Episode 23: Why Those Living With Disability Should Consider Having A Will & What You Should Know About Estate Planning Featuring Estate Planning Attorney Autumn Hancock

In this week's episode - Nationwide ERISA Long Term Disability Attorney Nancy Cavey talks about  "Why Those Living With Disability Should Consider Having A Will & What You Should Know About Estate Planning Featuring Estate Planning Attorney Autumn Hancock" and much more!

Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

LINK TO ROBBED: https://caveylaw.com/get-free-reports/get-disability-book/

LINK TO PROFESSIONAL BOOK: https://caveylaw.com/get-free-reports/disability-insurance-claim-survival-guide-professionals/

FREE CONSULT LINK: https://caveylaw.com/contact-us/

ATTORNEY AUTUMN HANCOCK INFORMATION:

Attorney Autumn Hancock focuses her practice on adoption, collaborative law, and family law. Attorney Hancock also handles certain probate and estate planning, real estate, foreclosure, and criminal law cases.

For more information about a specific legal issue, her contact information is:
Phone: 727-222-0529
website: www.hancocklawfl.com

She represents clients all over the Tampa bay area.

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Transcript

Nancy L. Cavey: 0:16

Hi, I'm Nancy. Cavey a national ERISA individual disability attorney. Welcome to winning isn't easy! Today we're going to talk about disability and estate planning with my special guest o f Attorney Autumn Hancock. Prior to us starting, I was t o talking about our topics with her, and I've learned a ton of information that I'm really anxious to share with you today. Now, one of the things that I've learned so far in my discussions with her is that a disabled person needs to have a, perhaps a willingness state plan that might be different than the person who is caring for them. So I'm going to ask autumn to expand about that. We're going to talk about why you might need a will or change your will. U m, and we're going to cover lots of other topics that she's anxious to share with us. So welcome autumn. Before we get started, though, I have to be a lawyer. I have to tell everyone on this podcast that we're both lawyers and we're not giving you legal advice, but we're just talking generally about disability and wills and estate planning. So now that w e've said that let's get going first, autumn, can you tell us about yourself and how you came to be a wills and estate attorney?

Autumn Hancock: 1:35

[inaudible] thanks for having me. Um, I'm originally from Ireland and I grew up in Sarasota with my parents. My dad is owns Hancock financial services, which does a lot of, um, elder planning for senior citizens in his community in Sarasota. Um, so I spent a lot of time in my younger years around that kind of, you know, looking at annuities, looking at life insurance. And I ended up in law school at Stetson. So I fell in love with St. Pete naturally, because it's awesome. So I stayed here and I started working in divorce litigation and real estate litigation. And I came across a company, um, or I guess a charity that was doing free estate planning for first responders called wills for heroes. So I started researching that really spoke to me. I'm passionate about that issue. It's my, husband's a firefighter of 20 years with no estate plan. Um, so as are many of his friends, so I started getting more and more involved with builds for heroes and volunteering. Then I started planning their programs for the area, um, and doing a lot of estate planning for first responders and learn more and more about it. Um, so I left my law firm that I was with at the time and started my own practice a couple of years later. And here we are, the rest is history.

Nancy L. Cavey: 2:48

Wow. Well, thank you for your work with first responders, correct. Now most people think about the state planning and wills for old folks. Of course, none of us are old. Um, but people who are disabled and unable to work don't necessarily think about why they need a state planning or a will. So let's first talk about, um, what is estate planning and what is a will.

Autumn Hancock: 3:15

So in a state plan is the process of deciding how you want property distributed throughout your life. And once you have passed or after your death and developing documents, to make sure that your decisions are carried out throughout the course of your life and after your life a will is a tool that's part of essentially like part of your tool belt in an estate plan. So a will is a written legal document. That's signed by an individual and each state has its own execution rules about who needs to be there, any witnesses, those kinds of things, but then he needs to be formerly executed. Um, and that is a document that says what happens to your property and to your person after you die. So the Will's only about what happens after death. The rest of the estate plan is what can happen now and throughout the course of the rest of your life.

