Medicaid planning seeks to ensure that your assets provide you quality care while maximizing what you pass on to your heirs. The probability that you will need long-term care is extraordinarily high: More than half of those turning 65 will need some type of long-term care services in their lifetimes. As life expectancy continues to [...]
I want to talk to you today about a Medicaid qualification issue. Most people are familiar with what they call the “five-year rule” or the “sixty-month look back.” The issue is whether you are disqualified from Medicaid if you've given away too much money during the five-year look back. And people think, [...]
Most people understand that Medicaid is for the poor, and they may know a family member who lacks assets to pay for a decent nursing home and was put in a "Medicaid facility." If you have known someone in such a facility, you probably weren't impressed with the care. So why would I want to [...]
Guardianship is a strange word that most lawyers are not even familiar with. That is why to represent someone in a guardianship matter, the attorney has to have a special certification from the State Bar of Texas. At Pyke & Associates, all of our attorneys have those certifications. Guardianship is the legal process of the [...]
If your parent has died and you are entitled to their house, how do you get the deed? Property is normally transferred by instruments called deeds from one person to the next. The deeds are all recorded in the County Clerk's office so that a title examiner can research and find the history of a [...]
Hi, here’s a common question we get: Can my ex spouse interfere with my estate? And the answer is, yes, they can. They can’t do it directly because an ex spouse is not someone who will inherit from you, and if there was ever a will that left them anything, the divorce nullifies [...]
Estate Tax Planning in a Biden Presidency (part 4) The Biden proposal to eliminate a step-up in basis is radical and dramatic. Being both radical and dramatic substantially decreases its chance of success in the legislative process, but what are the "step-up" basis rules? To read about other parts of his proposal, see our prior [...]
Estate Tax Planning in a Biden Presidency (part 3) As we have been discussing (see links to part 1 and part 2), those in the “donut hole” (an estate between $6 and $11 million per person or $12 to $22 million per couple), might consider estate tax planning. An obvious question is, can you take [...]
Estate Tax Planning in a Biden Presidency (part 2) In my memory, donut holes are delicious! But when you are in the “donut hole” it isn’t a good thing. Who knows why? You should be most concerned about the impact of a Biden Presidency on estate tax planning if you are in this “donut hole”: [...]
Estate Tax Planning in a Biden Presidency (part 1) To begin with, let’s NOT talk politics! But reality is, we are in the process of changing administrations, and possibly a change of control of the Senate. The November election has raised the very real possibility that a new tax act will be proposed by [...]