7. Robert & Amanda Corral - Corral Financial Strategies

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Welcome to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast where we dive deep into the pressing issue of wealth inequality in communities of color, cultural money beliefs and personal finance. Some of our families are struggling. Even people are actually homeless. Join us as we interview inspiring individuals and organizations across the United States who are dedicated to eradicating this disparity through their creative solutions and innovative approaches.

Together, let's explore how we can build.

A more equitable society for all.

Here's your host, Luis Barajas. Let's get into it.

Welcome everyone. Today I have our special guest. Actually, it's a father and daughter team who focus on working with families with special needs. I've gotten to know them, got to talk to them about the work that they're doing and just thought that they are just changing so many families in California and probably outside of California. But all I know right now is California. We'll get to know them a little bit better. It's Roberto and Amanda Corral. They are our guests here today and they represent a company called their company called Financial Corral Financial Strategies. And we just want to get to know them a little better. And so thank you both of you for being here with us today. And I would love for Roberto Robert to start with us and tell us a little bit about how you started in financial planning and how you've gotten to the point where now you're one of the top speakers in the country on working with families with special needs.

Yes, I graduated. First of all, thanks for having us on your podcast. It was just a pleasure to be here with you. Upon graduation from ucla, I was offered a job as an insurance agent by a black owned company back then, Golden State Mutual. And I started seeing the disparity between.

People of color and others regarding financial planning. The education wasn't there.

For whatever reason. They just didn't know exactly what to do as much as, say, your white counterparts. So that was the beginning of my journey in the financial planning world. I was also a mortgage broker and the reason behind that was.

Wealth. As you knew. Well now, Luis, a lot of it starts with owning a home and then you go on beyond that. So my goal was to make sure that I can help as many folks get a home loan to get to where they want to get. So that was my initial journey into financial planning.

Great. And so, Roberto, but I'd like to know a little bit more about also. I know that you saw things that weren't there, but I want to get into that detail. What is it that you saw that inspired to continue the work that you're doing, because the work that you and I do is not easy work. It's hard work that sometimes we even have to convince the. Our own people who need that help that what there's available for you. Amanda, I'd love for you to introduce yourself and how you also got involved working with your dad and how he's inspired you and how you're also an inspiration to a lot of young women as well.

Yes. Again, thank you for having us. My name's Amanda. I originally started by studying to be a part of the music industry, and I actually went on to even get a master's degree in music and a bachelor's in commercial music business. But I. I kind of felt like there was a little too much ego there. And then that's just, you know, from my own observation, of course. And I decided I would rather kind of work, help the little guy and, and feel like my soul was being enriched by my work. And at the time, my father already had his company. This is now going into the pandemic 2020. I had, as I think most people did, a kind of life crisis of what am I doing, what is going on, kind of things like that. And my father already had established his company and I was seeing the difference he was making, especially with families like ours. You know, my brother has autism, and, and I was always concerned as I got older and started having more futuristic goals and things like that. What's going to happen to my brother when my parents can no longer take care of him? How are my sister and I going to do that? It's just an extra burden that families that don't have somebody with a disability in the family could never understand. But my father has done a great job of planning for our family and other families, and that really inspired me to pursue a paralegal program. So I became an lda. So I started doing documents for my dad's company and things like that. And just seeing the impact of these families being very scared of the future, not knowing what's going to happen, being like, how am I going to provide for my child who will never be able to work and earn an income for themselves. And that just puts a huge financial and emotional strain on the families. And my father comes in and basically gives them avenues and ways to live comfortably and to ensure that their loved one will be well taken care of until the end of their life. So seeing how much of a relief that has given so many families, it just inspired me to. To go into that and to help people like Us.

Fantastic, Roberto. So share with us a little bit more of your personal story about your son and how. I think that is what kind of was the impetus for you to start figuring out what's going to happen with my son? Right. And what resources are available. And it was not that easy, I think, when you first started figuring out that, you know, what kind of family. So you've become almost a. A national expert on this. But tell us how that started. Tell us, I mean, basically what the thought process was be behind you taking care of your son. And then when you started looking into it, what you found was available or wasn't available and how you've gotten to get all. Garner all that. That knowledge and experience.

Yes. Yes. My son was diagnosed in 1999 with autism. Even though we. We had an inkling, especially my wife share that mother's intuition sometimes not right. And my son is two years younger than Amanda. Not that I want to go my daughter's age, but. But. So we went to a conference. My wife and I decided to learn as much as we could to help my son. And I remember the speaker was a psychologist. And after the conference, we went up to her, and we didn't know autism. The only thing we thought of was the movie Rain man, which necessarily, autism is more of a savant. But I remember us going up to the lady and asking, well, how do we cure my son? How do we make sure he's okay? She said, well, there's no cure. You're probably gonna have to put him in an institution. He's never gonna speak, get married, say I love you, and so forth. So for one of the first few times in my life, I didn't know what to say. My wife and I were, for a couple days, didn't speak hardly because we were so stunned.

How was your son at the time.

