Settlement Isn’t The Finish Line: Protecting Your Family & Future After Injury With Priscilla Castlebary

hello everybody thank you for tuning in today welcome to time for more injury funding podcast podcast for all who want to learn about legal funding and the significance in personal injury workers compensation and all other types of law practice domains i'm your host laura founder and CEO of More Injury Funding, the legal funding counselors with passion for law, medicine, legal funding, and heart for all suffering individuals. In today's episode, I have my dear friend and attorney, Priscilla Castleberry.

And she is with Priscilla. You can introduce yourself. Which company do you represent? Hi, everybody.

I'm so happy to be here with you, Laura. My name is Priscilla Castleberry. I am an attorney, and I own Rivolo Castleberry, an associate's law firm. We're licensed in Georgia, and we help people with family-based immigration and also wills trust and asset protection.

That's fantastic. Today's episode is for every injured person, every parent, and honestly, every adult needs to hear what we have to say today. When people think personal injury, they immediately think settlement money. But what most people don't realize is that the biggest risk after an accident isn't always the injury itself.

It's what happens if you can't make decisions, if your family isn't legally protected, or if your settlement ends up in wrong hands. So again, Priscilla, welcome to Time for More Injury Funding Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to talk about this subject because it's very near and dear to my heart.

I have actually I didn't really see the connection between a state plan and I will trust and personal injury until I had a lot of people call me after they got in a car accident. And they were and they, you know, they were like, I, I realized I don't have a will. I haven't created a trust. I haven't been in guardians for my children.

And something could have happened to me and I didn't have anything. And so that's when I realized I was like, wow, there is a connection between the two. And so I'm so excited to educate people on how they can protect themselves. Absolutely.

So, but, you know, most people, like you said, think personal injury cases are simply about winning money, putting that in their pocket, which is true. But you've said the bigger issue is often control of that money. Can you explain, Priscilla, what you mean by that and why control becomes such a major issue after an accident? Yeah, of course.

So there's I feel like there's two things. There's control of the money and there's also control of your life, your decisions. Right. If something happens to you and you're in the hospital, who's making those health decisions for you?

If you're incapacitated somehow, are people do people know how they can access your accounts and pay for your mortgage and pay for things so that you don't fall behind? So I feel like we'll trust and asset protection. What we do for people is we help them create a plan so that they do have control over what happens when they can't dictate what happens or when something unexpected happens. So if they can't say what happens, there is a plan that somebody else can follow that tells other people what you want to happen.

So you have a little bit of control from when you're not there. so it's so important for people to have this done because then uh instead of your family having to guess what do you want they actually have a pathway that you've created with the positions that you were on good good so yes then you have a plan and all of us no matter how young or old we are we should have a plan for for when we are no longer here uh so let's think of a real life situation. So let's say someone gets into a serious car accident and ends up unconscious or in coma, God forbid.

Legally speaking, what happens next? Who is allowed to step in and make medical or legal decisions for that person? Yeah, of course. So once you get in a car accident or something happens to you and you can't make decisions for yourself, what they will do is try to find the next family member that is closest to you.

So if you're married, that would be a spouse. But the problem usually comes up when either your spouse was in the accident with you. And so now there's, they don't know who to call or for families also where they're not legally married. And so you're the person that knows you the most wouldn't be allowed to make these decisions because you're not married.

It's not legally a family member. So that's usually where they will go. And there's also problems if you haven't written down who your decision is. Let's say your spouse makes the decisions, but your family doesn't agree with them.

They could take them to court and say, I don't like that you're making this decision. We should have the power were his parents and we should have the power to make decisions. And so now a legal battle ensues because there wasn't anything written down. And one thing people don't think about is basic survival during incapacity, like mortgage payments, rent payments, car notes, insurance, and daily basic expenses.

If the insured person is the primary income earner and they're incapacitated, who can legally access their bank accounts to keep the household afloat? Yeah. So it's usually whoever is named in the account with you. So there are some problems that we run into there because some people go, OK, well, I'm just going to name anybody.

