, okay, let's say I'm not a lawyer,
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so I can't go represent myself effectively. I take my car to the
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body shop. It's a thousand dollars repair. What do you do because the
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other person, insurance isn't going to pay. Let's say I have liability only
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then I've got no way to pay, no mechanism to pay for my car
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other than myself. So we get a lot of calls like that. And
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you can see in that scenario though, how would I hire a lawyer?
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Because if you win your case, let's say you even take it to magistrate
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court, which is claims that are ten thousand dollars or less. I got
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a thousand dollars repair bill. How I'm ever going to pay a lawyer for
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that? Because you know, the conventional arrangement between attorneys and clients on injury
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cases are what you think of as car wreck cases or in insurance claim cases,
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tendency fee. So the lawyer would get paid some percentage. I'd say
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the norm is a third. Depending on what type of case it is,
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you have more difficult cases and it's different. But you know, you got
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the how no lawyer is going to take that case where the most they could
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ever get back was three hundred and semad dollars. And then, of course,
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even if that happens, me in that scenario doesn't have enough money at
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the end to even get my car repaired. Now, the matter it can
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award you something for your aggravation, but mattersrates aren't big on that and sometimes
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don't want to really understand that concept because it's not a quantifiable amount. You
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can't it's not out of pocket expense, and so it becomes difficult. So
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we get a lot of calls with frustration like that, and unfortunately we can
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give some guidance, but normally we don't represent the person. Now, if
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you get in that scenario and you have trouble with a property damage claim like
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that, you can always call and contact the in Weustern Insurance Commissioner's office and
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they sometimes can get things moving. They won't, you know, present you
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in your in your direct claim and if there's a good faith dispute between you
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and the other person's insurance company, the Western Insurance Commissioner really can't do much.
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But if they're not communicating, or they're just making an offer that's extremely
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low and unreasonable in light of all the facts. Then you can you can
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actually do an online consumer complaint to the insurance commissioner's office and you send it
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in. I mean, it's online, completely fillable, email it in,
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it's right there. The insurance commissioner gets it, sends it out to the
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insurance company, and demands a response, and a lot of times that gets
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things moving. Now, in my scenario today, we were on a sheets
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parking lot. We were not on a public road. A lot of times
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when you contact law enforcement in that situation, they won't do a report because
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they say, well it's not a we don't do it. They at least
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don't do a crash report like you see normally in automobile accidents. So today
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we just exchanged information. I took a couple of pictures. Pretty sure it's
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one hundred percent the other person's fault. We were stopped, yes, so
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I don't know whether he didn't have a backup, but we were able to
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exchange information, verify, take some pictures. Then we'll work it out here
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when we get back from vacation and hopefully get our vehicle paid for. But
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then you get into you have total loss claims and you have repair claims like
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I'm going to have. And so in West Virginia, the I'm not sure
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it's in code, it's definitely in the Western Insurance Commissioner's regulations. And a
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lot of people are surprised by this. If your car is more than I
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think it's two years old, excuse me, it could be three years old.
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Then West Virginia law doesn't require that. In this case, it was
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the other person's fault. I should be put back where I was before.
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But our law as it stands right now, does not mandate that the insurance
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company put genuine parts in it. Like we have a Toyota four Runner.
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So we may not be able to demand that we get an actual Toyota bumper
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put back on our vehicle because our vehicles are two thousand and seven. And
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you know, you might be able to go to court and force them to
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use genuine parts versus what they call after market parts. But again, the
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difference between the values of those is going to make it cost prohibitive to ever
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go to court. In fact, when I had a bumper vendor about fifteen
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years ago, I went ahead and just paid the difference of what the other
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person's insurance company offered me and what it would cost to get a genuine bumper
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put back on my vehicle, because I didn't want the aftermarket part, and
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I knew that to file lawsuit over that little margin of value difference in value
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would never be worth it. So I just hate to do it because you
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didn't cause the accident, but I wouldn't paid the extra just to get the
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genuine part on there. So you might run into that if your car's a
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little older than three years. And really what people call us that their most
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upset about, or we get a lot of calls about, is when you
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have a total loss. So if in West Virginia, if your vehicle is
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damaged and the cost of repair equals are exceed seventy percent of what your car
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was worth right before the accident, then it's supposed to be total. Then
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the has to be totaled. And that's and then what you get, whether
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you have a loan against your vehicle or not, at least from the other
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person's insurance company, one you can get, you know, something each day,
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either for a rental or for a replacement vehicle or just for aggravation.