Three, when he was officially diagnosed? Three. And so again, this was a whole new world. My wife and I went to training conferences, everything we could do. My wife became an advocate. There's two really two avenues of advocacy. One is the financial, legal side and more the school side. So my wife became more the school side expert. And throughout the years, we just by going to conferences, asking questions, support groups, we started finding out about some of the programs that were available resources.

So we decided to become experts for my son. But Luis, throughout the process, we started seeing that we could help others because there were other family members, other support group didn't have any of this information. And luckily for us, we're bilingual, we speak English and Spanish. So that avenue also opened a lot of our tribes. More than half our clients are Spanish speaking. All the information we were able to gather regarding government benefits, and you had mentioned in California. We're in California, Medi Cal throughout the nation is Medicaid. But folks from California, we're so special, we call it Medi Cal. So we have our own name. And there was other services that people just didn't know anything about. So we would go to resource fairs. We would call workshops free of charge to any, any support group. They wanted this information. And that's how we became. I don't want to pat ourselves on the back and say experts, but we specialize in this community because we are part of the community. We are not just out there saying, you know, you need to work with us because, you know, we know what we're doing. We live it. Whenever I have workshops and we have resource fairs, Amanda and I, one of the first things we tell the audiences is, is that we're also part of the journey. We have a child that's not 27 years old. And so we've gone from. I don't want to say we're point Z, but we're A to say P. We've gone through a lot of what they don't know. So we give this information out and. And then if. If it needs to go beyond that, then obviously that's where our company comes in and. And helps. But it is so a community that is in such need of information because they don't know. They don't know what it. Who to turn to.

Yeah. So let me ask you and Amanda, do you happen to know technically, like, how many families in the United States or in California have families with special needs with children? Because it's not just autism. Right. There's down syndrome. There's a. There's a lot. I mean, we're talking about a lot of families that will have to somehow take care of a child or loved one and the future when they're no longer here as well. Right. Because. And how to protect their assets, how to take care of them. I mean, there's just so much that it can become overwhelming. And I always talk about connecting the dots. I'd love to connect the dots, but between. You're talking about not just financial, but legal, emotional. There's so much, you know, and there's so much that they can do to prepare themselves. But do you have any idea how many families there might be at all with this kind of need?

Well, the statistics that I found is that one in six people in the United States had some type of disability.

Personally, our company, the youngest person that we were able to serve was 2 years old. The oldest was 93. So as you mentioned, we're not talking just autism, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer's, mental illnesses, brain trauma. So this is a huge amount of folks out there that need some type of help. Again, it could be someone that's just starting the journey, and then there's someone that's more towards the end of it. And the way we look at it is up, down and around. What that means is up. It could be someone that's older than you, like your parent could be down, could be your child, and around is someone that's around your age group, could be a sibling, a cousin that needs these services. So we're able to.

Thankfully be able to be of service to that community. Again, 1 to 6 has some type of disability.

So when you were starting out.

Finding out what needed to be done to take care of your child, and again, you were preparing, not only as your child was three years old and getting to be like a teenager, but you were preparing, hey, one day you're not, you know, you and I are not going to be here on this earth. And. And as Amanda said, you know, he might. What they told you they scared you, right? He might end up in an institution. And then you start worrying as a parent, well, where's he going to end up? And you know, what kind of services. And we know that medical is. Is basically, if you're with medical, you kind of have to be in poverty, and maybe you're not even be getting the best help. So the thing is, what were you finding out when you first started out? That there was information missing or you had to connect the dots, or has it gotten better? You know, what. What is it that parents don't know or need to know? That from a financial standpoint, that right now you are pretty certain when you meet with families, they're like, clueless as to how to take care of their children.

Well, when we start speaking with a family, one of the first things we want to know is what benefits is your child currently receiving? And, you know, whether it's again, medical, Social Security and other benefits. And that's again the starting point, because if they have some of the benefits, that's great. But you'll be surprised, Luis, how many folks don't have any benefits. And we're talking about parents that. Whose children are sometimes in their 30s and they're not receiving anything because no one's ever told them. It's not like someone says, you know, your child has, let's say it's autism. And no one from the government knocks on your door and says, you know what? You're eligible for this, this, this, this. No, you have to find out. And usually it's through a support group or maybe in California, we have what's called regional centers where there's help for folks with disabilities. So those avenues are generally the ones that give you the basic information. But even then, when you go, say, to Social Security and you ask for some help, if you don't tell them the exact program that you need, they will sometimes deny you because they cannot say, tell you, well, you're not eligible for this program, but you're eligible for this one. It's just. That's just the way Social Security works.

So.

Yeah, correct. And a lot of people get denied not knowing that they do qualify for a different program, but because they're not told, they don't know. And that's where at times we're referred. We come in and we let them know, here's where we could help you and get you that Social Security, the medical, what have you. And it's great to have Amanda working with me now because, you know, I'm not 22, and I have clients who tell me, robert, we love working with you, but again, you know, you're not 22. I'm a baby boomer. So now we have the next generation of that will be able to serve some of this community that I won't be able to.

