Latest / WCHS Network Podcasts / 1/2/2025 Ask the Lawyer with Harvey Peyton
Transcript
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- 0:15Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed on this program do not
- 0:18Speaker 2: necessarily reflect the views and opinions of five adwchs it's
- 0:22Speaker 2: employees or WVRC Media.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Put the power of Peyton on the side. We have
- 0:30Speaker 3: a court room experience. Such your need, we never give up.
- 0:36Speaker 3: We're prepared to fight for your rights. When you need action,
- 0:41Speaker 3: count on us. What the power of Payton on your side,
- 0:49Speaker 3: The power of.
- 0:51Speaker 4: Ndvery pleasant, Good morning to you. You're listening to Bob
- 0:54Speaker 4: Adwchs the Voice of Charleston. I'm del Cooper. You can
- 0:56Speaker 4: put the power of Peyton on your side this morning.
- 0:58Speaker 4: Harvey Peyton is in studio. Is today Harvey? Happy New Year?
- 1:01Speaker 5: How you doing? Happy New Year to you day? And
- 1:03Speaker 5: I am impressed you got that microphone to turn on
- 1:05Speaker 5: with the first time at first. Tron Ron Newes and
- 1:08Speaker 5: I were here last week or week before last and
- 1:11Speaker 5: though well I can carry this load by myself, we
- 1:14Speaker 5: couldn't get the just one of those things to ender year. Yeah,
- 1:19Speaker 5: it's a great it's twenty twenty five. That's hard for
- 1:23Speaker 5: me to come to grips with. That means I was
- 1:26Speaker 5: alive in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Kind
- 1:30Speaker 5: I've lived into the second quarter of the twenty first,
- 1:33Speaker 5: which you think, well, you must be real, Well, I
- 1:35Speaker 5: am old, but happen from nineteen forty nine to nineteen
- 1:37Speaker 5: twenty five, So that spans that you know what, squadronnioles
- 1:43Speaker 5: or whatever. It's interesting to be here. It's changes are
- 1:47Speaker 5: coming in this year. Of course, tomorrow the big change
- 1:50Speaker 5: is Hoppy's going to sign on, right, So I assume
- 1:53Speaker 5: tomorrow will be the Swan song where you take calls
- 1:57Speaker 5: and instead of steam relief, there'll be accolations.
- 2:01Speaker 4: And I hope, so, I hope, I hope. So I
- 2:03Speaker 4: think that that's going to be the spirit of the thing. Anyway,
- 2:05Speaker 4: I would think so if he won't make anybody speak
- 2:07Speaker 4: nicely of him, but I hope most people.
- 2:09Speaker 5: No, I mean, he's not going to reject it either.
- 2:11Speaker 5: He's top. He's done a really good job he's been
- 2:13Speaker 5: a person of great influence in the state of West Virginia.
- 2:16Speaker 5: I didn't realize Teller read the article in the gazette
- 2:19Speaker 5: this morning. I knew that it was sometime in the
- 2:21Speaker 5: nineties the state wide talk line had commenced, but was
- 2:25Speaker 5: it as early as like ninety one? Yeah, so we're
- 2:29Speaker 5: almost thirty, you know, close to thirty years into that.
- 2:32Speaker 5: That's a long run time for any man. Has Jimbo
- 2:36Speaker 5: Hannon been on the air with his show.
- 2:38Speaker 4: For he was the one before he passed. He probably,
- 2:41Speaker 4: I mean it was probably about thirty years for I mean,
- 2:43Speaker 4: it's I mean, that's a long running show. That's a
- 2:45Speaker 4: long run.
- 2:45Speaker 5: It is. It's a long running show. It's hard work.
- 2:47Speaker 5: The idea that Hopy wrote a you know, a column
- 2:53Speaker 5: five days a week, and that was for years and years.
- 2:55Speaker 5: He's eased up a little bit here in the last
- 2:57Speaker 5: couple of years. But to do that and then put
- 3:00Speaker 5: together an on air statewide live show two hours a day,
- 3:05Speaker 5: I mean, that's just a lot of work. And then
- 3:08Speaker 5: to be involved in well way back when when it
- 3:11Speaker 5: was the Mountaineer Sports Network, to be involved actively in
- 3:15Speaker 5: all the major radio broadcasts from Mountaineer football, basketball, baseball,
- 3:21Speaker 5: et cetera. It's just a tremendous amount of work. I'm
- 3:23Speaker 5: sure he'll enjoy his retirement. It's well deserved. We've actually
- 3:27Speaker 5: come to be came to be pretty good friends. I mean,
- 3:30Speaker 5: I think hopies. We share a lot. He's from a
- 3:32Speaker 5: small town, I'm from a small town, both of us,
- 3:35Speaker 5: so everything we have to WVU. And actually he let
- 3:41Speaker 5: me be on the air several times, which I thought
- 3:43Speaker 5: was quite appreciated. I mean, that's a big deal to
- 3:45Speaker 5: get statewide exposure. And always made a point to send
- 3:50Speaker 5: him an email and thank him and his responsible as well.
- 3:52Speaker 5: Thank you. Never saw any money out of it. He
- 3:57Speaker 5: made a points are unpaid or ill paid legal advisor
- 4:01Speaker 5: did get a well when Paul Howard was here and
- 4:04Speaker 5: would get a gift card every Christmas and that was
- 4:09Speaker 5: perfectly compensation to us. Twenty twenty five, twenty twenty five
- 4:12Speaker 5: is going to be a really good year for the
- 4:15Speaker 5: Peyton Law firm. You know, with the turning of the
- 4:17Speaker 5: calendar page. There's been a Peyton Law practice in Nitro,
- 4:23Speaker 5: West Virginia for now forty eight years, and that's a
- 4:28Speaker 5: long time to stay up. Said well to practice and
- 4:31Speaker 5: the service a clientele. The last twenty plus years, there
- 4:37Speaker 5: have been two of us, Tom and I, and we've
- 4:38Speaker 5: had other lawyers have been one time was affiliated with
- 4:42Speaker 5: Chip Colwell and Jerry McCormick. And then you know, I've
- 4:46Speaker 5: had several attorneys that came through the office work. Therefore,
- 4:49Speaker 5: the usual progression, you come and work in an office
- 4:53Speaker 5: in an associate position, and then you start looking around,
- 4:56Speaker 5: like when you went to the prosecutor's office where she's
- 4:59Speaker 5: been when a lady went to be a family court judge.