You know, if my spouse and I are in an accident, then not only will I name my spouse, but also my parents and everybody so that they have access. And while they would have access in that instance, there's a problem that comes up with that. And that is that if something were someone were to sue you or somebody that you've named, they can have access to those accounts. So that's why just naming people on an account is not what we would recommend that you do.

It's better for you to create trust and have the trust on all of the assets so that if something happens to you, then your trustee can step up and have access to those accounts easily. And then if the person that you named as a successor trustee is not somebody that you continue to have a relationship with, you just update your trustee and don't have to go to the bank all the time to rename things. Or sometimes a lot of people forget to change beneficiaries or change people that they've named in their bank account.

And so it ends up being super problematic later on when it comes also to life insurances. I don't know if you heard, but there was like a recent case where somebody had a life insurance, was dating somebody at the time named her as beneficiary. Then they broke up and years passed He married somebody else but he never updated the beneficiary Listen to that And then 10 years later this girl got a bunch of money from his ex and the mom I mean the wife had, you know, no money. Yeah.

And she can ask for it back because that's who he named like that person is named as a beneficiary. And so remembering to change beneficiaries, you know, we all, it happens to all of us. Life gets busy and it's hard to do. But that's a way in which you can, if you just name the trust, you can, the money will go to the trust and whoever you've named as beneficiaries of the trust.

And so it's easier than having to change all of the beneficiaries that's in nature. It's very interesting you mention that because I learned that a few weeks ago at the Aspire for more masterminds in Florida because there was an attorney from Kentingham, which stayed from West Coast. He was talking exactly about that. So many of us business owners have no idea about that.

But thank you so much for bringing this up because most people don't know about it. Yeah. Can you talk, Priscilla, about how fast this problem happens? In your experience, do families realize immediately that they can't access money or accounts, or is it usually discovered when bills start piling up?

Yeah, unfortunately, it is not right away. It is when things start to pile up and then they go to the bank and then the bank turns them away because they weren't named. And now they have to try to figure out another way to get the money in. And so the bills keep piling up.

And we've all been in that situation where you go to the bank hoping that they can help you out with something. And then they're like, no, sorry, we can't do it. And then you wasted time and had none of that resolved. And so you're already dealing with something stressful, like if your family member is at the hospital or if they died, now you're having to deal with funeral costs and all of these things.

And then you're also having to deal with your not being able to pay your mortgage or things like that. I've had a client that her grandmother left her the house through probate. So she had a will and so left her on the will, but the will still goes through probate. So she had to wait for a judge to actually award it to her.

And so what happened was she didn't have the money to continue to pay mortgage of the house and she lost it. So she ended up having to rent an apartment and lost the house was, you know, bankruptcy or foreclosure and it was sold. And so this asset that her grandma thought was given to her ended up getting lost because of having to wait through the probate process, which takes anywhere between six months to a year where you're having to pay mortgage and all of these things without having title of the property.

So that's why it's so important to keep track and to secure money and estate that has been given as a gift from our family because they work for that so hard. So we definitely need to find a way to preserve it. Right. And if your parents are giving you a house or make sure they give it to you through a trust, you know, you get access to that right away.

There's a step up in basis in which you don't have to pay, you know, the taxes from the capital gains taxes. So there are a lot of benefits to receiving property through a trust. Now let's shift to a heartbreaking but critical topic, minor children. If a parent is severely injured or dies unexpectedly, what happens to the kids in that situation?

And in the short term, who has authority to pick them up from school or make any emergency decisions? Right. Yeah. It is a very hard subject to think about.

So what happens usually is if you get in a car accident and the police show up, what they do is they will call Child Protective Services because they don't want to be in charge of making the decision of who your kids stay with. if you are going on a date night and you're driving home and your babysitter calls the police because you guys haven't arrived. That's also what happens. They call chapter take of services.

Somebody comes in and takes the children until they can decide who can take care of your children. And so that could be a few hours, right, that there was somebody else, or it could be a few days if your family member is not close by until the time that they get there. And you're also leaving a lot of the decision making to somebody else. So what we do for our clients is we name short-term guardians.