Nancy L. Cavey: 4:05

So I like that concept of, uh, of a toolbox. So what are the elements of a toolbox, if you will, uh, for someone who is disabled and unable to work in terms of their estate planning. And then let's talk about perhaps that the caregiver who might be giving them care and what is should be in their estate planning. So we've got two distinct individuals here that we want to talk about. Um, so

Autumn Hancock: 4:35

Sure. So for family members with loved ones with disabilities and a state plan usually will mean how can I make sure that my loved one is taken care of when I'm gone? And if I'm caring for that person and providing any kind of financial assistance to them, how can I make sure that, that financial assistance doesn't negate their ability to receive other benefits that they might be eligible for, or might become eligible for later? And for individuals with a disability estate plannings, how can I control my property while I'm alive to make sure I stay eligible for my benefits, but also how can I give what I have to who I want when I die? Um, so when we're talking about there's so many different ways, and it's very individualized that someone can accomplish these things. So there are there's things called an able account, for example, where you can accumulate more than the$2,000 that you're otherwise usually allowed to have and continue to receive benefits when you're disabled. Um, but you've been to a specific type of account that's managed in a very specific way that allows you to use that, to supplement the benefits that you might receive. Um, there's special needs trusts, and those can be set up by the disabled individual or by someone who's caring for them. Um, for example, if you have a disabled adult, um, child, and you want to put money that you want to, to them, let's say in my will, I would want to give, um,$50,000 to my disabled adult child, but I don't want that$50,000 to mean that she loses her sub section eight housing and our Medicaid and her maybe Medicare too. Um, maybe her social security income, all of that stuff could go away because of that one gift. Um, and even as an attorney, and this is getting complicated, but even as an attorney, if I'm to really be able to reverse that. So let's say someone does that and doesn't properly plan. So, um, you know, I di I give all my nieces and nephews,$50,000. My one niece is disabled. Now, she, because of that gift was her eligibility for a lot of benefits. If they come in my office, that family, I might be able to reverse that I might be able to make it go backwards. But even then you're talking about potentially she's back on a waiting list for a long, long time to try to get back into the housing program or the benefits that she's receiving. So it's very important for both Everett, for everyone in the disability community, both the people that are disabled and their caregivers or people who are providing support to them to really look at every angle when you're planning your estate to make sure that you're not doing anything that creates more harm than good.

Nancy L. Cavey: 7:14

So I want to clarify something because people might be a little confused about should have benefits. For example, there are two types of social screen disability benefits. What is disability benefits, which is based on your earnings and your records, or there is a social security, supplemental income SSI that is asset based. So if you're collecting SSD I a distribution by a family member, isn't going to impact your SSD benefits. But on the other hand, if you're collecting SSI benefits, which is an asset test, then a gift from a family member or friends or relatives can impact your eligibility for your, um, SSI benefits, right?

Autumn Hancock: 7:58

When you're thinking about, um, eligibility requirements, when it comes to estate planning, there's usually three, what we categorize as three major governmental sources of assistance to persons with disabilities. Um, and so inheritance will impact all three of them. So the first one would be social, something like social security, disability, income, or pension, Medicare benefit

Nancy L. Cavey: 8:20

That are not SSD SSI. Okay.

Autumn Hancock: 8:24

S I'm saying social security disability is available regardless of assets or unearned income. So that's the first category pension, Medicare SEI, those ones you can get regardless of your income or your assets, then there's the second category, which is eligible to they're eligible only if their income and assets remain below a certain level, which typically we would say$2,000, which is traditional, but not always exactly the case, depending on your situation, but that one would include SSI. So supplemental security, income, Medicaid, medical assistance, or Medicaid, food stamps, general assistance, like, um, section eight, things like that. And then there's a third category, which is the eligible persons, regardless of assets or income, but it might carry a cost with it, like vocational rehabilitation services, things like that. So we categorize all three of those when we create an estate plan as three different things, and we want to look at all three of them and how they impact the whole plan.