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It's kind of a daily amount. You have to ask for it or they're
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not they're not going to offer it for you, but you should get that
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up until they offer you the total loss amount and you get a check.
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The problem is that in West Virginia they're really only obligated to pay fair market
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value, and there's there's a few different valuation programs. The insurance commissioner allows
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them to use. Insurance companies almost exclusively use some kind of a private system
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they have. I think it's a private versus Nada or Kelly's Blue Book,
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which are the common ones on the internet. But most people that have a
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car, like our fore Runner, for example, we like it, we
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bought it new, we know we've kept it up. We don't want to
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buy another Forerunner. We don't want to buy a more expensive, newer one
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that has a payment. So personal value is way more than the book value.
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That's right. So the value to the person who was completely innocent,
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you know, their vehicle value to them many times far exceeds the fair market
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value. What I mean fair market value just means what a willing seller or
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willing buyers willing to pay a willing seller on a regular market if you put
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it out there for sale, and sometimes they're decent amounts, but a lot
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of times they're lower than the client would would like and they don't get their
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car. Now, you can keep your car if it's a total loss,
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and the insurance company will pay you the total loss minus some value for the
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total vehicle usually, you know, so somewhere between five and ten percent of
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the value is what the salvage is worth. And so if you if I
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want to keep my totaled vehicle, yeah I can get let's say it's worth
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ten thousand dollars. Yeah you can keep it, but we'll deduct a thousand
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bucks from your ten thousand dollars payment because you're getting the car back versus us
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getting to keep it the insurance company getting to keep it. You do have
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to let the insurance company run it through DMV and get the title back to
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you marked with salvage on it, so you know, if you go to
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resell or borrow against it or something, it's it's going to have a salvage
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title on there, so everybody knows it's been totaled at one time or the
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other. But we get a lot of calls about that, and it's unfortunately
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unless you let now if you have no vehicle and you have some kind of
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business monetary loss, like you operate your own business, or you can't get
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to work. Absolutely no, it's hard because you have a duty to try
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to get those things done. So nowadays you got left uber all this stuff.
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But depending on the nature of your business and what vehicle was hurt,
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you can have certainly have a claim for those are like consequential damages. You
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would have that as well against somebody else's insurance company if you have something like
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that. But otherwise run of the mill accident, your car is totaled,
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you get fair market value. You also get five percent that's still in the
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code. I believe they assume you're going to have some sales tax, and
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so you get five percent on top of the fair market value and something for
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you should get something for all of the days that you didn't have your total
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payment check in hand. And so you know, I've answered probably a couple
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of calls this week on that same issue. People disappointed about the total loss
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issue because they think their car is worth more. And you know, again
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we get into the scenario where if it's worth. If you think it's worth
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five hundred dollars more, you know, maybe ten thousand, five hundred verse
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ten thousand. Well, again, you're not gonna be able to get a
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lawyer to help with that. And that's that's now. They used to be
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you could sue directly another insurance company. You can't do that anymore at all.
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Like if you have a dispute, if I have a dispute with this
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driver today, that happened, we just sue each other and then the insurance
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companies come in and fund it. Basically, they pay lawyers to defend it,
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and they ultimately end up paying claims. But you can't sue the insurance
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companies directly. We used to be able to do that if they acted really
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bad, but then the insurance companies complained in the mid two thousands they couldn't
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make enough money, I guess in West Virginia, and the legislature changed the
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law. Now they're immune from what they call third party suits. You can
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file claims to the insurance commissioner and doesn't have a lot of teeth most of
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the time, but it it helps. It gets It's not the same remedy,
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but that's if you're not getting communication from an insurance company, like they
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won't answer your calls or respond to your letters, and so they have an
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outright denied a claim. Yet call the insurance Commissioner's office because they're good about
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getting response because because the insurance companies don't like to get dinged by the insurance
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Commissioner's office any negative marks at all, so they're pretty responsive once the insurance
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commissioner gets involved. But yeah, you have the insurance commissioner call. If
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you've got any type of insurance claiming West Virginia and you're not getting any responsive
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communication, that's the way to go there. Well, what great information this
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morning. You can put the power of Peyton on your side this morning.