- 5:04Speaker 5: So I mean our tentacles, I guess you would call
- 5:08Speaker 5: him run deep in the whole community of western kanawh County,
- 5:12Speaker 5: Putnam County, Mason County, Jackson, Lincoln, the whole really southern
- 5:17Speaker 5: district judicial district of West Virginia. If you looked at
- 5:20Speaker 5: the federal courts, probably our footprint extends over that all
- 5:26Speaker 5: the southwestern counties and into southeastern Ohio where Tom has
- 5:31Speaker 5: been licensed to practice in Ohio for twenty plus years.
- 5:34Speaker 5: And our great pride is that you know we you
- 5:38Speaker 5: deal with us. When you hear the Peyton Law Firm
- 5:43Speaker 5: or the power of Peyton, that's either me, Harvey Peyton
- 5:45Speaker 5: or my oldest boy, Tom Peyton, the best I believe
- 5:51Speaker 5: in his forties lawyer from the plaintiffs standpoint in the
- 5:54Speaker 5: state of West Virginia right now, period paragraph, regardless of
- 5:59Speaker 5: the law, just law firm in the universe which comes
- 6:01Speaker 5: in here on its mothership and pronounces on this station
- 6:05Speaker 5: a lot with their guy who likes to do their promos,
- 6:09Speaker 5: but who then admits, well, I'm not licensed to practice there,
- 6:12Speaker 5: and I doubt has ever seen much of a shadow
- 6:15Speaker 5: here at the end of the day. But the Peyton
- 6:16Speaker 5: Law Firm, if you want to, you know, if you
- 6:18Speaker 5: think big to The reason we started doing this show,
- 6:21Speaker 5: which is now in its twenty sixth year, which is
- 6:23Speaker 5: a pretty long run, was with the attitude don't be
- 6:30Speaker 5: afraid to call a lawyer. A lot of folks they
- 6:34Speaker 5: have an idea, a lot of which is fostered by
- 6:37Speaker 5: the popular press or just humor. There are always lawyer jokes,
- 6:44Speaker 5: there are bad stories. You know, when greed happens. Greed
- 6:48Speaker 5: happens with all professions. Incompetence happens in all professions. But
- 6:54Speaker 5: competence is not news, and incompetence is, and so that's
- 6:57Speaker 5: what you often read it. Just do not be afraid
- 7:01Speaker 5: to reach out to a lawyer to see if you
- 7:04Speaker 5: need help. Primarily, the fees are not going to be exorbitant,
- 7:09Speaker 5: certainly ours are not. If we're retained to do a
- 7:12Speaker 5: certain thing, we talk about what our fees are and
- 7:14Speaker 5: we ask the clients. You know, it's just something you
- 7:16Speaker 5: can get into. You've got to be able to afford
- 7:20Speaker 5: to do this. You're entitled to know what this is
- 7:21Speaker 5: going to cost you. And I'm not aware of any
- 7:27Speaker 5: law firm that works on a contingent fee basis. For instance,
- 7:33Speaker 5: almost all of our Planet of storiented litigation is on
- 7:39Speaker 5: a contingent fee, which means you hire us, we take
- 7:42Speaker 5: your case on the risk of recovery. If you don't recover,
- 7:46Speaker 5: we can't get a successful resolution, we don't get paid.
- 7:49Speaker 5: That's part of the real incentive. I mean, the profit
- 7:53Speaker 5: motive exists in all business. It exists on the plaintive
- 7:55Speaker 5: side because we eat what we kill, and if it
- 7:59Speaker 5: exists on the defense side, because they eat what they build,
- 8:03Speaker 5: right and if they can find an insurance company they
- 8:05Speaker 5: can build, they'll build them. On the plaintive side because
- 8:08Speaker 5: we eat what we kill. And if it exists on
- 8:12Speaker 5: the defense side because they eat what they build, right,
- 8:15Speaker 5: and if they can find an insurance company they can build,
- 8:17Speaker 5: they'll build them. So I'm not worthy of anybody that
- 8:21Speaker 5: charges to see if you have a case. I mean
- 8:24Speaker 5: we spend hours Tom and I do every month, either
- 8:30Speaker 5: speaking with people in person because they come by the
- 8:32Speaker 5: office or they call them make an appointment, or in
- 8:36Speaker 5: depth conversations on the telephone, or exchanges of texts and
- 8:41Speaker 5: documents by email, just for the purposes seeing, hey, you know,
- 8:46Speaker 5: here's an issue. It's obviously an issue for the prospective plant,
- 8:50Speaker 5: or they wouldn't be reaching out. Do I need help here?
- 8:56Speaker 5: I mean I feel like I need some help here?
- 8:57Speaker 5: What can I do here? And we answer this quest
- 9:00Speaker 5: questions all the time, and unless it comes to the point,
- 9:03Speaker 5: well yes you do need some help and you're going
- 9:06Speaker 5: to need a lawyer to do that, there is no
- 9:11Speaker 5: charge for that. I mean, you can't. We never did
- 9:14Speaker 5: think it was right to charge somebody to see, well
- 9:17Speaker 5: do you have a case, and then all right, well
- 9:19Speaker 5: thanks for the money, but you don't have a case.
