00:50 John:	Welcome to Aging Insight everybody. This is your host John Ross here live in the studio with Lisa Shoalmire. We’re here live. It’s Easter weekend. 
01:01 Lisa:		Yes, it is. 
01:02 John: 	And yet here we are in the studio because you know what, we believe in this information.
01:08 Lisa: 		And we're here.
01:10 John: 	And we’re here, that's right. So we are here, we’re live in the studio. Of course it's a live call in show, so if you’ve got a question or comment, you feel free to give us a call. The phone number is 903-793-1071, that’s 903-793-1071 and we're going to have some good stuff to talk about today. We hope you're enjoying your weekend. It's beautiful out there. It should be a nice day.
01:36 Lisa:	You know I noticed yesterday John that it was Good Friday yesterday and as I was leaving the office yesterday about 4:30, I was headed over to a client’s house to get some papers signed and I noticed that in our little office area, we were the only people working. I don’t know if you notice that or not.  
01:58 John:		I didn’t actually but that doesn’t surprise me. 
02:00 Lisa: 		But don’t tell our staff that.
02:03 John:	Right. I know I did have to call … I tried to return a few phone calls to a few folks in other industries like financial services and things and I got a lot of voicemails yesterday.
02:14 Lisa:	What happened I think was that so many people had off of work and so they wanted to make appointments when they were off of work because when you're trying to care for an aging parent or you’re going to be in town for a holiday and you need to get some business done, you just got to get it done. We were open so we could visit with those folks and make sure that they could get some guidance and direction. 
02:41 John:		That’s right.
02:42 Lisa: 		But anyways.
02:42 John:	That's the thing is the job of elder law attorney it really never stops because people are going to have health crisis, they're going to have financial crisis, they're going to have legal crisis and all of these things are going to happen at once and you don't get to pick when they happen. This is kind of like when water heaters break. You don't really have any choice on when that water heater is going to break and you can be relatively sure that if it is going to break and it's going to spill water all over the place, it's going to do it at the most inopportune time.
03:18: Lisa:		A weekend.
03:19 John:	Yeah, weekend, at night, that sort of stuff. We end up trying to be available quite a bit for those sort of situations and of course that's because really Lisa and I, we do believe in this information. That's why we work on Good Friday and--
03:38 Lisa: 		And here on Holy Saturday, is what’s they call it.
03:40 John:		And here on Holy Saturday. That’s exactly right.
03:42 Lisa:	I want to give a special thanks to our sponsors that make sure that we have these lovely facilities and the equipment that's needed so that you can hear us out there on the radio. So I want to say a special thanks to Edgewood Manor and the Barnette Agency, Dukes Memorial Hospice, Riverview Behavioral in Calhoun Creek state. Also to Carlton Green and Company and St. Michael’s Hospital. Also Red River Federal Credit Union, Twin City Rehab and Inspirations Health and Rehabilitation out in Boston, Texas.
04:15 John:	Yeah. That's right and thanks to all of them. Like you said they make the radio show possible and of course we also are broadcasting this live on Facebook. So you can go to the Ross and Shoalmire page on Facebook, R-O-S-S. and S-H-O-A-L-M-I-R-E., Ross and Shoalmire you can go to the Facebook page and click on the link there and you can see us make radio happen, if you’re so inclined. But if you do, be sure and give us a like on there. Feel free to share the post so that your friends and other folks will be able to enjoy it as well.
04:56 Lisa:	John I always like to kind of… some of our listeners say, I don’t know, its like, “Where's John? Where's Lisa for the week?”
05:04 John:		That’s right.
05:05 Lisa:	This past week I had the privilege of speaking to the Lion’s Club out in Mineola. Texas. 
05:14 John:		Yeah, a Metroplex.
05:15 Lisa:	Yes, the Metroplex in Mineola. For those folks who may not exactly where Mineola is, it’s kind of near the Tyler Big Sandy area. What was great though was while I was there visiting with the Lions Club in Mineola, I got to meet Mr. Dodd who is a World War two veteran and he is still serving his community because he was there part of the Lions Club meeting and I think they having some signups for some charity table they were doing shortly and Mr. Dodd was signed up. It’s great to see folks that just continue to use the resources that they have and time on their hands to give back to their communities. It was great time.
05:57 John:	Pretty awesome stuff. I was at several different places running around this week. It’s just… it’s just a busy week. We do a lot of speaking and a lot of these presentations and speaking and things like that. I know Lisa said somebody with our eggs and issues that we do every month here in Tex Akin.