12:18
Give us a call is ask the lawg or Tom Payton from the Peyton Law
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Firm three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight three es are a
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four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. You can text over any questions
12:26
you have as well, if you would like. That's three zero four non
12:28
three five five zero zero eight three zero four non three five five zero zero
12:31
eight. You give us a call this morning. You can control the conversation
12:35
if you would like so we could answer questions that you would like to have
12:37
answered once again. Three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight three
12:41
zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight Payton Law for one line,
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Peyton Law Firm dot com. That's p E y T you in Peyton Law
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Firm dot com. There's there's so much. I've learned so much from just
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kind of that breakdown of how the insurance and stuff worked here. I worked
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in the rental car industry for a long time. It was we did a
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lot of replacement rentals, and so we dealt a lot with insurance companies and
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shops and different things like that, and every state has is a little bit
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different as far as that goes. It really blows me away the three or
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two or three year rule for the parts, because it seems to me on
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something that you finance for you know, five six seven or I guess you
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grew up to six years now that you're really getting this sold short there,
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it seems like another thing we didn't talk about, which because I referenced it
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for a minute, but you know, the other person, let's say you've
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barred against your vehicle and it's well, it turns out it's upside down.
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And that's a term of art, but that means that whatever, yeah,
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whatever your collateral is for the loan actually ends up being worth less than what
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your loan balance is, which can happen. It's hard with real estate.
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It happens a lot with vehicles, because you know, you go to buy
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a car and you can roll over your old loan into your new loan,
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and then of course, minute you drive a car off the lot, it's
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worth less. And so that's a problem because if you are hit by somebody
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and the fair market value your vehicle is grand, but you still owe eight
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grand, you're gonna you know, the five grand goes to the lender because
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the lenders on there as an additional insured I guess if it's another person that
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hits you could go to you directly, but you're supposed to pay it towards
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the lender because it's a total loss. But then there's that gap of you
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still owe that extra money because you didn't get enough money from the insurance company
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to pay off your loan because your vehicle was upside down because you owed more
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than what it was worth. So what do you do then, Well,
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then try and work with your lender and see if it's a small amount,
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they may just write it off or something, or maybe you can roll that
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over into a loan on a new car. But there is a mechanism to
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protect yourself when you buy your car. Normally that's when it's sold. I
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don't know if you can buy. You can probably buy it later, but
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I always see it in the initial sales transaction, and it's a one time
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premium you can buy. It's called gap insurance. And so when you see
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gap on your purchase documents when you go to buy a vehicle or something like
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that gap is the insurance that will make up that gap, that difference.
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So if you're in a car accident like the scenario I gave where there was
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a three grand extra amounts till ode even after the insurance payment, if I
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had bought gap insurance when I borrowed the money, usually when I buy the
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car, then it would pay. It would pay off that gap. And
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that's what gap insurance is. Now. It's it's it's usually they push it
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on you when you're trying to buy your vehicle because I think the generally the
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F and I guy or the salesman at the car dealership is an insurance agent
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as well for that purpose anyway, and then they can sell gap insurance.
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So that big good question for Larry Dawson. Maybe, yeah, right.
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I I was thinking about how some of this bleeds over into some of the
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stuff we talk about with Larry. Give us called this one three zero four,
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three four five fifty fifty three four five fifty fifty. Well take a
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break here in a few months, come back hopefully with your questions phone calls
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or text. You can text over questions the three zero four nine three five
15:56
five zeros or eight one hypothetical. I'll and buy it. And just from
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an exercise of interest, this is something that did kind of happen to me.