- 9:22Speaker 5: I mean, that's one of the things that if you're
- 9:25Speaker 5: in business to help people, and the Peyton Law Firm
- 9:27Speaker 5: is in business to help people. You try and do
- 9:30Speaker 5: as much as you can. I mean, honestly, compared to
- 9:38Speaker 5: law firms of significant size practicing in the area, the
- 9:41Speaker 5: things that we do on a transactional basis not necessarily
- 9:46Speaker 5: accident injury work or litigation work, fee shifting work like
- 9:53Speaker 5: for your cases or employment cases where the other side
- 9:56Speaker 5: pays the fees. Transactional work being well, I think I
- 10:01Speaker 5: need can you help me look over this contract or
- 10:03Speaker 5: I got a letter from my insurance company. Can you
- 10:05Speaker 5: read this for me and help me know what it says?
- 10:08Speaker 5: Or you know, I might be feeling a little bit
- 10:13Speaker 5: out of touch lately. I'm going to need a power
- 10:15Speaker 5: of attorney, so if somebody can act for me, or
- 10:19Speaker 5: I'd like to see that my kids get this property,
- 10:21Speaker 5: those sort of transactional things. I'll be honest. I mean,
- 10:28Speaker 5: we don't charge much, not enough to cover our costs. Actually,
- 10:34Speaker 5: I think I've prevailed on Tom, so we've got to
- 10:36Speaker 5: kick that up a little bit. But you know, he's
- 10:39Speaker 5: like me. I mean, you don't want to price people
- 10:41Speaker 5: out of things they need, and you don't want to
- 10:43Speaker 5: scare people off from calling you. I mean, somebody that
- 10:46Speaker 5: needs to get their affairs in order. You know, in
- 10:49Speaker 5: this age of blended families where maybe a man and
- 10:52Speaker 5: a woman have been married thirty years, but hey, maybe
- 10:54Speaker 5: each of them had a prior marriage or relationship, and
- 10:57Speaker 5: there are step children out there and have siblings, and hey,
- 11:01Speaker 5: you're in some real estate now, and you've got some
- 11:03Speaker 5: money in the bank. You know, you better be thinking
- 11:06Speaker 5: about a little estate planning because if you die without
- 11:08Speaker 5: a will, you may think that's all going to go
- 11:12Speaker 5: to your surviving spouse, but no, no, no, it's not.
- 11:14Speaker 5: And there's going to be some dealings to be done.
- 11:17Speaker 5: So what you would pay to get a little simple
- 11:19Speaker 5: estate plan done less than a thousand dollars, Probably I
- 11:23Speaker 5: might save your children and grandchildren and your surviving spouse
- 11:27Speaker 5: ten thousand dollars just try and sort out an airship
- 11:30Speaker 5: mess that doesn't need to exist. So that's our mantra
- 11:35Speaker 5: for twenty twenty five is we're still alive in twenty five,
- 11:38Speaker 5: and we're here to help you, and there's a lot
- 11:40Speaker 5: of ways to get in touch with us. I would
- 11:42Speaker 5: to say something.
- 11:42Speaker 4: Yeah, I was just going to ask as far as
- 11:44Speaker 4: I had some recent experience with my mom's actually had
- 11:46Speaker 4: a recent experience with a close death in the family
- 11:50Speaker 4: and she was put in charge of the estate. And
- 11:53Speaker 4: now everybody said that it was my aunt who passed away.
- 11:56Speaker 4: It was like a second mom to us. But everybody
- 11:59Speaker 4: said that she did like everything she was supposed to do,
- 12:01Speaker 4: as far as having her state planning and everything. She
- 12:03Speaker 4: put it all together. But what I think hadn't happened
- 12:06Speaker 4: is she hadn't updated it over the years. So she
- 12:08Speaker 4: was eight in her mid eighties or her when she
- 12:11Speaker 4: passed away, so for decades probably she had an estate
- 12:14Speaker 4: plan that was really well done at one time. But
- 12:17Speaker 4: when we got to her actually passing, in all this
- 12:19Speaker 4: paperwork of getting getting out, it ends up a lot
- 12:22Speaker 4: of it was out of date. There was like deeds
- 12:24Speaker 4: to properties that nobody could find. I mean there was,
- 12:26Speaker 4: it ended up being. There was still hassle on the
- 12:29Speaker 4: back end of things, although she put together a nice
- 12:31Speaker 4: estate at one point in time. So you do have
- 12:32Speaker 4: to kind of monitor these things even once you get
- 12:35Speaker 4: them done right.
- 12:36Speaker 5: Well. Yes, indeed, particularly if there is a significant change.
- 12:42Speaker 5: You know, heaven forbid the loss of a loved one,
- 12:44Speaker 5: maybe a child, someone who was a natural object of
- 12:47Speaker 5: your bounty, if they're remembered in your state documents will
- 12:53Speaker 5: or transfer on death. Well maybe I just look, we
- 12:58Speaker 5: do it some it comes into my office and sits
- 13:02Speaker 5: it out and said, you know, here's what I've got.
- 13:04Speaker 5: I mean, you did this for me twenty five years ago.
- 13:07Speaker 5: What do we need to do. I don't have any
- 13:11Speaker 5: hesitations that we don't need to do anything period. This
- 13:14Speaker 5: is still good. I could sure I could do this
- 13:16Speaker 5: for you. I could write a confirmatory deed or I
- 13:19Speaker 5: can do this, but you don't need it. It would
- 13:21Speaker 5: be just taking your money because what you've got here,
- 13:23Speaker 5: what we did there, it's it's self executing. It provides
- 13:26Speaker 5: alternatives if if your spouse passes away, what then happens
- 13:31Speaker 5: when you're gone? But yeah, it's not a bad idea
- 13:35Speaker 5: if you're around everything. And you know, we wrote those
- 13:39Speaker 5: wheels back when the kids were small and we were
- 13:41Speaker 5: still working on in this and you know, most people
- 13:46Speaker 5: you've got a house, but the bank owns it. Now
- 13:48Speaker 5: that's changed at that point. Let's call them, make an appointment.