06:21: Lisa: 		Right, the fourth Thursday every month, eggs and issues.   
06:23 John:	The one we do over at Trinity Church somebody said, “Well, it depends on whether John or Lisa is speaking because if you want to hear some stories, come listen to John and if you want to get some nuts and bolts... basically if you want to learn come listen to Lisa. If you want to be entertained to come listen to John, I think we both mix it up because the thing is this we've got lots of stories in all of this and we can usually relate some relatively complicated issues with some stories out there and some of those stories come from our own practice.
07:04 Lisa:		Yeah. I would say most of them do.
07:05 John:   	The vast majority of them come from our own experiences or the experiences that we've had as clients. Sometimes, and even here on the radio show, sometimes we like to tell stories that we have seen out there in the community or that we've read about but there's all kinds of stories out there. I know when I do a speech or when we both do speeches, one particular that we call the five big mistakes. 
07:33 Lisa:	The five big mistakes that we see people or seniors make when it comes to legal issues.
07:37 John:	That's right and with this, there's a few… like for example paying too much focus on the will as opposed to not concentrating on things like powers of attorney and stuff like that. Relying on Medicare to pay for long term care expenses because it’s not-
07:56 Lisa:	 	It doesn't.
07:57 John:	It doesn’t. Giving assets away and thinking that's going to protect them, that's mistake number three. Number four is getting bad advice. Relying on the wrong people out there who unfortunately don't know what they're talking about but still like to run their mouths as if they do. But the fifth one, the fifth mistake-
08:19 Lisa:		I hear you revving up right here.
08:20 John: 	Yeah. I’m revving up here. The fifth mistake is the mistake of doing absolutely nothing and this is the one that most people do and we're all guilty of it.
08:29 Lisa:	Absolutely. You know John, when I do visit with folks and they come into the office and they come in and they say they want a will and they need to get some guidance, whatever it is that they're needing, I always ask them, what has motivated them to finally come in and address this because John, what I found is folks are… they’re always willing to plan their next vacation.
08:53 John: 		Sure.
08:54 Lisa:	To do the research, to figure out where it is they want to go and make sure they get everything in the time that they're going to be there and they will spend months and months and weeks and… if you're planning a Disney vacation, you could spend two years planning for that big vacation. Folks always want to plan for the fun things, the happy things, the celebration things of life. When I have someone in my office and I ask them, what finally brought them in to maybe plan and seek some guidance in the estate planning or elder law area, John most of the time it's because of an event in their life. It’s not just that they thought, “Wow, we were kicking it around and we finally realized we need to do some planning.” It’s not how it goes because, John, when people come in to deal with elder law and estate planning issues, they are really facing their own mortality.
09:53 John:		Absolutely.
09:54 Lisa:  	They are facing the idea that they could be in capacity in their future and most of us, all of us would rather avoid that topic I'm sure.
10:07 John:  	It's not fun to talk about. Nobody wants to talk about that stuff, sure. 
10:10: Lisa:	There is a facet that you are in fact dealing with the issue that you won’t be here forever. 
10:21 John:	That’s right. When we get to this part of it in our speech, we're talking about people just failing to plan and we see this… essentially, our whole practice you can break down into two halves. The people who are like Lisa was saying they're coming in to plan ahead, that’s about half the people but then the other half are those that didn't and in one's way shape or form of that failure to plan has caused a problem. When we speak on this, we like to tell a particular story but this is not a story that you and I have experienced personally.
11:00 Lisa:	No, it's definitely not a story that you and I have experienced and our listeners and our viewers will figure that out real quick.
11:08 John	That's right, actually what it is, it's a story from the Bible, an Old Testament story. This concept of delaying your planning is not new and nothing points out how not new this concept is than by showing that people have been delaying making those necessary preparations all the way back--
11:39 Lisa:		To Genesis?
11:40 John:	-To Genesis. That’s exactly right. Here's what we're going to do, we're going to take a break, we’re going to come back and we're going to talk about this story and we're going to talk about a couple of other situations kind of in the sense that it is Easter weekend and so what does the Bible say about estate planning, elder law. Are there some tools and some tips that we can glean out there? Some lessons to be learned.
12:03 Lisa:		Some wisdom.
12:04 John:   	Some wisdom to be gained, that's exactly right. We're going to take a quick break, stick around, we'll be right back. 