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It's not something that I'm looking anything for. It's just more of an
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intellectual exercise because of the time frame that it was in. I've always been
16:11
interested if there was anything that I should have done. In this case,
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I had a situation where I had a bunch of worked one on my house
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when I when I bought the house that I was in it it was a
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house that was in my family years ago. When I moved back to town,
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I bought it and then immediately did a bunch of work on it,
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got it remodeled, did the thing that you're supposed to have, got like
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four different contractors that gave me the specs on the work, you know,
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and I tried to do the sober thing and picked the right one, you
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know. I didn't go for the lowest. I went for the one that
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I trusted the most and felt like I had the best relationship with and everything.
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And when the job was done, it was pretty beautiful. It looked
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about what we expected. Over time, we noticed a few things that were
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a little bit off. You know. Some of it was just cosmetic and
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didn't really think about it. We did have a problem with like a window
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that leaked a lot, and we had to call them back out several times
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to try to fix this window again. Stuff that you kind of suspect.
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Later we discovered a bunch of stuff. One of the things that they did
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to help save cost was they didn't take down our old drawwall. They just
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put drawwall up over top of it, which I gave permission for it.
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There's like, hey, oh, help with demo. There's no reason for
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us not to do this. We'll cut slots into the top, and we'll
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blow in new insulation behind the old drawwall that's in there, so you get
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fresh insulation and all that stuff. So I come to find out later when
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I had some work done on the house and somebody had to like cut through
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the wall to do some electrical work, that there was no new insulation nowhere,
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nowhere throughout the house. There was no no new insulation throughout the house.
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There were some electrical portions that were supposed to be upgraded that that as
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this guy was working, he was like, there's no upgrades in here.
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Like we found work that we had paid for that was in the contract and
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everything else that wasn't done. But it was like six years later before we
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before we discovered it. So this was years ago now and it's probably too
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far about wouldn't be a problem. Six years wasn't because generally on on in
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Western negligence type things or injuries like you think of you do have a two
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year statute of limitations. Now, of course yours would be some of that
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negligence type law would come into play. But I mean, you have a
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contract with the person and not to do working and working like manner or not
18:15
to do the work they said they did, which is what happened. That's
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fraud. In your scenario, you know, that's a breach of contract.
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And if it's in writing, I believe most it's still like a ten year
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statute limitations. Verbal contracts can be six years. It all depends on what
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type of transaction it was. But you you probably would be fine either way
18:36
because West Virginia, through the Common Law Court made law they have what's called
18:40
the discovery rule in most scenarios, so that if something was concealed by the
18:47
wrong doer, for example, especially in that case, and you don't discover
18:51
it, or wasn't a scenario where you should have obviously discovered it earlier,
18:55
the statute of limitations, let's say it is two years, wouldn't start to
18:59
run un till you made the discovery of the problem. And your your scenario
19:03
is actually a really good example of the discuss it's called the discovery rule because
19:07
it was not. Sometimes you have arguments, well, when should Dale have
19:11
known about that? I mean, if he solve this problem, and you
19:17
know, you get up more with maybe injury cases where somebody says they had
19:21
an injury at this point, but maybe they had you know, a work
19:25
injury, for example, but they get in their medical records and they had
19:27
the same symptoms and the same type injury leading up to Well was it a
19:32
new injury or was it the old injury? And so if the statute starts
19:36
when they started having pain from prior to the accident, well then they may
19:38
not have a case because it started. So you can have disputes about when
19:41
you should know you have a case. Your scenario is just boilerplate though,
19:47
because it was in fact the wrong to or concealed the wrongdoing, and so
19:51
you would you certainly don't have a duty to deconstruct walls or anything like that.
19:55
If it was something obvious you could see in your home after they did
19:57
the work, that may trigger the statue of limitations. But in your scenario,
20:02
it certainly unless there's something I don't know, it wouldn't even start the
20:06
two year mark until you found out there was that type problem. Interesting.
