Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Understanding Guardianship, Mental Health, and Legal Decision-Making with Mark Astor
Transcript
- Marci Grossman (00:16) Hello, I am MoneyMarci and welcome. Today's guest is Mark Astor. Mark was born and raised in the UK and began his legal career as a Palm Beach County Assistant State Attorney before entering private practice. He served as chief of two county court divisions and later worked in a felony trial division handling thousands of cases from misdemeanors to capital murder. Admitted to the Florida Bar, Mark later gained admission to the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, the District of Columbia Bar, and the Massachusetts Bar, where he opened a Boston office. Mark holds a BA from the University of Michigan, which I have decided not to hold against him, a JD, a Juris Doctorate, which is a law degree from Nova Southeastern University, and an LLM, which is a Master's in Law from American University. In 2016, Mark Astor (00:57) Haha. Marci Grossman (01:08) Mark founded Drug and Alcohol Attorneys, a service for individuals and families affected by substance abuse and mental health disorders. In 2017, he co-founded Astor Simovic Law with his wife, Audra Simovic, a firm dedicated to saving families whose loved ones are suffering from substance use, mental health disorders, and failed attempts at recovery. In 2020, he founded Baker Act Attorneys, advocating for individuals wrongly detained in the state of Florida's mental health system. Mark has successfully litigated against hospitals and facilities violating rights under the statute and is known for his relentless commitment to securing releases. Outside of law, Mark teaches Krav Maga and maintains a fitness routine, believing that physical health fosters mental well-being, and I'll add that dogs also foster mental well-being. Mark Astor (01:59) If only I could get them to practice law and work for food, but they will not do that. But they are excellent company, as you know. Marci Grossman (02:06) They are, though I have a cat who may try to take over this podcast at any time. Welcome, Mark! Mark Astor (02:09) Okay. Marci, it is so good to see you. And I enjoyed a little bit of time together before we came on, I'm so excited to be here. And thank you so much for allowing me to be a guest on your podcast. It's great to be here with you. Marci Grossman (02:23) Well, I'm flattered. I think law may be one of the few professions where you earn the doctorate before the master's degree. So what did you specialize for your LLM? Mark Astor (02:34) That was a time in my life where I had just gotten divorced. So 2004, 2005, I spent a year in DC. I'd been a government lawyer for a while, so I was somewhat familiar with working in the public sector. And I think even today, I think that was the most fun, the most pleasure, and the most, rewarding of time of my legal career. So I was very interested in the idea of maybe working for the federal government as a lawyer. I was really trying to find myself after leaving the state attorney's office. one of the things I really was passionate about was number one, I really wanted to go back and get my master's degree. I wanted to see if could just get a higher degree of training. And number two, I had a bit of a passion for politics, which is ironic because I... When I went up to DC in 2004, I wasn't actually a citizen. I couldn't vote in an election. But I'd worked on the local state attorney's reelection campaign. I decided, well, let's go big and let's go work on a presidential campaign. So that's what I did. And so I spent a year in DC, which was a phenomenal experience. I loved every minute of my time in DC. It's a world-class city, period. End of story. And I really enjoyed the culture of DC. I was working out and I was going to school and I was working on this campaign and it was a year for me to sort of just get my head straight again after going through a divorce. And so unfortunately the candidate I worked for didn't win so that meant there was no job for me. So I came back to Florida and I sort of went back to my humdrum life. So I specialized in law and government, so there's a lot of studying of, white collar crime, and some administrative law, because obviously, we have a lot of administrative agencies within the federal government, right? So understanding how they worked and just getting a general idea of how that, how all the pieces sort of work together was important to me. listen, You go to DC, everybody's got a law degree. I mean it's like when I lived in California for three years, right? The person, if you go to restaurant, the waiter is a wannabe actor. You go to DC, the waiter is a lawyer, just waiting to get a job. It's pretty interesting dynamics. And so I said, okay, I'm gonna need to get my master's degree at least to even be considered for some type of position within the federal government. And I think I had designs of potentially going to work in the White House as some type of, you know, assistant White House counsel, but. Like I said, it didn't work