12:06 Operator: 	Call 903-793-1071 to ask your question. 
12:20 John:	All right. For those of you who are still out there live, it’s weird we got a everybody else thinks we're on the break but you're not on the break here, you're still going.
12:32 Lisa:	The radio folks are getting commercials. John, the story that we're going to talk about, I never really thought about it from AN estate planning standpoint and then just one day it just hit me that of course that’s what it’s about.
12:52 John:	Yeah. Of course it's an estate planning concept. You can actually see several things and we'll talk about a few of them but there's lots of stuff about doing the right things and so often whether you're talking about taking care of yourself, taking care of the people around you, that wisdom to be gained can be … It does apply. It’s kind of odd that you wouldn’t think about it. What does estate planning have to do with anything? It really does, let’s see, we’ve got about two minutes worth of commercials. You know what we need? We need a Facebook Live sponsor.
13:42 Lisa:		That our Facebook live viewers can-
13:45 John:	They can click on somebody and that would be a pretty good idea. If anybody out there if you're watching the Facebook Live and some point you say, “Hey, I like that. I'd like to be the sponsor.” We could probably make that happen. The other thing is you don't have much time to take a break and take a drink of water when you're live on the radio so you got to rest that up during the break. Let’s see. I think about 30 seconds to a minute left and then we'll be back live and we got a comment, a Happy Easter comment on there.
14:36 Lisa:	Alice will tell us I didn't really think about it being Good Friday so we just kept our schedule and what we always do and seeing all those folks not working and enjoying the day off my plan.
14:50 John:	We might still be seeing some of that on Monday too because I think a lot of people have Monday off also. Schools are close. I don’t know, if schools are closed, banks are probably closed. Banks are always closed.
15:04 Lisa:	On Monday is a… I know it’s a holiday in Washington D.C. because of the tax deadline. 
15:10 John:	Yeah. That's right. Speaking of which, tax deadlines you have all the way till Tuesday to file even though tomorrow is the 15th. All right, we’re going back live here.
15:32 Lisa:	Welcome back everyone to Aging Insight. This is Lisa Shoalmire and I’m here in the studio with John Ross. We’re enjoying a beautiful picture-perfect Easter weekend, if you’re listening to us live today. That has really… John and I were  talking about it before we were on air and Easter is… It's such a religious holiday as Christmas is a little more commercialized these days.
16:00 John:		It has gotten a bit commercialized.  
16:03 Lisa:	For the most part. It made us think about some of the stories in that you can actually find in the Bible that talk about estate planning issues. Who knew? 
16:21 John:	In our practice, we see people get into a stage of their life that we call frail, vulnerable but not incompetent. You’ve reached… because of your age, your health that you've become sort of weak and unable to tend to many of your needs, you may mentally still know what's going on. You may be able to express your desires and things like that but because of the slowing down of everything, it does create this vulnerable position.
16:57 Lisa:	There's a certain insecurity I think that comes with that but when your physical health fails you and you do have to rely on others and I think there's just some anxiety and insecurity that can come with that, and that can lead to some poor judgments and decision making.
17:16 John:	Yeah, and you could easily be... this is the same period of time where we see people… when you hear about somebody giving all their money to a Nigerian scam artist you say, “How could anybody fall for that?” Yet people fall for it every day and many times it's because of this position in life. We have an example of this position in life that goes all the way back because Inheritance is not a new concept. 
17:50 Lisa:	No. It’s been going on since the beginning of mankind, I would say.
17:53 John:	Yeah. I would say and you go all the way back to… we usually tell the story of Isaac. Of course at the time, the Jewish tradition at the time was essentially you didn’t have a lot of possessions necessarily.
18:11 Lisa:	Right. You may have land that you were farming or grazing your herds of goats or cattle or whatnot on and you had some tools and such but these things were acquired by pretty hard scrabble.
18:27 John:		Absolutely.
18:28 Lisa:	Under the Jewish tradition, and John you may correct me if I don’t get this quite right, but this where the idea that the oldest child-
18:38 John:		Yes, the oldest male child.
18:40 Lisa:	-The oldest male child would receive a double portion of inheritance from the father and that was a way to keep some wealth concentrated in the family. Not only did this oldest male child receive a double portion of inheritance from the father, they also became be the patriarch of the family upon the death of their father. They became the boss of the family clan.
