Having an estate plan can ensure that fiduciaries are identified to oversee and distribute your assets in the way you would have wanted. As a business owner, your ownership assets in your estate may require a more sophisticated level of planning.
While Medigap policies are standardized, regardless of which insurance company sells them and where you live, the premiums can vary from insurer to insurer and among locations. Experts say that this makes it important to understand the differences you may see, when evaluating your options.
The BENES Act, which cleared committee Wednesday, aims to minimize the chance that beneficiaries get slapped with life-lasting late-enrollment penalties.
Having a child with special needs can come with all sorts of unique challenges from a financial and estate planning standpoint. Public benefits, for example, can play a huge role in anticipating how much money your child will need down the road in your later years, as well as when you’ve passed away.
Estate planning documents often are treated like the photocopied permission slip for a child’s field trip. You fill in your name, include the children’s names and dates of birth and sign. The document is filed away to be used if needed, but you really never expect it to be used.
Both the state and federal government, administered through the Social Security Administration (SSA) and Medicaid provide disabled individuals with a variety of life enhancing, and sometimes life sustaining, public benefits.
Each year, senior citizens lose billions of dollars to financial fraud, with the loss to individual victims averaging tens of thousands of dollars.
Parents may delay creating an elder law estate plan, because of the in-law issue. Some parents are unfortunately estranged from an adult child, only because of the problematic son-in-law or daughter-in-law.
It is also important to realize that it isn’t merely ‘why’ you are updating your will, but ‘when’ you are updating that can make all the difference.
Without a proper elder law estate plan, the children’s responsibilities are even more exhausting, stressful and sad.
