FOCUS ON COMFORT Hospice care is intended to ensure that those who are in the final stages of a terminal illness are cared for and comfortable. It is not to cure a current disease process. Instead it is to help provide a more holistic or all encompassing level of care.…
MONEY LEFT IN IRA AT TIME OF PASSING NOT SUBJECT TO NORMAL IRA RULES This blog previously discussed the Supreme Court case of Clark v. Rameker and the legal implications of money remaining in an IRA at death, that is in turn left to the heirs of an estate. Putting…
GOVERNMENT HAS BEST AT HAND – FOR FREE Whenever a taxpayer submits tax documents that deal with a work of art or of cultural significance that is valued at least $50,000, according to the taxpayer’s own estimate, the IRS goes through a process by which it independently evaluates the items.…
PROBATE IS UNAVOIDABLE It is a fact of life that we can never plan for the worse case scenario and there is always risk in anything you do. The law recognizes this special risk, at least in part, in wrongful death lawsuits. In order for a wrongful death action to…
On February 10, 2016 the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (‘ICE’) announced in a policy document that appears to coincide with ranking ICE officials testimony before the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging that it recently launched ‘Operation Cocoon‘ to help curtail the use of “elderly citizens” unknowingly…
MODERN PROBLEM WITH ANCIENT ROOTS New York is one of approximately 19 states, along with the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands to specifically adopt the Uniform Simultaneous Death Act in some significant form or another. The law was drafted in 1940 and amended through the decades, last time…
NOT CUT OFF FROM BIOLOGICAL PARENTS IN EVERY CASE It is not unheard of for adoptive children to seek out their biological parents and reestablish contact once they are old enough and understand the world much better. The drive to understand who your biological ancestors are, to know where they…
UNIFORMITY OF LAWS Many laws across the country are the result of non-profit civic minded legal entities. The American Legal Institute is perhaps the most well known of these groups. Not all laws are “laws” in the traditional sense. Some are written by these legal entities and the various states…
CLOSING PERCEIVED LOOPHOLE Congress created the generation skipping tax almost 40 years ago in 1976 and ushered in an age of increasing complexity for the tax code, always complicated and cumbersome, to fix a problem perceived at the time (and since) of avoiding taxable events by transferring assets to “several…
GOOD FOR CERTAIN SUBSET OF POPULATION A health savings account is another way to save your money, tax free, for an inevitable expense that everyone will have to face and deal with eventually. Unfortunately one of the variables of retirement is that you will never know how much you will…