As people age and children leave the house, many parents entering retirement age use the opportunity to downsize their home and belongings. Rather than downsizing all at once, a growing trend among seniors is to do so in steps over a period of years. In earlier generations, the elderly usually…
Schedule an in-office, Zoom or phone consultation Here.
New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog
When to Get Power of Attorney for a Parent
Caregiving is about more than just tending to the physical needs of an elderly parent. If your parent is also dealing with dementia or another degenerative disease, you must also prepare to cope with effects on both the body and mind. In the event that your parent becomes incapacitated, you…
Biggest Estate Planning Celebrity Lessons from 2014, Pt. 2
The first part of this article listed some of this year’s most notable celebrity deaths and the estate planning issues that arose as a result. This next part of the article is a continuation of lessons that can be learned by the estate planning problems of celebrities who passed away…
Green House Homes for the Elderly
In decades and centuries past, when people got old their children and younger relatives would care for them until they died. Now, when elderly Americans are too old to care for themselves and assisted living is not an option for financial, physical, or mental reasons many are sent to live…
Five Retirement Changes for 2015
Factoring in retirement to an estate plan can be confusing, tiresome, and complex. In fact, this aspect is arguably the most difficult part of estate planning because you can never be positive about exactly how much money you will need in retirement. With the influx of new estate planning tools…
Are Wealthy Families More Cautious Leaving Money to Kids?
According to a report released by U.S. Trust, in the United States there are nearly 1.8 million households that have assets totaling $3 million or more. Many of these families will struggle with how to give their children an inheritance that provides for their needs while not giving them so…
Estate Disputes Continue in Estate of James Brown
James Brown’s life was full of life, music, and manic energy. It was also full of broken marriages, estranged children, tax liens, and legal problems related to drugs, guns, and domestic violence. However, James Brown’s estate was meant to be a mea culpa for his transgressions in life and to…
Cohousing a Growing Trend for Elderly Living
One common concern for seniors living alone is the lack of community and companionship. Not only can it be dangerous for an elderly person to live alone, but loneliness can have a physical, emotional, and mental toll on someone of advanced age. However, in order to combat the issues associated…
Americans Fail in Retirement Literacy
In multiple surveys and studies, senior Americans and retirees have not scored well on retirement literacy tests. In the latest study, U.S. citizens between the ages of sixty and 75 who were polled had an eighty percent failure rate of the retirement literacy test. The results of the poll and…
Joan Rivers’ Estate Lesson: Choosing Place of Residence
Joan Rivers’ estate continues to be a topic of interest as it has been recently discovered that she reduced her estate tax burden by claiming residence in one state while actually living in another. Ms. Rivers’ died in September at the age of 81, and she had a will on…