Medicaid Estate Planning: Maximize Your Results

Medicaid Estate Planning: The 5-year look-back provisions where seniors must sell all assets 5 years before entering a nursing home. What can be gifted for Medicaid asset protection.

Medicaid and the Living Trust

Living Trusts are widely advertised in seminars on estate planning. But can they be used if you may have to apply for Medicaid? This article discusses some of the pitfalls.

When Parent and Child Reverse Roles

When we start off in life, our parents provide love and nurturing, as well as the necessities of daily life. As time passes, we grow into adulthood. Our relationship with our parents becomes one of equals, with each providing love and nurturing for the other, while both are self-sufficient. Often, parents reach a stage in their lives when they are no longer self-sufficient, typically due to advanced age or illness.

Financial & Estate Planning For the Dual Income Family

In today's world, it is more common than ever to find dual income households. Recent estimates by the Department of Labor find that women comprise around 47 percent of the American workforce. Compare this percentage to 1960 accounts estimating women in the workplace at around 33 percent. Because of the proliferation of working women, special planning is necessary to properly address the issues faced by households where both spouses work.

Asset Protection - Why Do You Need It

With your growing financial portfolio and asset, it is imperative that you take steps to protect your assets. A practical solution for creating an additional umbrella of security for your family is to take advantage of asset protection that minimize the risk of losing your assets or being taxed heavily.

Planning Ahead For Your Senior Years

When the diagnosis is Alzheimer's disease, the ability to manage your own affairs will decrease over time. Making adequate, informed decisions about your personal business and your health will become more difficult. But, early legal planning lets you choose a person to manage these things for you, according to your wishes.

Durable Powers of Attorney

One of our greatest frustrations as elder law attorneys is not being able to help families implement strategies that would qualify their loved one for Medicaid and protect family assets because a power of attorney is insufficient to allow us to do what we need to do. Therefore, we thought it would be beneficial to address durable powers of attorney in this issue.

Sometimes a Conservator can be a Good Thing!

The thought of having a conservator appointed for a parent or relative - even a friend or neighbor - is something we all seem to loath. It has all sorts of negative connotations, including the fact that a conserved individual will be paraded through the probate courts with psychiatric and medical evaluations open for all to see. But, most of all, it's the loss of dignity that results when the state declares an individual incapable - and takes away his or her right to vote, or marry, or divorce, or write a check, or pay a bill, or make any other meaningful decisions. It's a position that no one wants to come to in this life.

What is Your Legacy?

How will you be remembered when you are gone?

Three Advantages a Roth IRA May Offer Your Estate Plan

Many may not consider the possibilities that a Roth IRA can offer an estate plan. But, there are three advantages that a Roth IRA can offer if your estate value is under the Applicable Exclusion Amount ($1.5 million in 2005, and $2 million in years 2006 & 2007) and if one of your planning goals is to leave as much money as possible to your heirs.

Probate and Probate Avoidance

When an individual dies in Florida or while owning real property in Florida, probate is the procedure used to transfer his or her assets to the proper heirs. The procedure can be time consuming and expensive. However, with proper planning, the entire procedure can mostly be avoided.

Estate Plans and Trusts Discussed

We all know that we need to have our lives in order in the event of our demise because our families are so important to us. As the Death Tax slowing dies over the next many years, it behooves all of us to have estate plans and trusts set up to shield our assets from legal liabilities which can pop-up out of nowhere and also to pay the least amount of taxes to the government after we die.

Unsecured Personal Loans

There are many benefits when applying for an unsecured loan. One is the approval for this type of loan is relatively fast. This is because there is no need to look at collateral repayment in case of default. Unsecured loans are perfect for people who don’t own their own property or those with adverse credit. They can be used for a variety of reasons including debt consolidation, vacations, new cars, home improvements, etc.