New York Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog
“Protecting Your Future” has been Ettinger Law Firm’s slogan since we began in 1991. These words have deep meaning to us and our clients. Following are the eight ways an Ettinger Elder Law Estate Plan protects your future:
- Makes sure your assets go to whom you want, when you want and the way you want. This can be all at once, at stated ages, managed by someone re responsible, leaving someone out and preventing them from challenging, protecting heirs from themselves, etc.
- Takes a social approach to estate planning by fleshing out potential sources of conflict ahead of time and taking steps to prevent discord and preserve family harmony.
- Protects our client’s home and other assets from the high costs of long-term care either at home (community care) or in a facility (institutional care) and renders our clients eligible for Medicaid benefits to pay for their long-term care.
- Avoids time-consuming and expensive court proceedings on disability (guardianship proceedings) and on death (probate court proceedings).
- Reduces or eliminates New York and federal estate taxes on estates over about seven million dollars using gifting strategies for single persons, and trust tax planning strategies for couples, by setting up a trust for each spouse allowing them to double the amount they can pass estate tax-free to their heirs.
- Prevents assets you leave to your heirs from being lost to divorces, lawsuits and creditors and makes sure those assets pass by blood, instead of to in-laws and their families.
- Provides a free review every three years to address changes in your health, your assets and your family so your plan works when you need it — not when you wrote it which may be decades earlier.
- No charge for telephone calls and emails to the law firm so that questions and concerns may be addressed as they arise, putting your mind at ease.