Estate Planning and Elder Law Essentials: Wisdom from Attorney Michelle Unvarsky

Navigating the twilight years of our loved ones can be as complex as it is emotional. But Michelle Unvarsky, a seasoned attorney from Las Cruces, New Mexico, joins us to shed light on how to handle these challenges with foresight and empathy. In this episode we uncover the value of estate planning and elder law, understanding the profound impact it had on Michelle's personal life, especially in the wake of her father's dementia. She draws from her reservoir of experience to highlight the importance of preparing for the future with dignity, and the difference between estate planning and elder law, ensuring that families are equipped to handle the unexpected turns life may take.

This heart-to-heart doesn't shy away from the tough conversations, including end-of-life decisions and New Mexico's right-to-die law, as we offer insights into the power of timely decision-making. The spotlight is cast upon the legal strategies such as irrevocable trusts and utilization of the Pension Protection Act, designed to protect assets and navigate the Medicaid process with finesse. Michelle's expertise guides us through the nuances of early consultation, asset preservation, and the wealth of resources that can support families through these trying times. Her commitment to education emerges as a beacon of hope, offering clarity and direction through the fog of uncertainty that surrounds aging and care.

Lastly, we tackle the art of nurturing growth and authority within the legal profession. Michelle's personal success story serves as a testament to the effectiveness of community engagement through workshops and webinars. We also uncover the strategic advantage of honing a legal niche, as specialization is not just a marketing tactic but a commitment to mastery that attracts a dedicated client base. Her methods, such as a robust online presence and outsourcing content creation, could be just the catalyst other attorneys need to elevate their practices to new heights. Join us for an episode brimming with heartfelt advice and professional acumen that promises to resonate with both families planning for the future and aspiring legal experts alike.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi and welcome back to the Marketing Law Cast. I'm Jennifer Goddard. I'm the CEO of Integrity Marketing Solutions and the host of this weekly Marketing Law Cast, where we interview various experts in law firm marketing, as well as some extraordinary clients and attorneys who are working in the fields of estate planning and elder law.

Speaker 2: 0:19

Before we dive into today's episode, a special shout out to our sponsor. Quid Pro Quo. Are you a law firm looking to scale or sell your practice? Qpq's expert team can help you unlock your firm's full potential. Stay tuned for valuable insights brought to you by QPQ.

Speaker 1: 0:34

Today I am so pleased to have as our guest Michelle Unvarsky, who practices in Las Cruces, new Mexico, and estate planning and Alder Law. Hi, michelle, welcome to the podcast. Good afternoon, how's everything going? You know everything is going great and I'm so happy to have you on the podcast, michelle. You and I worked together for quite a while now and we've had some even a retreat there at the ranch where we were able to work together one-on-one, and we just everyone on our team just loves working with you guys, and so it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.

Speaker 1: 1:14

I always like to start off with. So you know I know a lot about you, but our listeners don't necessarily. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your law firm and how you got started? And you know, tell us a little bit about yourself and your law firm and how you got started? And you know, tell us a little bit about yourself and your firm.

Speaker 1: 1:29

I've been an attorney for 29 years now. Sounds like a long time when I say those words, but anyway, my husband and I have a very small farm. We grow pecans, I play with chickens 20 chickens and so that takes up our spare time. Evenings and weekends we're working on the farm. It's a pleasure to come back to work because I get to sit on my mat. If I really enjoy the type of law I practice.

Speaker 1: 2:01

I started out as a baby lawyer in a big law firm and we were doing litigation, insurance, defense and it kind of it grinds you down, it ground me down, let's put it that way and I realized that I would not be able to sustain it for the rest of my life and enjoy it. I had a couple of really ugly cases and about that time my dad was diagnosed with dementia. Mom and dad moved in with me, with us, and dad got bad fast and it was a real wake-up call for me because they didn't really have any plans in place, kept cold for me because they didn't really have any plans in place. We spent a lot of time laundering around trying to find help, trying to figure out how to do things, trying to figure out how to conserve money, because it was just pouring out the windows and doors and dad eventually succumbed. And at that point I realized you know, there has to be something that we can do. And so I looked around and that's when I came up with elder law and estate planning.

Speaker 1: 3:12

If people have plans and plans, we can age with dignity and we know who's going to take care of us. We have chosen those people instead of having the court choose them. So there's much hell From your own adversity. You really found a way that you could turn that into helping other people avoid that or at least get through it as well as possible. Correct, yeah, and that's my goal, and my website is called Plan it Forward. If we plan it forward, we can make arrangements for some of the bad things that could happen in life, and that way, when they do happen, when we hit those potholes in the road, we've got a plan in place.