20:10
Yeah, there's even some case laws saying you know should have done you know
20:14
fine, well and contractors are you sound like it sounds like you did your
20:18
due diligence, But they're just like a lot of professionals. I mean,
20:22
you can have all the recommend I mean almost every bad contractor case or construction
20:26
case I have somebody used that contractor because somebody knew recommended them, and so
20:30
you just never know and you can't. Yeah, they have insurance and things,
20:33
so that that generally doesn't cover warranty type workmanship issues, and so you
20:41
know, only way to cover that that I know awhare of is make sure
20:44
they're bonded. But that's not really something that's as far as I know,
20:48
is done in the industry except in public So if you're working for the public
20:51
sector of the government, then you have to be bonded, and but I'm
20:53
not really heard of that, certainly not in residential type construction scenarios. So
20:57
the other part with contractors is, yeah, you could come to me.
21:00
I could tell you, hey, you're in time's going to cost to fix
21:03
all this ten grand or something. Well, yeah, you're gonna win that
21:10
case, probably meaning they're at fault you have damages. The third part is
21:17
the problem sometimes on those claims, which is are you ever gonna collect?
21:19
And you get a judgment, it's just an order from let's say a magistrate
21:22
or a circuit judge that says person A is person B. Numb money and
21:27
person a can use the court process to try and collect it. But there's
21:30
not like an ATM up there where they give you your money and then hey,
21:34
I want I get my money. Now you've got to go try and
21:37
collect it. And collecting can be sometimes the most difficult part of a case.
21:41
That's why when there is insurance coverage available to cover a loss, it's
21:47
particularly important because oftentimes that third prong of how do we collect this if we
21:51
win is not something you have to worry about because you got insurance money there,
21:55
and if you win, you know you're gonna get paid. Contractors most
21:59
of the time don't have coverage for something like you just recited. So then
22:03
we win, you get a judgment. We got to go figure out does
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this person own any property? Can we put a lean on it? Where
22:08
does the bank? Can we attach the bank account? You know that kind
22:11
of thing? And is it even worth it? Will they file bankruptcy on
22:15
us? Where we may not get any money? And so those are all
22:18
consideration you know on it. Where does the bank can we attach the bank
22:21
account? You know that kind of thing? And is it even worth it?
22:23
Will they file bankruptcy on us? Where we may not get any money.
22:26
And so those are all considerations when you have bad bad contractor cases.
22:30
The problem is you say, well, what do I do to make sure
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I have you know, a good contractor that has UH, is responsible and
22:37
can cover any loss. And I don't know, it's really difficult. I
22:41
mean, it sounds like you did your due diligence for sure, you interviewed,
22:44
and that's all you can really do. I mean, I don't know
22:48
what else what else to do? I mean, obviously you could don't pay
22:49
a lot of money up front. Those are common sense things. If it
22:52
sounds like it's too good to be true, it probably is. And just
22:57
be careful. And I mean if you can get a contractor to do it,
23:00
yeah, you can escrow your money until you're satisfied with different stages of
23:04
the job. But a lot of them aren't going to agree to that.
23:07
And some of the smaller job contractors, you know, they're I mean,
23:11
they're bouncing here to hear they're basically taking payment to make your Yeah. I
23:15
mean I means there's some of that that's perfectly fine, I think, but
23:18
if you're robbing Peter to pay Paul. When a construction job like you pay
23:22
me a deposit and I'll tell you it's for your two by fours to build
23:27
your deck with. Then I take that money and go use it. Almost
23:30
like a Ponzi scheme. Yeah, I mean that's what usually it had.
23:33
That's and honestly, there's there's certainly some a lot of fraudsters out there as
23:37
far as contractors and things. But I think a lot of the cases I've
23:41
had with contractors that have trouble, they just literally get in over their head.
23:45
I mean, you can't make can't pay this subcontractor because this customer didn't
23:48
pay on time, or not to do extra work because some part of your
23:52
crew messed up the job. So now you're spending more time for free in
23:56
essence getting something done. So a lot of it's that, and it's just
23:59
snowball with these contractors. Then they are robbing Peter to pay Paul, and
24:03
it's just not really a scheme they started off planning to do. It's just
24:07
the way it turns out now. At the same time, then there can
24:11
be a fine line there between civil liability and criminal liability. Let's go ahead
24:15
and do this as take a break, we have a question on the text
24:18
line that we'll get to when we come back. If you would like to
24:19
contribute, you can do that as well. You can text threeser A four
24:22
nine three five five zero zero eight. Threes are four nine three five five
24:25
zero zero eight. You can also call us this morning, of course at
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three zero four three four five fifty eight fifty eight. Give antoina shout wing
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you call in. Tell him how that's three zero four three four five fifty
24:34
eight fifty Let's go ahead and take a break. The power of Peyton is
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on your side this morning. The Peyton Law Firm is in studio. Tom
24:40
Payton is here one line at Payton Lawfirm dot com. You're listening to ask
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the lawyer. This is five adwc HS, the voice for Charleston. This
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is Tom Peyton, my father, Harvey and I are the Peyton Law Firm.