Nancy L. Cavey: 9:23

So, um, is there any other special, um, reasons or needs, why someone who's unable to work should have a will or do the estate planning? And if so, at what point in time should they be, uh, considering having a will or doing estate planning?

Autumn Hancock: 9:41

So estate planning in general, any person who's reckoning with disability, particularly a person condition, whether it be intellectual, physical, or both needs to ensure that they have, um, their, not just their will, but their healthcare advanced directives and their powers of attorney in place as soon as possible. And those are the three basic things, I guess I should back up three basic things that everyone should have in their state plan. So when I do it for my first responders, even if it's the most basic, it includes a healthcare advanced directive, a power of attorney and a will. So those three things is what I think everyone should have. Like your 18 year old neighbors should have that.

Nancy L. Cavey: 10:19

So could you break those three things down for us?

Autumn Hancock: 10:22

Yes. So we'll like we talked about is the document that we'll talk about what happens to your stuff and to you when you pass away that healthcare advanced directive is a lot of people call it a living will. Um, so some attorneys will do two documents. One's going to be called a healthcare surrogate designation, and one's called a healthcare. Um, a living will, and the healthcare advanced directive is both of those things combined. So you can put it together. You could do it separate. So the healthcare surrogate nomination is going to say, who's going to make decisions about your healthcare, if you're unable to, for any reason, um, it can be that you're unconscious, you're in a coma. It could be that you, um, have some kind of intellectual or cognitive disability that creates a situation where you can't make that those kinds of reasoning decisions. Um, and when a doctor says, Hey, look, this person's unconscious. We need to cut off one of their legs. We need permission to do so. Who are they going to call to make that decision? So that's your healthcare surrogate.

Nancy L. Cavey: 11:20

That's also important, isn't it? If somebody has a progressive disease, as opposed to these acute or traumatic events.

Autumn Hancock: 11:28

Absolutely. And it progressive disease, it matters so much because what you don't want is someone to be able to petition for guardianship over you, because you don't have these things in place. So as things progress, you might be in a situation where your sister or your mom, someone else shows up and says, we're going to have to petition to become their guardian, because there's no document that legally gives me the right to make these decisions. And now this person's disease has progressed to the extent that they can create that document now, right? So you want to do it as soon as you can. So you don't run into a situation where you can't and you can edit it as long as you're mentally or intellectually cognitively able to, but you want to hear some things in place because petitioning for guardianship is expensive. It's very expensive for your family. And the money has to come from somewhere and the court can make it come from you. Um, but it also takes away some rights that you might not need to be taken that you might need to be divested of. Um, go ahead. No, go ahead. Okay. So the next thing is a living will, and a living will is part of the healthcare advanced directive. That document tells what you want to happen in certain circumstances, if you are not able to make the decision. So do I want my support? Do I want, um, food and water through the, for as long as I'm in a vegetative state and it usually categorizes into three different categories. So we talk about a terminal condition, an end stage condition, and a persistent vegetative state, which are three different things, which your spending team can explain to you in detail. Um, but a lot of times are confused. So a lot of times people think a terminal condition is the same as a persistent vegetative state, and that's not the case. So you want to really think about under each of those different circumstances. Do you want like support? Do you want to be kept alive by artificial means if you cannot breathe, but your brain is alive, like those different situations. So that's what a living will is. And you have all of those things into the same document. If you choose, which is called a healthcare dense directive. The, the other document that I mentioned is the power of attorney, the power of attorney can give someone the meat, the ability to make health decisions. Um, but usually it deals with financial decisions.