out. But great year. It was a great year for me. Marci Grossman (04:45) Okay. So you're very well traveled, both in terms of locations and the type of law that you've practiced. You've run the gamut. How did you end up in your particular area of law? Mark Astor (04:57) Yeah, it's been some journey for me, Marci both personally and professionally to get here, to be in front of you today. So like I said, I came back from DC. was here. I was back in Florida for about six years and worked in various family businesses. I was pretty miserable. I really wasn't able to maintain any kind of personal relationship with anybody of any significance. And then in 2010, I took what I had left after the '08 crash and I ran to, I literally ran to California. I mean, I don't mean I physically ran, but I literally ran to California. I had a cousin who lived out there and I had actually a good friend of mine who had been a public defender in Dade County, Miami while I was prosecutor. And we actually graduated law school the same, at the same time. And he said, hey, come out here. Let's open up a criminal defense practice. And I said, great. So he was taking the California bar for the third time and I took it for the first time. He passed, I didn't. And I ended up ultimately taking the California bar three times and didn't pass it, although the last time I got within a percentage point of passing it. But he would be saying to me, you know, you're not listening to the universe. You're not supposed to be there. And you know, I'd studied for the Florida bar for three weeks and I was about a year into studying for the California bar and couldn't pass the darn thing. And finally, you know, after three years there, I ran out of money and I had to come home. So, Then I met somebody that basically changed the entire course of my life. I got invited to go to a breakfast meeting that I wasn't even, I didn't really want to go to because I was pretty miserable when I came back. I went to a breakfast meeting that was where the key speaker was a gentleman by the name of is the founder of a company based here in Miami called How to Manage a Small Law Firm. And what How to Manage does is it teaches solo and law firm practitioners, the business side of being a lawyer, which is not something they teach any lawyer anywhere in law school, anywhere in the country. They just, teach us black letter law and that's it. And you know, I came from an entrepreneurial background. My father left school at 14. My mother left school at 16 and my father built businesses. That's how he put food on the table. He was an entrepreneur. Some businesses worked and some businesses didn't. And so I sort of had a basic understanding of what it meant to get up every day, work. really really hard to come home and put food on the table. And I went to this meeting, watched RJon Robins talk to a group of about 20 lawyers about the business side of being a lawyer. Now they looked at him like he had three heads and being typical lawyers, their egos got in the way and they couldn't possibly open their minds to the idea that they had no idea what they were doing when it came to business. And they were really rude to him. But I got it and after we got done. you know, with the presentation, I begged him for a job and he ultimately hired me after I got done begging and groveling. I needed a job or I was broke, but I also wanted, I also saw an opportunity here to really, really broaden my horizons. And I ended up working for him for about a year. I watched him, as he taught other lawyers the business of being a lawyer. But what I realized was, and I didn't realize this at the time that I went to work for them, is that How to Manage is a personal growth company for lawyers. Think about that, right? mean, if there's any profession that needs personal growth, it's definitely the legal profession. And their underlying philosophy is that personal growth must precede financial growth. And I spent a year there, and more than anything, other than learning about the business of being a lawyer, I finally realized the reason I'd been pretty miserable, both personally and professionally, which was that I had failed to take 100 % responsibility for my life. And for a year there, I was ready to do that. You know, I had close family members and friends who had these issues, behavioral health issues. And in February of 2016, I sat myself down in the local library here in Boca because I was broke. I had no money, but I had an idea and I had a mission and I was very motivated and very driven. And I got the cheapest cards, business cards I could, made at Vista print. I drove around to treatment centers, handed out my business cards, said, I'm here to help people. Nobody had heard of me. I hadn't even, I hadn't lived in Florida for three years. and I hadn't practiced probably closer than, you know, maybe even five years. So it was an uphill battle just to get my name out there. And for the first 14 months, I took all different kinds of cases to pay the bills. 