Trusts

Three Reasons Why Giving Your House to Your Children Isn’t the Best Way to Protect It from Medicaid

You may be afraid of losing your home if you have to enter a nursing home and apply for Medicaid. While this fear is well-founded, transferring the home to your children is usually not the best way to protect it. Although you generally do not have to sell your home in order to qualify for […]READ POST »

Pros and Cons of a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust

A Medicaid Asset Protection Trust (MAPT) is one option a person may consider to protect their assets from Medicaid and nursing homes or long-term care. A MAPT is an irrevocable trust created during your lifetime. The primary goal of a MAPT is to transfer assets to it so that Medicaid will not count these assets […]READ POST »

Using Estate Planning to Prepare for Medicaid

Long-term care involves not only a loss of personal autonomy; it also comes at a tremendous financial price. Proper planning can help your family prepare for the financial toll and protect assets for future generations. Long-term care can be very expensive, especially around-the-clock nursing home care. Most people end up paying for nursing home care […]READ POST »

Using Estate Planning to Prepare for Medicaid

Long-term care involves not only a loss of personal autonomy; it also comes at a tremendous financial price. Proper planning can help your family prepare for the financial toll and protect assets for future generations. Long-term care can be very expensive, especially around-the-clock nursing home care. Most people end up paying for nursing home care […]READ POST »

Is It Possible to Put a Retirement Plan in a Special Needs Trust?

Retirement plans often make up a significant portion of the assets of parents of children with special needs, or of individuals who have become disabled as adults.  In such cases, the question arises as to whether the retirement plan can be put into a special needs trust. The answer, as with many legal questions, is […]READ POST »

How Your Estate Is Taxed, or Not

Congress sets the amount that an individual can transfer tax-free either during life or at death. The current estate tax exemption is so high that very few estates will have to pay an estate tax. In 2017, Republicans in Congress and President Trump doubled the federal estate tax exemption and indexed it for inflation. In […]READ POST »

How to Create an Estate Plan That Includes Your Pet

Pets are members of the family, so it is important to consider how to provide for them in your estate plan just as you would the human family members.  While we may think of pets as part of our family, the law considers them to be property. This means that you cannot leave anything in […]READ POST »

receiving inheritance while on medicaid

Receiving an Inheritance While on Medicaid

For most people, receiving an inheritance is something good, but for a nursing home resident on Medicaid, or those who rely on Medicaid as their primary form of insurance, an inheritance may not be such welcome news. Medicaid has strict income and resource limits, so an inheritance can make a Medicaid recipient ineligible for Medicaid. […]READ POST »

What Happens to Assets Left in a Special Needs Trust on the Death of the Beneficiary?

By their very nature, special needs trusts (SNTs) are usually designed to terminate, or at least radically change, when the trust’s primary beneficiary dies. But terminating a special needs trust is not as simple as merely writing a check to the remainder beneficiaries and calling it a day. There are several key considerations and requirements […]READ POST »

Understanding the Common Types of Trusts

A trust is a legal arrangement through which one person (or an institution, such as a bank or law firm), called a “trustee,” holds legal title to property for another person, called a “beneficiary.” Trusts fall into two basic categories: testamentary and inter vivos. A testamentary trust is one created by your will, and it […]READ POST »