19:08 John:	Yeah. They didn't call it an inheritance, they referred to this is as the blessing. Isaac would bestow the blessing on the oldest child. Now, that was the Jewish law but as with any time you have laws but then you also have families and family dynamics is a whole another ballgame. I bet almost everybody that's out there listening in some way can relate to the idea that Isaac he's married, he's got Rebecca there and then they've got their two kids.
19:46 Lisa: 		That’s right. They have their two children, Jacob and Esau.
19:49 John: 	Jacob he’s the man's man. I'm sorry, Esau he's the man's man.
19:55 Lisa:  		That’s right.
19:55 John:  	He's the older one, he's the tough guy, he's the hunter, big kid too, big manly thing.
20:03 Lisa: 	I just imagine Isaac and Esau going to hockey games together, if they … Not in the desert, of course. 
20:13 John:		Probably not in the desert. 
20:15 Lisa:	They were bonded, they were father and son. Isaac clearly respected Esau’s manliness, taming the wild and all that. 
20:28 John:	That’s right, and he's hairy kid too apparently. I always joke like maybe like the 70's Burt Reynolds, the man’s man right there.
20:41 Lisa: 	The other thing I don't know is that the legend is that Esau was a red head. 
20:47 John:		Is that right?
20:47 Lisa:		That's right. 
20:49 John: 	I guess that's the first time I’ve heard of that. You learn something new every day.
20:53 Lisa: 		That whole fiery person.
20:56 John: 	I’ve got some of that hair tip right there. Then of course we’ve got the other kid, we’ve got Jacob.
21:02 Lisa: 	We have Jacob and now folks you know… we’ve had plenty of folks in our office come and tell us about their sisters and brothers and they will say, “Well, my brother is really mama's favorite and even though mama would never say that he was the favorite--
21:17 John:		I know a child of a mama who would say the same thing. 
21:27 Lisa: 	Hash. The Bible makes clear that Jacob was his mother’s favorite child.
21:31 John: 		That’s right.
21:32 Lisa: 	And there's no question that Isaac loved Jacob and Esau. There’s no discussion that that’s not the case but sometimes you just click with a parent and here, Esau clicked with Isaac and Jacob clicked with his mother. 
21:47 John: 	That’s right and everything's rocking a wall. Again everybody knows what the deal is. There's no question about it. This is the Jewish tradition. Everybody knows what the deal is. You’re older, you’re patriarch, in this Isaac he’s going to bestow it at some point his blessing on his oldest child but he doesn’t have to. Ultimately it’s his to bestow.
22:20 Lisa:	It was definitely the tradition--
22:21: John:	That’s the tradition and I don’t think there’s any question that that’s what he was intending to do.
22:27: Lisa:	No. No question that that was what he was intending to do. Why don’t we take a break, John and we’ll come back and-
22:35 John:	Yeah. We’re going to have to take a break before we get to the real meat and bones of it here. We’re going to have to wait… we’re going to have to get in because that’s the thing about live radio. We got to take that break right at the bottom of the hour and we’ve only got about a minute left before we can get to that. Lisa, in our practice have you ever seen where maybe some family members scheme against some other members?
23:05 Lisa:	Yeah, particularly when the patriarch, senior of the family was not at the highest and their best.
23:12 John:	Or when death is imminent.
23:19 Lisa: 	I’ve seen or I’ve cleaned up the mess where people have put deeds and life insurance policy beneficiaries at the hospital bedside. 
23:29 John:	Yap. We’ve do run into this, we actually hear these conversations almost every day and so what we’re going to do is when we come back from the news break, we’re going to talk about what exactly happened in this particular situation and maybe what it is that you can learn from it, and we have a little time after that, we’re going to talk about a few other places in the Bible that get into some estate planning and some elder law issues. Stick around, we’ll be right back. All right.
24:07 Lisa:	Our timer got me a little off there.
24:10 John:	Yeah. We took a break a little bit early on the first one so that threw us off but we’re all good now that we’re at the bottom of the air. Let the news do its thing while we sit here and visit with our people on Facebook Live. Hopefully you’ll enjoy this on Facebook Live. It’s a little weird for us to get on here and stare at the camera as opposed to just staring at the microphones. We’ve been doing this program for almost four years?
24:42 Lisa:	It’ll be four years this August.
24:44 John:	Two and a half at this point, a little more and all of that has been private. We’ve been here hiding behind microphones.