11 months in, my father died. So it was a tough time because I had to scrape together the money to pay for a funeral. So it was a really rough time in my life. I'd hit rock bottom. Where was I going to go? Right? I was either going to sit on the floor and cry back. my sucky life or I was gonna do something about it. And my father never would have stood for me sitting on the floor crying about it. He would have said, get off your ass and go and make it happen. So I did. in 2017, I had enough money to go get a tiny little office. Turned out that my now wife also had a tiny little office in the same building. We met at a networking event. And despite the fact I swore to her that I would never get married again 18 months ago, we got married. But meanwhile, for the first seven years, It was just the two of us working together 25 hours a day, eight days a week. My wife is a brilliant lawyer, I mean just a brilliant lawyer, and she had spent about a dozen years living in the Boston area practicing in the guardianship arena. And the idea that we came up with was that we could use guardianship, which is traditionally really only used for elderly people, and tailor it to the kinds of cases that we were working, right? Where we really needed firm control of what was an out of control situation. And in the last two years, we've hired a bunch of staff. We have an office in Orlando. We still have our office in Boston. yeah, it's been some whirlwind. It really has. But you know, it's ironic. You know, I got married. I have two amazing stepchildren. And I guess that the motto of the story is by finding a bunch of people that needed our help, that needed asked to save their family, I saved my own family. I saved me, I saved my wife. I've been able to support my mom for the last bunch of years. We travel and we've hired staff and those, the people that we've hired, they've been able to take care of their family. So that one little breakfast meeting, meeting one person, completely changed the direction of my life. That's my story. Marci Grossman (10:49) Well, that's an amazing story. One of my big mentors was a gentleman who often says, you're not just practicing accounting, you're practicing the business of accounting. So make sure you know that you know how to do those parts of it. It's not enough that you do it for your clients. You have to remember to do it for your own business if you want to be able to continue. So I get it. Mark Astor (11:11) Yeah, I mean very much so. I think that the thing that I didn't realize is that, from a business perspective, there is really no difference between what we do as a law firm, versus say a restaurant or a car dealership or a bookstore. At the end of the day, it's sales and marketing. Now, obviously as a lawyer, when it comes to the, you know, not necessarily selling the legal services, but actually providing the service, and that's the production of the legal services, we're obviously bound by a certain set of principles called the rules of professional responsibility, right, which are written by the Florida Bar and the Florida Supreme Court. So we have to conduct ourselves to a certain degree of competence. But at the end of the day, when I talk about the business, I'm talking about the sales, the marketing, and all that other fun stuff that's associated with running any type of business, the numbers. Marci Grossman (11:57) Right, you have to treat it like a business. So you said it was your, well, she wasn't your wife at that point in time, but she had experience in the guardianship arena and you had friends and family members that had been in situations where they needed it and that's how you ended up getting into the practice of law your firm does guardianship and what was it, interventions and estate planning. Mark Astor (11:59) Yeah. Marci Grossman (12:24) I Mark Astor (12:24) There's sort of three, there's three elements to what we do. The first is legal, right? Cause we're a law firm and there are three statutes here in Florida that allow us to get a family authority from a court to start making medical and mental health decisions for their loved one. And depending on the case and the form of relief that the family wants. We can tailor it, right? Do you just want an order putting him into treatment or do you want to have access to their medical records, control their finances, where they live, restrict their ability to travel, take their driver's license away so they can't drive high or drunk? I it really depends. mean, do they have access to money, a trust fund? I don't know. Do we need to control that money so they don't, you know, waste it and use it for nefarious purposes? So we can tailor the relief based on the requirements of the client and all three basic statutes that we use to do that. So I've got the legal, there's the clinical. I have two amazing clinicians that are part of our team. They are an a la carte option for clients that want them, but they can come in and help us to not only find the facility that's clinically appropriate, but help them to get insurance approved. Because if mom and dad have been paying a premium all these years, they want the