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Tag: estate planning attorney

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Tell Someone about Your Advanced Medical Directives

MP900448483If you have a health care power of attorney and living will, you should make sure that someone you trust knows where to find them.

It is very easy to get advanced medical directives today. You can often get living wills and health care powers of attorney as part of the process of admission to a hospital. If you tell a doctor about your wishes, it is often good enough for the doctor to make a note of them in his or her notes. However, getting those documents at a hospital or by telling a doctor can be a problem.

The system of medical records used in the U.S. does not make it easy for doctors to know that you have expressed your wishes ahead of time, especially when they actually need the information as The New York Times reports in "You've Detailed Your Last Wishes, but Doctors May Not See Them."

There is a potential way to mitigate the possibility that this problem will happen to you. Get your living will and your health care power of attorney ahead of time, by going to an estate planning attorney. These documents are routinely created as part of the estate planning process.

Once you have created the documents, you should store them in a secure place.  However, do not stop there. Make sure that someone you trust knows where to find the documents. That person can then get them when needed, to the doctors providing care for you.

This is not a perfect plan that will work all of the time, but it is better than relying on the current system of medical records.

Reference: New York Times (March 27, 2018) "You've Detailed Your Last Wishes, but Doctors May Not See Them."

 

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Digital Asset Availability Limitations

MP900442500Gaining access to the digital accounts of deceased loved ones is slowly becoming easier. That means that people need to think about what type of access they want to grant as part of their estate planning.

Even just a few years ago, it was almost impossible to gain access to the digital accounts of the deceased. Even when ordered to allow access by judges, tech companies would point to their terms of service and deny that access. This created many problems for families and estate administrators who needed access to those accounts for a variety of reasons.  In Maryland, the legislature passed a law which became effective on October 1, 2016.  The law allows Maryland residents to name a fiduciary, during incapacity and upon death, to access the resident's online accounts. DC has not yet enacted such legislation.  For details on how to manage your digital assets, see an estate attorney.

In response to this problem, state legislators have slowly been passing new laws to gain access to digital accounts.  As a result, some tech companies are beginning to change their policies to account for this. However, when it comes to your estate planning, do you want someone to have access to your digital accounts after you pass away? If yes, for how long should they have that access?

This subject was recently considered by the Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog in "Digital Assets Estate Planning — Alternatives to Perpetual Access."

The problem? The longer a digital account remains open without someone monitoring it, the more likely it is to be hacked by someone who can use the information in it for criminal, fraudulent or other nefarious purposes. Cases of this happening are becoming much more frequent. It sometimes means that estate administrators must deal with all of the problems associated with identity theft in addition to their more traditional duties.

Given these potential abuses, you might want to direct in your estate planning that your accounts be closed completely, after the period of time necessary to wrap up your affairs.

Reference: Wills, Trusts & Estates Prof Blog (April 6, 2018) "Digital Assets Estate Planning — Alternatives to Perpetual Access."

 

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The Disappearance of Pensions

MP900439295[1]Most American workers are no longer offered a pension by their employers. That leaves many wondering if they will ever have enough money to retire.

Pension plans have a long history in the U.S.  However, they did not become standard until the middle of the 20th century.

Labor unions advocated for pensions and companies agreed to offer them to their employees.

Even non-union employees benefited from this, as employers made pensions a standard part of their benefit packages.

In the 1970s, employers began wondering how they were going to be able to pay for everything they had promised their employees. The life expectancy of Americans was rising and that threw pension plans’ actuarial tables off.

As a result, many companies did away with pension plans for their employees and switched to 401(k) plans as the Washington Post discusses in “‘I hope I can quit working in a few years’: A preview of the U.S. without pensions.”

401(k)s were supposed to make it easier for people to retire.

The idea was that employees could have their own investment account. They could put their money into the accounts and many employers matched the amount put in.

The system was entirely voluntary. That is where the problem came in.

Over the years, most people have not put nearly enough into their accounts. As a result, they do not have enough money to retire.

That leaves many elderly people now working long after they had hoped to leave the workforce, because Social Security does not provide enough money to live on.

Reference: Washington Post (Dec. 23, 2017) “‘I hope I can quit working in a few years’: A preview of the U.S. without pensions.”

 

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You Might Need More Than One Will

Attractive Mixed Race CouplePeople who have substantial assets in more than one nation, might need more than one will to have an effective estate plan.

Ordinarily people only have one will. They cannot have more than one. If they create a second will, then the first will is no longer valid.