24:55 Lisa:	Yes, in the studio, in the downtown Texarkana studio.
24:58 John:	Technology has caught up with us though and now we get to do it live and fill in the commercial breaks with some additional stories and stuff. It’s funny because I’ve told this particular story in speeches. It’s got to be a few hundred times at least. Maybe several hundred but you could always look out into the audience and you can see who knows the story.
25:27 Lisa:	I would think around these parts that would be… most of the audience I think would know the story. I think that most of them probably have never thought about it in the terms that we’re talking about it.
25:40 John:	That’s right. It’s funny. You could always see the ones who have heard the story but then there are always some folks in the audience that I think it’s all new to them. There’s a few out there that say this is a new story to them and of course it’s a big world out there-
26:02 Lisa:	I was about to say those folks were not at Ms. Anderson’s class in vacation Bible school in the fourth grade or they would know this story.
26:11 John:	That’s probably right. That’s probably right.
26:19 Lisa:	Certainly not thought about Jacob and Esau and Isaac in the sense of… I know we’re get into it after the break about how aged and how decrepit Isaac really was when he’s making these big sweeping decisions and didn’t go as he intended.
26:44 John:	Yeah. Unfortunately that’s something that we also see pretty regularly.
26:50 Lisa:	I find John dealing within the state right now where there’s no doubt that the lady who’s deceased have a very close relationship with a special nephew but she didn’t make any plans and she was well into her 80s. When she passed away, I think the family, most of the family realizes the special relationship but some other family members who stand to gain certainly have pushed in and it's a mess.
27:19 John:	That's exactly right. You've got to take care of your business and particularly before it's too late. It's so funny though. I don't Lisa, we've got 30 seconds before we're back on but I always get people that'll ask me… they'll come in, they've put off for 70 years, they've put off doing any estate planning and we come up with a plan in the office and then they say, "What if something happens before I come back to sign?" You hadn't worried about it for 70 years and now you're worried about something happening in the next ten days? All right, we're going back live.
28:00 Operator: 	Have a question? Phone 903-793-1071 now back to Ageing Insight with John and Lisa.
28:08 John:	Welcome back to aging insight everybody. This is John Ross here in the studio with Lisa Shoalmire  and of course if you have any questions or comments, you can give us a call at 903-793-1071, that's 903-793-1071. Before the break, Lisa and I were talking about the story of Isaac and how he… his plan ultimately was to leave everything or bestow his blessing which essentially was a double share to his favorite boy, his big hairy manly kid, Esau. That's what he was going to do but he made zero, zero preparations.
28:54 Lisa:	Basically, Isaac he's reached a point where… I just imagine him essentially being housebound at this point.
29:04 John:		Right, he's blind.
29:05 Lisa:	Yeah so he's blind, he has a lot of trouble getting around; he can't hear very well, our bodies do fail us. We use them for all the decades and decades but at some point, those senses begin to fail us. Isaac it looks recognized that that's where he was and he knew that he wasn't going to be around a whole lot longer. It was time to bestow that blessing.
29:36 John:		He's basically decided you know what; the end is knocking at the door here.
29:43 Lisa:	He's calling for Esau to make him a meal. He's going to make a ceremony out of this right?
29:53 John:	That's right. You know, when you have a ceremony, what do you have to have? You've got to have some food.
29:59 Lisa:	Well, I know every church I've ever been to certainly believes that we all need some… the dessert table is piled high.
30:07 John:	That's exactly right. Unlike a banana pudding, Isaac he wanted Esau to go out and hunt him some game, his favorite game and of course being a manly man and a hunter man, he says, "Dad, I'm out of here." He heads out.
30:25 Lisa:	Yeah and I just think that... he heads out in… here's the situation, when we have the spouse, we have Isaac's spouse kind of thinking, "You know, I want my son, my favorite son to receive the blessing."
30:39 John:		She knows what's about to happen, she knows what's coming.
30:40 Lisa:	Yes so I want my favorite son to receive that blessing. She comes up with a plan. She hatches a plan. I think that's kind of interesting that in the big picture of things, it wasn't Jacob's plan. It was his mother's plan and we certainly can see that around in our time as well. She comes up with this plan and they make the stew that Isaac loves. You know John, I could just imagine this fragrant, Middle Eastern spicy stew because as you get older, your smell isn't quite as good, your taste buds don't taste good but you know you just savor that meal. They strap on some goat fur sorts of things-
31:34 John:	Of course Rebecca grabs Jacob and says, "Look, you're going to need to go in there and pretend like you're Esau." Jacob, he's a smart kid. He looks at her and he's like, "Mom, you're crazy. You're out of your mind. There's no way, no way whatsoever that dad is going to believe that my little skinny self is that big hairy boy Esau."-
31:59 Lisa:		I'm my brother, that's right.