Well, the beauty of Amanda is that if she's fallen in love with the career path that you have, is that she's able to leverage all the relationships that you've, you know, you garnished over the last, you know, 20 years or whatever. And so she's able to leverage that and then leverage all the knowledge and experience that you have. So even though she's. She's very young, she's got a lot of experience behind her or a lot of education and experience behind it because of her dad. So, Amanda, what. What do you feel that when you see your dad working or with you guys working with a family is the biggest source of worry. What is it that parents, when they. When they come and talk to you a bit and they refer to you that they worried most about? What is that?

Of course, first and foremost, it's the loved one who has a disability. They're worried about their care. But one thing that. That I know my parents have worried about and, and other clients of ours have worried about is their other children, because most of the. Most of our clients don't just have that one child, assuming it's like the child we're talking about. They have other children, too. And there's. It's. It's a huge balancing act because, of course, the child with the disability is going to need the most financial help because they won't be able to provide for themselves. But these families also want to leave something to their other children and other resources because they don't want their. The child with a disability to be a financial burden on the other children. Which is something that my parents have worried about, too, is my brother. You know, there's three of us. There's myself, my brother, and then I have a younger sister. My parents don't want my brother's care to ever be a burden for my sister and I. You know, one day we want to get married and have kids, and my parents want us to have everything we want in our life, a fulfilling life. But, of course, my brother needs the care. But with that, there's a balancing of, yes, you're going to have to take care of your brother, but we don't want it to be a huge burden and to ruin, you know, everything else you want to build with, you know, a significant other or a career, whatever, you know. So I think that's a huge worry that a lot of parents have is for, first and foremost, for the child with a disability and. And leaving enough money for them to make sure that they're set for the rest of their life, but also for their other children, too, and making sure that. That their child's taken care of, but that, you know, any other children they have are also able to live their own life. It's. It's a big balancing act. It makes things a lot more difficult, which is why this type of planning is very necessary, because us siblings, we worry. Like my sister and I, we've talked about it like mom and dad are too old. You know, like weekends you can take, you know, my brother, you know, if you want to go on vacation with your family, I'll take them. You know, we've talked about it, things like that, because we know the day is coming. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when, you know, so it's just making sure that everybody's taken care of, but especially this child with special needs.

God, those are. Amanda, those are excellent points you've made.

My question to you guys is what I would assume that there are families that already sometimes kind of start some of the planning on their own. And by wanting to be proactive, they're actually made some big mistakes by setting up the wrong, for example, estate planning structure or whatever. Can you share with us? Can you share with our audience? What are some of the biggest mistakes outside of the. I would say the biggest mistake is not to plan. Right. Not. Not planning. That would be the biggest mistake. But there are some people that who become proactive but don't realize that they're making a major faux pas, maybe with, you know, their children getting further aid down the road when they're no longer here. Or what are some of the biggest mistakes that you guys see?

Well, what I see is families will tell me, for example, yes, we have our estate plan, we have our will, we have our family trust. And if they have a child with a disability who's receiving benefits, you know, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, so forth, if they're named on these financial legal documents, they can potentially be disqualified from receiving further medi Cal, Medicaid and Social Security. When you run the numbers.

A child who, say, lives to the age of 60 or 70, and many children with disabilities do live to that age.

The benefits they're receiving from the government is about a million dollars or so. At one time, I had a family with a child that had severe disabilities, and we ran the numbers, they were going to receive about 4 million in benefits.

Wow.

So one of the first things that we ask is have you set up, for example, special needs Trust, you know, where your child can receive anything you want to give them and still qualify and keep the eligibility for these benefits. There's folks that say, yes, I have it. And when we. Not that I'm not an attorney, but it's easy for me to read some. And it has that child's name, not through a special needs trust, but just directly. And that would disqualify them and then potentially have Medi Cal Medicaid payback. But I do want to touch on something real quickly. Luisa, you had Amanda touched upon as a parent. Amanda, obviously is talking from the side of a sibling.

Yep.

As a parent, our biggest worry is what's going to happen when we are no longer here. Right. Our biggest worry. That's why you need to set up these documents correctly. So no matter what happens in. In my case personally, and I shared with you one time, I believe, Luis, I had a heart transplant 10 years ago.

Yeah.

So to make sure that we had our. Our documents in order Last year I was diagnosed with cancer, so. And I'm still going through that. But these are the things that I tell folks these things because they can happen to anybody. I know special needs planning inside and out, because I live it like I have mentioned, but I'm still a human. These things happen and you have to prepare for them, get your family involved, let them know what they need to do, if they don't already. Obviously, in my case, I have Amanda, so she's learning all this. But not everybody has an Amanda next to them that knows and will keep gathering this knowledge. So it's so important for you to start talking to someone, whether you know it's us or somebody else, attorneys and special needs attorneys, because you just never know what's going to happen tomorrow.

And I think one thing too that's important is.

