Fall Planning For Seniors

It’s time for cozy sweaters, apple pies, corn mazes, and Halloween pumpkins. And not to be forgotten, colorful autumn leaves. Ancient cultures have associated this time of year with the impermanence of life, and falling, vibrant autumn leaves are an apt metaphor for this impermanence. If you’re a senior, then it is perhaps a good time to consider whether you need to make some changes to your long-term planning.

Autumn is the perfect time to create or review important legal documents like your will,  your trusts, your powers of attorney, and your healthcare directives. By the time winter arrives, you will have protected your family’s future. Let’s get started!  

Advance Directives

Advance directives are important for seniors. They allow you to designate someone to make financial and medical decisions for you when you become unable to do so.  As their name suggests, these directives are executed in advance so that there is no need to appoint a guardian in the event that you become incapacitated. 

• A healthcare proxy is used to designate a specific person – a spouse, a child, or other trusted person in your life – to make medical decisions on your behalf when you are incapacitated.
• A living will is a legal document you prepare in advance that includes details about the medical treatments you want and do not want to be used to keep you alive. End-of-life decisions that are important to think about and address in a living will include mechanical ventilation, tube feeding, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, dialysis, and organ and tissue donations. It’s a good idea to share your living will with your health care provider, along with your family.  
• A power of attorney authorizes a trusted person in your life to make important financial and other personal decisions on your behalf if you are unable to do so.

The value of advance directives is that you are the one making the decisions about your financial and medical well-being before you become incapable of doing so. A skilled Long Island elder lawyer can also use advance directives to protect your assets and ensure eligibility for Medicaid. 

For all directives requiring you to name a person as your proxy, it is important to name someone you trust to handle your affairs honestly and in a manner that you would approve of. If possible, it’s important for your proxies to also have good administrative and organizational skills, not have potential conflicts of interest with your needs and wants, and be willing to serve in this capacity for you.

In the absence of advance directives, the court may be required to appoint a guardian to deal with your affairs if you are incapacitated.  

Wills

A will is a legal document in which a person describes in detail how his or her money, real property, and other assets will be distributed upon death. Typically, the will also names a personal representative, the individual who will administer the will when the time comes. If you don’t have a will, it’s time to create one with your Long Island elder lawyer. If you do, it’s important to regularly review and update your will to ensure that it reflects your current desires about the distribution of your assets. Also, it’s important to ensure that the personal representative you named continues to be the right person to represent you. Changing circumstances in your life and in the life of your representative may require you to make a change. 

Trusts

A trust is another tool for making decisions about how your property will be distributed when you die. There are a number of different types of trusts that are used to reduce taxes, protect assets, and provide for loved ones. Trusts can be used along with a will and other tools to create a comprehensive estate plan, including a plan to avoid probate.

Long-Term Care Planning

The biggest threat to the assets of older adults is the cost of nursing homes and in-home care. These assets may include:

• A family residence
• Other real property
• Pension and retirement accounts
• Cash, savings, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and CDs

Advance planning will allow for strategies to protect assets and reduce costs. Planning tools and strategies include the following:

• Long-Term Care Insurance – Statistics show that approximately 25% of older adults will require nursing home care at some point. And such care is undeniably expensive. Elder lawyers have differing opinions on the value of procuring long-term care insurance. Long-term care insurance used to be a more important long-term planning tool, but over the past few decades, many insurers have fought to avoid paying out legitimate claims. Still, it can be a viable tool to cover nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and in-home care. A Long Island elder lawyer will help you evaluate whether purchasing long-term care insurance makes sense for you.   
• Medicaid Trusts – Medicaid benefits help many people cover a significant amount of their long-term care costs for nursing homes. However, eligibility is subject to strict asset and income limitations. If you exceed these limits, you can often meet the Medicaid eligibility requirements through the establishment of an irrevocable trust, sometimes called a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust or MAPT.  These trusts serve the purpose of ensuring that the value of the assets that you place in them is not counted toward Medicaid eligibility limits. While these types of trusts do require you to relinquish control of the assets in the trust, they are an effective tool to preserve them.

These strategies are not exclusive, and there are a number of other vehicles and strategies that can help you or the seniors you care about feel prepared in this autumn of life. 

Contact Davidow, Davidow, Siegel & Stern

Since 1913, our firm has been serving the needs of Long Islanders. We are one of the most successful elder law, special needs, and estate planning firms in the area. Our compassion, service, and deep knowledge make us the right choice for seniors. We ensure that you are protected, maximizing the government programs available to you, while paying the least amount in estate and income taxes. Contact us today to see how we can serve you.