benefits they've been paying for. And so we have the clinicians if they want them. And then the third element is what I call law enforcement. So I have a retired cop on staff with a team of investigators. because we get a lot of calls for people that are missing. They're on the streets. They walk out of treatment and rather than waiting for the police to go find them, we will do it for them. And if I get a judge to give me a pickup order, then we'll work with law enforcement to get this person off of the streets into a place of safety. So, as we have grown, we have built all these different resources in and as you pointed out, if we need to do estate planning, we can do and look, sometimes, as you correctly said, sometimes an intervention is the appropriate relief. I mean, I'm a big believer if you don't need me, that's okay. I'll happily direct you somewhere else where I think that you might need to get help. And if you want to do an intervention, listen, I'm a big fan of interventions. They're a great way to get somebody into treatment in a very gentle manner, but you're going to need a court order in place to keep your loved one there. Ultimately, in order for a family to experience that true miracle of recovery, somebody has to go to treatment and they have to go there long enough for it to work. And so we tell families, you should expect this to be a year long journey. Not that you have to hire us for a year, although it's not unusual for us to be in a case for a year, but this is going to take a year. You cannot fix five, 10, 15, 20 years of damage in 30 days. It doesn't happen. Only in the movies. And anybody who tells you otherwise simply doesn't know what they're talking about. most of our clients are in treatment for minimum three months, typically six months. and then they work what's known as a continuum of care. They probably go to live in a recovery residence. They work 12 steps. They get a sponsor. They go to meetings. They continue with outpatient services based on their needs. And if you can get them to one year, at that point, typically they have developed not only the skill set, but the habits to maintain recovery for the rest of their life. Because the goal is to get this right the first time. I don't want repeat customers. I know that sounds ironic, right? But I hate repeat customers. I want to get it right for you the first time. But you've got to buy into the program, right? You've got to understand, appreciate what we do. And at end of the day we're in the courts, and I can only make a judge move so quickly or convince a judge so much. But we get great results for the clients that work the program, the ones that don't, that ultimately decide they don't want to go this route. Unfortunately, some of those families experience tragic results. So, you I know every year we're gonna be making a call from a family like that. And it's heartbreaking because I take this work, probably too personally, but we're really mission driven. And my mission is to save your family. I'm gonna do what it takes to get it done if you will take that leap of faith with us. Marci Grossman (16:02) In addition to mental illness or substance abuse, guardianship is also used for older people who might have dementia or other issues, cognitive issues like that that would prevent them from being in a position to manage their own life. Mark Astor (16:17) Yeah, I will tell you, we don't take a lot of those cases because that's not really my focus. My focus is really on the folks that have behavioral health issues. I've noticed sometimes we'll get a call from a family who says, oh, I spoke to this guardianship lawyer and he or she says, you can't use guardianship for a behavioral health issue. OK, well, have they ever handled a behavioral health case? No, they work with elderly patients. Well. I appreciate what they're telling you, but we've been doing this successfully for 10 years and I'm telling you, you can file guardianship on somebody who has a behavioral health issue. We're going to focus on different issues and different factors in the case, but ultimately we're going to be arguing that your loved one lacks the capacity to make what we would objectively consider rational decisions with regards to their well-being and whether it's a substance use disorder. or schizophrenia or dementia at the end of the day, they either have the capacity or they don't. Marci Grossman (17:14) You also practice in Massachusetts. Are these federal laws or are the state laws slightly different in different places? Are the things that we're talking about going to be somewhat limited to these two jurisdictions or would they be relatively similar throughout the country? Mark Astor (17:17) We do. Yeah, so I mean look most of the bulk of our work mostly is done down here in Florida. We do take some cases up in Massachusetts. Primarily because my wife practiced up there for so long. So just about every state, as far as I'm aware, has a form of guardianship. So sometimes a lot of what we're doing is is people coming in from perhaps another state like Massachusetts And