I think some parents with the best of intentions don't want to bother their other children with it. They just want to take the full load of taking care of everything, and they don't want to bother their other children with it, you know, because they want them to have their own life. And, and that's very honorable. But I think a huge mistake some parents can and do make is not involving their other children. And God forbid something happens to the parents. These now the siblings are like, what do I do? Like, where, where, where are the documents? I don't even know where they are. Are they in the garage? Are they in the office? You know, they don't even know where to begin. And so I think there needs to be some involvement. Of course, you don't want to overwhelm your other children, but my parents have done a really good job of teaching my sister and I, taking us to support groups, and we've been involved, very involved in the process since, I mean, some of my childhood memories were going to therapy with my brother, going to support groups with my parents, you know, things like that. My sister and I were always involved and, you know, you know, when that awful day comes that something happens to my parents, she and I will be able to figure it out. We have at least the basis to where we can figure it out and we can help out, you know, but if you don't involve your other children, you know, at least giving them the what you're doing, why you're doing it, how to access the documents, then if, you know, if something happens, then that's really detrimental to the loved one with a disability. So I would say make sure your other kids are involved and at least know the basics of what's going on, take them to the meetings, have them sit in with meetings so they at least are aware of what's happening and why.

Yeah, that's fantastic. I'd like to get down and dirty into the practicalities, right? And so, you know, I work, I'm all over the place. I deal with entertainers, and then I still deal with families in the barrios, right, where the, the families have children with, like I said, down syndrome or multiple sclerosis or they'll have autism. But the families don't have a lot of money. And so the parents are concerned that what are they going to leave? How, you know, are they going to be under the medi cal system their whole life? And what happens and, and what happens if the children don't want to take care, you know, what happens if my, the, the siblings don't want to take care of their, their brother or sister?

You know, who will manage that, manage their, their, their life for them? Walk me through what you normally do with people who do not have a lot of assets. Do they get a life? In my head I'm thinking, well, okay, I, as a dad can get a life insurance policy, but I can't name my son because if I name, let's say my son has autism. I can't name my son because if he gets it, he's going to get the money. It'll blow maybe the medi cal benefits that you talked about. So they'll have to do a trust or maybe a special needs trust that you mentioned. But then who's going to manage that money for my son? And, and, and for how long? And does my son need any other protection? You know, when I sit down and I do an estate plan for a client, I'm doing a durable power of attorney. I'm doing a health care directive. You know, who's, if, if you're, if you're no longer there, Roberto, who's making these final medical decisions for your son? These are real practical kind of things that you worry about. I would love if you can kind of walk me through when you talk to the parents, you talk to them about life insurance and how it's set up and the special needs and what happens if the siblings aren't around or available? Who's going to take care of them? There's so much to think about. And also I will share with you that as they say, you know, a surgeon should never perform surgery on themselves. Right. Somebody who has also kids. The thing is that the problem is you get very emotional. And when we're emotional about our own children. We make mistakes by not thinking things through. So I would love to hear, again, kind of walk me through for a family that doesn't have a lot of assets, who has a lot of. Who. Who, you know, who's really worried about the future of their child, what you do to protect them and how you protect them.

Yeah, well, we. We take a holistic approach and we team up with other professionals.

Okay.

Whether it's an estate planning attorney, could be an investment advisor, could be a cpa. So part of what we do is we want to know who's. Who's part of your team and do they understand? Because you'll be surprised how many times these folks set up an estate plan. But. But they never even asked, do you have a child with special needs? They don't ask, for example, do you care now or in the future, will you care for someone with special needs? And nothing against them. They just. That's not their avenue. That's not what they specialize in. But that's what we specialize in. So we ask these tough questions. And maybe for us, you know, Luis, it's easier to ask these questions because we are part of the community and we live this life. We have this journey that I had mentioned. So it's easy for me to ask these questions where a lot of professionals are scared or just maybe just don't have experience. But we ask all these questions. Who's going to care for your child? Who's going to manage the money? You know, and let's say the siblings live out of state. If they can't do it, well, we work with them. And part of the team, we bring in other professionals that can help bring this support. Because you'll be surprised. There are times that people you think want to help are not available or can't. But then there are times there are people that want to help, but you don't ask them. And that's why you need to bring this up, because you need to know who is going to be there for your child. And you mentioned money. Well, sometimes there's not monies to. There's no assets to leave. But a life insurance policy could potentially be a solution. And, you know, there's more than one type of life insurance policy. And that's part of the conversations that we have with these. With these professionals and the families is bring your team. Let's all work together and make sure. Because the main issue here is we want to make sure that that special person is taken care of. When you're no longer here, or let's just say mom and dad are here, but they have their own issues. They have capacity issues in the future. Now people are living longer, which is great. But then at the same time that means that they're going to need long term care potentially because it took me longer. And I tell the folks that I work with, you're caring for a child who maybe can't dress him or herself or bathe themselves. What if that's you in the future? Have you thought about that? And a lot of times parents don't plan for themselves because they focus so much on planning for their child that they forget about themselves. So that's also part of the conversation. So it's a tough conversation to have, but it's necessary. And we wouldn't be doing our job if we don't bring these things up.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And the money does come in handy. You'll be surprised when we start talking about these things. Maybe mom and dad don't have all the resources to buy themselves, let's just say a life insurance policy, but they have other siblings that will pitch in and help because they know that maybe they won't be able to care for that child. But you know, they can help somehow even get that policy to hire someone in the future. That may be a way to solve at least part of that problem. But again, it has to be brought up. And if it's not brought up, the child, that special needs person is the one that's going to suffer.