31:58 John:	-Esau my brother, not going to happen. She says no I got this. She obviously had been thinking through this one and so yeah she's wrapped him up in some animal furs. She says, "Yeah you go in there wrapped up in these animal furs." Here we get Isaac and like so many of the clients that we have dealt with; frail, vulnerable but you know, he's not incompetent.
32:27 Lisa:		No he is not.
32:27 John:	He is not incompetent but he is so frail and vulnerable that at this point in his life, really all he could do was reach out and touch. When he reaches out and touches and he feels that animal fur and he thinks he's talking to his big hairy boy Esau, ultimately, he gives his blessing to the wrong person.
32:54 Lisa:	Right. Like you said, he wasn’t incompetent but because of his frailness, he was easily mislead and that is something we see so often is someone being easily mislead. That's what happened here. The blessing was bestowed on Jacob. Esau returns from the hunt and this blessing now has already been bestowed. John, I can't say that I understand exactly how this Jewish tradition worked. I can't understand necessarily why he couldn't have taken the blessing back and said, "Wait a minute, I made a mistake, but something about the tradition, about the legal aspects of making that blessing, it was done.
33:43 John:	That's right but you know, you can see this in… about two years ago, we talked about a situation where a daughter had talked to her dad and told her dad, "Look, you're going to need somebody to care for you and I'm willing to do it. You just need to deed your house over to me. That way, I'll have the house and I can… that'll essentially be my payment. You go ahead and deed that thing over to me now." Then in this case, the dad was vulnerable, he was needy, he was weak, he was worried, he was concerned and so he trusted this girl and he deeded the house. So he made a competent decision to deed her his home. Ultimately, things soured. The relationship soured and it soured so bad that it got to the point where the daughter actually evicted him from his own house. With the story of Isaac here, again, he is competent to make decisions. I can't tell you how many competent decisions I have seen that ended in a deed, a will, a power of attorney in some way shape or form and yet the circumstances surrounding that execution were at best suspect.
35:10 Lisa:		Right, just like this one.
35:10 John:		Just like this one.
35:11 Lisa:	All right John. It looks like we have a caller calling in. So caller? That's true. I have always said that. I said that was the situation that God obviously turned into furthering of his cosmic plan. In that sense, it was not the wrong decision, it wasn't the wrong blessing. From a human standpoint, it certainly wasn't Isaac's intention. It's one of those things that God turned that situation into still furthering his plan but from a human standpoint, we all understand that that was not what was meant.
36:16 John:	Yeah so maybe not the… he picked the one that… he didn't intend that but the outcome in that particular case-
36:30 Lisa:		He knows what he wants done with it.
36:31 John:		That's exactly right.
36:33 Lisa:		Maybe Rachel knew something that we all don't know.
36:35 John:	Here's a listener who's clearly heard this story before. Absolutely, thanks for calling. That's a good point. There's actually… you can see several places throughout the Bible that kind of interactive with some of the elder law stuff but that one really is one of my favorite. That's one of those just great stories that with the animal fur and the holding, it's just a fantastic story and it really does illustrate the point that ultimately, if there's something that you want to happen and you feel very strongly about it, you've got to make preparations to make that happen before you get to a point where you can be tricked and manipulated.
37:23 Lisa:	I always tell folks you should do your planning when you're at your highest and best if possible. That means not coming off… a lot of times by the time we're in the middle of dealing with a chronic illness or a terminal illness, medications, treatments, the stress, you're not at your highest and best. Sometimes that's our window of opportunity, that's our option to do the planning. If you're listening, most folks are never going to be any higher and more best than they are right now.
37:59 John:	Yeah that's in many cases, it's just going to go downhill and it can change on such a sudden moment. All right, so Lisa I'll tell you what, let's take one more break and we'll come back and we'll see if we can point out one or two other little spots if we have time. Stick around and we'll be right back. I can't tell you how many times I've told that story although that's the first time anybody listening to me tell that story has pointed out that. Now, I have pointed out several times that while that may not have been his intention, that because of the way and the circumstances and everything… I've pointed out that like in my practice, I've had people who did this sort of late in the game plans or were manipulated and stuff. In the end, because of legal interventions and things like that, the end result was able to come out okay. Kind of like in this story, it only took a couple of wars and a generation or two but you… I guess that's kind of the whole point. It's yeah you can fix some of these problems later but man is it so much better if you can prevent them from happening on the frontend.