- 13:53Speaker 5: Bring in your documents. We'll look at them. You know,
- 13:56Speaker 5: if there's something needs to be done, you know, if
- 13:59Speaker 5: it's extensive trust documents, things of that nature, we have
- 14:03Speaker 5: to spend some time on it. There will be a charge.
- 14:04Speaker 5: We'll tell you beforehand. You know, I can do all
- 14:07Speaker 5: I can look this all over for you, but this
- 14:09Speaker 5: has passed just some usual introductory examination, so you know,
- 14:15Speaker 5: maybe a couple hours worth of work here to tell
- 14:18Speaker 5: you exactly what you want to do. That a lot
- 14:20Speaker 5: with people that come in and inherited some real estate.
- 14:23Speaker 5: What does this mean? Who owns this property? That's one
- 14:27Speaker 5: of the reasons you really ought to think about an
- 14:29Speaker 5: estate plan and some formal documents if you own real estate,
- 14:33Speaker 5: because you know, there's not a whole lot of wiggle room,
- 14:38Speaker 5: even in today's lack standards about title examinations to real estate,
- 14:43Speaker 5: there's not a lot of wiggle room. When the rubber
- 14:45Speaker 5: hits the road and you're as ultimately most property is
- 14:48Speaker 5: going to change hands or be sold, someone takes a
- 14:51Speaker 5: critical eye look at the titles as well. There's a
- 14:54Speaker 5: problem here because the way this estate was handled like
- 14:59Speaker 5: eighteen years ago. Now you've got to go back and
- 15:01Speaker 5: straighten that out. So do it right to start with.
- 15:04Speaker 5: And you can contact us uh Peytonlawfirm dot com. And
- 15:09Speaker 5: you know, when I first started practicing law, computers were
- 15:13Speaker 5: I mean that was something that sent him into the moon.
- 15:15Speaker 5: And then the size of a room too. Right, Well,
- 15:17Speaker 5: I can remember the first pocket calculator. I was working
- 15:20Speaker 5: with a fellow here in Charleston. I was still in
- 15:23Speaker 5: law school. He got one of the Texas instrument pocket
- 15:25Speaker 5: which you could put it in your pocket with a
- 15:27Speaker 5: lot of force. He had exerting. So he's showing off
- 15:31Speaker 5: and he did his banking was in the Charleston National
- 15:35Speaker 5: Bank it's the Chase Building now, and they had a
- 15:37Speaker 5: nice big lobby and the one lady that always waited
- 15:40Speaker 5: on him, he goes in with a stack of checks.
- 15:42Speaker 5: Instead of felling out his deposit slip up in the office,
- 15:45Speaker 5: he goes down and whips out his calculator to show
- 15:48Speaker 5: off and add up his and literally drew a crowd
- 15:53Speaker 5: literally people in the lobby. Is that one of them
- 15:56Speaker 5: had a pocket challenge? Because all that I mean, that
- 15:58Speaker 5: doesn't hurt. I mean, and now, I mean there was
- 16:04Speaker 5: and there was probably as much computing power in that
- 16:09Speaker 5: telephone are you're sitting there as there wasn't in the
- 16:12Speaker 5: Apollo third sure, any we had hunging skin paper with
- 16:18Speaker 5: car onion skin, with carbon paper for copies. There was
- 16:22Speaker 5: one xerox machine on the floor on the tenth floor
- 16:25Speaker 5: at the Charles National Bank building, so all the lawyers
- 16:27Speaker 5: could share it and hold down the expense. Things have
- 16:30Speaker 5: changed a lot, and one of the really great changes
- 16:32Speaker 5: is in email. And I'm not necessarily saying social media.
- 16:37Speaker 5: Although we have a presence on Facebook and whatever the
- 16:41Speaker 5: other Instagram, I don't that's Tom's domain. But you can
- 16:46Speaker 5: go to our website Peytonlawfirm dot com and there's a
- 16:49Speaker 5: tab so you can send an email and you can
- 16:53Speaker 5: ask anything and the listen. This is it's all confidentially.
- 16:56Speaker 5: Only people that see those emails are either me or
- 16:59Speaker 5: all of a sudden, Tom, the other lawyer in the office.
- 17:01Speaker 5: They do not pop up on anybody else's screen. It's
- 17:04Speaker 5: only on I'm the only access and Tom is the
- 17:09Speaker 5: only access. So you know, we get emails and you
- 17:13Speaker 5: can you can start a conversation and literally it's the
- 17:16Speaker 5: clients centrist. If it's about a document, for instance, most
- 17:20Speaker 5: people have or can access the capacity to scan that
- 17:24Speaker 5: document or take a photo of it, take a screenshot,
- 17:27Speaker 5: send it as an attachment to an email, and we
- 17:29Speaker 5: can look that over and right back and say, well
- 17:31Speaker 5: what about this well, then if it turns out, look,
- 17:34Speaker 5: this is something that yes, there's probably a remedy here.
- 17:38Speaker 5: You've got some equities on your side. Now let's take
- 17:42Speaker 5: the next step. You come on in, bring these papers,
- 17:45Speaker 5: come on in and see us in person. That's just
- 17:47Speaker 5: been a that's a tremendous help, not just to us
- 17:50Speaker 5: but to the public. And honestly, it's not I mean,
- 17:54Speaker 5: I literally have seen a commercial for I guess legal services.