maybe they have a guardianship up there and they want to bring a loved one down to treatment here in Florida because there is some great treatment down here in Florida. But what do you do if your loved one is coming from Massachusetts and you have guardianship up there but they're in Florida? Well, we have a process here in Florida called domestication. And that basically means we can get a judge here in Florida to recognize whatever rights the family has for Massachusetts. So if there's an issue, we can run to court here in Florida. Why run all the way back up to Boston if you could do it here right in, you at Palm Beach County if they're in treatment here. So we do a lot of that. And also somebody is here in treatment, we have guardianship, and they may go back to their home state, which is not unusual, and we'll work with counsel in that other state to facilitate that lawyer in the other state getting the guardianship recognized in their home state. So these things typically are involving more than one state. Most, actually most of our moms and dads are not here in Florida. We've had people come from Hawaii, I've had international clients. So mom and dad are typically not here. It's their loved one that's either here, coming here, or we've got to figure out how to get them here. So that's what gives us the jurisdiction. You don't have to be a resident of Florida. I think we've even done it with persons who wasn't even the citizen of Florida. So there's a number of different ways to save somebody. Marci Grossman (19:09) I don't know about most people, I would think that it wouldn't be a surprise if most people, what they know about guardianship is what they heard when it was Britney Spears or some other famous person that was for a period of time under guardianship. And of course, in those cases, you hear who they appointed, how they appointed, whether the person should be in guardianship, how they got out of guardianship, what powers the guardian had, all of these aspects. What can you do so that we understand that whole process better? Mark Astor (19:41) Yeah, you know, it's so ironic that you should bring that up, Marci, because people a lot of the time will say, well, what about Britney Spears? Well, I'm not intimately familiar with her case, but my understanding is that there was a guardian, I think it was the dad, who was appointed over her for, I think it was about 11 years, which is about 10 years longer than our typical guardianship here in Florida. You don't have to take control of everything, right? It might just be that you just need to be able to make medical decisions for them and you need to be able to get access to their medical records. And perhaps you need the extraordinary authority to make sure that they take their medications because when someone is not taking medications, that's when instability can start to kick in, right? Or they resort to more recreational type drugs such as marijuana. So, I know there was sort of a lot of light shed on the whole Britney Spears thing, but we're not looking to... The goal here is to get your loved one well so that we can restore their capacity so they can become productive again and move on with their life. I mean, our clients typically don't have a couple hundred million dollars sitting in the bank, so there's not that much money to fight over. They may be the beneficiary of a trust, but we're not talking Britney Spears type money. And I'll be honest with you, we're really, really careful too with this stuff, Marci. And I tell clients, and I've had to reject clients because what we do is a shield. It's not a sword. We're looking to help somebody, we're not looking to harm them. And every once in a while I'll get somebody who calls us and it becomes evident to me that what they're really trying to do is to harm the person. And if that's the case, you got the wrong lawyer. I'll tell them, sorry, we can't help you. We're not taking this case. If you want to talk to us about how we help this person, that's a conversation we want to have with you. But if you're up to no good, you got the wrong guy. Don't call me. I'm not looking, this is not what I do. I didn't save myself by, you know, unsaving other people. So every once in a while you get somebody who just is looking to do something shady and I'm just not the right lawyer for those kinds of clients. There have been times where we took a client and it turned out that perhaps they had not been candid with us about their motives and I'll, I'll fire the client. I'll file a motion to withdraw. get out of the case and say, sorry, this is not what we do. I'm looking to save them and save your family. Marci Grossman (21:46) So you're representing the family as they determine who is going to be the guardian and what powers that that guardian will have because you have the resources with counselors and whatever else to determine what this person really needs. As I said, so many of us our exposure to this is just what we read in the news. And of course, Britney Spears, because it was a long drawn out court case and it was all about Mark