And if they do get, for example, a life insurance policy on themselves, the beneficiary is the child, but the beneficiary should never be the child. Obviously with special needs it has to be the special needs trust. Correct. That's, that's the beneficiary on a life insurance policy. I just want people who listen to us to make sure that they understand that. Yeah. And, and then on the practicality side, the, the special needs. Now I've been doing financial planning for 30 something years and I know a lot of attorneys that if you go to their website they'll mention everything they do and including special needs, but they don't really know special needs. Right. How can I find an attorney that really does special needs? Obviously, I guess you must know who they are because you, you actually speak all over California and you probably speak at a lot of legal conferences or I'm sure you've had a chance to speak to at legal conferences where you've met a lot of attorneys that do that. But is there like A website that people can go to to find out. And what would that be?

There's a couple of organizations off the top of my head. One is called the Special Needs alliance, another one Academy of Special Needs Planners. So there's attorneys, there's fiduciaries, there's insurance agents, investment advisors who specialize in this market. But having said that, there are not a lot of folks that do specialize in this market. Right, but those are off the top of my head, the ones that I would probably look at. If you don't know someone you could interview, for example, say I'm part of the Academy of Special Needs Planners myself. But let's just say you go in there and you're looking at Downey. You know, you'll say two or three names and you could always call them and interview them, see if they fit, you know what you want. So they go by City, Pasadena, throughout.

What questions? And so if I were to hire an attorney to do something like that, what kind of questions or an advisor, what kind of questions should you ask them? I wouldn't even know what to ask them because, you know, if they tell me, yeah, they do special needs. There's so many people that, I mean there's so many advisors that tell you that they do something when they really don't. They've done maybe one case, but they're not experts in it. What kind of, what questions would you ask the attorney or Amanda, what questions would you know what you know now, Amanda, if you were going to call an attorney or an advisor, what questions would you be asking them to really understand if they're the right person for you?

Well, I mean I, my first, the two words that come to my head are education and experience. So what education have you done? Like, like have you. For example, if someone has a CHSNC like my father does, chartered Special Needs consultant, probably that person really knows it because they've gone through a whole course, passed an exam, gone through a whole three module course just based on special needs planning alone. So if someone has those letters again, CHSNC behind their names, that person's probably going to know some stuff and then experience, you know, how many clients have you helped? What kind of disabilities have you worked with? Because likely if someone can only name autism, down syndrome. Well, I mean those are probably two of the disabilities that most people are familiar with and they have never even heard of some of these other disabilities that may be a little more rare than that kind of tells you right there. Well, I mean, yeah, everybody knows the terms autism and down syndrome, you know, who have they worked with? How long have they been doing this? How many cases have they had things like that? Because my father's right. There are a lot of people who will say, oh, yes, I do. Special needs, I do. But they've never really even had any specialized training or education on that specific field. So if that's the case, then they may be wording things in a way that's not beneficial to the client. But that just goes with the general scope of legal terminology that works for other types, are just, you know, neurotypical people, but not for someone with a disability. So I would say asking especially their education, I think even more so than. Than the experience, to see that they've actually studied this and know what this is.

So how much time does it take when you start working with a family with special needs where they haven't done any planning. Right. They haven't done any insurance or estate planning, and you've got to connect them. What's a good time frame to say that it takes to connect all those dots? To have the right team in place, to have the right documents in place, to have the right financial statements in place? What's the normal timeframe that when you work with a family? Because I know people. I have family members with special needs, and I can tell you they're the busiest people. They barely have time. They work eight, 10 hours, and then they come home, and then they have to start taking care of their child as well. I think that's got to be one of the biggest hurdles, is just sometimes having them find the time to block off, to meet with you guys. Right. And so give me the expectations. When a family comes and works with you, how long, you know, what, what the. What the length of the process is?

Well, you know, Louise, that it's a little difficult to answer because there are folks that. That get it and they want to do it right away, and they can have everything in place in as quickly as, say, three months.

Okay.

You know, so if they really want to do it, you know, it can be done. And we're very person. We're very, very flexible, working with schedule. But then there are folks that, whether it's because they're still in denial or, you know, still angry or whatever the.

Reason is, they're just busy.

Yeah. Or they're so busy they don't find that it could take them years. So until the point that something happens to. To a friend, for example, and then they're like, oh, you know what? I. I really need to Take care of this. So it could be in as quickly, in three months. Because to draft the some of these documents, it doesn't take a whole lot of time in the sense as long as you're organized and you have all the information. But again, if, let's say you're married and your spouse isn't as diligent and isn't in bigger rush, again, maybe in denial, it could take a while. I would say if someone's ready to go three to six months, they can.

