There are several ways to protect your assets, and preserve them for your heirs. One way to do that is through a family trust. When someone decides to set up a family trust, it is meant to benefit their relatives. It is meant to specifically benefit the person’s family, which can include blood relatives, relations by marriage, or relations by law, in the case of adoption. These can be revocable or irrevocable trusts and are essentially a subcategory of living trusts.
A living trust is set up to benefit both you and your heirs throughout your and their lifetimes. It is designed to hold your assets safely within it and give you the power to organize it how you would like. A living trust helps to avoid probate and provide for a smooth transfer of assets after a person dies. Transferring assets into a trust can save years and thousands of dollars in legal fees. However, not all of your assets should be included in a living trust, for various reasons. We will go over those here.
The reality of aging is a part of life, and, as unpleasant as it may be, it may lead to needing long-term care before we pass away.
Whether it is caring for a specific cognitive illness, such as Alzheimer’s disease, or any number of physical ailments that leave a person unable to care for themselves, going into nursing home care requires us to examine a host of issues. This includes the costs of a nursing home and how to protect your assets.
When a person decides to set up a family trust, it is meant to benefit his or her relatives. A family trust is meant to specifically benefit the person’s family, which may include blood relatives, relations by marriage, or by relations by law, in the case of adoption. A family trust can be a revocable or an irrevocable trust which is a subcategory of living trusts.
It is probably safe to assume that a conversation about a prenup is not what most people want to think about. After all, none of us think we will be in a position to actually need to know what a prenup protects, and how it works, especially after we’ve just committed to the person we love for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, things do not always work out, and life does not always go the way we planned.
It is an unfortunate fact of life. When you or a loved one reaches the stage of life, where you may need long-term care or a nursing home, Medicaid can help to cover the cost, as most of us will run out of the money needed to pay for these facilities. However, when the person dies, Medicaid will go after any assets they have in order to pay back what was paid out for the person, in a process called the Medicaid Estate Recovery plan.
As we grow older, the possibility that a spouse may need long-term care in a nursing home grows. It is a difficult part of life to face, and the questions that go along with it can be difficult as well. Among the main concerns is protecting your assets, should a spouse end up in a nursing home for long-term care.
While watching our parents grow from the people who took care of us into elderly adults who, in turn, need care can be difficult, it’s important that we’re aware of what we can do to protect them mentally, physically, and financially. Concerning the latter, there are ways to protect elderly parents’ assets. And while it may seem complicated, there are ways to ensure it happens.
Protecting assets from a nursing home is the new
challenge for many because they risk losing their assets if one of them becomes
a resident to a nursing home.
You should plan ahead and protect your assets. As one
grows older, the concern of losing all or some of their properties to nursing
home grows, and they start to plan and consider options available to protect
their assets.
A gift or a transfer is any activity that involves
selling, gifting, and exchange of assets for a less amount than what is in the
market. Also, a transfer could be a charitable asset transfer, such as a
charity. However, this could be disputed if the total balance of the assets can
be settled for the benefit of the claimant.
Initially, there are ways of protecting assets instead of
giving money away. This is where an asset protection trust comes into play.
