Estate planning involves a number of strategies for protecting yourself and your loved ones. Have you taken advantage of these asset protection opportunities?
- Medicaid Planning: America is facing an enormous demographic shift. As baby boomers continue to age, an increasing percentage of the population will need long-term care – a prohibitively expensive proposition. One strategy for dealing with this is to make sure you carry a combination of adequate health and long-term care insurance. Another strategy is to build provisions into your trust, called “Medicaid triggers”, that let your successor trustee engage in Medicaid planning on your behalf in case you become disabled.
- Special Needs Planning: When you have a child, grandchild, or other beneficiary with special needs who depends on government benefits, a direct inheritance can deprive that beneficiary of those government benefits. A special needs trust protects your loved one’s benefits while at the same time maintaining their quality of life.
- Asset Protection for Beneficiaries: It is all too easy to fail to protect the inheritances of children and grandchildren. When an inheritance is left outright to a child or grandchild, instead of being shielded in a trust, that inheritance is vulnerable to a laundry list of threats. It is susceptible to creditors, to divorce settlements, to lawsuits, and even to simple poor decision-making on the part of the beneficiary. Leaving an inheritance in a properly established trust can keep it shielded from unwanted threats.
Asset protection is an important, but sometimes overlooked, aspect of estate planning. Your estate planning attorney can help to ensure that you and your loved ones are protected.
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