While everyone needs an estate plan, demographics show that women in particular should take steps to address the matter.
Living Longer & Needing Care
On average, women live five years longer than men. This means women have to face a few realities: (1) they are more likely to require long-term care, and (2) will require care for a longer period of time than their male counterparts.
According to the Pew Research Center, more Americans age 18-34 are living with their parents than in any other living situation. Over 32% of people in that age group live in their parents’ house which leads to an interesting estate planning dilemma for the parents.
While some adults who live with their parents are financially independent providing for their own daily living expenses and even paying rent, many living at home are in some way, shape or form financially dependent on their parents. This dependence can make estate planning even more important.
Discuss Your Plan
Trustees serve a very important role in the effective administration of a trust. The maker of the trust document, the grantor, gives another neutral third party, the power to administer the terms of the trust throughout the lifetime of the grantor and after, if the terms of the trust provide so. The trustee is essentially in charge of managing all the assets of the trust, without taking an interest in them. While a trustee can also be the maker of the trust, many people elect another individual, or a corporate trustee to continue administering the trust upon their death.
There are some express terms that a trustee must follow, such as:
Estate planning is vital for all people wishing to have control over the distribution of their assets following their death. Women, in particular, should take time to plan their estates. In the U.S., women control nearly 40% of the nation’s investible assets and nearly half of those assets are managed solely by women.
Surviving Spouses
Many women outlive their husbands by a number of years. Outliving your partner tends to mean that you inherit their estate. Most spouses will be sole beneficiaries of each other’s’ estates. This means that the surviving spouse will be in full control over the final disposition of the assets. If your spouse didn’t make plans and you are aware of special instructions or requests they would have wanted, it is your job to make those plans now. For instance: if your spouse had children prior to your marriage and wanted them to have an inheritance but didn’t plan, it is now up to you to decide whether or not to include those wishes in your own estate plan.
Elder abuse has been an increasing trend over the past few decades, within roughly one in ten Americans over 60 years of age experiencing elder abuse, whether it be financial, harassment, sexual, physical, or passive abuse through neglect or deprivation. Of the elders subjected to abuse, over 90% of those Americans are abused by someone they know, either a family member, friend, acquaintance, medical staff employee, or caretaker.
Predators seek out opportunities with the elderly in order to become involved in their lives and then later exploit them in their most vulnerable state. Often times, an individual will claim to be helping the elder individual, either by assisting in caretaking or house keeping, and then will later bill them for an exorbitant amount of money or get ahold of their checking account to pay themselves.
Warning Signs
The passing of a loved one is not easy. The closer you were to the deceased the bigger a toll that it takes on you mentally and emotionally. You may experience anger, frustration, and numbness as you seek to process the passing. As you begin to contemplate what you must do next, you experience a feeling of being overwhelmed with facing the unexpected. All of these feelings are a part of the normal process of grieving and it is typical for a person responsible for handling the deceased’s estate to feel overwhelmed. Thinking ahead of time and knowing what to expect can reduce these feelings and help make the overall process go more smoothly.
Beyond the Funeral Arrangements
Many people are already familiar with arranging a person’s funeral, burial or cremation. After you have made arrangements for a funeral service, a viewing, the burial, cremation or spreading of the ashes, there are still a number of actions that must be completed to wrap up the deceased’s affairs. It is of the utmost importance that you contact all relevant people and organizations that need to know of the deceased’s death.
There are three main types of trusts for special or supplemental needs. Each has their own specific purpose and use, and will apply differently for every party.
First Party Special Needs Trusts
The first party special needs trust was developed to be funded with assets owned by the trust beneficiary in order to help them qualify for government benefits. This type of trust is usually established when the intended beneficiary is about to receive either a lawsuit settlement, inheritance from an estate, a large gift, or assets, that would disqualify him from receiving supplemental security income. Supplemental security income has a qualifying threshold that the beneficiary must meet; the individual cannot possess personal assets that equal over $2,000.
Special needs trust are a type of trust by which the beneficiary is provided for through the trust income, but has no control over the distributions of the trust. Generally, special needs, or supplemental needs trusts, have been used to provide for those loved ones with disabilities or who are unable to care for themselves any longer.
Once a special needs trust is established, family or a loved one can put the assets in the trust for the benefit of the beneficiary in order to provide them with any number of resources they feel the beneficiary deserves. The trust funds can be used to compensate for additional medical bills not fully covered by insurance, for personal leisure, travel, or anything the grantor feels the beneficiary may want or benefit from.
Eligibility for Benefits & Being a Beneficiary
Probate is the legal process that takes place after a person passes away. It typically involves submitting a valid will to the surrogacy court in New York state, taking inventory of the deceased’s estate’s assets, paying off the estate’s liabilities and distributing the estate assets to the beneficiaries designated in the will. What assets go through probate though are not always what the deceased or the future beneficiaries expect. Only certain assets are considered probate assets and pass ownership through New York probate proceedings.
Probate Assets
Probate assets are those who are owned individually by the decedent or person who has passed away. These assets are a part of the decedent’s estate because they have not been disposed of through other testamentary instruments like a trust or been passed on through a survivorship right or named beneficiary designation. Typical examples of a probate asset is all the property left in a person’s residence, the residence itself, bank accounts and cars.
Spendthrift trusts are a type of irrevocable trust in which the grantor seeks to leave property or assets to a beneficiary, under the terms they outline, by which the beneficiary cannot alter, because they have no legal claim to the trust property. An irrevocable trust is a type of trust by which the beneficiary cannot modify the terms of the trust without the first obtaining the permission of the grantor.
Irrevocable trusts allow the grantor to create this trust document in which they transfer their rights to the property into the trust and the trustee, a third party manager of the trust, now technically holds legal title, until the trust allows for vestment in the beneficiaries. Beneficiaries are not the only ones who lack control in these trust situations; in an irrevocable trust, once it is created, the grantor cannot undo the trust to obtain title to the property without first getting the consent of the trustee and beneficiaries.
When To Use a Spendthrift Trust
New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog