Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report LIVE!: Estate Planning Basics
Unlock the secrets to safeguarding your legacy and ensuring your peace of mind with our special guest, attorney Greg McIntyre, founder of McIntyre Elder Law. Ever wondered how to protect your assets and secure long-term care without the stress of last-minute rushes? Greg lays out the cornerstones of estate planning, from the indispensable general durable power of attorney to the crucial healthcare power of attorney, living will, and last will and testament. By tuning in, you'll gain invaluable insights into why planning ahead is not just beneficial but essential for your financial and personal well-being.
Greg dives into real-life scenarios and expert advice, showing how these foundational documents can help you avoid guardianships and court oversight, manage healthcare decisions, and more. Imagine having the peace of mind knowing that your affairs are in trustworthy hands even if you become incapacitated. This episode serves as your comprehensive guide to navigating the often overwhelming world of estate planning. Don't miss out on the chance to learn from one of the leading voices in elder law and take control of your future today.
Hi, this is attorney Greg McIntyre, and I'm an estate planning and elder law attorney and the founder of McIntyre Elder Law. I founded McIntyre Elder Law because I saw that there were so many people out there that were losing their assets and not able to pay for long-term care, or they were having to spend down all their assets to pay for long-term care. I would like for people to plan ahead and I wanted to give people an option and tell them how, and educate on how, to plan ahead. So thank you so much for joining us for our Facebook Live event today. So thank you so much for joining us for our Facebook Live event today, where we're going to talk about estate planning and how to plan ahead. We're going to review a few tools that will allow you to plan ahead. Always do better when you plan ahead, when you study for the test ahead of time, when you study for the test ahead of time, when you research and study and create the paper all along, as opposed to cramming the night before. So this is an informational video and we'll give you an opportunity to connect with us. In the end, we've put a link in this post to mcelderlawcom scheduling. That's on our website. That's a site where you can schedule an appointment, a free consult, right on our calendars.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to go through a few foundational ways. You know, when you're building a house we don't want to start with a roof. If you go by your job site and you see the roof built first and it's laying on the ground, you want to fire that contractor. Let's start with the foundations. Let's build a firm foundation and then we'll put the walls on and the roof. Okay, so what I call foundational planning is the general durable power of attorney, the healthcare power of attorney, the living will and the last will and testament. That general durable power of attorney, in my opinion, is one of the most important things you could have in place. Your general durable power of attorney and healthcare power of attorney are going to help govern your life during your life. Estate planning is as much about while you're alive than after you're gone, and it's also about leaving a legacy for your loved ones in the future. We want to make sure you're properly cared for and the general durable power of attorney survives incompetency and capacity.
Speaker 1:In that situation, if you can't make your own financial decisions, you don't want everything to be frozen. You don't want your spouse to be locked out of accounts, retirement accounts, insurance, any financial account. You want him or her to be able to access those, perhaps, and also to be able to handle any real estate that you own where both of you would be required to sign to do anything with that property. Otherwise, people get into situations where bill accounts, even creditor accounts, are frozen and they don't have anybody appointed to do anything with those. They might need long-term care and they need somebody to step in and really help pay for that. They might need to shift around assets to qualify for a benefit, but they're incapable of doing that because of their current situation where they're not competent, they're incapacitated, they can't handle their own personal, financial and legal affairs. So a general, durable power of attorney allows you to appoint the right person to do that and to step in and act for you. It also avoids guardianships and court oversight and having to hire an attorney to go after guardianship for a loved one because they haven't had the foresight and done the planning and put the proper planning in place for a comprehensive, general, durable power of attorney. Those are written extremely differently, you know. Not all powers of attorney are created equally. There are certain things that need to be specifically enumerated within the general durable power of attorney to be able to be used. So I would encourage you to meet with an attorney to talk about a general durable power of attorney, how it works and what needs to be in it, so you don't get in a situation where you're stuck and where the only choice is the family goes after guardianship through the courts and the court has oversight on everything and how every dollar is spent.
Speaker 1:Next, a healthcare power of attorney. A healthcare power of attorney also extremely important. It's important that if I'm incompetent, incapacitated, I've appointed the right person to step in for me and perform my important healthcare decisions for me. It could be day-to-day health care decisions, could be regarding procedures or medications, could be more severe than that, but I want to appoint that one person who I call the quarterback, who can huddle up with the family and run in the play right, who is the one voice, so we don't have multiple people at the same level who have competing interests or can't make the right decision the same decision, don't agree what should be done for me and I suffer. So a healthcare power of attorney should also, in my opinion, have a HIPAA authorization built in so that your agent can access medical records. That's important as well, and a healthcare agent and a healthcare power of attorney can also handle disposition of the body burial. It governs organ donation Should also have a mental healthcare component to allow. As we age Alzheimer's, dementia for example the lines really blur between mental and physical health care. So we want to really make sure that we include the ability to handle any mental health care that's needed within that as well, or else that's not going to be allowed within a standard health care power of attorney, standard health care power of attorney. So a comprehensive health care power of attorney can be very important for your care, your proper care, if you're unable to make your own medical decisions. If one of those is not in place, that can also necessitate having to go after guardianship for a loved one to be able to manage their health care, to obtain health care information and appoint a person through the guardianship court proceeding to handle that part of your life.