So somebody that can be at your house, lives 20 minutes from your house, that can be there right away. We give them instructions to their babysitters or whoever takes care of your children so that if you don't make it home, they can call first the people that have short-term guardians and they will show up with a letter that you've written authorizing them to stay with your children. And so when the, and then call the police. So when they show up and they call child protective services, then there's already somebody in the home that the kids know and that is authorized to stay with them.

And then what we do is name long-term guardians. So especially here in the U.S., right, there's a lot of people that have family in other states, but they have a lot of close friends nearby.

And so they can name short-term guardians the friends that are nearby, but you wouldn't want them to stay with a family. You know, you wouldn't want them to stay with them, but they can keep the kids until your family comes from out of town. And so that way we ensure that your kids are never, you know, in the care of strangers. And they're always with somebody that they know because the trauma that brings having somebody that you don't know, tell your children, hey, your mom got in a car accident or your mom passed away.

You don't know how they're telling them that information. And so it could end up being traumatic for the kids. So it's a lot better when it's somebody that they know. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.

This is one that really scares people. If both parents are involved in the same car accident and are incapacitated or deceased, what happens legally to their children? Is it true that children can temporarily end up in state custody while the court figures the whole situation out? Yeah.

Yeah. So like I said, as I was saying, they bring child protective services and then if they can't find it, we'll go up to a judge. they're looking at a lot of things like, you know, these people have money or how they have a way to protect them. And usually somebody that looks good on paper is not somebody that you would want them to be with.

I've had a lot of cases of that. They would give it to a family member. So if you are someone that wouldn't want a family member to take care of your child, then it's so important, even more important that you do this because they will never just give it to a friend. It will always be a family member.

And that uncle or aunt is not always that good. Yeah. Sometimes friends would be better in some situations. Right.

All right. So let's talk, Priscilla, about settlements. If someone receives a large personal injury settlement and then passes away unexpectedly maybe years later what happens to that money if there is no estate plan in place Yeah that a very good question So if you have no estate plan or if you have only a will what happens is it goes through a process called probate, which I've referred to before in this podcast. But what probate is, is basically you're suing yourself for the benefit of the people that you owe money to.

And so that's who gets paid first, the people that you owe money and then whatever's left, it goes to your beneficiaries, whoever you would want it to go to. But there's three things that are wrong with probate. One of them is that it's long, as I've stated before, it takes between six months to a year in which your bills are still due, you're supposed to be paying everything, but your bank accounts are frozen until it goes through the process of probate. The second thing is public.

During COVID, they had a probate court through YouTube. And so anybody could just log into YouTube and see who had died and what they had left and who they had left it to. You could even go online right now and find like Michael Jackson's will, Whitney Houston's will. It's completely public, everything that's in there.

And the third thing is that it's costly. We estimate it costs between 3% to 7% of your assets. So if you own a home, right, that homes now are pretty pricey. So if you own a home, you're already paying 5% if that's your only asset.

So I deal with that with people too. They think, I don't have a lot of money. I don't need an estate. I only have a house and some life insurance and retirement accounts.

Well, that's super important to protect because they do take, you know, at least 5% of all of the assets. Yeah. So Priscilla, tell us what happens when minor kids are named as beneficiaries of which accounts? Life insurance or retirement.

Yes. Tell us about that, please. Yeah. So what happens is that they get your life insurance.

Life insurance and retirement accounts usually pass outside of probate because they do have beneficiaries. So it already says who it's going to. But when the beneficiary is a minor, it gets pulled into probate. So that money that we were talking about, right, the 3% to 7% that costs now includes your retirement accounts.

And it's also, you know, includes the life insurance that you have. And so what the court will do is they will appoint somebody, sometimes a family member, but sometimes it's a professional fiduciary that will charge you between $150 to $200 an hour to manage the assets until your kids turn 18. Oh, goodness. That's a lot of money per hour.

So how many hours will that be? Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. And then they would give it to whatever's left of that money.