39:26 Lisa:	I just think of all, maybe a couple of times I've had grandchildren go to a grandparent who is a bit frail and anxious and I've had grandchildren manipulate those grandparents into oh I'm going to school, I need money for tuition or some such. The grandparent doesn't know to ask the right questions or to check it out independently for themselves. They just you know, the granddaughter says the tuition is this much, he writes a check and it's done. We find out that there never was a schooling going on.
40:06 John:	Interesting question though and one that nobody has ever asked me is; well, if Isaac had come to you to plan in advance, how would you have set it up especially considering that at the time, the blessing was essentially verbal as opposed to a written document?
40:27 Lisa:	I would guess that under Jewish tradition, under the oral tradition, you could do things with witnesses. You had the two witnesses or three witnesses. I bet we could find that somewhere in Leviticus or Deuteronomy.
40:45 John:	That's probably right. You might have some witnesses to the oral statement. It would probably be one way to do it. I've never, Like I said, I've never really thought about that part about actually how would I given the circumstances there. All right, it looks like we've got about 20 more seconds before we get back here on the radio.
41:17 Lisa:		Look there, very nice.
41:20 John:		It is very nice.
41:25 Lisa:		My eyesight's not as good.
41:31 Operator: 	Have a question? Phone 903-793-1071 now back to Aging Insight with John and Lisa.
41:40 Lisa:	Welcome back everyone to our final segment on today's Aging Insight of Easter Weekend here on 2017. John and I were inspired to talk about some biblical incidents where we see that there's an intersection of the state planning and elder law. We've talked about how Isaac, Jacob and Esau and the blessing and the inheritance that went through that. You know John, I think even more importantly, again to show that these issues and these family conflicts and the issues about material things have been going on for thousands and thousands of years, even Jesus during his ministry, somebody took a moment of Jesus' time to ask him to settle an elder law and an inheritance dispute.
42:41 John:	Yeah somebody called out from the crowd and they said, "Teacher, teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance. Tell him to give me my one half of the inheritance." I've had people come to my office and say, "John, lawyer, tell my brother to give me my one half of the inheritance."
43:06 Lisa:	It's hard to imagine that based on my faith, that someone would take the time to aggravate Jesus with make my brother share my inheritance. It's written down and we have it. It was obviously important enough to include. You can find this particular segment story in Luke 12:13 around that area and you will see this story. John, as you recall, how did Jesus respond to this person in the crowd?
43:47 John:	Basically, Jesus turns back and he said, "Look stop worrying about your inheritance. That's not what's important." The possessions, the things, the stuff, it doesn't really matter. What matters is the harmony. It's that family harmony there. That seems to be the real point there. Jesus is like, "Don't worry about your stuff. It's stuff. It's just stuff."
44:17 Lisa:	It's just stuff. Of course there's other places in the New Testament, we hear all about wherever your treasure is, there is your heart also. You had this person in the crowd shouting out, tell my brother to share half my inheritance with me. Can you imagine John and I know we can because we see it, can you imagine the focus that this family member who had felt wronged by his brother and the sharing of his inheritance, how much focus of their life was on that, how they've been cheated?
44:55 John:	Again this is… I've had people who will bring up family disputes that happened years and years and years ago. Yeah that's probably… this person in this crowd; this has occupied their whole mind, their whole life, their whole existence all over some stuff.
45:19 Lisa:	They didn’t take that moment to ask Jesus what can I do to become a holier person? What can I do to find favor in God's eyes? No. I want my brother to share stuff with me and he won't do it.
45:36 John:	Jesus shoots him down right off the bat. He's like, "Look, that's not important you know [45:43 inaudible]. I'm not going to tell him to share the inheritance because that's not important. That part does not matter. What matters is the intangible.
45:57 Lisa:	That's right, the intangibles. We kind of use this sometimes as we have people coming in seniors coming in to plan their estates which step one, it's a great step. Sometimes they have ides that we know based on our experience are going to just be like sticking a stick of dynamite in the middle of their family and lighting the fuse. Of course John, anyone, under law, anyone can do with their stuff anything that they want to do.