Well, that's reasonable. But I just think some people might think, oh, if I go see Roberto and Amanda, I'll get it done in a week or, you know, a day. The first time I go meet with them. It's important to know that there's a still a time period that they've got to prepare and handle all the documents.

Can you guys share a story of somebody that you got involved with, helped, and then maybe a parent passed away or somebody happened that you saw that, you know, you saw that how the special needs trust really did help? Or, you know, can you share a story of some of the work you've done, Roberto, where somebody has passed away and you actually. Maybe the first time you saw it really happen. For example, you know, I. Part of my financial planning process is life insurance as well. And I hate to sell life insurance. I'm not a life insurance salesperson. But, you know, I will share with you that I had nudged my aunt to get a term policy when it had terminated for her husband. He do we need it? And I told her all the financial planning reasons why she ended up getting it. And my uncle passed away just. And he was like in great shape. He passed away like a year and a half later from just a cancer that had been not diagnosed and he didn't have it. And then all of a sudden he got it and he passed away right away. And that half a million dollars really helped him for the next 20 years. And from that point on, I became a big advocate of life insurance. And now again, because I've been in this industry for 35 years, I've had clients who pass away. And I've seen all the positive things, leaving family with. With assets. Right. To help take care of them. But I would love to know more on the special needs side of something that you've done, that something turned very positive.

Well, I'll give you one that wasn't as positive. Just start with at a family who helped them receive benefits, ihss, which is a California program. And you know, they Set up their trust and so forth. And throughout the process, I told them, you know, it might be a good idea for you to get a life insurance policy. They had a couple of small ones, but they needed more because they have properties and again, their child with special needs, and they were against it. And more than once I nudged them. It's a good idea for you to get it because again, you never know. So, yeah, everything was going well, and I received a call from the family, and they say, we want to get life insurance. When someone comes to you and says, we need life insurance, sometimes you're thinking, why? So, sure enough, we talked a little bit about it. We're going in the process. Two weeks later, they call me and tell me that the husband has cancer, stage four. I told him, you're not going to qualify. And a couple weeks later, he passes. And, you know, so that's a negative, obviously, because again, we. I had been telling them, get it, get it, get it. And they were against it. But then we've had some that were in the process of helping them set up their plan. And during COVID suddenly the father. The. The father tracks Covid and passed. Passes away. But luckily he did purchase life insurance. So his wife, and he was a veteran, so he had other benefits that, you know, came to the family. But because they did listen to our advice, they were able to go on. Obviously, you know, it's a sad situation when you lose a loved one, but financially, they were able to go, you know, keep on. Keep their house, keep their same style of living. Everything is fine. So that was obviously very positive because they did listen to this, see the need and move, then just sit and think about it. They did it and got it. And. And in that aspect, it was positive because the family did.

But I'm talking more. I'm talking more in the. In the special needs area. Right.

There were special needs.

Okay. All right. And. And so, Amanda, maybe, because I know that you're starting to get involved in and not drafting legal documents because you're not an attorney, but you help oversee that, that side of it with your dad.

Are there any mistakes that people sometimes make when they're. And when I say mistakes, I'm not talking about almost legal mistakes, but more practical mistakes on, let's say, the estate planning side from special needs. I'll give you an example. Usually when we're looking at drafting with the attorneys an estate plan, sometimes the parents don't think about when they leave their children assets.

Right.

For regular children. They, you know, they say, oh, when they turn 18, they can keep the money. But my experience has been no child has been mature enough to handle any kind of money at the age of 18. And then they say, well, we'll push it to 21. And then we really start talking them through and by the end of when we have them at age 30. Which seems more practical these days, right?

Yes.

It used to be where we used to have our clients give one third of the assets to their kids at 20 and. Or 25 and 1/3 at 31, 30 at 35. But I've gone through that process with clients, and it is the biggest accounting nightmare in the world when you go through that process compared to just leaving them at all at one age when you feel that they're mature. From the special needs side, do you guys see any maybe mistakes that are. Again, when, when we put those down, they were legal, they were correct, but it wasn't very practical. Have you seen any kind of non practical, non practical areas in an estate plan for special needs?

Well, speaking from. So I'm gonna also bring up conservatorships.

Yep.

One mistake I've seen is waiting too long and not starting it before the child turns 18. Now, you don't want to start it too early. Like if someone's like, oh, my kid's 15, I want. No, that's too early. I would say three to six months before the child's 18th birthday is when you want to start that process. And I've had some clients that, you know, kid turns 18, they've maybe been told about a conservatorship, but maybe the person didn't really explain it well enough to. To kind of be like, no, this is something you need. And then I've had families be like, oh, my kid has a surgery in like two months and the doctors won't let me weigh in or even be present because they're over 18. And that's the mistake that a lot of people make is they wait too long. They wait until something happens to just start doing it.

Okay, take a step, take a step there because this is something that's, that's that you said that I think a lot of people don't know, right?

Yes.