Speaker 1: 4:00

So you know, you and I have an understanding of what estate planning and elder law is, but sometimes our listeners don't always know the difference or even the overlap between them. Could you just kind of give us an idea of what is estate planning and what is elder law and how do they overlap and intersect? I guess the basic definition that I think of for estate planning is having your own plan in place for where you want your stuff to go when you can either no longer take care of it or after you leave us after you die. Elder law is kind of a subdivision of that. Elder law is planning for aging, and whether you're 20 or 50, we want to age gracefully. We want to know there's some way that somebody will take care of us according to the rules we have put in place. And that's basically, in my mind, elder law. We help people who are moving to assisted living, nursing homes, that type thing. If they don't have a plan in place, then it's kind of a scurry emergency plan. We would rather have something in place ahead of that, but it's possible.

Speaker 1: 5:24

So in your situation with your dad, what would you? Have? Something in place ahead of that, but it's possible. So in your situation with your dad, what would you have done in advance? If you could have? That would have made things easier for you and your family. We would have made arrangements to have more in-home health care. We took care of him at home until the very end and looking back, I realized that we were, to borrow a euphemism we were burning our candles at both ends, we were both at wit's end and we weren't really taking good care of him because we were so frazzled. I think we would have had more in-home health care. We probably would have had adult daycare for him and, closer to the end, although we did keep him at home, I think he was probably a good candidate for a nursing home.

Speaker 1: 6:21

24-hour care. I was rushing home at night and spending the whole night on a recliner to be there so my mother could have some rest, and you just can't do that. You cannot do that. I know there's. I have clients come in and they say, oh, I promised my parents I'll never put them in a nursing home. That's not realistic. Yeah, so I would imagine in the work that you do, that you come across clients who are in similar situations and so kind of how, what's your process? I mean, how do you, how do you work with families who are in these kinds of situations Usually, and I remember there was nobody to talk to, nobody that knew what we were going through or that we knew of that knew what we were going through, and so I kind of let them tell me what's going on and where the tender points, the sore points, are, and then go back through it with them and say, well, have you tried this?

Speaker 1: 7:22

Or what if we did this instead and make suggestions such as home health care or having you know. Consider nursing home. Consider nursing home If you're there and you're visiting and they don't know when you're going to drop in. They're going to take good care of dad. They will, but there's 24-hour care there. So if there's an emergency, you're not trying to wake up in the middle of the night and groggily trying to figure out what to do next.

Speaker 1: 7:53

There's somebody there, and so, from a from a legal standpoint, what kind of planning and legal help do you give these people? It sounds like like you're definitely an ally in this process for them. But then you know where does the legal part come through? I think it would be the legal documents, the health care directive, and on my directives, through the years I have added a lot to them based on lawsuits that we see. So not only do we have the life or death, you know, unplug me if there's no hole, but we have what I call the second bite of the apple If I am already connected and it looks like I'm not coming back, I'm going to be connected for the rest of my life. Now I'm giving permission to the people who are my agents to disconnect me if that's what the people want.

Speaker 1: 8:47

And then the third one I've been putting in is the dementia provision, because we've had a lot of nursing homes lately that when these dementia patients get to the point where they can't eat anymore, they're inhaling their food, causing pneumonia. They're putting feeding tubes in these people and you're not going to heal the brain. I mean you're just feeding tubes in these people and you're not going to heal the brain. I mean you're just not going to heal the brain, you're making that person uncomfortable, you're exposing them to more medical risk. And so I think if people know and make a very well-reasoned informed consent choice before they get to that point, then it takes a lot of that stress off their family. So it sounds like you're kind of helping people face some very difficult decisions.

Speaker 1: 9:35

How do you balance that? You know it seems to me like that would be sometimes a very difficult role for you. You know it's well, it is and it isn't because I went through it. A lot of the people that walked through my door either know somebody or had a family member that went through this and they know what it's like, they've seen it, and so it's not that hard to describe it and get them to think about it, to make some decisions and whether they make the decision to have, you know, end of life whatever, or whether they decide to be connected. Wait for a miracle, but at least they've discussed it and thought about it in depth, discussed it and thought about it in depth. The other thing that we're fortunate here in New Mexico, I guess fortunate is we have a right to die law, and so if people find themselves in a terminal situation, they can get a prescription for a terminal lethal dose of medication. But here we have to either administer it to ourselves, either a shot or um pill, and so I I always caution the people. You know, don't wait. If you've got a terminal decision to make and you want to end things, don't wait, because if you can't do it yourself, you're sunk. So you know it a little bit is just education people, um, once they know what their choices are, they know how they feel about it and they make their own decision.

