Aging Parents
Do Your Parents Have a Plan?
It’s not an easy conversation, but it’s a necessary one. Without an estate plan, the burden of making important decisions may be passed onto a surviving spouse or children. We can help you make plans that protect your parents’ assets. So, you’re not left trying to manage long-term care costs, reduce taxes paid, or keep an estate from going to probate.
Schedule a free meeting with one of our experts to learn more.
Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late
Your parents have worked a lifetime to create a life of value. Protecting that value will be easier if planning starts today. Ask your parents now about their hopes and goals. Doing so can help ensure they don’t lose their home, savings, and more to long-term care. It can also help your parents have the pride of knowing they’ve helped you avoid the burden of estate management, costly court appearances, and unnecessary taxes.
Questions to Ask Your Parents
Estate plans that work don’t start with templates and forms. They start with a conversation focused on listening and understanding. Every family is unique, so we work with clients to develop plans that serve their needs.
Here are some of the questions we address:
Do you have more than a will?
When did you last update your will?
How will you pay for long-term care expenses?
Have you made plans to protect your spouse?
Do you know what's going to happen to your home, farm, and property?
Will your car, boat, trailer, etc. have to go through probate?
Are you leaving your children with the tax burden of an IRA?
A Guide to Planning for Aging Parents
You may want to make it clear that these conversations aren’t just about passing on their assets. They’re also about making sure the government and long-term care facilities don’t end up with everything they’ve earned.
An effective plan may include:
Power of Attorney
An aging parent will want to give a trusted person the ability to make decisions for them if they can’t
Updated Will
If it’s been a long time since your parents made their will or they used a template to do so, it’s probably time to make some enhancements
Asset Protection Trust
Help them protect assets, ensure they’re managed properly, and that they go to the right place
IRA Tax Planning
Make sure they know there’s more to IRAs than waiting to take distributions, including plans that keep assets from being lost to long-term care cost
Medicaid Benefits
Applying for coverage and understanding eligibility requirements can be tricky, and creates situations where people don’t get the care they need.
Veterans Benefits
Our VA-accredited attorneys can help veterans and their families get the benefits they deserve—oftentimes after they’ve already tried and failed.
Nursing Home Planning
Nursing home costs can be $100,000 or more a year, and that can quickly eat away at everything they worked a lifetime to build.
Farm Legacy Planning
We can help protect your family from losing the farm due to taxes, probate, and long-term care costs, so you can keep it in the family for another generation.
Plans That Are
on Your Parents Side
Estate plans for your family only work if they’re up-to-date. An old plan could end up costing your parents and you a lot of money, time, and stress.
A customized plan can help you:
Preserve
Assets
Avoid
Probate
Reduce
Taxes
Want More Information ?
Thinking through your parents’ future can be challenging. So, you may have some questions.
Check out the list below to see what other people in similar situations have asked.
No, Medicare does not provide long-term care or custodial care.
An elder law or elder care attorney is a lawyer who focuses on issues that affect the aging population. An elder law attorney provides service and guidance on legal matters such as estate planning and long-term care planning, social security, Medicare, and navigating the federal and state public laws and benefits such as Medicaid and Veteran benefits.
Long term care planning combines the goals of estate planning along with the concerns of protecting and preserving assets from the very substantial costs of long-term care and/or expediting long-term care coverage through Medicaid planning. Essentially long-term care planning addresses “what will my care look like as I age and how will I pay for that care?”
We understand this is a tough situation and often parents don’t think they need help. But it is situations just like this that your parents appointed you to step in help. Whether it be via their healthcare or financial powers of attorney, it’s now your responsibility to make sure mom or dad is receiving the support they need.