This principle is central to estate law.

The last will a person drew up and executed, is the only will that should be used in the absence of extraordinary circumstances to settle an estate.

However, it is not always technically true.

There are people who might need more than one will. If you have assets in more than one country and are a citizen of both countries, then you might need a valid will in each country, as the Financial Review explains in “Double trouble for dual nationals.”

The problem is that some countries have strict laws about who can inherit certain property. There are laws about how much of an estate must be given to a spouse and to children.

Most countries do not allow deviation from these laws, even for people who do not live there full time and who have a valid will in another nation.

Even if your will is valid in the U.S., it is possible that another country where you hold assets could invalidate it for the property you hold in that country.

If your estate might be subject to the laws of more than one nation, make sure that your estate plan is valid in all the nations where you own property. If that does not seem possible, then have separate estate plans for the property in each nation. You may want to see an estate planning attorney in Bethesda, MD.

Reference: Financial Review (Sep. 20, 2017) “Double trouble for dual nationals.”

 

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Tax Reform and People with Disabilities

Pexels-photo-265702Republican tax plans have some people with disabilities worried. For parents and grandparents of those people with disabilities, it suggests that a special needs trust is more important than ever.

The ramifications of the new Republican tax reform for individual Americans are still being assessed.

Some people will pay lower taxes, but a few will likely see their taxes increase. One group concerned about the new law was people with disabilities.

Not only will those with disabilities enjoy the standard deduction doubling under the Republican plan, but their taxes might decrease even further due to another provision. The plan includes a provision to lower the itemized deduction threshold for health care expenses in tax years 2017 and 2018. The new tax law lowers the deductibility threshold from 10% to 7.5% of adjusted gross income.

Not until 2019 will the threshold increase return back to 10% where it was pegged in 2016.

Accordingly, the fears expressed by The Hill in "Restructured tax code would unduly burden people with disabilities" did not come to pass.

There is something parents and grandparents of the disabled, as well as the disabled themselves, can do and that is create a special needs trust. These trusts do not ease anyone's tax burden but do allow people with special needs to have more income to help cover any increased taxes.

If you would like to learn more about special needs trusts, then talk to an estate planning attorney Bethesda Maryland for the details about setting one up.

The process is complicated and needs to be done in a particular way in order to work but an experienced attorney can help you with that.

Reference: The Hill (Nov. 24, 2017) "Restructured tax code would unduly burden people with disabilitie

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Update Your Estate Plan

man and women shake hands over a laptopIf you do not continuously update your estate plan, then it will not be as effective as you want it to be.

After people get an estate plan, the last thing many of them want to do again, is to go back to the estate planning attorney and make changes.

It can be expensive to do so and it takes time away from other things. It also forces people to think again about their own deaths.

This leads people to think that if they have already gotten an estate plan, then at least they have something. They believe that they do not need to make regular changes,  since they will always have time when they are older to change their plans to account for everything that has changed since they first got estate plans.

However, that is a bad idea as Market Watch reports in “There’s no time like the present to update your estate plan.”

The biggest issue is that you might not have as much time to update your estate plan as you think. Even the most cautious person with the healthiest habits in the world, can never know what might happen to him.

You do not have time to wait to update your estate plan to take changing circumstances into account. It is important to make changes to your estate plan, when those changes first become necessary.

If you do not continuously update your estate plan, then you risk leaving your family in a bad position when you pass away. They are the ones who will have to deal with anything that might have made sense once, but that no longer does.

Reference: Market Watch (August 7, 2017) “There’s no time like the present to update your estate plan.”

 

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You Need a Power of Attorney

No matter who you are and what you do for a living, if you can read this, then you need a general durable power of attorney.
Think for a moment about everything you routinely do to make sure that all of your finances are in order. You pay many kinds of bills, including cable, phone, utilities, rent or mortgage and many more.
You probably pay these bills every month without much thought, other than a bit of grumbling.
You are used to it. You know how to pay them. You know if there is enough money in your accounts to cover the bills. You can also get that money out of the accounts and get it where it needs to go.
However, what if something were to suddenly happen to you?
You need to consider how difficult it would be for someone else to take care of all those bills, as WMUR 9 ABC points out in "Money Matters: Why you need a durable power of attorney."
You need to think about what would happen, if you have an accident and could not pay your bills for a few months or even longer.
What would it be like to get out of the hospital and come home to a big stack of unpaid bills? How many of your services would be cut off? Would you be in any shape to pay all of the stacked up bills to quickly get everything back in order?
There is a way to avoid that scenario.
You need to go to an estate planning attorney and get a general durable power of attorney. This will allow someone that you trust to pay your bills, if you are physically or mentally unable to do so.
Reference: WMUR 9 ABC (July 6, 2017) "Money Matters: Why you need a durable power of attorney."