Nancy L. Cavey: 13:56

So, um, how does disability impact a life insurance policy? And do any of these documents protect, for example, you, if you were to become disabled and unable to manage your affairs from any of your relatives, changing the beneficiary of the life insurance policy,

Autumn Hancock: 14:14

Right? So if you have a park attorney, the power of attorney is, has the ability to change your life insurance beneficiaries. If that is one of the powers that's given to them through the power of attorney documents. So the documents for what I like to tell people is if you see a power of attorney, that's less than six pages long, it's probably not detailed enough. So it's, you want to enumerate every specific power that the person is allowed to do. So can they mortgage your real estate? Can they go empty out your bank account? Can, what things can they do and what things can't they do? So if of the things is they're allowed to manage your life insurance policy, then they did, they can do that. But every other random relative that you have doesn't have the ability to do that. Um, so you just want to be careful and you want to make sure that you put the power of attorney is effective immediately. So it's a little different than the healthcare advanced directives, because the person that you appoint as your healthcare advanced directives can't do stuff against your will. So if I'm sitting up in the hospital bed, I'm like, no, sir, I don't want that. And they're like, no, yes, I look at this paper. I can do it. That's not how that works, but a power of attorney becomes effective right away. So as soon as you give it to that person, they can go to the bank and empty your bank account. And the bank's not obligated to call you and say, Hey, do you want them to do this? So you don't have to be under any kind of disability for the power of attorney to become effective.

Nancy L. Cavey: 15:37

So

Autumn Hancock: 15:39

It's scary for me to be real careful with those ones.

Nancy L. Cavey: 15:42

It is. So that's a lot of great information that we've talked about. Let's take a break and we're going to come back and I've got some more questions to ask. All right, sure. Welcome back to winning. Isn't easy. Now I've got a question for you. What mistakes do you see, uh, people make when they're writing their will and they're disabled or in the same scenario? What mistakes are they making in estate planning? Uh, and they're unable to work that you want them to avoid. Okay.

Autumn Hancock: 16:35

Okay. So the first big mistake that everyone, whether disabled or not disabled needs to know, not to do when it comes to a will, is don't make handwritten changes on your will. After it's executed, you can't cross things out. And then that invalidates it.

Nancy L. Cavey: 16:51

But that happens in the movies all the time.

Autumn Hancock: 16:54

It, it happens in my office all the time, believe it or not, but it's not. You can't do that. So if you need to change your will, it's as simple as picking up the phone, calling the attorney that drafted it for you, um, to tell them, I need to take this person out and put a different person in or something like that, but you don't want to cross things up. The other big one, right?

Nancy L. Cavey: 17:12

Becomes difficult. People are gonna say, well, that's just a way for the lawyer to make money, right?

Autumn Hancock: 17:17

No, no. You can copy it off into your Microsoft word and make the team yourself if you'd like to. But don't, hand-write it. You need it to be anything. Is that the point of is that you don't want John Smith to find your will, right before you die and breast things off. And no one will know whether you made that change or not. So you have to make the change in the, the same way that you created the original will. So it doesn't have to be the same lawyer. You can go wherever you want to get the change, but it needs to be executed in the same way. So two witnesses and a notary need to be here to sign that you made that change. So there are ways that you can make a quick edit to a will without having to reexecute the whole thing, but it's a different document that gets attached. So don't, hand-write your changes. The other one, if you use a DIY template for a will, it's not a hundred percent off. I mean, all the lawyers are going to be mad at me for saying this, but it's not a hundred percent off limits, but you can't try to do it yourself. But if you're in a situation where you are caring for a loved one, who's disabled, or you do have a disability or the risk that you might have a progressive disease or progressive illness later, you really want to make sure that you have a team of professionals that are able to look at things from every angle. So that's a big one. Um, because those DIY templates sometimes are a lot. They're very vague and there, it leaves a lot of discrepancies for ligation later.

Nancy L. Cavey: 18:41

So in other words, you want a customized, um, estate planning documents, including a will that addresses your current situation and what you would anticipate, particularly if you're having a progressive, a disabling medical condition, is that right?