46:30 John:		You can leave it to whoever you want in whatever way, shape or form you want.
46:34 Lisa:	That's right but you know sometimes people don't think about the trail distraction in their family they're leaving behind. For instance, I've had folks who maybe they've helped out one child during their lifetime much more than their other children. I've had clients who've wanted to say, I keep a ledger book in my nightstand and when I die, I want my executors who's my, who's this one child to subtract whatever's written down in my ledger book from his sister's inheritance because she got  so much in advance. That's just a recipe for disaster. It really is.
47:18 John:	It certainly can be. It looks like we've got another caller here. Caller, you're on Aging Insight, what can we do for you? I think when Jesus was telling this I know we want harmony; I don’t think he was including the Romans in the harmony part there. I think that he might have said give that-
48:12 Lisa:		Give to Caesar what is Caesar's-
48:15 John:	What is Caesar's but nothing more. You're not going to make the government happy in any stretch. That's certainly right and trying to will not do you any good either.
48:27 Lisa:	You know John, it kind of makes me think about it is tax week and it's Easter weekend. It's also right before Tax Week, tax deadline day. I think that the caller brings up a good point though is you can certainly plan for your family in such a way and I think really biblically there are a lot of ways directed to do that to where we're not increasing strife and greed and covetousness through our planning. I think it's certainly just fine to plan the most optimum way, of course completely legally of course to minimize any-
49:09 John:		To minimize some discord.
49:10 Lisa:		Discord and minimize anything that is going to the government.
49:14 John:		Absolutely. We're not giving to Caesar any more than Caesar deserves.
49:21 Lisa:		Or demands under a penalty or jail.
49:25 John:	That's right. You know, there's one last one. We've got just a minute or two here and we've got one more thing that I kind of wanted to mention here just because it is Easter Weekend. You know, Jesus himself did not have an estate like we would think of.
49:44 Lisa:	Yeah, no, his meager possessions; his clothing, his robe, you got Roman soldiers throwing dice and dividing those up or something.
49:52 John:	Yeah and so you look at it and you say, well okay he had essentially the clothes on his back and even those were basically taken by the Roman soldiers and divided out. What did Jesus have in inheritance?
50:07 Lisa:		Did he make an estate plan?
50:10 John:	Did he make an estate plan and yeah he did leave something of value behind and that was Mary his mom. He had mom that he was leaving behind. Before he dies, he sets out a plan, "Hey I need her to be taken care of."
50:30 Lisa:	My most precious possession on this earth because of course back in the day, women… you know, as the oldest son, he's in charge of the care of his mother. Joseph apparently has died at this point so he's the oldest son, the care of his mother falls to him. He's not going to be able to carry that out because he is being crucified. From his punishment from the cross, he sees John and Mary standing there below. He calls out to John, "Take care of my mother. Here is my mother; I commend her to your possession and care."
51:16 John:		That's right.
51:16 Lisa:		That was a plan that he made for his obligation.
51:20 John:	John took her into the home and cared for her. When you're out there, that to me is one of the big things out here. We so often deal with people who are care givers in some capacity. They may be caregivers for their parents, they may be caregivers for an incapacitated spouse, they may be caregivers for an adult disabled child, they maybe caregivers for minor children or grandchildren but so many are in a position of care giving. Even the ones that are not, you don't know what the circumstances of the people you leave behind are going to be. I think one of the best lessons in all of this is to plan for the care, the protection and the preservation of the dignity and the resources available to the people you leave behind. It's not about here's my stuff. That I love you will of when one spouse dies I leave everything to the other, that is not providing a scheme of protection and care for your spouse. All that's doing is leaving them the stuff.
52:45 Lisa:	You've got to take a bigger picture, a bigger plan than just look at your stuff and plan for that family, for their harmony, for their care, for their protection. It's just the right thing for you to do and I think we're pretty much mandated to do that.
53:05 John:	Absolutely. I hope everybody out there has a great Easter Weekend. Thanks to the people who have commented on Facebook and shared our broadcast day. Thanks to all of our sponsors who make the program happen and thanks to our regular listeners out there, you know who you are.
53:23 Lisa:		And callers that's right.
53:24 John:		That's right. We'll see you next weekend.
53:24 Lisa:		Happy Easter.
53:30 John:		We'll see you all later too.
53:32 Lisa:		Bye.