SOME ANNUITIES DO NOT RENDER APPLICANT INELIGIBLE FOR MEDICAID As this blog wrote about several months ago, certain financial products purchased by a Medicaid applicant do not render them ineligible for Medicaid benefits. While the previous post discussed why a short term annuity did not render a Medicaid applicant…
MANY ISSUES TO ADDRESS – PRIVACY AND LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS The issue of video cameras in nursing homes has exploded over the last several years. With the large scale saturation of such user friendly technologies as Skype, Facetime and similar video technologies it should not come as a surprise that…
GIFT TAX LIABILITY Gift tax liability and estate planning sometimes intersect. The tax Court case of Steinberg v. Commissioner, 141 T.C. No. 8 (Sept. 30, 2013) deals with an interesting issue, if tax law can ever be interesting, where gift tax liability and estate tax liability intersect. It is important…
An earlier post on this blog provided an overview of using beneficiary designations as part of your estate plan. Recall that beneficiary designations are a way to transfer property automatically upon the death of the asset owner outside of the probate process. This post is part II of that discussion,…
While the main purpose of an estate plan is to distribute assets to your loved ones after you are gone, it can also serve an important purpose while you are alive – planning for your potential incapacity. An estate plan can provide instructions for the management of your assets, payment…
According to the Boston College Center of Wealth and Philanthropy, the Baby Boomer generation stands to inherit over $27 trillion in the United States alone over the next four decades. A large portion of that wealth is invested into your parent’s home, but when you inherit the house it can…
Many people, business owners and everyone else, are concerned about the federal estate tax when creating their estate plans. Although the federal estate tax is 40%, it does not apply unless the decedent has an estate worth over $5.34 million, and the estate amount is doubled if the person is…
An attorney is developing an online game aimed at teaching its players about estate planning. Stephanie Kimbro has created a demo for the game, “Estate Quest,” where the player is a detective who is given various cases about people who did not plan their estates correctly. The player is taken…
For many New Yorkers, the term ‘trust‘ continues to invoke visions of the super wealthy. Similarly, terms like “trust fund baby” are used to refer to spoiled, rich individuals who do no work on their own and simply live off their parents savings. The connotation is always negative. As our…
The population in New York (and throughout the country) is aging. As the Baby Boomer generation enters retirement, the percentage of residents in their golden years is rising steadily. Statistics suggest that the average age will continue to increase for the next few decades. One effect of this change is…