Speaker 1: 11:14

Yeah, in terms of your law practice I know you're located there in Las Cruces what's your kind of market geographic? What's your area that you serve? New Mexico is a very sparsely populated state. Most of the law firms that do estate planning and elder law are in the northern half of the state. I tell people you can draw a line horizontally across New Mexico and separate north from south. The north is where all the industry is and where most of the population is. Down south we're very, very sparsely populated, mostly cattle ranches and farms, and so people have traveled for hours to come and see me here in Las Cruces, which is the biggest city in southern Mexico, there's four of us that do estate planning and I'm the only one that does Medicaid preparation. Everybody else kind of threw up their hands and said no, don't want to do that, it's too complicated, don't want to. So I have people from the eastern side of the state, from the western side of the state and all the way up to and this won't make sense to most people through the consequences which is about halfway up the state, along the Rio Grande. So a lot of times we have our first meeting by Zoom this has been a real. I guess the pandemic was good for that. It taught us all how to use Zoom and then the second. They come to see me, we talk and we sign documents. So it's worked out pretty well. They only have to travel the distance.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Once you mentioned, in the kind of the scope of what you provide, provide that you do Medicaid preparation planning. Can you explain to me what that involves, what that is? Evocable trust to preserve it as we can, that keeps the stay-at-home spouse if there is one safe from having their estate depleted? Paying for the incapacitated spouse? We have a Medicaid look-back. Everybody does at five years. So it has to be done pretty well in advance If we don't know enough in advance or if they don't plan far enough ahead.

Speaker 1: 13:36

In 2008, congress passed the Pension Protection Act which allows us to move some of the assets around to protect the stay-at-home spouse and protect those assets as much as we can so that the stay-at-home spouse again is not eating cat food Right their loved one in the nursing home. We can do Medicaid-approved annuities. We can do prepaid funeral trusts, things like that, where we spend down enough money and protect the home so that can be passed on, so that people are a little more comfortable and a little more at ease knowing that they're not going to have to spend down to the last $2,000, $3,000. So if someone is facing a situation right now where they're saying I really need to be thinking about putting my loved one into a nursing home, but I have no idea how we're going to pay for it. Would you say that a consultation with you would be a good first step? I would hope so, because if they go to the nursing home first, the nursing home's going to tell them well, we'll apply for Medicaid when you hit your $3,000 mark. They're not interested in preserving the assets.

Speaker 1: 14:54

I'm fortunate. I've been doing this for a while in southern New Mexico and now I have allies in the nursing home, so a lot of the caseworkers will say call Michelle, talk to her, see what you can do before we apply for Medicaid, and that's been a big help. I have done estate planning and elder law workshops for caseworkers for the nursing home, and these people are very interested in this. Although the nursing home could be making more money, they're interested in helping their patient clients. If somebody is listening to this podcast and they're in that situation, they should go to your website and fill out one of those forms and have a call with you. Well, yes, and in addition to that, thanks to Integrity Marketing, I have a webinar on my website about planning for Medicaid. It's a good way to dip their toes into it and find out what is available. Excellent, so they could go to your website and find that, find the link there to that medicaid elder law webinar, and then they'll be a lot more educated, better informed, at that point.

Speaker 1: 16:08

And now can they? Can they spend a call with you? Uh, for free, or is there a charge for the phone call? Okay, for the initial console, usually there is a small fee. I want them to fill out a personal information form so I have as much information as possible, especially on their assets, so I can give some really in-depth information about what we can do. I hate it when they call and they say well, we have a house and I have an IRA and I don't know how much is in my IRA and you know that I'm just punching in the dark and I don't know Right. If I can give them a little bit of information and I think it's worth it for me to charge for it, because I'm going to have to do research ahead of time and figure out what is available for them, very good, okay. So if you're in that situation, if you're listening to this podcast, then go over to Michelle's website at wwwplanitforwardcom and find that webinar and that will help you get onto the right course and get informed about what's available for you.

Speaker 1: 17:20

Backtracking just a little bit, michelle, how did you make the transition from when you were doing the insurance defense and start starting up with this estate planning and elder law practice? You know a lot of attorneys are wanting to get into this practice area and they don't really know how that process is going to work for them. I was still doing litigation when I started to transition over. I had I limited the number of cases that I had so that I could study in my spare time. I was very fortunate in that my husband was willing to allow me a couple months off and so I did.