- 18:01Speaker 5: I would call it quasi legal services, where people who
- 18:04Speaker 5: have been injured are asked to apparently have resolved claims
- 18:12Speaker 5: by opening an app and filling in some information about
- 18:17Speaker 5: their medical bills and how they feel, and Okay, here's
- 18:20Speaker 5: your offer, and we'll send you the money. I mean,
- 18:23Speaker 5: and that I think that commercial was maybe for the
- 18:26Speaker 5: largest law firm in the universe. I'm not sure. It
- 18:28Speaker 5: certainly wasn't us, and I don't think it was any
- 18:31Speaker 5: of the attorneys that practice here, those who advertise them,
- 18:36Speaker 5: both those who do not, who are solid sound West
- 18:40Speaker 5: Virginia practitioners. But to me, it's dangerous and it's unconscionable,
- 18:46Speaker 5: and that's not an effort to help people, and it's
- 18:48Speaker 5: just an effort to generate some cash as quick as
- 18:50Speaker 5: you can.
- 18:51Speaker 4: And you don't get that. I don't know how you
- 18:54Speaker 4: as a client. I don't know how you'd feel comfortable
- 18:55Speaker 4: with that, honestly. I mean, I guess maybe at a
- 18:57Speaker 4: certain age you're more comfortable with the app infrastructure than otherwise.
- 19:02Speaker 4: But I'm fifty, I'm not coming up.
- 19:03Speaker 5: Yeah. Well, yeah, and I will say that the advertisers
- 19:06Speaker 5: I've seen look like twenty somethings, you know, it's just acclimated.
- 19:11Speaker 4: To there's a better way, though, twenty somethings. There's a
- 19:14Speaker 4: better way. There's a way to talk to somebody, to somebody.
- 19:17Speaker 5: You can pick up the phone and call three oh
- 19:19Speaker 5: four seven five five five five five six. It's not
- 19:22Speaker 5: a long distance call from anywhere in the world.
- 19:24Speaker 4: Now there's no such thing anymore.
- 19:26Speaker 5: We have an eight hundred number which we gave to folks,
- 19:28Speaker 5: and you can steal a close six eight one nine
- 19:30Speaker 5: five five five. I always felt it handy because I
- 19:33Speaker 5: could call anywhere that number from a pay phone, right yeah,
- 19:36Speaker 5: And people look at me and I said, a payphone.
- 19:38Speaker 4: What Yeah. Trying to explain my daughter long long distance
- 19:41Speaker 4: to my daughter, you know, is pretty incredible because you know,
- 19:44Speaker 4: she calls her her her grandmother's all the time and stuff,
- 19:47Speaker 4: you know, and so she'll dial the numbers and everything herself,
- 19:50Speaker 4: and we just get into random conversations and ties. Well,
- 19:52Speaker 4: you won't believe when we were a kid, you had
- 19:53Speaker 4: to have long She's like, yeah, like mill trying to explain.
- 19:56Speaker 5: Seven four to three was a long distance fall seven
- 19:59Speaker 5: five five. But if you're going to east you could
- 20:02Speaker 5: call from Nitrate to the head of Cabin Creek and
- 20:04Speaker 5: it was a long distance. But if you called Clintdenna
- 20:06Speaker 5: and there was an extra charge.
- 20:08Speaker 4: Remember, you didn't have to put the area code in
- 20:10Speaker 4: calling locally. You just had a call like you know,
- 20:12Speaker 4: nine two five, whatever the number was, and you would
- 20:13Speaker 4: DOWT three. Didn't have to put the AERA code through.
- 20:15Speaker 4: That wasn't all that long ago. Really, let me get
- 20:17Speaker 4: our contact information out and we'll take a break here
- 20:18Speaker 4: real quick. You can call us this morning three zero
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- 20:41Speaker 4: Payton Law Firm online. It's Peyton Lawfirm dot com. P
- 20:43Speaker 4: E y t O in Peyton Law Firm dot com.
- 20:46Speaker 4: We'll take a break and be backward after this. You're
- 20:47Speaker 4: listening to ask the lawyer with Harvey Peyton. I'm Dale Cooper.
- 20:50Speaker 4: This is five eight WCHS the Voice of Charleston.
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- 22:27Speaker 4: you can give us a call this morning and uh
- 22:29Speaker 4: you can put the over text this morning that has
- 22:31Speaker 4: a question for you. Uh, let's see, could you ask
- 22:34Speaker 4: Carby to explain the difference between a will and a trust.
- 22:36Speaker 4: What is the benefit of putting assets in a trust
- 22:39Speaker 4: rather than simply having a will?
- 22:41Speaker 5: Well, in West Virginia, I will say, I see none.
- 22:44Speaker 5: I am not an advocate of trusts for the vast
- 22:49Speaker 5: majority of folks that we see, and I'm talking about people,
- 22:52Speaker 5: and it's not uncommon in this area to see people
- 22:55Speaker 5: that have in a state maybe a couple million dollars.
- 22:58Speaker 5: You know, when you start talking about out, we've lost
- 23:01Speaker 5: a lot when we lost Carbide and do pot and
- 23:04Speaker 5: the big retire benefits. But people who are who have
- 23:09Speaker 5: the time to manage their own accounts to ride this
- 23:13Speaker 5: stock market as high as they can. They have retirement
- 23:16Speaker 5: accounts and individual savings and investment accounts, real estate. You know,
- 23:25Speaker 5: there is no US of State tax applicable. There's a
- 23:30Speaker 5: US of State tax, but it doesn't kick in until
- 23:35Speaker 5: ten million or eleven million dollars in net of state assets.
- 23:38Speaker 5: So planning with the idea of avoiding state tax, what's
- 23:45Speaker 5: a lot of that is based on this trust theory.