Astor (21:49) Yes. Yeah. Marci Grossman (22:12) money and all of these other aspects. You hear guardianship and it's like, okay, what is this? What does it do? What does it mean? What am I giving up if I'm in guardianship? I think it sounds a whole lot less scary when you're saying, yeah, it lasts about a year for this person to get treatment and you only take as much power of whatever type it is, whether it's financial or, making the medical decisions. That's, wow. Mark Astor (22:38) The other thing to consider Marci is that is that the court automatically appoints this person, a lawyer to represent them so it's not like you're standing there and the families with us and their loved one doesn't have a lawyer. They have counsel to. The court appoints them a lawyer. And the other thing is obviously if if for some reason mom and or dad are not appropriate to serve as a guardian you can hire a professional guardian and again that, there can be peril with professional guardians too. We've seen some of that abuse here in Florida. So, I mean, we are really, really careful about who we're going to work with when it comes to the professional guardians we've got to be really careful with this stuff and it's really a vetting process for us. And we're just not going to work with somebody who's just, has the wrong motive to do the work. It's as simple as that. The same with treatment, right? I mean, we're really careful who we work with in terms of treatment. My wife and I have spent a lot of time and driven a lot of miles visiting different treatment centers. And if we don't, you know, as a general rule, we won't work with a treatment center where we haven't been to see the place and met the, you know, the clinical director and some of the clinical staff. I need to know who I'm working with here. Now obviously if one of my clinicians makes a referral, it's different story because I trust them implicitly. But you have to be careful. As the old saying goes, there's no substitute for experience in doing this work. So we're 10 years in here. So we've seen the ups and downs and the good and the bad of the industry. Marci Grossman (23:50) You can say that in every financially or medically or whatever related profession that there are good people and bad people and you've got to be able to talk to people so that you can put some guardrails in place of having reputable firms work with you, of having personal contact, a personal review to kind of keep things on the up and up. Mark Astor (23:51) Yeah. Marci Grossman (24:11) It's scary when you think about all the things that we need and all the people we have to rely on. It's good to know that there are firms out there that are, yeah, this is what we're doing. We're putting it out there. We're making it very transparent what we do, how we do it, who we do it for, who we work with. I hope I never need your services, but it's good to know you're out there. Mark Astor (24:32) That's what everybody says. it's ironic you say that, Marci. Over the years, one of the things I've been really proud of is I became a Florida Bar CLE provider. like any professionals, we need a certain amount of continuing education credit. I've had two courses now that the Florida Bar has approved for continuing education credits. And so I've been all over the state talking to the lawyers. And they say lawyers are twice as likely as non-lawyers to develop a substance use disorder. And when I speak to a group, you'd be shocked how many lawyers come up to me and say either they have a problem or they have a family member who has a problem. I mean, I've had judges over the years call me, about a family member. So, you know, this can affect anybody and everybody. It does not discriminate. It doesn't care how wealthy or poor you are, the color of your skin, your religious background. It doesn't care about any of that stuff. You know, this is a disease and it will attack the host. regardless of any of that stuff, it simply doesn't discriminate. I always tell families, you know, say, well, when should I deal with this? Now, that's when you should deal with it. When you realize there's a problem, this is the time to deal with it. Because like any disease, if you allow it to progress, it will destroy the host. It will. And it'll destroy your family too. Marci Grossman (25:38) Right. And that's mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, every way of it if you don't deal with it. Yeah, I mean, I like having repeat clients, but I want them to file their taxes every year. You know, the things that go with that. But yeah, I can see where you don't want to have repeat business. Referrals are nice, but not the same clients. Mark Astor (25:42) every way. Yes, Correct. And sometimes we have to do it over again, you know, for a myriad of reasons. Sometimes somebody's in recovery and they relapse. That can happen. It does happen. So yeah, I mean, we'll go back to court, you know, get this person back into treatment and we go through the process again. It's not an exact science. You know, I don't think anything is. But we get great results