Speaker 1: 18:08

I took I think it was six months off and I just really intensively went to continuing education and took classes on estate planning and elder law. You're still never going to be completely well-versed in it. I mean, it is a continuous thing and no matter how many classes you take, the laws change and you're going to have to keep up with it anyway. As you take, the laws change and you're going to have to keep up with it anyway. But at least I got some of the language down and I understood some of the processes so that I could open my doors and do a fairly competent job and they talk about the imposter syndrome. I don't care how well prepared you are, you're going to find places where you think, holy crap, I don't know what in the hell I'm doing, why are they paying me? But you just you network and you develop resources Right as you go. There's a lot out there and you just have to plug into it. You have to learn where it is and then plug into it. I guess for me the hardest part was learning what was there so I could grab onto it.

Speaker 1: 19:22

Another aspect that I think a lot of attorneys want to know is that, if they're looking at this practice area is the marketing. So you kind of build up your knowledge base so you're ready for clients. How do you start getting clients? I guess getting Google reviews, because people really rely on those. But in addition to that, I think putting out information and I'm not talking about advertising, putting out information about estate planning, about elder law, about the changes in law, is really important. But it has to be usable bites for people, in very simple language, because lawyers speak a different language than everybody else and if you don't put it in terms that everybody can understand, it's lost. So those little blogs and newsletters are really important, in addition to, and probably what's most important, is the Google reviews or the Facebook reviews or whatever.

Speaker 1: 20:25

Once you start doing that, I mean, the traction comes after a while. Right, one of the things that I always advise clients is the first step in this. You just kind of affirm that the first step is you have to establish some authority, some credibility, so that people see that you care, that you know the law and that you're there to help them. So you have that credibility. That's the foundation. I know sometimes attorneys that want to get you know, they want to get things going right away. They want to skip that part. They want to get right to. You know running some ads doing, you know doing something that's going to just drive those leads and you know, well, I think that that can be part of it, where you're putting out the information and you're kind of becoming a thought leader in your market. That's going to make everything else flow a lot better. I know, because we've worked together, that you've put a lot into that aspect of your marketing.

Speaker 1: 21:28

I think the other thing too, now that you've said that, the other thing I do workshops from time to time I used to do quite a few. I used to do them once a month here at my office, but again COVID kind of put the quash on that one. But I got my name out enough that people now call me and ask would I please come to give a workshop for breast cancer survivors? For today it happens to be for parents of disabled children. The National Association of Retired Federal Employees has me back on a regular basis and so once you get your name out there and you have some rapport and you can talk to people in simple language and I don't mean that to be derogatory, but instead of saying things in legal language, to be able to do it in a language that they can grab onto and take home, that makes a big difference, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 22:32

We also talked a little bit about their B&R on your website. I know we worked with you. You actually have three webinars that we run through. How has that helped you with your lead flow? How successful has that webinar marketing been for you? It has been excellent.

Speaker 1: 22:49

Right now we are featuring the estate planning website and I have three or four hits every day and then I get back the feedback and almost without exception, people listen to 100% of that webinar, which is I mean, how many times do we tune in and think, oh, this is garbage. And we tune back out Almost without fail. These people listen to 100%. I have one on probate and I have one on elder law and, interestingly enough, even though we're not featuring both, they're there on my website and people tune in to them. So I have two or three hits every month on the other two also, when it just depends what they're looking for.

Speaker 1: 23:35

I would highly recommend them. They're great. It really helps in pre-qualifying people and having them. You know, helping them know what questions to ask and, you know, be better prepared for that initial conversation. You're a little unique in having the three. Most of my clients you know they'll have one, but I love that you have the three and, as you say, we feature one. We promote one for about a quarter right, about three months, and then we'll switch over and doing yes, yes over to one of the other ones.

Speaker 1: 24:10

Yeah, I can see the lead flow, you know I can see all those numbers, so I've been really happy, uh well, with that webinar program for you. There's something else that we're doing for you. We're doing more of the actual writing and posting your content for you. Has that been helpful for you, saving you some time and still getting your messages out? Let me take a couple steps back and tell you.

Speaker 1: 24:37

I started out in medicine, and in medicine you do an internship and a residency before you are allowed to practice. In law, they just kind of dump you out the door. You do whatever, okay, and I'm a real firm believer in doing the grunt work first, and so I would really highly recommend that people do their own blogs or at least take content and make a blog out of it, learn how to post it, that type thing, before they hire someone to do it. Even though you guys are doing those blogs for me, I still have to review them and make sure the content is correct and what I want to put out there before I approve them. But I used to set aside a half a day on Fridays to do my blogs. Now I don't have to. I can zip through and approve the blogs that you guys are writing for me in probably a half hour or less. So it has been a very big time saver for me. It really has. And not only that. Your team is very receptive. When I see an idea or hear of something, I can send them an email and boom, there's my blog. So it's been very nice. I really love that approach as well.