Speaker 1:The third foundational piece a living will, a declaration for a desire for a natural death. It is not a last will and testament. A living will is a declaration for a desire for a natural death. It's stating that if I'm terminal, if I'm incurable, if I'm in a persistent vegetative state, if the only medical procedures that can be done are going to prolong my suffering, it's my voice in the room saying it's okay to let me go. It's both a practical and a legal document. Legal in that it's going to legally state that we're going to not hold the hospital doctor staff liable for following through with my wishes in that situation. But also it's a practical document because it doesn't put, say, on my six children, my four beautiful daughters, necessarily just the sole burden and decision of carrying that decision with them for the rest of their life. They're going to know what dad wanted in that situation. So it's practical and it helps with the family as well.
Speaker 1:And then there's the last will and testament. The last will and testament is a document where you appoint your executor, that's, the person that's in charge of moving assets through the probate process, changing ownership entitled to those assets after you pass away to your heirs under the rules and the guidelines that you've written in your last will and testament. And then and probate gets a bad rap If you have a will, it must go through probate. That is the court process, that is the process by which a will passes assets and an executor is. The executor is qualified and given power to testamentary letters probate letters, to pass title to assets. So A last will and testament in a probate process may or may not be the right place to pass your assets. The last will and testament goes through a claims period in probate which opens up your probate estate and all your assets flowing through the probate estate to the claims of any creditors.
Speaker 1:If you've needed long-term care, an extensive long-term care, if you've accessed the benefit to pay for that long-term care, that is the place where that benefits claim would attach and perhaps force the sale of a home, for example. That would not get to the children. That would not benefit them or their grandchildren. So we can help plan around that. A great tool to help plan around that, especially for the house, is using deed planning, a ladybird. A ladybird deed, an enhanced life estate deed, nicknamed a ladybird deed. A ladybird deed is a deed that automatically passes your home, for example, to your children if that's who you want it to go to, if you pass away, and it instantly protects the home while not impeding your ability, even within a look back period for a benefit, to obtain a long-term care benefit. So Lady Bird Deed is an amazing tool to make sure you save the house, stay in control of it for the rest of your life and then pass it to the children, and we've helped families save a ton of homes okay, a ton of value and property to keep in the family and still make available benefits to pay for long-term care.
Speaker 1:Trust are great plan ahead tools. Trust avoid probate in that claims process. Trust have beneficiaries and the trustee that you appoint would be responsible for passing those assets to the beneficiaries under the rules you set up in the trust. A revocable living trust allows you to stay in control of the assets in the trust, but a benefit program, a governmental benefit program, still sees you as in control of those assets, so they count it as your assets, assets and those assets are collectible. An irrevocable trust, let's say a specialized trust like a Medicaid asset protection trust, would still allow you to draw income off any rentals or investments within that trust, but it would not be countable as your asset. Those are really cool plan ahead protective trust for long-term care planning.
Speaker 1:We handle this type of planning and much, much more at our firm and I would open our firm up for free consults because you joined us on our Facebook Live event or watched the recording and hung out with us for a few minutes this morning. You can schedule that free consult by calling 1-888-999-6600 or you can schedule right online on our calendars at mcelderlawcom. That's mcelderlawcom slash scheduling and we've included that link right in our post. Thank you so much for joining us today. We'll see you live next week at 10 am on Thursday, where we're going to discuss estate, estate planning for special needs family members. So we're going to contemplate if there is a person that draws disability, say SSI, with a Medicaid health care component in your family, a child, a grandchild that you want to leave assets to. We're going to tell you how to do it next week, thursday at 11, I'm sorry at 10 am, where we're going to be back live and each week we're going to discuss a different topic.
Speaker 1:Thank you for allowing me to join you and come to your phone or your computer today and hang out. And thank you for joining me or your computer today and hang out. And thank you for joining me. Remember mcelderlawcom scheduling and join us next week for special needs estate planning. And I would like to say that even if I have six children, they're both healthy. Knock on wood, I don't know when a life event is going to happen to one of them or myself, so I like to plan for the what ifs. We're going to get into that also. All right, thanks for joining us today and you have a great day.