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update. Debris on the roadway on I seventy seven North at milemarker one twelve.
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That's past Tupper Creeks Road in Mercer County. Maintenance on I seventy seven
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North from mile marker sixteen to mile marker sixteen point five. The northbound right
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lane is closed and other maintenance. On I seventy seven north from mile marker
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power of paytron on your side? The power of eleven minutes. So the
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top of the hour, you're listening to the Payton Law Firm on as the
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law. You're a five ADWCHS the Voice of Charleston. I'm Dell Cooper sitting
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in for Jeff Jenkins today who's still doing the morning news on Metro News.
27:00
Jeff will be back next week, of course for the program. You can
27:03
welcome you haves a call this morning three zero four three four five fifteen fifteen
27:06
if you have any questions for Tom Payton from the Patent Law Firm. Three
27:08
zero four three four five fifty eight to fifty eight, or you can text
27:11
in questions if you like as well. Three zero four non three five five
27:15
zero zero eight. That's what the three zero four five four to two did.
27:18
And they have a question for Tom this morning. What is involved in
27:21
setting up a trust to pay a relative on a monthly basis in case I
27:23
pass away before this person does. Yeah, a good question. So that
27:27
really falls into the estate planning realm. We get a lot of questions about
27:30
trusts. People hear about them. They don't really know whether they should do
27:36
one. They've been told they should by somebody. Trust to me, are
27:44
are are good? If you have a need for a trust a particular situation,
27:48
just to do a trust in general to quote avoid probate, or you
27:53
know, just to have your stuff in trust just for some so it'll be
27:57
owned by another entity to protect you from a life ability. I'm not real
28:00
big on that, at least not with my clientele. You know, if
28:03
you're talking about folks that have tens of millions of dollars, and there's different
28:07
types of fancy trust you can do to shift income here or there, but
28:11
most, I mean, my clients don't need that. But this particular question,
28:15
this would be something we would go over into state planning. So we
28:19
do what's called testamentary trust, so they're actually typed into the will and come
28:23
into effect when you pass away. So let's say you have a relative that
28:29
you want to get the benefit of your estate, but they're a spend thrift,
28:33
they can't handle money, you know, it'll just burn a hole in
28:36
their pocket as soon as they get it. Or they've got a you know,
28:40
gambling or addiction problem, or maybe a disability, although the disability is
28:44
a little bit different. Type of trust. So within your will and it's
28:48
we do it quite commonly. It's not that complex. We can create trust
28:52
language that has some segment of your estate go into this trust that is created
28:57
after you pass away and then pays out to the beneficiary over a period of
29:03
time. You can set even let's say you think, well once they reach
29:07
a lot of times, if there's older folks and they have grandkids that are
29:10
really young, they might do this just because there's a reasonable chance that grandkids
29:15
will inherit when they're still under the age of eighteen. And if you don't
29:18
have a trust, the kids will still get it, but it'll be controlled
29:21
by a quarter pointed custodian until they turn eighteen. Then they get it all
29:23
when they're eighteen. If you do a trust in your will, you can
29:27
say, well, maybe they don't get it all unfettered until they're twenty five,
29:30
for example, and we'll have somebody else control it, a responsible adult
29:34
until they reach that age, and that responsible adult can use their discretion to
29:38
use it for their health, education, maintenance, and support needs, for
29:44
example. But it's not the child that gets to choose. They can ask
29:48
the trustee. For the example, I give a lot. You know,
29:51
you get an eighteen year old that all of a sudden they got one hundred
29:53
thousand dollars. It seems like King's ransom when you're don't know how many video
29:57
games I could have bought for one hundred thousand dollars when I was eighteen.