It will be given to them right at 18. So let's just say that they, you know, what a kid gets at 18 now is $500,000 or $250,000. Like, could you imagine an 18 year old with that amount of money and how they might spend that money? And so that's also how a trust helps with all of that, because you can specify in the trust what age do you want it to go to them and you can separate it.

You can give it to them all at once, or you can give it, you know, one third at 25, one third at 30, one third at 35, so that you make sure that they're mature enough to be able to manage that amount of money. Splitting may be a really good idea, and that's exactly what we do with cash advances in more engineering funding is when we approve somebody for a significant amount of money, let's say between $50,000 or even $20,000 and let's say up to $100,000 or more, we usually highly recommend to attorneys and to the clients, to the usual clients would argue with us, to rather split that up so that client doesn't go and spend that on one day.

Right. That's $100,000. That's a great idea. Yeah.

All right, Priscilla, so let's talk about asset protection. Injury settlements can be life-changing, but they can also disappear quickly, as we mentioned. Yeah. What are the most common threats to a settlement after it's received?

For example, maybe overspending or family pressure. Yeah, there's definitely that one. Creditors, divorce, or even being sued. yeah for sure so i think like the biggest ones even though the first two that you mentioned are true um i feel like the biggest ones are definitely divorce um creditors and getting sued and those people can have access to that money right away if you get divorced even if the accident was you know yours and the check was to you um that money still is considered property of both of you.

And so that money would be able to be taken away. And I've heard some cases in which a person that's wanting to divorce somebody will wait. I'm sure you have a lot of cases of that. They will wait until they get the settlement check to then file for divorce.

And now they have to split that. So yeah, getting sued is a big one. If you have a business, right, to make sure that you have the proper protections, as in creating an LLC and having enough insurance that would cover if you get sued and making sure that you're not piercing the veil between your personal property and your business properties so that they don't have access to that, but they could if there's some coming rain off your assets. And do you, Priscilla, help clients set up LLCs or is that somebody selling a job?

So usually they come to me with LLCs. I can help them for sure create that. And I'm trying to expand into business owners specifically. I didn't expect that.

I wanted to do estate planning for everybody. But I want to say like 80% of my clients are business owners. And so I want to make sure to not only protect their family because, you know, estate planning is about protecting the family. But there's also the business, you know, succession planning.

Who is going to pay for the business bills, payroll? if something happens to you. Because usually the person running everything is the one that, you know, manages all of that stuff. And so, yeah, we're moving into that.

I'm going to start getting training into that to be able to help the clients I already have that have businesses. Just create a plan that covers all of their life, their personal and also their business. That's wonderful. And are you speaking at Will by Betty Seminars in the coming future?

Yeah, I did. I just finished speaking at her Atlanta Summit and then I will be in New Orleans as a finalist for Will by Betty and if you haven't been to her events, that's where we met that's where we met and if you haven't been, you have to be there it's honestly a great time and just so many inspiring women such as yourself, we've gotten to know each other in a more personal level and it's just amazing like the caliber of women that go to that event and so I was going to say this is a great exposure for you because all of those ladies are business owners So would be great for you to spread the word about your business and what you do Right And because many people don know it actually very hard to find a good attorney who specializes in OOCs and setting up trusts and wills Because it's something, again, that we don't think they're often about, but all of us should have in place.

Right. If someone receives a large settlement check tomorrow, what are the first legal steps you recommend, Priscilla, that they take to protect themselves and their family? And what are the biggest mistakes you've seen people make right after receiving the settlement? Yeah, I think we talked about it.

It's going and just spending it all on a house or on something else. Vacation. Vacation. Diamond rings, new tires for a car.

Right, or a car. That would be like a super bad investment. But yeah, spending it, it's like one of the biggest issues that I've seen with people getting their settlement check. what I would recommend is that they if they don't already have a financial advisor or a you know a state planning attorney to step one protect what you already have so if you already own a home you know make sure that you create a trust to put it there so that it protects it for your for your kids so that would be step number one protect what you already have and then step number two would be how do we make this money last for generations create generational wealth or even if you want to spend it I understand like you it's your money you should spend it on yourself too but also you know being able to put into I don't know like a life insurance or or another account that can compound and then just leave you know that money you put money there and then it compounds and then he could leave some money.

I'm all about creating generational wealth. Absolutely. For the, for, for my, the families that I work with. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And Priscilla, what is your favorite part working with your clients? Yeah. Thank you.

I mean, I love the whole process. It's amazing. Like the honor of being able to be there for the families. I'm not a transactional attorney.

I don't want to stay planning to be transactional. I want us to have a lifelong relationship to where I'm there for your kids if something happens to you. I'm there for your spouse if something happens to you. But my favorite part has to be our very last meeting, which is where we give them the binder, but we also record what we call priceless conversations.

And it's a chance to, we see it as passing on not only your assets, your personal assets, but also passing on your individual assets. Like what are your values? What are the things that are important to you? If you created a business, what is, you know, the story behind the business?

What are the principles that you want your family to have um like for immigrants right what was that uh journey like i think those are the things that your family will miss that they won't miss your money they'll miss you your face the way that you said things your voice um and all of this started because my mentor her dad had passed away and all she had from him was a voicemail that said hey it's your daddy call me back yeah and then she in one of the iphone updates she lost the voice her dad's voice and she said she felt like she had lost him all over again and so now that's why we do this thing for our clients where we record them talking to their minor kids so that if something happens so that their kids have uh something to look at and hear their parents so that that's definitely my favorite part.

Oh, that's so wonderful what you do with your clients, with their children every single day. And you truly make a difference in people's lives. Thank you, Priscilla, for what you do. Thank you.

I really, really appreciate it. It's been a really incredibly eye-opening conversation we had today with you because it's clear that personal injury isn't just a legal claim. It's a life event that impacts your family, your future, and your ability to stay in control. Don't we all want to stay in control?

Before we wrap up today, if someone is listening to this episode or watching us today and they've had an accident or they're currently in a personal injury case that they're going through, what's the best way for them to contact you, Priscilla, and your team at Rebolo Castle Barron Associates Law Firm LLC? Yeah, of course. So if you guys would want to talk to me, you can schedule a 15-minute call with me at www.rcalawfirm.

com. And also, you can follow me on social media. My handle is at the Latina Mom, so T-H-E-L-A-W-T-I-N-A-M-O-M. Wonderful.

And before we get through today's episode, I have a fun pop-up question. That's all I always do for my guests. You ready? Yes.

Okay. if you could change your profession today what would you be okay um so i think if i could change i would be like uh some like a travel biography you know yeah something like that some some whatever that gets me paid for traveling i love traveling i would i hope to visit the whole world one day and so I'm getting there little by little but that's my my my happy place is just going and meeting new people and seeing new cultures and meeting beautiful places in beautiful places so yes something that pays me to travel I would love that I love it I take me with you I'm with you I'm the same way I absolutely love traveling you're talking about traveling and international affairs we have fifa international football league going on and you are again from argentina argentina current world cup world cup champion so we're hoping to defend that yeah so i was talking to one of my employees melina she's from brazil so we had a meeting this morning and i said my friend she's from from argentina so we were just we had good you know that that rivalry you know the competition and the passion i'm lithuanian i'm lithuanian team unfortunately didn't get into into you know up to this point but hopefully one day because back in the day when i was younger we used to have really really good lithuanian soccer football team yeah so hopefully we'll get there one day soon and hopefully we'll see the green uh yellow green and red uh you know amongst all other flags yeah again awesome thank you so much again priscilla and thank you for joining us today and to everyone listening and watching us.

We hope that you got some value from today's episode. Share with anybody that could benefit from us, whether you're a client, injured person, somebody who needs Priscilla services, an attorney or judge, because this is the kind of information you don't want to learn until or when it's too late. Until next time, and if you have any clients needing cash advances, medical funding, post-settlement funding, case funding on law or law firm financing, reach out to us at moreinjuryfunding.

com, call us at 404-931-8250 or email us at info at moreinjuryfunding.com. Until then, be well. Thank you.

Bye-bye.