Autumn Hancock: 18:57

Exactly. Yeah. And you, you run risks that you accidentally make some, you know, you miss something and that causes big problems for someone down the road that you won't know for 10 years maybe, or for you. Um, and as far as being disabled and mistakes that are made specifically with relation to people that are disabled or people that are caring for disabled, um, loved ones when creating the state plan. The biggest thing I would say is that you really want to think about the benefits that you might be impacting by what you're doing with the assets at the time, or the unearned income or earned income. Um, so what you want is to plan your estate, to maximize available government funding and services, and using your state funds to supplement them. Because unless you're a billionaire, you probably don't want to use your own money to pay for stuff that the government's willing to pay for it for you. So,

Nancy L. Cavey: 19:51

So reminders, what it is that the government is paying for, that we don't want to pay for.

Autumn Hancock: 19:56

So you were talking about maybe medical coverage like Medicaid. Um, sometimes people that are disabled are also eligible for SSI, in addition to their SSD, are there other benefits that they might get from their employer or from any kind of settlement that they might receive? Um, we're talking about section eight, housing, um, maybe mental health services are available, um, but not only to the person, to their disabled persons, children as well.

Nancy L. Cavey: 20:26

Right. Are there any other mistakes that, uh, people need to know about, uh, where they they're doing, um, their estate planning and wills, if they're disabled that we haven't already talked about,

Autumn Hancock: 20:36

Making sure you choose the right person or executive, which I kind of alluded to earlier, but just like the power of attorney and the healthcare surrogate, you want to choose a personal representative in your will. Um, that is someone that will carry out your wishes and think long-term, so you might want to name at least one level of alternate. If that personal representative is unable to serve. So if they are convicted of a felony or they moved to Australia or something like that, and they're unable to do it, you want to really think all of that stuff through, because it's a long process to be a personal representative in most States.

Nancy L. Cavey: 21:09

So I'm going to throw a curve ball at you because I just had this happen in a case, uh, gentleman's in North Carolina, um, disabled cognitive issues, collecting his social security, his long-term disability benefits. And he made his aunt, uh, responsible for his, uh, his estate and gave her power, uh, over, uh, over his assets. And of course, guess what she did. She cleaned out his bank account, and then she died. So now he's having to Sue his aunt's estate. Um, what happens in those kinds of cases where that, that worst case scenario happens?

Autumn Hancock: 21:47

Yeah. It's hard to prove when you comes to power of attorney situation, right? Because they, any, you can't Sue the bank, you can't Sue any third parties because they're the right to look at your power of attorney as if it's real, unless you show them in writing that it's not ahead of time. So you're stuck suing, I guess probably what his cousins at the, in that scenario. So

Nancy L. Cavey: 22:08

Administrator of her, her estate,

Autumn Hancock: 22:12

Right. And assuming that she has assets to collect on, right? So if she took all your money, I don't know what kind of money she had for herself. Maybe it may be a lot, but if not, you're looking for non-exempt assets that you can collect against in that state. And you're wasting so much money. Sometimes it's depending on how much money she took, it's not even worth it to do anything about it, other than distance yourself from that side of the family. But it's a, it's a, that's an uphill battle. And that kind of litigation can go on for years and years and years.

Nancy L. Cavey: 22:41

And in the meantime, he's living in his car because she literally cleaned out the money. He had gotten in his retroactive, social security, disability payment, and the retroactive payment of benefits he got from the long-term disability carrier. Um, so obviously those kinds of mistakes can have a catastrophic, uh, financial consequences.

Autumn Hancock: 23:01

There are some benefits, believe it or not to appointing a corporate or a professional personal representative, or a professional power of attorney. It costs money in increments, but there is usually malpractice insurance options available. So at least if something does go wrong, you have someone that you can collect from in those scenarios. It's hard to tell people if you can't fit, trust your family, what do you do? You know?