Speaker 1: 25:56

I think you're so spot on. If you try, if you work at doing it yourself, you're going to get a lot of insight into how this all works, what you want to say, what your voice is and how much time goes into it. And at a point you have the balance changes. You need the time back, not so much the money back, and so if you're working with a team like our team, where you have that trust, you can start making that transition where you're getting time back and you're still getting the consistency of your message out. You know what you're looking for when you do get those blogs for approval, because you've been through that process yourself. You've done it yourself. I think that's a great insight. Yeah, it makes me shiver when people just turn things over and don't know what the mechanics are to it.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Yeah, yeah, I wanted to ask you a little bit about what you see for the future in estate planning and overlaw. Are there any trends that you see that could impact your practice or the practice in general of estate planning and overlaw? The influence has already started the avalanche of the baby boomers aging. I don't see that it's going to slow down anytime soon and more and more people are going to need help and are going to be looking for help, because now we are such a digital society that it's not set and suffer anymore. You research it. So I don't see that that's slowing down at all.

Speaker 1: 27:39

As far as changes, I think there are changes coming. There's legislation. They're threatening to decrease the inheritance tax for one, and that's going to make a big difference in estate planning for some people. They're going to have to do more for people who are aging out and need assistance assisted living, ancient place type places, and not only that. I've seen more and more, even around here, senior living communities where you can walk to the little grocery store in the corner or whatever, instead of having to get in your car and go to a big grocery store. So those are a lot of things that are changing and I can't see that it's going to slow down at all. I think as baby boomers, as we age, are going to demand it more and more. These are definitely very viable and growing fields of law, increasing need that you don't really see it going away anytime soon.

Speaker 1: 28:40

Like going away anytime soon, it's sort of as far as your plans and your law firm, what? Where do you see Michelle, in three to five years? Three to five years I am. I'm hoping to get a young associate on and start grooming that person. I I certainly could use the help and do have the work.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I'm booked out quite a ways and I always worry that if people have to wait six weeks, eight weeks for an appointment, they get discouraged. It would be nice to have a second person here who could pick up some of that slack. And also, I'm aging. I mean someday I'm going to retire. I would like to know that I have somebody in place that I can say here you go. Now you've learned it, here you go and you feel confident that they can, you know, pick up the reins, so to speak. I've heard some real horror stories from some of my friends who sold their law firms and walked away and all of a sudden it was a disaster. And they have people bumping them and saying, oh my God, what did you do to us?

Speaker 2: 29:52

I would like to have someone who continues the practice.

Speaker 1: 29:57

That's a great goal, and we could sit here and talk for a long time, but we're starting to get up against our deadline. What would be your best advice? You know it's funny. You ask that I had lunch with a new young attorney last week. In fact, he invited me out and he's starting in this. He was taking the same path that I did. He left litigation. It was distasteful to him at this point, and he wanted to know what my advice was.

Speaker 1: 30:26

And I think the biggest advice is earmark the audience that you want. I mean, I go for I'll call them middle-aged women, who are in the sandwich generation. They have parents who are aging out and they need to help them. They have children who are either in college or graduated from college and they need assistance too. And so that's where my marketing was Pick your market. And then I think the getting information out about estate planning is really important. So start doing those blogs, start asking for Google reviews, let people know you're there, and then study, study, study. Don't pass up an opportunity to learn something new.

Speaker 1: 31:14

I think the other big thing is to limit your practice. Decide what you want to specialize in and not be a jack of all trades, because then you are a master of none, totally a master of none. I mean, there are people around here that do divorce, bankruptcy, whatever, in addition to estate planning, and I've seen their plans and they're just they're lacking. So continuous learning, get the word out, talk about in-state planning and get your message out. Establish your authority, your credibility, and really focus on your niche, both your practice area niche and your marketing, your market niche. Right, right, okay, that's great. I think that's really wise advice. Well, michelle, it's always a pleasure. I've enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for joining us on the Marketing Lawcast. Thank you very much, jennifer, it was a pleasure.

Speaker 2: 32:13

That's a wrap for today's episode, and a big thank you to our sponsor, Quid Pro Quo. Qpq is your partner in law firm success, offering expert guidance on scaling, selling and optimizing your practice. With a team of experienced professionals, they bring real-world insights to the table. Are you ready to take your law practice to new heights? Visit their website at wwwquidproquolawcom to learn more and start your journey toward a thriving and sellable law firm.