- 23:50Speaker 5: It's just it's non existent. There is West Virginia had
- 23:53Speaker 5: an inheritance tax. The difference between a state tax is
- 23:57Speaker 5: that's actually a tax on the estate based upon just
- 24:01Speaker 5: how much money's there. If you haven't a state of
- 24:03Speaker 5: this size, here's the rate. But that size has to
- 24:07Speaker 5: exceed eleven million dollars per person now for that to
- 24:11Speaker 5: even apply. So that's off the table. West Virginia had
- 24:15Speaker 5: an inheritance sax which was actually a tax on the recipient,
- 24:19Speaker 5: and it was it was bad. It wasn't really very fair.
- 24:22Speaker 5: It was a fifty thousand dollars exemption and it applied
- 24:25Speaker 5: even to widows, and it kicked in at ten percent
- 24:27Speaker 5: after that. And you know that's why by the mid
- 24:31Speaker 5: early nineteen eighties, the legislature just abolished it. We had
- 24:36Speaker 5: a nice, wonderful woman, a lawyering Virginia Simms, worked with
- 24:39Speaker 5: the Tax Commissioner's office. She was the Inheritance Sax division
- 24:42Speaker 5: and a wonderful person to deal with. And to answer question,
- 24:45Speaker 5: she frankly said, I don't know why we have this.
- 24:49Speaker 5: It's not fair. It's burned some and so the legislature
- 24:53Speaker 5: abolished it and it's never been reinstituted. Okay, well, there's
- 24:57Speaker 5: no tax benefit that I can see. To a trust.
- 25:01Speaker 5: If you're under the exemption for federal state tax, well,
- 25:08Speaker 5: we don't have to go through probate. Well, there are
- 25:10Speaker 5: ways to plan your estate around probate avoidans. Number one
- 25:15Speaker 5: is if you have tax deferred annuities retirement accounts, you
- 25:19Speaker 5: always need to take care of those with a beneficiary designation.
- 25:24Speaker 5: If you have someone you trust and you want to
- 25:27Speaker 5: give them some money at your death, put their name
- 25:29Speaker 5: on the account and call it TOD. You can have
- 25:33Speaker 5: a certificate deposit transfer on death too, proof of death
- 25:37Speaker 5: to the bank the account's transferred, it doesn't go through
- 25:39Speaker 5: your probate estate. You can now do what's called a
- 25:43Speaker 5: transfer on death of real estate. If you have, for instance,
- 25:45Speaker 5: your residence. I want to be sure this goes to
- 25:49Speaker 5: this child or to that child, all right, if you
- 25:53Speaker 5: know that right now, and that's what you want to happen,
- 25:55Speaker 5: assuming you live in that house when you die, do
- 25:58Speaker 5: a transfer on death deed. That means you don't give
- 26:00Speaker 5: up any present ownership. You can sell the house, move
- 26:03Speaker 5: to Florida if you want to do a reverse mortgage.
- 26:06Speaker 5: Just means that if you die, whatever's there goes to
- 26:09Speaker 5: the person be transferred on death or you can revoke
- 26:14Speaker 5: that do another one. So you can really limit the
- 26:17Speaker 5: probate size of your estate through actions that you take.
- 26:20Speaker 5: And we point people in this direction all the time,
- 26:24Speaker 5: so that most of your state is a non probate transfer.
- 26:27Speaker 5: I really recommend, though, that everybody have at least a
- 26:30Speaker 5: simple will I leave all my property to my spouse
- 26:35Speaker 5: or if she predeceases me too, so and so it
- 26:38Speaker 5: may never need to probate that document. But every now
- 26:42Speaker 5: and then something pops up, like, oh wait a minute,
- 26:45Speaker 5: you get a notice after somebody dies. You know they
- 26:47Speaker 5: were a participation in the DuPont employee stock program back
- 26:50Speaker 5: in the sixties, and here's twenty five years of stock. Well,
- 26:54Speaker 5: you have to probate the estate in order to make
- 26:57Speaker 5: that transfer. So it's a stopgap measure. You create a trust,
- 27:02Speaker 5: and the problem is you're creating a separate legal entity
- 27:06Speaker 5: that has to have a tax ID number. If you
- 27:10Speaker 5: deal with the trust, you have to deal with an
- 27:12Speaker 5: arm's length as if you're dealing with another person who
- 27:15Speaker 5: you can't see and who doesn't compel you to do things.
- 27:18Speaker 5: So in my experience, all that idea that we're going
- 27:21Speaker 5: to keep up with these trust documents gets lost, you know,
- 27:23Speaker 5: in that little fog that clears up, So you don't
- 27:26Speaker 5: transfer the real estate when it needs to be transferred,
- 27:30Speaker 5: and so you don't put a proper inventory of assets
- 27:34Speaker 5: that are going to go into the trust at any
- 27:36Speaker 5: given time, and you don't have a separate tax ID number,
- 27:39Speaker 5: and all you have is just quote a trust that's
- 27:43Speaker 5: either non economic because there's no money there to correct
- 27:46Speaker 5: carry out the purposes, or it's not actually executing. You
- 27:51Speaker 5: can't execute it because there's nothing there to deal with.
- 27:54Speaker 5: I've just I mean the difference between it trust it will.
- 28:00Speaker 5: I mean a will is a is a testamentary transfer.
- 28:04Speaker 5: It takes effect, and it is spoken on melmead to death.
- 28:08Speaker 5: The trust make here effect some isshues after death. But
- 28:12Speaker 5: it's a it's an entity that's created now. So I'm
- 28:18Speaker 5: just not big on them. I don't. I think I've
- 28:21Speaker 5: spent I actually had had to tell clients, you know, well,
- 28:26Speaker 5: this is going to cost us some money. But this
- 28:28Speaker 5: is a This is just a non economic trust, and
- 28:30Speaker 5: it can be dissolved, but it takes court intervention. You
- 28:34Speaker 5: leave somebody a house, I'll leave my house and trust
- 28:36Speaker 5: for jumbob okay, who pays the taxes, who pays the insurance,
- 28:44Speaker 5: who fixes the roof? Where's the money in the trust
- 28:48Speaker 5: to do that? So Jim Bob's sitting there, Well, he
- 28:51Speaker 5: didn't get any money. He got a house that's in trust.