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Fiduciary Rule Confusion

MP900289434[2]The new fiduciary rule for financial advisers has caused a lot of confusion about what is and is not allowed with retirement accounts.

On June 9, a controversial new Department of Labor rule went into effect. The rule seems simple enough. Financial advisors who give investment advice to consumers about their retirement accounts, must act as fiduciaries of those consumers.

At least for attorneys, that is a very simple idea to understand.

Nevertheless, for consumers and their advisors the new rule has caused a lot of confusion, as the Washington Post details in “A new conflict-of-interest rule for retirement savers is causing a lot of confusion.”

The easiest way to understand what the new rule means, is that advisors have to act in the best interests of the people they are advising. Investment advice must be based on the best thing for the saver, not the advisor.

Therefore, if an advisor would earn a higher fee from suggesting one investment rather than another, he, or she cannot advise the saver on that basis. If the investment that pays the least to the advisor is better for the consumer, then that is the investment that must be recommended.

Many advisors are taking advantage of the new rule to make changes to how they manage retirement accounts.

The confusion surrounding the rule has given them the opportunity to make changes customers may not like and place the blame for them on the new rule.

If you are not sure if a change your advisor is making is really required by the new rule or if you should look for a different advisor, ask an estate planning attorney.

Reference: Washington Post (June 19, 2017) “A new conflict-of-interest rule for retirement savers is causing a lot of confusion.”

 

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Millennials Also Need Estate Plans

Attractive Mixed Race CoupleMany articles are written about what the Millennial generation wants and needs. Not enough articles are written about their need for estate plans.

Whatever field you are in, you have undoubtedly heard a lot of talk about how it relates to the Millennial generation. No one hears about it more than Millennials themselves. They like to discuss what their generation needs and their elders like to tell them about what they  think they need.

With all of the talk about how Millennials live, behave and even vote, there is not much room left for talk about what will happen if they pass away.

It might seem premature to have those discussions, because Millennials are young and expect to live for a long time. However, many of them will pass away long before they think they will.

That means they need to think about their mortality and get estate plans established, as the Christian Science Monitor points out in “Millennials, don’t forget estate planning.”

One of the most important things estate planning can do for Millennials is to get them to think about what happens to their belongings and their children after they pass away. Estate planning focuses the mind on how the decisions we make, can have a long-term impact on our loved ones.

If done properly, estate planning also gets young people to think about their need to save money for retirement, emergencies and the possibility they might pass away while they have minor children.

If you are a Millennial, then seek out an estate planning attorney.

You should go ahead and get your first estate plan, just in case something does happen. That will get you started on making important plans, which is a good habit to get into.

Reference: Christian Science Monitor (March 7, 2017) “Millennials, don’t forget estate planning.”

 

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Hire the Right Estate Planning Attorney

Business meetingMost attorneys are specialists in their particular practice areas. For your estate planning, you should hire  an attorney who is a specialist in estate planning.

Human beings can only become truly knowledgeable in a limited number of areas. We cannot all be experts on everything. This is true even within disciplines.

For example, if you wanted to learn something about the history of 16th century Britain, you would be unlikely to learn very much by asking a historian who specializes in the Roman Empire. You would want to ask a historian who specializes in English history. Even better would be asking someone who   only studies 16th century Britain.

A similar need for specialization is even more obvious, when you think about your health.

If you need heart surgery, you would not seek the services of an ear, nose and throat specialist. You would not even want a neurosurgeon. You would want a cardiac surgeon.

The same thing is true with legal matters and estate planning, as the Norman Transcript points out in “The right attorney is needed for wills and estate planning.”

Estate planning is a complicated and specialized legal field.

Only attorneys who have dedicated their lives to studying the field can be guaranteed to give you the services that you need. You might know someone who is excellent in criminal law or who excels at writing contracts. While he or she might even be willing to help you with your estate planning, you would be better off going to an estate planning expert.

Many avoidable mistakes are made when people do not seek out the services of an estate planning attorney. Do not let those mistakes happen with your estate plan.

Reference: Norman Transcript (March 5, 2017) “The right attorney is needed for wills and estate planning.”