and it makes me proud of the work we do. Marci Grossman (26:19) Well, I think that's fabulous. Is there anything you would like to share before we wrap up? Mark Astor (26:24) You know, I would tell the moms and dads out there, know, be a nosy parent, right? Make it your business to find out what's going on, even if they're not adults, right? Find out what's going on because when you get somebody who's 30 years old and they're having an issue, it didn't start the year before. It typically started in their early teenage years and by the time they get into their 30s, it's full blown out of control. So what I would tell moms and dads is be really nosy about what's happening in your child's life and start to notice things. Are they any different? Have their eating habits changed, their sleeping habits? Are they starting to play hooky at school? If they have a job, if they stop going to work? Are they hanging out with different types of friends? Have they become aloof? Are they sort of estranged from other members of the family, including the parents? This is especially with moms. I've spoken to thousands of moms over the years. My wife always tells me I make them cry. I don't do it intentionally, but when you have a heart to heart with somebody, it's an emotional conversation for both me and the mom. And the point is that moms have this amazing instinct, what's the word I'm looking for? It's instinctual. I know it works with my mom and if I've got a headache, she knows, right? It's a special thing with moms and their children. So when I tell you speak to the moms, it's because the moms are the ones that typically notice things first. So keep an eye out for these things and find out what's happening in your child's life. And if there's a problem, listen, have lots and lots of free resources. I do a video almost every single day and it goes out on every social media platform you can think of. And I do it for free. And I do it because I think people need to have the information. They shouldn't have to call a lawyer to get the information they need. Go to my YouTube channel. There's 500 videos there. And I make a different one every day. And if you don't find what you're looking for, send me a message. I'll make a video for you, which I'm happy to do. Because if I'm helping you, I'm probably helping some other families too. And it's about. giving value and giving back. And there's a couple of eBooks on our different websites. So there's a lot of resources here and you can get it all for free. I want you to have the information you need so you can decide, are you ready for the next step? Are you ready to consider some legal services here so you can take control of an out of control situation? Marci Grossman (28:34) Mark, what you offer is tremendous. I've only been to the one of your sites and the resources that are on there are just incredible and so in-depth. I could have gotten lost in there. I will share links on the podcast notes. Mark Astor (28:36) Thank you. Marci Grossman (28:50) so that people can see where to find you and the various legal services that you offer. Mark Astor (28:54) If you go to the bottom of both of my websites, one is the Mental Health Addiction law firm website, the other one is Baker Act Attorneys. At the bottom of the page are links to all of our social media platforms and you can find just boatloads of video content there. And you can peruse till your heart's content. Marci Grossman (29:10) Make some time to do this because there is a lot of resources available. It's nice to know if you've got one of these challenges that there are resources out there and though you only practice in Florida and Massachusetts, a lot of things apparently come through Florida and I don't know if you have resources you could send people to if they had problems in other states. Are you a touch point they could use? Mark Astor (29:13) Okay. I've got a really extensive network. I can normally find you a lawyer in another state. But my two clinicians, they work all over the country. So they're not restricted like me by jurisdiction. And so at the very least, you know, I can put you in contact with one of the clinicians and that's a great place to start because they are full of phenomenal information and resources. And, you know, then we can talk about next steps after that. Marci Grossman (29:56) That's fabulous. No one should have to struggle with this alone and not have, you know, alone their family and not have the professional resources to ⁓ get the help they need and get their family back together. Mark, I have so much appreciated having you here. Thank you for being my guest. To my listeners, I will be sharing a link to all of his websites in the show notes. Please... Mark Astor (29:56) I'll find you somebody. Yeah, 100%. Thank you, Marci Marci Grossman (30:23) Check out Mark and his firm and all they offer. There's so much information there. And please don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and stay tuned. I will see you next time. This has been MoneyMarci on Marci Talks, Money and Life. You got this. See ya.