Answer: If you are a professional who helps families plan for or deal with ANY of their elder care matters, then you owe it to yourself to be listed on America's #1 online source for "Elder Care Experts"….
ElderCareMatters.com
ElderCareMatters.com is where you will find more than 2,000 competent, caring elder care experts located across America, including:
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Elder Law Attorneys
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Estate Planning Advisors
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Financial Planners
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Investment Advisors
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Geriatric Care Managers
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Insurance Professionals
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Life Care Planners
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Professional Organizers
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Reverse Mortgage Lenders
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Senior Move Managers
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Senior Real Estate Professionals
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Tax Advisors
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Aging in Place Professionals
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Daily Money Managers
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And other elder care experts with long and successful careers working with seniors and their families
This is also where you will find some of America's best:
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Assisted Living Communities
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Alzheimer's / Memory Care Communities
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Continuing Care Retirement Communities
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Home Care Agencies
Together, we provide families across America with:
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Unparalleled professional expertise
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Up-to-date elder care information & answers to your elder care questions
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Competent, caring assistance with a wide range of elder care services
So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional who helps families with ANY of their elder care matters, then request today an Application for Membership in the national ElderCare Matters Alliance and get listed on ElderCareMatters.com - America's #1 source for "Elder Care Experts" plus information and answers about a wide range of elder care matters.
Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
ElderCareMatters.com
Answer: The correct answer is "It depends". It depends on your unique family, health, and financial situation. Tax consequences also have to be considered. In the event you need long-term care, there is a five year look-back period that applies to gifts (transfers of assets without consideration). Thus, if you are faced with a chronic or catastrophic illness within five years after you transfer the home to your children; such transfer may impact your ability to obtain Medicaid (Title 19) benefits. This is a very complicated area of the law and requires careful consideration.
If it makes sense to transfer the home to your children, there are several ways to structure the transfer. The first is an outright gift to your children. This is generally not advisable for tax reasons and asset protection purposes. The second is by completing the transfer but retaining a life estate. While generally superior to an outright gift, this is also not without problems. However, the retained life estate does give you some legal control over the property and also preserves some tax benefits associated with inherited property versus gifted property. The third is a transfer of your home to an irrevocable trust. This is usually the preferred method of protecting the home as it balances tax benefits with asset protection issues and also protects the home from your children's creditors or in the event they should predecease you.
As you can see, the transfer of your home is something that requires careful consideration and sound legal counsel.
Paul T. Czepiga, Esq., CELA
Czepiga Daly Dillman, LLC
Newington, CT 06111
860-597-7995
www.CtSeniorLaw.com
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Connecticut chapter
Answer: A homestead would not disqualify the sisters from Medicaid and SSI benefits. However, a trustee cannot transfer ownership if sisters are only entitled to “life estate” benefits.
To locate experts in your state who can help you with this elder care matter, go to: www.ElderCareMatters.com/statechapters.htm
Joseph F. Pippen, Jr., Attorney at Law
Law Office of Joseph F. Pippen, Jr. & Associates
Largo, Florida 33771
727-586-3306
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Florida chapter
Answer: Legal problems that affect the elderly are growing in number. Our laws and regulations are becoming more complex. Actions taken by older people with regard to a single matter may have unintended legal effects. It is important for attorneys dealing with the elderly to have a broad understanding of the laws that may have an impact on a given situation, to avoid future problems.
Unfortunately, this job is not made easy by the fact that Elder Law encompasses many different fields of law. Some of these include:
- Preservation/transfer of assets seeking to avoid spousal impoverishment when a spouse enters a nursing home
- Medicaid
- Medicare claims and appeals
- Social security and disability claims and appeals
- Supplemental and long term health insurance issues.
- Disability planning, including use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, “living wills,” for financial management and health care decisions, and other means of delegating management and decision-making to another in case of incompetence or incapacity.
- Conservatorships and guardianships
- Estate planning, including planning for the management of one's estate during life and its disposition on death through the use of trusts, wills and other planning documents
- Probate
- Administration and management of trusts and estates
- Long-term care placements in nursing home and life care communities
- Nursing home issues including questions of patients’ rights and nursing home quality
- Elder abuse and fraud recovery cases
- Housing issues, including discrimination and home equity conversions
- Age discrimination in employment
- Retirement, including public and private retirement benefits, survivor benefits and pension benefits
- Health law
- Mental health law
Most Elder Law Attorneys do not specialize in every one of these areas. So when an attorney says he/she practices Elder Law, find out which of these matters he/she handles. You will want to hire the attorney who regularly handles matters in the area of concern in your particular case and who will know enough about the other fields to question whether the action being taken might be affected by laws in any of the other areas of law on the list. For example, if you are going to prepare a new will and your spouse is ill, the estate planner needs to know enough about Medicaid to know whether it is an issue with regard to your spouse’s medical care planning.
David F. Anderson, Esq.
David F. Anderson, P.A.
Miami Lakes, Florida 33016
305-825-4052
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Florida chapter
Answer: If you are an elder care professional and you would like to "get the word out to thousands of families across America in a cost effective way about how you can help them plan for and deal with their issues of aging", then you should join our 1,250 elder care experts as a lifetime member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance. And, now, if you are one of the next 250 members, you will receive a 25% discount off the regular lifetime membership price.