30:00
I don't know what I would have done. But what you see is,
30:02
you know, buy a fancy car, Well, then you can't pay for
30:04
the insurance, or then you damage it and it's just immediately worth less.
30:07
It's the worst investment in the world for the most part. So you get
30:11
that scenario. And if you've put that money in trust and that eighteen year
30:15
old can't go spend one hundred grand on a one hundred thousand dollars car and
30:18
blow it all because they have to ask the trustee, hey, can I
30:22
have that money? Spend it on? Trustee would say hopefully no, Let's
30:26
get a you know, a camera or something reasonable, since you're eighteen,
30:30
and you know, eighteen's wrecked cars and can't afford to maintain them, and
30:33
you've got to keep some money in that trust because you might need it for
30:36
school, you know. And so those type trusts we do frequently. And
30:38
you can the callers question and you can go on. You can have a
30:41
lifetime trust created that will last as long as that person lives. You can
30:45
set parameters for the scenario that I gave, And what we do most of
30:51
the time is you're designating a trustee because you trust them, and so we
30:53
generally just give them discretion. You can use the money for the other person,
31:00
as long as it's generally for their health needs, their education needs,
31:03
to help them maintain or support themselves if you think they need it. And
31:07
then that person just has discretion to pay when needed, or even pay third
31:11
parties directly. But you can mandate that certain amounts or percentages come out of
31:19
the trust on regular basis. And so I think that answers the question there.
31:23
But yeah, we can do that type scenario or that type arrangement when
31:29
we do a basic of state planning meetings. If you come in for a
31:30
will and you've got as we're talking, there's some need. You know,
31:34
I talked about child with a disability, so there's you might need a special
31:38
needs trust set up in your will so that if they are severe and they
31:44
need medicaid government funding to pay for almost all of their needs, then to
31:49
give them let's say one hundred thousand dollars outright all most likely all that will
31:55
do is make them ineligible for government benefits for a while, and they will
31:59
spend all that there quickly it will not have served much of a purpose for
32:04
them. But you can set up a special needs trust that another person controls
32:07
that money and just kind of supplements what the government pays for so that they
32:13
can do things like maybe take a vacation, or maybe get gifts for family
32:15
members or some things that they might need to help function, but the government
32:21
just won't fund that type of device, for example, on a system device
32:24
or something. So those are examples of trust we do in the state planning
32:29
process. There's a lot of other different kinds of trust to do, but
32:32
just to do a trust, to have a trust is not I would not
32:37
do it because I've actually spent as much time unwinding those as creating them.
32:40
When somebody else has created it and you've got all these different trust documents and
32:45
things, you know, it just becomes a more complicated when you pass away.
32:49
If things haven't been kept in really neat order, because people amend them
32:52
all the time, they aren't recorded necessarily, you got to know what the
32:57
terms are. And it's generally a private document. So somebody loses it,
33:00
you've got an issue, and and so it's it's not something you just do
33:05
willy nilly, but there are reasons to do them. We can we can
33:08
do certainly the ones in the wills, and we do. We don't do
33:10
many living trusts, but if you have a particular issue where you need living
33:14
trusts, we can refer you to lawyers that do those regularly. Good information
33:19
from Tom Payton from the Peyton Law Firm this morning. If you want to
33:21
ask the final question, probably the day your WelCom gives to call this morning
33:22
three zero four three four five fifteen fifty eight three four five fifteen to fifty
33:25
eight or get in on the text line three zero four nine three five five
33:28
zero zero eight and we'll interrupt conversations or try to answer that. I had
33:31
kind of a fun question for you that I thought about as you were answering
33:35
the trust question. And uh, I just wonder what leeway does someone who's
33:40
creating like a will or a trust have. You see these movies or TV
33:44
shows a lot of times where everybody arrives at like the reading of the will
33:47
or whatever. I don't think that really happens, right, Well, it
33:52
can, but not. There is no requirement of reading the will in West
33:55
Virginia because when it's admitted to probate, meaning after you pass away out,
34:00
let's say I'm nominator or executor, I go take the original what's admitted to
34:04
probate. It meets all the requirements to be a will in West Virginia.