- 28:53Speaker 5: He can't go borrow any money on it because he's
- 28:56Speaker 5: not the beneficial the legal owner. He's a benefits or recipient.
- 29:01Speaker 5: So how do you deal with that? Well, you deal
- 29:04Speaker 5: with it by following an action in the circuit court
- 29:06Speaker 5: of the county wherever that real estate is, and say
- 29:09Speaker 5: that it qualifies as a statutory non economic trust and
- 29:13Speaker 5: it's executed by conveying the property to the beneficiary, which
- 29:17Speaker 5: is what was intended to start with. It's just clerked
- 29:20Speaker 5: in that fog. I've said too much.
- 29:23Speaker 4: Well, it's it's interesting you bring this up because there's
- 29:26Speaker 4: a I've noticed a trend on line, especially with younger
- 29:30Speaker 4: people and generally non experts in the field, that are
- 29:34Speaker 4: obsessed with trusts. It's like it's like their content creator
- 29:38Speaker 4: influencer recommendation for everybody. You've got to create a trust
- 29:41Speaker 4: right now, because if you're created a trust, you're going to
- 29:43Speaker 4: create all these protections for yourself. And I've asked this question,
- 29:45Speaker 4: not only of you now, but but John berd Death
- 29:48Speaker 4: been in here. We've asked the question before. I've nobody
- 29:50Speaker 4: thinks it's actually nobody with professional expertise actually thinks it's
- 29:53Speaker 4: a good idea under most, under most circumstances.
- 29:56Speaker 5: Now, there are exceptions to every rule and wh you
- 30:00Speaker 5: have a significant estate and you have minor children, and
- 30:03Speaker 5: someone needs to be in charge of that money, maybe
- 30:06Speaker 5: even past their age of majority at eighteen, they serve.
- 30:09Speaker 5: But that is a trust with a very specific and
- 30:12Speaker 5: limited purpose that's generally testamentary in nature. It's created by
- 30:18Speaker 5: the will, and it names a trustee, and it gives
- 30:22Speaker 5: some substance. There's something there that you can go get
- 30:26Speaker 5: a tax ID number, that you can open a bank account,
- 30:30Speaker 5: you can have a person designated as trustee. There's some formality,
- 30:34Speaker 5: but just the idea that we should have this because
- 30:37Speaker 5: we can have it, it makes no sense to me.
- 30:40Speaker 5: And you're right, it's largely online influencers that I see now.
- 30:44Speaker 5: It was readers Digest fifty years ago that made those
- 30:47Speaker 5: recommendations and probate that horrible thing. If a person dies
- 30:57Speaker 5: and we're all going to die, and they have some
- 31:01Speaker 5: substance owned in their own name, real estate, stocks, bonds, cash,
- 31:06Speaker 5: valuable antiques, coins, guns, and you go to the take
- 31:11Speaker 5: their death certificate, and you go to the FIDUCE Area
- 31:13Speaker 5: office in Kanawa County right down there next to the
- 31:17Speaker 5: old in the old courthouse the same day the old
- 31:19Speaker 5: jail door, or you can go if you have some
- 31:22Speaker 5: Putnam County and go to the courthouse second floor of
- 31:25Speaker 5: the annex, well the old courthouse annex. You pay, depending
- 31:33Speaker 5: on the size of the estate, somewhere less than two
- 31:36Speaker 5: hundred dollars to be qualified as personal representative and to
- 31:40Speaker 5: open the estate. You're giving a packet of forms that
- 31:43Speaker 5: are essentially self explanatory. You complete an appraisement of the estate.
- 31:50Speaker 5: Now that's that's an area where if a person has
- 31:52Speaker 5: some substance, you got to think about hiring a lawyer.
- 31:55Speaker 5: You know, of course thousand and fifteen hundred dollars maybe
- 31:58Speaker 5: to get it done correctly. But at the end of
- 32:01Speaker 5: the day, for an estate of a million dollars, if
- 32:04Speaker 5: it's a probate estate, you're going to walk out with
- 32:08Speaker 5: actual probate expenses of less than five hundred dollars legal fees.
- 32:15Speaker 5: If you are lawyer less than fifty to fifteen hundred
- 32:18Speaker 5: dollars or less. So you've got approximately two percent of
- 32:21Speaker 5: the value of the estate tied up in probate. Now
- 32:24Speaker 5: is that worth creating some trust that may or may
- 32:28Speaker 5: not work? To me, the answer is no. It's like
- 32:32Speaker 5: people who will literally convey property back and forth chasing
- 32:39Speaker 5: a twenty thousand dollars homestead exemption using form deeds. And
- 32:45Speaker 5: you say, look, okay, so you saved yourself over the
- 32:48Speaker 5: course of the five or six years who were chasing
- 32:50Speaker 5: that homestead exemption sixty bucks a year. So yeah, that's
- 32:58Speaker 5: that's three hundred dollars. Now the cost of straightening out
- 33:01Speaker 5: this mess you made in the title, it's probably a
- 33:06Speaker 5: couple thousand bucks.
- 33:07Speaker 4: Sometimes you can be way too clever for yourself.
- 33:09Speaker 5: Well. Tax driven decisions, I mean, there are other reasons
- 33:14Speaker 5: to make decisions and to carry out your business other
- 33:18Speaker 5: than just simple tax avoidance. I mean people will sometimes
- 33:23Speaker 5: if you think, well, look i'm looking at this, I'm
- 33:25Speaker 5: looking at this online, I'm looking at your tax liability.
