Social Security Income (SSI) is a needs-based program administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) to help people with disabilities pay for goods and services. In 2018, SSA made major changes to how Special Needs Trusts (SNT) are set-up and administered. What follows is a brief explanation of the program…
Is an advance directive enough to ensure that your wishes are followed when you cannot express them because of disease or illness that affects your ability to make decisions for yourself? Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (POLST Orders) for short, are often confused with advance directives. These medical care planning…
Earlier this month the Center for Medicare Advocacy and the Long Term Care Community Coalition made a joint announcement regarding changes to the Nursing Home Compare website. Nursing Home Compare is a service provided by Medicare.gov to help prospective nursing home residents or nursing home residents and their families obtain…
More seniors than ever are carrying high debt into retirement. Managing high debt simultaneously with managing the cost of daily living and medical care on a fixed income is a recurring problem in many households. The amount of debt burden has skyrocketed over the past decade. The National Council…
The advantage of including a trust in your estate plan is that trusts usually avoid probate. The beneficial effect of that advantage is that your beneficiaries may gain access to the assets held in trust faster than those assets transferred via will. When used optimally a trust may minimize estate…
Adding trust instruments to your estate plan can help a surviving spouse and other beneficiaries have access to assets while the rest of the estate is wound up. Especially if there are young children or children with special needs ensuring continuity of financial security to survivors is at the forefront…
This is the last post in our in-depth series of trusts and why and how to include them in your estate plan. For prior topics, click here. We were last discussing common mistakes we see in the establishment of trust instruments. Our last post examined failing to fund the trust.…
We’ve been examining adding a revocable (a/k/a living or inter vivos) trust or irrevocable trust to your estate plan. Trust instruments are an important part of your estate plan, particularly if you have a spouse and young children you wish to provide for upon your death. When mistakes are made,…
It is not uncommon in our region for people to own real property outside of New York State. Increasingly, people own other home or investment properties out of state and even out of the country. A will generally disposes of all of an individual’s assets. The rules are different however…
Clients call this law firm asking for a copy of their will or other estate planning documents because they cannot locate the original all of the time. Our first response is to tell them that if they cannot find the original document, then they do not really have a will.…