New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog

Being Fair in Estate Planning is Not Always Equal

Published on: May 7, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

The common thought when estate planning is to split the inheritance equally among your children. The main goal of the distribution is to be fair to each child, but that is not always the case. Sometimes there are special considerations that need to be made for one or more children that result in unequal distribution of the estate.

Circumstances for Unequal Distribution

Splitting an estate equally amongst your children may seem like it makes the most sense, but sometimes circumstances arise that make the situation more complicated. Like many families, oftentimes one child does better financially than the others, or one may be struggling through difficult financial times. In addition, if one of your children has special needs it will require additional planning and resources from your estate to care for them for the rest of their life.

Common Misconceptions about Elder Law Planning

Published on: May 6, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

With millions of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age and beyond without any type of plan, many believe that it is too late to begin planning for elder care. Others have unnecessarily spent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in care and other needs because of the lack of an elder law plan. These are some of the most common misconceptions regarding elder law planning as well as how you or your loved one can avoid them.

It Is Too Late to Plan

For single or married elders, one of the most common and most devastating misconceptions about elder law planning is that it is too late. For seniors that are about to go into nursing home care or are already a resident, most have been informed of the five year look-back period for Medicaid and believe that there is nothing that can be done.

Checklist for Estate Planning Documents

Published on: May 5, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

As adult children delay marriage and elderly parents are living longer, estate planning can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. A recent survey showed that only about 55% of all parents have an estate plan or even a simple will. In addition, almost 25% of people ages 65 years and older admitted that they do not know where their parents’ estate planning documents are kept, and 44% do not know what the contents of those documents say.

Importance of an Estate Plan

Horror stories abound of adult children unable to provide for their ailing parents because they do not have the proper documentation. Despite needing to make immediate decisions, children get stuck in court and money gets tied up because there is no estate plan. Even fewer parents have health care directives and it can have an immediate effect on their wellbeing if there is a medical emergency.

Family Caregivers in Need of Serious Help

Published on: May 4, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

There are more than 44 million people in the United States currently acting as a caregiver for an elderly or disabled loved one, and they devote a significant amount of time, money, and energy to the endeavor. According to researchers over at the Rand Corp. think tank, the informal cost of elder care in the United States that caregivers pay out of their own pocket is more than $522 billion every year and over 30 billion hours of labor. The personal and opportunity costs on caregivers are unfortunately being ignored, and it is causing serious problems for caregivers across the country.

Informal Costs of Elder Care

The Rand Corp. came to this amount by calculating the cost of unpaid work that caregivers perform for their elderly loved ones in addition to the opportunity cost of caregivers, calculated as “paychecks that could be pocketed if the caregivers were working and not taking elders to the doctor, monitoring their health and helping them with daily activities.” In total, the $522 billion spent on elder care every year by caregivers is more than the entirety of federal spending on Medicare in 2013.

Coming Trends in Long-Term Care Insurance

Published on: May 1, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Long-term care insurance is one of the biggest topics of conversation among retirees and estate planners. The industry is going through a period of turmoil with many policyholders now cashing in on their long-term care needs and few new buyers signing up for long-term care insurance. As a result, companies that carry long-term care insurance are shifting the way that they approach these types of policies, and consumers should be looking for new trends in long-term care insurance.

Long-Term Care Insurance

There is good reason for shifting trends in the long-term care insurance industry. Sales for individual policies have plummeted over 75% in the last ten years, and only ten percent of long-term care insurance carriers are still in business. Those that remain continue to increase the premiums and tightly underwrite all of their policies. At this point, most long-term care insurance plans are only available for the wealthy and are unaffordable to the lower and middle class.

Insurance Companies Receive Medicare Revenue Boost

Published on: April 30, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Health insurers across the United States received a welcome surprise when they discovered that they will be receiving a 1.25% increase next year in Medicare revenue benefits. This declaration reverses a previous proposal by the U.S. government to decrease the amount of Medicare benefits that insurance companies would receive in order to bring it in line with other government programs for the elderly and disabled.

Medicare Benefits for Insurance Companies

The U.S. government has been slowly decreasing the amount of Medicare benefits received by insurance companies in a bid to bring private Medicare coverage equal to other government aid programs. This year, insurance companies received four percent less in benefits than 2014, and the original proposal for 2016 included benefits cuts of another 0.9%.

Estate Planning for Unmarried Couples

Published on: April 29, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

There are many couples at retirement age that have been together for years but have opted to not get married for personal, professional, or legal reasons. For these unmarried couples, estate planning is crucial if you want your partner to inherit from your estate. If the homeowner dies without a will in place, the other partner would be out on the street with little to no recourse. However, there are options to ensure that your partner is protected through your estate plan while simultaneously planning for the other loved ones in your life.

Estate Planning Options

For couples that want to protect their partner but still leave the home to their children, one of the more popular ways of dealing with this problem is to create a life estate for the surviving partner. If drafted correctly, the partner gets the right to live in the home until they move into a nursing home facility or pass away, at which point the real estate would revert to the children. If a couple decides to go with this option, it is smart to also leave money to the spouse specifically for the purpose of house maintenance and upkeep.

Japan Seeing Prisons Turn into Nursing Homes

Published on: April 27, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Japan is facing a unique problem in its prison systems: it cannot persuade people to leave. The country has one of the highest proportions of elderly convicts in the world, and crimes committed by this cross-section of the population have quadrupled over the last twenty years. Over twenty percent of all prisoners in Japan are over the age of sixty years old, and the country is facing an issue about what to do with their elderly convicts.

Reasons for Elderly Prison Population

The costs of healthcare in Japan are increasing rapidly, and elderly prisoners face better living conditions in addition to better healthcare than they would if they were to be released. Japan is trying to reduce the number of homeless seniors by more than thirty percent by the time that they host the summer Olympic Games in 2020, but many prefer the government-subsidized life behind bars.

Facebook Legacy and Other Digital Estate Planning

Published on: April 26, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

In the age of the internet, concern must be paid to the digital assets in addition to the physical assets of your estate when you pass away. While there have been considerable issues with this in the past, social media companies are finally instituting policies to handle the social media of a person who has died. Some companies like Twitter and LinkedIn will deactivate or remove your social media account when they have been notified of the death, but other social media companies like Facebook are taking digital asset protection one step further.

Facebook Legacy Contact

The Facebook legacy contact is the company’s newest way of dealing with a deceased account holder’s social media page when they pass away. You can appoint a person as your legacy contact, and it can be anyone who also has an account with Facebook. That person is notified upon your death of their legacy status and given access to your memorialized social media page.

Back to the Basics – Estate Planning Mistakes to Avoid

Published on: April 24, 2015 | by Ettinger Law Firm

Celebrity estate stories are rife with lessons about mistakes to avoid when creating an estate plan, such as problems with the estates of James Gandolfini, James Brown, and Anna Nicole Smith. Poor estate planning can lead to probate, taxes, and family disputes. Failing to create an estate plan or drafting a poorly written plan can lead to many issues for your loved ones after you pass away, but there are some mistakes that you can avoid in order to minimize the chances of problems in the estate planning process.

Mistake #1: Thinking You are Too Young or Possess Too Little

In 2012, a report from Texas Tech University revealed that only around 54% of all Americans possess an estate plan. Many do not create a will or other estate planning documents because they believe that they are too young or do not possess enough to warrant a will. However, a good estate plan does not just pass your assets to your loved ones when you die; it can also protect you while you are alive.