Elder Law Estate Planning

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The goal of estate planning is to help you distribute your lifetime accumulation of wealth at the least possible cost and in the most efficient manner †to transfer assets to your heirs with a minimum of estate shrinkage. Estate shrinkage is the depletion of assets caused by estate settlement costs, repayment of debt and estate tax liability. Have You Planned For The Future? The answer lies in each of these questions †if you answer “No or I Don’t Know” to any of these questions, we recommend contacting and Elder Law Attorney and consider Estate Planning immediately:

* Do you have a will?
* Would a trust be far more practical for your particular situation?
* What other names are currently on the deed or title to your home?
* Will there be a spouse on the mortgage with you?
* What are the tax consequences for you while you are alive?
* What are the tax consequences for your heirs upon your death?
* When if ever would the loan have to be repaid?
* If any loan is to be repaid, what ...
... amount would be due?

Planning for the distribution of your estate is an important and complex financial planning issue. To keep current with how your estate may shrink due to changing tax laws, it would be wise to periodically review your estate plan with a professional advisor. The reason for estate planning is not only to leave something after you’ve gone, but also be able to manage the costs of long-term care for one’s own needs. Although paying for care out of pocket can be very expensive, it is just as important to think about the cost of providing care over a period of years in non-economic terms. The need for long-term care is often necessitated because an individual is no longer able to get through his or her physical daily routine or maintain his or her cognitive skills. The resulting care needed is referred to as custodial care. The family becomes involved because the individual is no longer safe. At the beginning it is usually a simple matter of setting out a routine and encouraging a loved one to adhere to it. As the illness progresses, however, thoughts turn to bringing in skilled personnel such as home health care providers or geriatric care managers to take on some of the responsibility. It is at this point that the family often discovers that Medicare or the VA, which they thought would help shoulder the caregiving responsibility, will not pay for custodial care. When caregivers realize that custodial care will only be paid for by their own assets and income the reaction is to undertake the increasing burden of providing care on themselves. This is when the physical and emotional toll starts to accumulate because of the nature of long-term care. If you are not able to get through your daily physical routine or if you have a cognitive impairment, you are no longer safe. That means that someone else has to be available on a 24-hour basis. The cumulative effect of being on-call combined with the physical effort to assist someone can be devastating, both physically and emotionally, to caregivers. This leads to the first of two maxims:

1. Taking care of chronically ill people makes healthy people chronically ill. In almost every situation it necessitates one or more children becoming involved. And since the responsibility is rarely shared equally it often leads to the second truth:
2. Taking care of a parent over a period of years doesn’t bring children together…it tears them apart.

Now you may not believe you or an aging parent will ever need care over a period of years. And you may be correct; the risk of needing long-term care may be minimal. But do you now begin to see what the consequences of guessing wrong will be?