Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report
Veteran’s Benefits in Estate Planning: What You Should Know
Benefits you earned shouldn’t be out of reach just because the rulebook is complex. We sit down on Veterans Day to map a practical path to VA Aid and Attendance—a pension that can help pay for in‑home care, assisted living, or nursing home care—without draining a lifetime of savings. Drawing on years of elder law practice, we unpack the real asset limits, the home and acreage rules, and the underused Veterans Asset Protection Trust that can shield excess resources and still keep you in control.
Across the conversation, we focus on preserving dignity and choice. You’ll hear how to balance everyday access to funds while sheltering the rest, how to select a trusted third‑party trustee, and why a well‑timed trust can be Medicaid‑compliant so you can stack Aid and Attendance with Medicaid when health needs escalate. We also lay out the essential foundation: a general durable power of attorney, a health care power of attorney, and a living will—documents that prevent guardianship and keep decision‑making with the people you choose. For the home, we explain probate‑avoidance strategies like a Lady Bird deed to protect equity and ensure it passes cleanly to your heirs.
Whether you’re a veteran, a spouse, or a surviving spouse, the goal is clear: protect what you’ve built, activate the benefits you deserve, and keep control over where you live and how you’re treated. If you’ve wondered how to qualify for VA Aid and Attendance, avoid unnecessary spend‑downs, and steer clear of probate, this guide offers the steps and the reasoning behind them. Subscribe for more elder law insights, share this with a veteran who could use it, and leave a review to help others find trustworthy planning advice.
Hi, it's Greg McIntyre with McIntyre Elderlaw here with my law partner, Brenton Begley at McIntyre Elderlaw. Hey, Brenton.
Brenton Begley:Hey.
Greg McIntyre:You know, we just wanted to say happy Veterans Day to everyone and talk a little bit about estate planning, veterans' benefits, and how that's important to veterans. So, Brenton, we handle estate planning to assist veterans in qualification for veterans aid and attendance pension benefits. Tell us a little bit about estate planning that can get someone lined up for a veterans aid and attendance pension benefit.
Brenton Begley:Well, you know, the veterans and attendance pension benefit is something that you have to qualify for, okay? And you can only have so many assets and qualify for it. So, you know, there's a couple options out there if you're over-resourced to qualify for veterans' benefits. Okay. So specifically, we're talking about benefits, by the way, when it comes to long-term care or in-home care, um, and not necessarily disability benefits, those are conflated quite a bit. So uh when it comes to aid and attendance pension benefits, um, you can only have around it's around $130,000 in addition to a residence, no greater than um, you know, two acres of land with that residence. Okay. So if that's the case, then in your overresource, then you may um be able to use a veterans asset protection trust to um tuck away some of those assets that are over the threshold. And if you are able to do that, then those assets no longer count as yours, and you can direct who those assets go to at death. You can direct who manages those assets through you know that trust by appointing a trustee, and you can avoid probate any unnecessary process after you've passed away.
Greg McIntyre:Brent, I think that's a that I just wanted to say, you know, I think that veterans asset protection trust is a way, uh it's such an underutilized tool by veterans. It it really opens them up for that veterans aid and attendance pension benefit that can pay for in-home assisted living or nursing home care without having them spin down all their assets, and and it's not applying for Medicaid, right? It's not applying for another benefit. It's actually actually accessing a pension benefit from your employer, your past employer, the United States military. And it's offered. But you know, sliding some assets in that veteran's asset protection trust, that's a nice little safe to put them in. And and they're they're still there for your use of benefit, right?
Brenton Begley:Exactly. You know, you do have to name a third party. Uh can be you can't be your spouse as the trustee. Um, but that doesn't mean it can't be a family member, a very close trusted family member. The other thing is that it's it's a great situation for a veteran, too, because you're if you're looking at paying tens of thousands of dollars worth of you know health care costs, then activating that benefit is really gonna help. And you can still keep out a lot of assets from that trust where you have direct um access to those assets. So you don't have to rely on a trustee for everything. You know, a lot of people you know uh avoid maybe setting up a trust where they appoint somebody else as the trustee because they don't want to have to go through that individual to access the trust. But here, you know, this gives you the opportunity to keep sufficient amount of assets out of the trust to be able to pay for anything that you need and tuck away the excess to go ahead and have that excess protected and so that it no longer counts against you as an asset when you're trying to qualify for that benefit.