A lot of parents don't realize that when their kids are 18, sometimes they're still finishing high school. There may be months away from what they've turned 18. And if there's some kind of accident and there's no living trust. No living trust or no health care directive that the parents don't have access to, Health information. Right. Or can't make any medical decisions for their child, who sometimes is 18 years old but still living at home sometimes until their twenties. The parents still think, well, I'm the mom, I'm the dad, I get to make medical decisions for my kids. But they don't realize that.

Right.

Once they turn 18, they don't have that power anymore. Yeah, that's a wonderful point that you just mentioned. And I want to backtrack a little bit because I think that people that are listening to us, even though you use the word conservatorships, explain to people what a conservatorship is when you have a special needs child.

So a conservatorship is a slew of documents that basically says that you have the decisional capacity to make decisions on behalf of somebody. There's a conservatorship of the person, which means you're deciding things like where they're.

Going to live.

You know, kind of more things like that. Just, just more their day to day. You're managing their day to day. You can also manage legal affairs and financial affairs. Meaning, you know, if you have somebody with a disability and, and someone tries to defraud them in any way, you know, they get them to sign a contract, no mom and dad can come in and be like, we have conservatorship. That contract is immediately considered null and void because mom and dad have to approve if it's mom and dad, you know, different cases.

But yeah, so. So basically a conservatorship.

Covers the person.

And that has to be approved by the. That has to be approved in court, correct?

Oh, yes. This is a whole process. It's not just a document you fill out and you say, here it is. You know, it's. It's something that you have to submit to the courts, you have to attend a hearing, you have to be bestowed the letters of conservatorship by, by a judge. And then I was also going to mention there's also conservatorship of the estate states. So if you have somebody, because conservatorships aren't just for children, it can also be for an older person who's maybe getting dementia or maybe somebody who got in. Exactly. A lot of people know the word conservatorship just from the Britney Spears case.

Right.

Ships are a whole different monster that a lot of people don't quite thoroughly understand. And they could also be for somebody who maybe is, you know, in their 50s or 60s. So they do have assets, they own a car they work, they have money saved up, they get in a bad car accident, traumatic brain injury, and they're. Unfortunately, these things can happen. So now they need a conservatorship, Someone else needs to manage the estate, because this person does have assets because they have worked, they now no longer can manage them for themselves. So now someone else needs to come in and manage them. So conservatorships are, are necessary for either someone who's developmentally disabled, who acquires some kind of disability, whether it's due to old age or accident of some sort like that. But you were mentioning, it's just like estate planning that, that goes across the board for anybody, which is also a great thing to look at because, like what you said is, is exactly true. If unfortunately, Your child is 18 or above and gets in a car accident, there, there can be some holdups in the, in kind of the medical space and what to do and the decision and things like that. Because exactly once you turn 18, legally, your mom and dad can't make those decisions for you anymore. So it's a really good idea to get that going. Conservatorship, especially if you have like a developmentally disabled child before that age happens, so that God forbid something happens, they need a procedure, things like that, you already have that decisional capacity. You can be there from the first appointment. There is no hassle. And I have seen families wait and then they come and they say, I, you know, they won't even let me into the doctor's appointment. Exactly, because your child's over 18 and that's the law. And I tell them, I'm sorry, there's nothing you can do until you get a conservatorship. And they wait. So that's the biggest mistake I've seen is not being proactive, not being preventive, being reactive, doing something only after there's a reason to, instead of anticipating that and being prepared before that situation arises.

I would assume that.

One of the things that stops families from doing the planning is that in their head they think that it's so expensive to get it done that they can't afford it.

Right.

It's kind of a catch 22 and it needs to be done. But they postpone it. One is because some people are in denial, but they postpone it because they think it's going to be a lot now, like in this day and age. I know, at least from a, from a regular estate planning standpoint for families that have no complexity. Financial technology, as it's called, fintech apps, there's A lot of apps on for estate planning, right? People can get an estate plan now for $350, for $600 with Encore Estates, with Will and Trust, with Vanilla, whatever.

What should a family with special needs basically take a think about what they would have to spend or what invest in their, in their children and is there any kind of help for them if they really can't afford it? How do they get this help? If you got families that obviously you're going to get, you know, to do a special needs trust, you got to get an estate plan done which includes a special needs trust, right? And then they might think, well, they can get a life insurance policy. But the problem is that you can't even try to get a term policy because it's going to terminate at some point. You don't know when you're going to die and leave those assets to your child. So you probably need more of a permanent type of policy which is a little bit more expensive, a lot more expensive. And then you got to deal with the consultants and you got to deal with the advisors and all of that. What do you do with families that are in the barrios or immigrant families that come and have children with special needs? Is there any help for them or how expensive can this be?

You want to touch that one?