This 25% discount is available only to the next 250 elder care professionals who join the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional – take advantage of this special 25% discount offer and pay only $337.50 for a "lifetime membership" (and there are no annual membership dues, ever!) to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
To request an Application for Lifetime Membership, send an email directly to: psanders@eldercarematters.com
Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com
If you are an elder care professional and you would like to "get the word out to thousands of families across America in a cost effective way about how you can help them plan for and deal with their issues of aging", then you should join our 1,250 elder care experts as a lifetime member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance. And, now, if you are one of the next 250 members, you will receive a 25% discount off the regular lifetime membership price.
This 25% discount is available only to the next 250 elder care professionals who join the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
So if you are a competent, caring elder care professional – take advantage of this special 25% discount offer and pay only $337.50 for a "lifetime membership" (and there are no annual membership dues, ever!) to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
To request an Application for Lifetime Membership, send an email directly to: psanders@eldercarematters.com
Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters, LLC
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com
Answer: The experts of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
ElderCareMatters.com is now offering a NEW Ask an Elder Care Expert service.
Each week one of our 1,200 experts will answer your family's important questions about elder care matters – from legal, financial, housing, health care, etc.
If you would like to ask one of our Elder Care Experts a question about his/her areas of expertise, just send a short email (a few sentences only please) to: Questions@ElderCareMatters.com
Every day we will post one of your questions along with an answer provided by our Featured Elder Care Expert of the Week to the homepage of www.ElderCareMatters.com (which is currently visited by thousands of families each week). Yours may be one of the questions posted.
So bookmark www.ElderCareMatters.com and visit us daily as questions about a wide range of elder care matters are answered by some of America's top elder care professionals with years of experience helping families plan for and deal with their issues of aging.
Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters
1-877-379-4500
www.ElderCareMatters.com
The ElderCare Matters Alliance is a national organization of 1,200 elder care experts who help families across America plan for and deal with their issues of aging, including providing families with a host of elder care resources that can be found on www.ElderCareMatters.com
If you are a competent, caring elder care professional – you need to belong to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance.
To request a Lifetime Membership Application to the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, send an email to psanders@ElderCareMatters.com
www.ElderCareMatters.com – America's online source for elder care experts who help families plan for and deal with their issues of aging.
Phillip G. Sanders, MBA, MSHA, CPA
Founder & CEO
ElderCare Matters
www.ElderCareMatters.com
Answer: Life estates and irrevocable trusts are tools that estate planners use to help their clients achieve defined objectives. Usually, one tool is more effective than the other in reaching a desired objective. The usefulness of these tools varies from State to State, and you should employ them only with the help and advice of a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction.
An example of when a life estate might be the best approach is where Mom and Dad have sold their home in order to move closer to their children, and it turns out that Dad needs nursing home care. Instead of spending all of the sales proceeds on Dad’s nursing home care, perhaps Mom purchases a life estate in a child’s residence for the full fair market value of the life estate. The life estate will give Mom the right to live in the residence for the rest of her life, but her interest terminates upon her death. As long as Mom actually lives there for a year after purchasing the life estate, her interest in the residence will not be a countable resource for Medicaid eligibility purposes when Dad goes into the nursing home, and it will not be countable against Mom’s eligibility later on if she also needs nursing home care. Thus, Mom and Dad can lawfully convert some of their non-exempt cash into an exempt interest in a residence. The purchase of the life estate may generate capital gains tax for the child, but that burden may be outweighed by the benefit of enabling Mom and Dad to qualify for Medicaid benefits.
An irrevocable trust might be used where Dad is going into a nursing home, and his and Mom’s assets are such that he will qualify for Medicaid benefits at that time. One of the things Dad can (and probably should) do is transfer his interest in his and Mom’s residence to Mom. The transfer to Mom will be ignored for Medicaid eligibility purposes. A reason he might want to do so is that if Mom predeceases him and he ends up being the sole owner of the residence, he may be disqualified from Medicaid, unless he can communicate an intent to return to the residence in the event he is ever able to do so. In any event, the State Medicaid office will almost certainly place a lien on the residence so that if it is ever sold, the State will be repaid all of the Medicaid benefits paid on Dad’s behalf before his family ever shares in any remaining sales proceeds. However, Mom could avoid this result by placing the residence into an irrevocable trust which pays her all of the income for the rest of her life, and then the trust terminates and the remaining assets go to the kids. As long as she creates and funds the trust at least five years before she applies for Medicaid benefits, the residence can pass to the children without jeopardizing her or Dad’s Medicaid eligibility.
It is critical to remember that the Medicaid rules vary from State to State, so before you do anything in this area, you need to seek guidance from an expert in your State who can counsel you regarding the local interpretation and application of the rules. A great place to find such an expert is at http://www.eldercarematters.com/statechapters.htm.
Scott A. Makuakane, Esq., CFP
Est8Planning Counsel LLLC
Honolulu, Hawaii 96813
808-587-8227
Member of the national ElderCare Matters Alliance, Hawaii chapter
