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PLANNING FOR CHANGES

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ome big changes in your life are easy to recognize. When you have your first child, for example, you know that your life has dramatically changed. At these times, it is easy to see why you need to update your estate plan to reflect the changes.

However, there are other changes in your life that are harder to recognize because they occur gradually. For example, in your career, you will probably have many different raises and promotions. Each one individually is not a big change, but cumulatively the change can be quite dramatic. Because the change in income has taken place over such a long period of time, it is easy to downplay its significance. However, if you think about the change in income from the beginning of your career to now, you might see that it is very significant.

Income is just one thing in your life that you can gradually change over time. Think about other ways that your life has changed over time, especially since the last time that you updated your estate plan. If there have been significant changes, contact an experienced estate planning attorney and get an updated estate plan that takes those changes into account.

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Do you know what your parents’ plans are to pay for long term care in a nursing home? Do your parents even have plans for the possibility? These are questions that you need to know the answers to. I’m sure you are aware that you can be forced by law to pay for the care for your children. What you might not know is that 29 states have laws that can force you to pay for the long term care of your parents, even if you do not live in those states.

Known as Filial Support laws, these laws have provisions that allow nursing homes to seek reimbursement from relatives of those in the nursing homes’ care. Some courts have ruled that nursing homes can recover from relatives who live out of state. The important thing is where the nursing home is located, not where the relatives live.

Long term care in a nursing home is exceedingly expensive. Make sure that your parents have a plan in place to afford the care. If they do not then you could be responsible. While you are at it, make sure that you have a plan to pay for your long term care, if you ever need it. Do not stick your children with your nursing home bills.

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Many people make the mistake of thinking that estate planning is just about protecting wealth and distributing property. Those are often important goals of estate planning, but they are not the only reasons to have an estate plan. There are other reasons to have an estate plan and other goals that you can accomplish with an estate plan. In fact, the other goals are often far more important than wealth and property.

If you have children, you can use an estate plan to determine who should have guardianship over your children in case something happens to you. Whose custody you leave your children in is usually far more important than how much money you leave your children. However, if you do not have an estate plan, you will not be the person to decide who will take care of your children.

An estate plan also sets out who takes care of you and your property if you become incapacitated. If you are in the hospital, for example, someone might need to make health care decisions for you. As part of your overall estate plan, you can decide who has the authority to do so.

Do not make the mistake of thinking that just because you do not have a lot of property you do not need an estate plan. Property is important to estate planning, but it is not the most important thing.

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If you are in surgery and unable to make an important decision concerning your care, have you considered who you want to make the decision for you? Have you discussed it with the person you would designate so that he or she knows what you would want done? Have you created the appropriate legal framework for the person you designate to make those decisions? A Health Care Proxy is a document that you can use to legally appoint another person to make medical decisions on your behalf when you are incapacitated and unable to make them on your own.

Doctors and other health care workers have to follow strict legal rules and procedures when discussing your health and care with other people. To protect your privacy, they are not allowed to discuss your care with other people in most cases. That means that if a decision regarding your care needs to be made quickly, the doctors will have to make it themselves. What they choose to do might not be what you would want done. A Health Care Proxy allows you to designate someone who doctors can legally discuss your health with and someone who can tell doctors what you want. Talk to an attorney about getting one today.

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People are sometimes confused by the term “Revocable Living Trust.” Unscrupulous companies and websites often take advantage of this confusion as a way to get people to purchase a Revocable Living Trust form from them. These companies and websites make people think that there is something magical about a Revocable Living Trust. However, to understand whether you need a Revocable Living Trust, you need to understand what is truly meant by the term.

The words themselves are not magical and they do not create a magical legal document that is perfect for everyone. First, a Trust is a legal entity that holds property and assets for the benefit of someone or something else. The property is held in “trust.” Revocable and living merely mean that the Trust is created while you are living and that you have the right to revoke the Trust and retain the assets that you put into it. For many people, this is an excellent estate planning method as any assets put into the Trust while you are alive do not have to go through Probate after you pass away. However, some people should use different legal methods in their estate plans, often for tax reasons.

To know whether a Revocable Living Trust is right for you, talk to an experienced estate planning attorney.

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One thing that makes estate planning fun is that everyone’s situation is unique. Every client that comes into an estate planning attorney’s office has a different story to tell and different estate planning goals. The fun part for attorneys is not only in listening to all of the different stories, but also in developing an estate plan that meets each client’s unique situation.

For example, many people go to an estate planning attorney with the idea that they need to get a Living Trust. Most people will actually end up with an estate plan that does include a Trust. The questions become what kind of trust? How is it structured? Is it revocable or irrevocable? Does it include a Trust Protector? Can it be amended? Who will serve as the Trustee? The answers to these questions and others like them make each Trust a little different. The estate planning attorney finds those answers by listening to what the clients say.

In today’s world, you do not have to go to an estate planning attorney to get a Living Trust. There are other options. However, you should go to an attorney so that you can be certain that someone has listened to your story and created a Trust that is right for you.

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When you pass away, it’s often necessary for someone else to be able to access your email account. Many business deals today are done almost solely by email and to properly wrap up your affairs, someone will need to check your email to make sure that there is nothing that needs to be acted upon.

Accessing someone else’s email is difficult without a password, however. The person attempting to access your email will need to get the information from your email provider. The provider will not release that information to just anyone. For example, Gmail requires a death certificate, a power of attorney and other types of personal documents to prove identity. Yahoo will only release the information with a specific court order granting access to the email account. Other companies have different requirements.

The best solution is to leave your password somewhere that your heirs can find it. That does not mean a desk drawer where they can find it now. Leave the password in a safety deposit box or other secure location that only you can access. If you do not have that type of secure location, ask your attorney to keep the password secure and to release it upon your death.

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It’s hard to think of almost anything good that has come out of the scandal at Penn State. When children are abused, it’s never good. Now that Jerry Sandusky has been convicted by a jury of his peers, however, it’s time to ask what we can learn from the scandal. There are certainly a lot of lessons that should be learned by university administrators and athletic departments, but this is an estate planning blog. As it turns out, there is an estate lesson in the scandal too.

If you know anything about the scandal, you have heard the allegations that head football coach knew about Sandusky’s abuse of children and helped to cover it up. Of course, that may not be the case and we might never know what happened as Paterno passed away shortly after the scandal broke. He did not tell his side of the story. However, his family might not have gotten the lesson about keeping things from public consumption as they requested that Paterno’s Will be sealed by the Court. After a media outcry, the family backtracked in a couple of days and released the Will to the public.

As it turns out, there was nothing controversial in the Will and it was originally sealed for privacy reasons. However, the lesson to be learned is that when you hide things from a public that wants to know, you create more speculation than the situation often calls for.

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People who create their own estate plans often make the mistake of thinking that they only need to use one legal instrument and that it will take care of everything. This is usually a Revocable Living Trust. While a Living Trust is a great estate planning tool, it is probably not the only thing you need. Estate planning is more like putting a puzzle together to find the right fit between various legal instruments to effectuate your goals.

A Revocable Living Trust is only effective for the property that you transfer to the Trust. If you forget to transfer something or are unable to transfer something for some reason, than the Trust has no legal authority over that property. If you pass away before you can transfer everything into the Trust, the Trust will also not be effective. The normal solution for this problem is to execute a Pour Over Will. This is a very simple Will that directs that any property in your estate should be transfered to the Trust. That allows the property you didn’t transfer to be distributed according to the terms of the Trust.

There might be other estate planning instruments that you want to use with your Revocable Living Trust. Each person’s estate planning puzzle is different. An attorney can help you solve your puzzle.