Kevin Pillion - Co-Executor PLLC

If you are serious about being prepared for all of the eventualities of aging, you need to understand the fact that the majority of senior citizens will need living assistance someday. Given this reality, proceeding with the notion that it is unlikely that you will ever need such care is tantamount to a wager against the odds.

If you are expecting to retire in relative comfort you are going to have to acknowledge that this is a goal that will take effort to reach rather than viewing it as an entitlement. With the above having been stated, statistics tell us that a very high percentage of people are unprepared for retirement.

Many people are surprised when they hear just how expensive long-term care has become these days. If you look at the average length of stay which is between two and four years, coupled with the average costs you may be faced with an expense that exceeds $200,000 toward the end of your life.

Transferring assets to your loved ones is the objective when you are planning your estate, and it is important to understand the fact that you have multiple options to this end. You may automatically think that you will be using a last Will to express your wishes, but when you look into the details you may find that this is not the best choice for you.

If your estate is valued above a certain amount, your heirs will be faced with the prospect of paying the federal estate tax. At the present time the estate tax exclusion is $5,120,000 and the rate of the tax is 35%. So the portion of your estate that exceeds the exclusion amount is subject to the 35% tax.

If you are planning for the future, you probably have considered the use of life insurance. This can be a great tool to help protect your loved ones. However, many people don’t carefully consider their life insurance needs. Take a look at the information below, to better understand the need for enough life insurance coverage. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to discuss life insurance options, contact an estate planning attorney.

If you have friends and family members who mean the world to you, it’s important to discuss their need for an estate plan. This can be easy to approach if you’ve recently handled your planning affairs. You likely want to make sure that your loved ones will always be protected with an estate plan, throughout all of life’s events.

If your loved one is in need of long term care, you’re probably taking the time to compare different long term care facilities and options. Many seniors prefer to age at home so that they’re able to live a more comfortable life in a familiar environment. If you’re considering at home care for your loved one, you will need to carefully consider his or her needs.

Few people want to have to talk about estate planning because it involves uncomfortable subjects like money, health, disability, death, and dying. However, having a conversation or series of conversations over the years truly will benefit you and your family.

Your will or revocable living trust may indicate that if you are legally separated or divorced, your ex will be deemed to have predeceased you and cannot inherit from you. However, certain plan documents containing beneficiary designations – such life insurance, annuities, retirement plans, and pensions - do not have this same provision. These later plan documents rule and can result in your ex inheriting from you.

Sometimes the unthinkable can occur, and it can be all the more tragic if there are no estate planning tools in place to address the ‘what ifs. It’s unfortunate that more young couples don’t have an estate plan in place, neither a basic will nor durable power of attorney. They often wait until after they have started a family, or when they purchase their first home or even when they reach their 30’s or 40’s.

There are people out there who feel as though estate planning is something that is only relevant to those who reach an advanced age. Of course it is pure common sense to recognize the fact that the likelihood of your death becomes greater as you age, but this does not mean that estate planning is something that only senior citizens need to engage in.

Estate planning attorneys will often say that it is important to avoid asset erosion when you are engaged in legacy planning. This causes a lot of people to scratch their heads. They wonder why there should be any reason to be concerned about the value of their assets being reduced simply because they pass away and want to transfer them to family members.

You hear a lot about probate avoidance when you start to delve into the subject of estate planning, so let's take a look at three of the most common reasons why people choose to avoid probate. When you use a last will as your primary vehicle of asset transfer there could be disgruntled parties who learn of your wishes and feel as though they want to contest them.

A charitable remainder unitrust or CRUT is a financial instrument that is utilized to provide the grantor with tax efficient income while simultaneously protecting assets placed into the trust. The grantor would generally act as the beneficiary and the trustee, but he or she must also name a charitable beneficiary.

Once in a while you hear a statistic that is so jaw-dropping you question whether or not somebody made a mistake in passing it along. In the elder law community there is one of these that has been circulating for the past several months that is really attention-getting.

The initials “LLC” in a financial planning context stand for a "limited liability company." (Note that the “C” stands for company rather than corporation.) The limited liability company is somewhat of a hybrid enterprise that has some of the characteristics of a corporation while also resembling a sole proprietorship or partnership depending on whether or not there is more than one member.

Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock you are aware of the fact that the powers that be in Washington are consumed with the matter of the federal deficit. A while back a deal was struck to raise the debt ceiling so that the government could remain operable. This agreement included the appointment of a congressional committee that must come up with a plan to reduce the federal debt by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

When you're making plans for your retirement it is important to have a cogent and realistic understanding of the limitations of Social Security. You can't get into the head of every person who is unprepared for retirement, but it would be logical to assume that a high percentage of individuals have unreasonable expectations regarding how far Social Security will get them.

It could seem as though there should be no problem transferring assets to others without incurring any undue expenses. Unfortunately, the IRS code does in fact stand in the way of cost-free asset transfers in many cases and this is largely due to the existence of the gift tax.

There are some statistics that you run across that are kind of hard to believe if you have not already done some research into the subject in question.

There are those who refer to the federal estate tax as the "death tax, «and though this can sound like a flippancy there is actually reasonable logic to support this name. To explain, let's take a look at the anatomy of this levy.