34:07
It's recorded in the same place as deeds are recorded at that time, so
34:09
it's public records. So there isn't any unless the will demands you get everybody
34:15
to get over to do a quote reading. I mean, I think somebody
34:17
asked me to do a will reading. Well, I've been asked many times
34:22
because people think it's required, right, and then only one time was I
34:25
asked to kind of read it in front of it or relatives not it.
34:29
It was a bit unfair actually, because I realized later why the client wanted
34:32
me to do it, because like some of the beneficiaries that he'd hailed into
34:36
my office were getting meniscool amounts. Oh so it was like a movie.
34:39
Yeah, it was like you get a dollar what I didn't draft the will,
34:44
and you're not required to give anybody anything. Actually the spouse rules are
34:47
a little bit different, but you certainly don't need to give a child a
34:51
dollar or ten dollars to make it legal to an essence cut them out of
34:54
your estate and all it does when you do. I just haven't done that.
34:58
I mean when I was young, I probably did because a client asked
35:00
me, but usually when I cancel them at this point, they agree not
35:04
to do that. And I'm not sure I would even drafted if if they
35:07
asked me to, because it's just one to put your executor in a difficult
35:09
position because they've got to it might be their sibling or a relative or whatever.
35:14
We hand somebody a dollar, right, I mean, then then maybe
35:17
if you you know, they may even have to ask them to sign off
35:21
on something for that or why would they even bother to cooperate at all?
35:23
And so you know, I steer clients away from that when I can.
35:29
But uh, and what about like those like again going to the movies,
35:31
not anything that's actually happened, the weird qualifications that you hear that that that
35:37
as a mcguffin for the movie basically like for a reason to do it,
35:39
like you have to travel to seven countries before we'll give you your money or
35:44
whatever it might be. Can you actually do that as long as it's not
35:46
and I haven't had anything unusual like that, right, and I've seen yet,
35:52
But I think as long as it's not gally illegal or against public policy,
35:57
it's probably okay. Now, okay, yeah, well, I mean
35:59
you can't have things, you know, interfering with mayor like if you ever
36:04
marry this person or you know whatever, you know, making it contingent on
36:07
marrying somebody or divorcing somebody or something, that's probably void as to public policy.
36:12
But I don't know, it's still a private I mean, a will
36:15
is like a gift. I mean, it's like Christmas gifts. Nobody's entailed
36:17
anything, and so that's people come in and ask, well you think that's
36:20
right. It's like, well sound, I mean, if that's what you
36:22
want to do, then it's right. That's all I care about it.
36:24
I mean, if you want to tell me why, it's good. But
36:28
about done with time, So yep, that will do it. Today.
36:30
We have about a minute left and want to make sure you have a Yeah,
36:32
we've talked about some different things today, and we started off with the
36:36
car wreck. And if you take that snare a little further and you actually
36:37
had an injury, if my wife would have still been in the car and
36:40
gotten hit hard enough to get hurt, then that's the kind of situation where
36:45
we actually take the case versus just giving Hume information. But we do an
36:49
awful lot of work for consumers and regular people that get injured in car wrecks
36:54
or or hopefully not have a family member killed. But but we do put
37:00
out an injury and do a really good job at it. So if you've
37:01
got to dispute with an Automa Bile insurance company for any other Matt, you
37:06
can give us a callers or shoot us an email. That's a great way
37:07
to get through to us Peyton Lawfirm dot com. And we also have Facebook
37:13
page that that I pretty well operate. So if you send it something to
37:15
messenger or message us there, it will be me or Dad that's see your
37:20
emails and we'll be the ones to respond and we'll try and be quite prompt
37:23
with that. That's great information. So Peyton Lawfirm dot com and Nitro West
37:27
Virginia. The phone number threes are A four seven five five fifty five fifty
37:29
six. Paytent Lawfirm dot com. Threes are A four seven five five fifty
37:31
five at six Tom. Thanks a bunch. We'll see you guys back here
37:34
next week. Look forward to Thanks lif have a good vacation.