Well, I'll preface by saying there's absolutely financial resources available specifically for families with children with disabilities. Some are regardless of income. The biggest one I'm talking about is ihss, which I'll let my father expand on because he has a lot of experience helping families acquire that benefit. But we always work with these families. We, I mean, well, most of the families we work with are lower income, are immigrant families. So, you know, if it was impossible, we would have no clientele. Basically, you know, we make it work whether it means, you know, we take it payment plans or, or we help them get that income flow from IHSS first and then that can pay for everything, basically, which again, I'll let my father touch on in a second. There is absolutely plenty of resources and money should not be a factor for stopping someone from planning because you're really just shooting yourself in the foot because you're saying, oh, I don't want to or I can't do it because it's too expensive. Well, it's really expensive to bury someone. If you have no life insurance money, that's even more expensive, you know, so it's just, it may seem more expensive now, but in the long run it's gonna really save you A ton of money. Because the only thing that's certain in life is death. It's gonna happen. It's better.

You have to have taxes, Amanda.

Unfortunately, death and taxes. Exactly.

We cannot get out. Keep telling people I said there's a, a hundred percent chance that we're all going to die. And it hasn't changed in and thousands of years.

Yeah. Roberto, tell us about some of the resources available for, for families like ihss.

Yeah. You know, prior to that, I do want to mention that as Monica, as my daughter Manna was saying, our goal is to help every family that needs help. And we never let money be the reason why we can't help them. Depending on what the service that we offer, we'll take payment plans. I've had clients that pay me 50 bucks a month, you know, so we pay off, you know, whatever the amount is because we get it, because again, we live it. So generally, if they really, really want the help, we'll find a way to do it. And we have done pro bono work in the past also going back to, since we brought up IHS list, which stands for in Home Support services in California, there's a program that if you have Medi California and you have a loved one with special needs.

Generally it's mom. Let's just paint an example. You have a 10 year old child with a disability. Mom cannot work because has to take them to therapy, take them to school, sometimes take them out of school because it's been a rough day for the child. So there's no way mom can work. Well, depending on the severity of this child, the counties will pay mom to be the caregiver. And again, it all depends. The number of hours that you can get approved for in California is up to 283. And each county has a different pay scale, hourly pay scale. But that way mom can take care of the child instead of this child going to an institution which is more expensive. So in a way it's saving the government money if mom can generate mom takes care of that child. So we help folks apply for ihss, go from A to Z. Many times they're denied certain services. So we appeal it. And I've had many hearings where I represent the family as an advocate. It's the family and myself. You have the judge and then you have a couple of representatives from the county and they explain the reason they deny certain services. And we have to give them proof and testimony why they should give them these services and pay mom free. So that's what that's One way, many times that we could provide the cash flow to fund some of these financial and legal vehicles that the family needs. And again, if they don't qualify for whatever reason, we have personally, we have done some pro bono work.

Now, Roberto, if I understand correctly, that IHSS money that the parent receives that no longer is taxable. Correct.

If they live in the same household, it is not taxable.

It is not taxable if they live in the same household, Correct?

Yeah. And if, let's say you're caring for, let's just say your sibling who lives in a different household, then it is taxable.

But we have many cases, we have hearings. I have a hearing in two weeks, for example, because. And going back to when we first started, the way we found out was when my wife is going through an advocacy training for special education, the law part, the schooling, a parent told her about it. And again, it goes from support group or parent groups. That's a lot of times that you find out about these things. And that's how we found out. And we were denied initially.

Twice, and we were about to get our attorney involved, and then suddenly they couple hours later they said, you're approved. And they gave us back pay 10 months and gave us a substantial check. And now my wife is a caregiver to my son. But there are other resources. There are many, many resources that folks don't know about. And we always give a free consultation. It's at our cost. We want to see if we could be of service to the, to a family and community and we take it from there.

Well, we are ending the hour here and I just want to thank you guys for all the wonderful work that you're doing.

I know how hard it is. I know how hard it is also to work with families where you have one spouse that wants to do it and the other spouse is in denial. They don't want to work together. I just think that it's. I just think that the work that you're doing is just so unbelievably brave. I commend you. I would love for you to tell people how they can get a hold of you. Amanda, Roberto, how can they find you guys? Where do they call you? What's your website? Can you give us some information?

Yeah, my office number is 626-498-1398. Better way to get a hold of us is through email.

Okay, you.

I'm going to give them your email address.

Yes. So my email is admin, A D as in David, M as in Mary. I N as in Nancy adminoral, which is our last name. So that's spelled C O double R a l f s.org so admin corralfs.org is probably, yes, the best way to get a hold of us and the website and our website which has a contact form at the end. One of the tabs is a contact form and that goes to our emails as well. And that is coral. Again, c o r r a l financial strategies.com fantastic.

I thank you so much for coming on today. I thank you so much for giving us the information.

Whoever is listening to us or watching us on YouTube or through Apple or Spotify, share this information. If you have family members or friends or relatives that do not speak English, share the information for them. Let them get a hold of them. They both speak perfect Spanish and they'll be able to give them the information one on one. I want to make sure that there's a lot I know for a fact there are a lot of families who are not bilingual, who are Spanish speaking only here in California who could use the help. So please share that information with them. I appreciate you guys for doing that. Roberto, Amanda, thank you so much for being with me today and I look forward to talking to you guys soon.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for listening to the Wealth Gap warriors podcast. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. I love the show, guys.

You're awesome.

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