NAELA News

The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) held its annual conference earlier this summer in Arizona and Attorney Jennifer Holmes-Griffin was in attendance.

 
We are now preparing a summary of her thoughts from the conference, along with additional elder law updates, and will be sharing them as well as some helpful insights relating to estate planning in upcoming posts and newsletters.                                                                 

Two More Good Reasons to Plan Your Estate

• When you pass away, your assets will be distributed the way you want. This is not always the case. If you do not have a will or trust, your estate may be distributed in accordance with the NH statutes, which may not be consistent with your wishes. This is especially true with 2nd marriages
                                             
• Peace of mind. Having a proactive estate plan provides you with the comfort of knowing that, should something happen, you have a team in place to carry out your wishes and intentions

Caregiver Thoughts

Did you know that according to the Kaiser Health News that the number of Americans with Alzheimer's will almost triple by 2050?   As baby boomers enter their "golden years," the number of people afflicted with the disease is expected to reach millions more than previously anticipated — 13.8 million by 2050.                                                  

This is not encouraging news, but knowing this does give people the opportunity to take proactive steps with respect to their estate plan now.

Read full article.

Two More Good Reasons to Plan Your Estate

As noted in our previous post, people often ask about why it is important to have an estate plan. Here are two more good reasons:

• Allows you to protect yourself and your loved ones in the event you become disabled. Without powers of attorney for financial matters and health care, if you become disabled, your loved ones will be dealing with the courts, which is costly, time consuming and stressful.
  
• Save your heirs taxes, time in settling your affairs, surety insurance premiums and legal and accounting costs. Did you know that the tax rate for accumulation trusts has increased significantly under recent changes to our tax laws and particularly under Obamacare? It is important that if you have a trust that you have it reviewed to ensure that the income is distributed, not accumulated.

Two Good Reasons to Plan Your Estate

People often ask about the importance of creating their estate plan.

Naturally the various reasons why a family should do so will vary depending upon their circumstances. Generally speaking, here are two good reasons to plan your estate:

1. Allows you to protect any inheritance from children's divorces and lawsuits. Trusts can be drafted so that the inherited assets can be protected from a bad marriage, or a personal claim.                                    
2. Assurance that a disabled child or loved one will be taken care of and won't lose public benefits, if needed.    

We'll provide additional "good" reasons to plan your estate in our next post...                                  

Avoiding Probate...

There are a number of different ways of holding assets that will avoid probate. 

The simplest is probably just joint ownership, such as a piece of real estate held as joint tenants or a bank account held jointly. This type of assets will pass automatically to the other joint owner when the first owner dies – but keep in mind, there will still be a probate at the second death. 

Another way to avoid probate is by assets which have designated beneficiaries, such as an insurance policy or a retirement plan (such as an IRA). These assets will pass to those beneficiaries when the owner of the asset dies.

Still another way to avoid probate is to hold assets in a revocable trust.

Do I need to do estate planning with an attorney?

Most people will benefit from a properly drafted estate plan. Even if a person has modest assets, the other documents created in the estate planning process, such as the durable power of attorney for financial matters, and the durable power of attorney for health care, are of great benefit in assisting a person's family in administering his or her affairs should he or she become ill or incapacitated. Beyond that, a will, or in many cases, a trust, is very helpful in creating an orderly way for assets to pass when someone dies.

As far as using an attorney is concerned, while it is true that many of the documents that an estate planning attorney will use can be found in very simple form in a bookstore or online, these documents, when used by a non-lawyer, will not be able to encompass the complexities of particular individual situations, and may contain \"boiler plate\" language that is not at all what the person intended. In addition, these forms may not even be valid in the state where the person using them resides.