.: stage 2 planning
Health Care and Estate Planning
As you and your loved ones get older its important to plan for future health care issues as well as addressing estate planning issues. You should review the following three areas with a professional(s): Health Care Options, Asset Protection & Preservation, and Estate Planning. You and your family should carefully review your concerns, goals, and options to devise a plan for each of these areas:
Health Care Options
Determining what future level of care that may be needed may be difficult to predict. We help families by getting to know their current situation, needs, and concerns and then providing guidance that gives them the best chance to develop the proper care plan. There are many levels of care between home health care and a nursing home. We can help you to review your current insurance coverage and determine what benefits are available. Also, we can help you to determine if long term care insurance or other programs make sense.
If you think a loved one is heading down a path of needing care you should consider several factors, including:
- Self-supporting ability to conduct daily needs/activities
- Competency/cognitive abilities
- Desire to remain in their home vs. how accepting person would be to different levels of care including entering a nursing home
- Safety concerns...think about how safe it is for person to be alone in home
- Family help... will family members participate in care
Asset Protection & Preservation
Financial planning is critical to maintain and preserve your loved ones assets.
Nursing home costs as well as home health care costs are expensive. The question becomes how are these costs going to be paid. Generally there are only three potential sources of funds:
- Self-paying out of your loved one’s/family assets
- Long-term care insurance if you have it
- Qualifying for and receiving long term care Medicaid benefits.
You need to review your loved ones Health care plan, Medicare benefits and Supplemental Medicare benefits, if any. A review of your loved one’s assets also needs to be done, including reviewing how each asset is titled. You need to review the current state and federal laws and guidelines regarding any transfer or gifting of assets in order to legally protect your assets.
Estate Planning
A review of any existing estate planning documents should be done first. An estate planning attorney should be consulted to help you in this process. Then you can determine what other documents you may need.. Generally Durable Powers of Attorney (which allows the appointed person whom you choose to handle your financial affairs) and Health Care Proxies/Living Wills (which allows the appointed person whom you choose to make medical decisions for you if you are incapacitated) are crucial documents to have. Also wills and trusts are often needed. Any or all of these documents may be needed. If there are existing documents in place, they may need to be updated or replaced, especially if they are outdated. Finally, as stated above, different strategies can be explored to legally protect assets, save taxes and preserve your estate.
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