Nancy L. Cavey: 23:27

Well, unfortunately you can use my client's example, uh, as an illustration of what can go wrong when you trust family members and what may be better to do exactly what you said, right? So let's take a quick break and I'm going to come back and I got some more questions for you. Welcome back to winning. Isn't easy. Now I know that it can really hard to find an Arista disability attorney, because there's not a lot of us in the United States who specialize in this area, but there are many more lawyers who do estate planning and wills. Um, how does a person find the right estate planning and wills attorney for them?

Autumn Hancock: 24:28

My advice is always to think about this kind of situation on a trust continuum. So if you are going to hire someone to mow your lawn, you probably could get someone off the mat that you Google, right? Because if they mess it up, it's going to grow back. But if you're going to hire a brain surgeon, you're probably not going to go and Google, who is the brain surgeon, because you want someone that you can trust. So I think of, you know, on a continuum, all the services that we need in life, how much do we have to really trust that person? And if it's someone up here on this side of the continuum, like a brain surgeon, I would say someone that's going to take control of all your assets for you and your heirs might be on that end of the spectrum. So you want to ask other people that you trust, who they've worked with, that they trust. So ask your accountant, ask your financial advisor, ask your other attorneys that you work with. Um, but then once you're there and you interview the person you're talking to them, recognize that aside from, you know, the fancy office and how, you know the cookies they have in the lobby, this is going to be an ongoing relationship they're building. So you're looking for someone that you're comfortable with because estate planning documents usually don't just get made and then sit there for 50 years, never talked to the person again. So this is going to be a relationship. So you want someone that you can tell all your stuff to. Um, as an example, I have someone, a family that came to my office recently where they had their estate plan done, or the, uh, one of the women in the family had her estate plan done by a lawyer who her niece worked for. So because of that, when she went to get her estate plan, she didn't, she appointed to two daughters. She appointed one of them as her personal representative, but she didn't want to tell the lawyer that her daughter was a convicted felon because she was embarrassed because he's her, you know, her niece worked for him or her. Somebody worked for him in the family. So she didn't tell him. And, but that disqualifies her from being a personal representative in Florida. And the other daughter was like someone they didn't trust. They don't want her to manage everything. So in turn, she passed away, the will said that the personal representative was a person who can't be the personal representative. And the only other left is the daughter that she didn't want to do it, but there's nothing in writing this as she can't do it. So now daughter is the personal representative and there's all kinds of negation going on with her, trying to sell assets out from under the rest of the errors and things like that, which is why, why she wasn't appointed in the first place. So that's an example, just like, you know, worst case scenario, but you want to make sure that you have an attorney that you're super comfortable telling all the messy details of your family do so that you don't leave something out like that, that could long-term impact what happens with this house might end up being sold and not be owned by who you want it to be owned by now because of it.

Nancy L. Cavey: 27:15

So at your family, uh, as you said, um, it's been in the financial planning business for many years. So why can't a financial planner, do all this stuff. Why, why do I need a lawyer to do this?

Autumn Hancock: 27:26

Digital planner can do some of this stuff, but they can't do financial planners. Can't give legal advice. So they can't tell you the legal repercussions of certain decisions. And they might not know like my dad, for example, he's my dad. So I don't know if it's like the least biased example, but he calls me, he's been doing this forever. Like since I was in middle school and he calls me still and asks me questions about, um, you know, some of the stuff I want to do this for this client, what are the legalities behind it? And that kind of thing. Um, and other, you know, financial advisors really do consult with attorneys a lot. Um, but when it comes to the process as an attorney, once you die, if, unless you've done probate, avoidance planning, which is one of the parts of the planning that is available, that some people, um, if you've not done that your state's gonna end up in probate. So the people that go to probate to fight for your assets to make sure that everything happens the way you wanted it to happen, our lawyers. So in turn we see all the things that happen when it doesn't get done. Right? So that's what I can say. Like for example, the felony conviction, like I can make sure that all of the people that walk into my office know that no one who has had a felony conviction can be your personal representative employee. And I've seen what happens if you don't listen. So I can give you those examples where I think a lot of times financial advisors, it ends when, you know, when you make the investment.