Greg McIntyre:Yeah, and as a bonus, I just add Veterans Asset Protection Trust are also Medicaid compliant. So while I was bagging on that benefit earlier, hey, there might be a situation where you want to roll to a benefit in North Carolina to also add to the Veterans Aid attendant's pension and pay for assisted living or nursing home care.
Brenton Begley:Yeah, you can stack those benefits if you go ahead and put the veterans asset trust in place early enough. You can go ahead and stack those benefits.
Greg McIntyre:This you can stack the benefits, and it works for both. And it's Medicaid compliant also. So, I mean, you know, and you know, one of the things that we do is is we do help veterans with this type of benefit and qual, how about qualification to get their assets lined up so they can apply and qualify for that benefit. We know the benefit well. And I think too many veterans do not invest in estate planning. Right. You gotta look at, hey, veterans out there, guys, men, women, you need to invest in some professional estate planning, professional legal services. It is worth its worth the investment if you do it correctly, okay? And it can help protect the assets that you work so hard for. Um we do take care of our clients, we take care of our veterans. I'm a veteran of the U.S. Navy and so many fond memories, tough memories. I'm very proud that I served. And I know you are too. And I work hard to take care of my family, and I have a good estate plan in place to make sure I take care of my assets, open myself up for benefits, and you should too. And we make that affordable and accessible to all people, especially veterans, okay? Now, an often overlooked thing veterans do as well, and everybody does, is really foundational work. If you become, heaven forbid, incompetent or incapacitated, you do not want your family to have to go after guardianship for you and take care of you. You want to have in place, if you have the trusted people in your life, agents appointed under a general durable power of attorney, a healthcare power of attorney, have that living will in place. Let's have the last will and testament to say where your assets go, okay, as a safety net to get them there. Britain foundations is so important, and the planning we do for veterans and others is so much about protecting yourself during your life, not just after you're gone, right?
Brenton Begley:Yeah, I mean, imagine, you know, what we provide is not just protection of assets, it's a protection of your dignity and protection of your right to choose, you know, how you use and deploy your assets and also where you live, where you're going to be treated, how you're going to be treated. You know, a lot of people think, well, I have family members next of kin can make decisions for me if I can no longer make those decisions. That's just not the case. To make a decision on someone else's behalf, you have to have legal authority to do so. And if you do not have power of attorney, you do not have legal authority unless you seek guardianship, and that's an extreme measure that we want to stay away from. I mean, the law even reflects that it's an extreme measure. The law wants you to have the power of attorney in place because the law is going to make everybody look and see if there's a power of attorney in place before a guardian can be appointed. So it's a way to protect yourself from having a guardian put in place that is going to take that ability to choose away from your family. Certainly take the ability to choose away from you, and you get to dictate where you live, how you're treated, through the relationship you have with a trusted individual and the parameters that you put in those legal documents that we craft and customize specifically for our clients. So these are things that are often overlooked, but incredibly important because it gives you the ability to control what happens, gives you the ability, you know, as much as we can to control your future, your destiny, and to determine where your assets go. You know, and even if you don't have enough assets where it necessitates a trust, you really ought to keep those assets out of probate. That's another thing. I mean, if you're looking at making sure that your home goes to your children and actually makes it to them, you don't want it to go through this process called probate where the creditor has the opportunity to make a claim against it, you know, and using something like a ladybird deed to protect that property, even if a trust isn't necessary, is important. These things are often overlooked, you know, but they're low-hanging fruit. If you can go in, see an attorney, make sure you have those foundations in place, make sure you're avoiding probate, that's fundamental. And then you can also look, hey, how can I now or in the future activate a benefit to help cover the cost of very expensive, overly expensive care, okay, to make sure that I don't have to spend everything I've worked hard my whole life at the end of my life, right, just to pay for this care.
Greg McIntyre:Very well said, agreed, Brenton. Um, we're proud of our veteran clients. We're we're we're thankful for their service, and we would like to be of service to them. The benefits that we're talking about are for veterans and their spouses and spouses of deceased benefit uh of the deceased veterans. Um, and anyway, you know, Brenton, thank you for joining me in this special kind of veterans uh edition of the Elder Law Report, where we're talking about qualifying for veterans, um, aid and attendance pension benefits and other estate planning that veterans should have in place. I would offer a free consult for our veterans. You can schedule by calling 1888 999 6600 or directly online on our calendars at mcelderlaw.com/slash scheduling. Thank you.