- 33:29Speaker 5: What you want to do here is to lose control
- 33:31Speaker 5: of your property and save yourself like thirty bucks a year.
- 33:38Speaker 5: This is not worth it for you. This is not
- 33:41Speaker 5: socially or economically or familial. It's worth it to you.
- 33:46Speaker 5: And a lot of times I tell people I'm not
- 33:48Speaker 5: going to do it. I mean, I understand what you
- 33:50Speaker 5: want to do, you shouldn't do it. It's not going to
- 33:53Speaker 5: be your benefit. I'm not going to take your money
- 33:55Speaker 5: for doing something that you know you heard about it
- 33:57Speaker 5: the beauty parlor.
- 33:59Speaker 4: That kind of reminds me going back to how you
- 34:01Speaker 4: opened up the show, and we'll kind of end up
- 34:03Speaker 4: on this. Tom and I had talked about this briefly before,
- 34:06Speaker 4: but from the direction that you know, we talk about
- 34:09Speaker 4: influencers giving legal advice when they're not actually lawyers and
- 34:12Speaker 4: things like that. I think that one of the issues
- 34:14Speaker 4: that the Peyton Law Firm really helps with is it
- 34:16Speaker 4: helps level out the asymmetrical nature of legal representation, because
- 34:20Speaker 4: I think what happens with people sometimes is they get
- 34:23Speaker 4: lawyered by TikTok and they're trying to engage with, like
- 34:27Speaker 4: say a corporation who's lawyered by actual lawyers, right, And
- 34:30Speaker 4: so the asymmetrical power on that is you have somebody
- 34:33Speaker 4: who's TikTok educated thinking like, well, you have to do
- 34:35Speaker 4: this and you have to do this, and the corporation
- 34:37Speaker 4: is like, no, we don't, We don't have to do
- 34:38Speaker 4: any of that.
- 34:39Speaker 5: What do you talk about? In particular, because we handle
- 34:42Speaker 5: so many injury claims folks who get influencers and TikTokers
- 34:48Speaker 5: or some sort of an app on the phone said, look,
- 34:53Speaker 5: but you don't realize. You think you're talking to this
- 34:55Speaker 5: nice adjuster. That person is a lawyer. I mean the
- 34:59Speaker 5: adjusting staff. A lot of these major insurance companies are lawyers.
- 35:02Speaker 5: I mean, i'd be practicing, but they are talking to
- 35:04Speaker 5: you because you're choosing to represent yourself as a lawyer
- 35:09Speaker 5: representing the other side. And here's what they want you
- 35:12Speaker 5: to say. Oh really, I said, yeah, Well did you
- 35:14Speaker 5: say that? Well, well that was what kind of like, yo, yeah,
- 35:18Speaker 5: that's exactly. Oh you're feeling better, aren't you. You don't
- 35:21Speaker 5: think you'll need any Well, how do you know? I mean,
- 35:24Speaker 5: he answers, Well, I don't know. I'm not a doctor.
- 35:26Speaker 5: But it's easy to be led by a skilled person
- 35:28Speaker 5: into making statements that are just detrimental. So the whole
- 35:33Speaker 5: point of the whole show I try to say, don't
- 35:37Speaker 5: be afraid to call us. I mean, I can't tell you.
- 35:41Speaker 5: Tom can't tell you, and nobody should be able to
- 35:43Speaker 5: just tell you you have to hire this lawyer for
- 35:47Speaker 5: this issue. We can tell you. Look, you need a
- 35:52Speaker 5: lawyer on this. You can get in over your head.
- 35:55Speaker 5: We like to help you. You know, if you're comfortable
- 35:59Speaker 5: with us, let us help you. Here's what it's going
- 36:01Speaker 5: to cost. Don't be afraid to make the call though,
- 36:04Speaker 5: and you know, don't believe everything you're reading commercials either.
- 36:07Speaker 5: We're here, so we're ready. You're giving me the Oh
- 36:10Speaker 5: that was just a scratch. I'm sorry, I was just
- 36:13Speaker 5: scratching this now.
- 36:17Speaker 4: And we can. Let still have about a minute left,
- 36:18Speaker 4: but you can start telling giving people your information, how
- 36:21Speaker 4: to start out you and everything before well.
- 36:22Speaker 5: Peyton Law Firm. We're located at twenty eight oh one
- 36:26Speaker 5: First Avenue in Nitro. It's about a mile off the
- 36:29Speaker 5: interstate from the Nitro Interchange. If you're coming from Charleston,
- 36:33Speaker 5: go to the bottom of the ramp and take a left,
- 36:36Speaker 5: and if you're coming from Winfield, take a take a
- 36:39Speaker 5: left both ways because it's the loop. Come down First
- 36:41Speaker 5: Avenue and we're about a mile on the courn of
- 36:44Speaker 5: twenty eighth and First We certainly love people to stop by.
- 36:47Speaker 5: Or you can call three oh four seven five, five,
- 36:50Speaker 5: fifty five fifty six and we try to return every
- 36:53Speaker 5: call every day. Or email us at Peytonlawfirm dot com,
- 36:57Speaker 5: which is clearly a preference because we can respond to
- 37:00Speaker 5: those twenty four seven three sixty five Paytentlawfirm dot com.
- 37:05Speaker 5: Our website there's a tab sends a secure email to
- 37:08Speaker 5: holy me or Tom. We're gonna try and help you.
- 37:11Speaker 5: I mean, we'd like to be kind to our clients
- 37:14Speaker 5: and prospective clients. Everybody there's entitle to be suspected. There's
- 37:18Speaker 5: no cases big in the world. There's the one you're
- 37:21Speaker 5: confronted with right now, and we realize that and try
- 37:25Speaker 5: and help. But sometimes the help maybe you don't need
- 37:27Speaker 5: a lawyer, or the answer may be