Nancy L. Cavey: 28:49

So, uh, there are some Apple saw a song that the lawyers take care of details, um, that we clean up messes. Um, well, let me ask you this. Um, how does, uh, when you're interviewing a lawyer, what questions do you think they need to ask him to make sure that, that they're going to have that trusting relationship and that the attorney really at the end of the day has their best interests at heart?

Autumn Hancock: 29:20

Sure. One of the things I think is not, it's not an end point, it's not the only thing to know, but does the attorney really focus on the state planning? Because a lot of attorneys are what we call doorstep attorneys, and some of them can be great at what they do, but they don't really focus on anything. So you want to make sure because the law in estate and the law surrounding life insurance and disability really changes it's fluid. So you want someone that's really focused on making sure they understand what the current status of the law is and what protections are currently available to their clients. Um, and then you also want to ask your attorney about succession planning, because this is a long-term relationship. So if your attorneys like me, where they own their own business, and they're the only one that works here, what's going to happen. If I'm not here, do I have a plan in place is what my client should be asking. They don't ask, but they should. Um, and do I have a plan in place? So what's going to happen to your will, is my safe. And something happens to me or what's going to happen if you need it to be revised and I'm sick, or I'm not here anymore. Um, those kinds of questions, I think that are really important. And that can tell you a lot about who you're working with and what kind of person they are, um, and how detail oriented they are. And that can answer a lot of your other questions.

Nancy L. Cavey: 30:32

Would you anticipate that that attorney would also be, um, contacting them on a regular basis? Not to be a pest, but to just see if circumstances had changed and whether, um, the estate planning needed to be changed.

Autumn Hancock: 30:46

Yeah. You should hear from your estate planning attorney at least every 18 months, I would say, um, depending on your age bracket and your circumstances, right? So if you are a 19 year old who gets his, will done, when he's moving out of his parents' house and you know, you're going to college, maybe you don't hear from that person that every 18 months, but there should be a pretty regular schedule of contact between the attorney's office and you, whether it's coming from you or from them. So if I don't hear from a client for 18 months, I, I mean, I send cards a one twice a year just to check in, but I'll usually I'll call, or my assistant will call. And just say, especially during times, like now, like during COVID, we're calling all of our clients, make sure everybody's okay. And has a place to live and food.

Nancy L. Cavey: 31:28

Yeah. Right, right. So how can people reach out to you if they're in the Tampa Bay area and talk with you about what's right for them in terms of estate planning in a will

Autumn Hancock: 31:38

I'm in St. Petersburg on central Avenue. Um, in my, I have a website it's www dot Hancock law, F L like florida.com. Um, and you can also call me at(727) 222-0529 or email at autumn at Hancock law, florida.com.

Nancy L. Cavey: 31:59

So one of the things we haven't talked about, uh, just in closing is you also teach this area of law.

Autumn Hancock: 32:05

I do, I teach at St. Pete college and I'm on like a rotation of classes. So this semester I'm teaching business law. Um, but it's, you know, different subjects that I taught on in this area as well.

Nancy L. Cavey: 32:17

Right? So you bring your expertise to not only as a lawyer, but you teach, uh, paralegal students about this particular area. And I think you serve on some other community committees. Is that correct?

Autumn Hancock: 32:28

I do. I'm the, um, law practice management chair for the St Petersburg bar association. And also, um, I write for the Florida association of women lawyers journal I'm on that committee. Um, and I'm on several

Nancy L. Cavey: 32:40

Other little sections of different bar organizations in the area. And I'm the liaison for Florida for the Wells for heroes program. Great. Well, I love the fact that you not only, uh, are involved in the first responder community, but that you teach and you're actively involved in a number of, uh, legal groups. So thank you for your service and thank you for, um, being with us today. So that's a wrap. If you liked this podcast, please consider liking our page, leaving a review or sharing it with your friends and family. Remember our podcast comes out weekly, so tune in next week for another great episode of winning isn't easy. Thank you.