Many a well-intentioned family member has taken on the responsibility of caring for an aging parent only to realize that they’ve committed to more than they can handle on their own.
And many more people will need to step into a caregiver role in the coming years.
The U.S. Census Bureau projects that the population of people 65 and older will grow by approximately 50% over the next 30 years!
When you die, someone is going to benefit from the use of your car. Wouldn’t it be nice to decide now exactly who that person should be?
You can do that today – it’s easy! When registering a vehicle, you can designate a transfer-on-death (TOD) beneficiary, not unlike what you can do with a bank account.
How to designate a beneficiary
Simply complete the area reserved for this purpose on the reverse side of your registration certificate. If you do not have a registration certificate, or if you are registering a new vehicle, complete the Official Registration, Form H-13, and designate the Owner in Box 1 as “John Doe, Transfer on Death to Jane Doe.”
When you die, the transfer-on-death beneficiary need only bring a certified copy of your death certificate to the nearest Department of Vehicles office to have the registration transferred. Continue reading
If you’re confused, or unfamiliar with trusts as part of an estate plan, you’re not alone! Some people need to have a trust, others do not.
Then there’s the probate process. Does having a trust impact the probate process? Should you have a trust to avoid the probate process?
To answer your questions about trusts and probate, read on!
Over the past year, the pandemic has definitively disproved the old adage, “you can’t go home again.”
For nearly 27 million young adults, going home again became the best survival option as colleges closed or transitioned to a remote model and employers laid off massive numbers of staff.
In fact, Pew Research reports that in July of last year 52% of young adults resided with one or both of their parents. (For comparison, that percentage is 4 points higher than the corresponding one recorded during the Great Depression.)
The movie opens on a shot of a woman walking through a quaint village of cobbled alleys and charming shops. As she makes her way along the street, she is greeted by passersby and greets them in return.
She pauses to exchange a friendly word with a shopkeep who knows her name, inquires after her mother, and asks if she’d like her usual order. Her path intersects with the postman, who digs into his satchel to pull out her letters. A small boy on a bicycle nearly runs over her toes in his haste to catch up with his friends. He shouts an apology over his shoulder as she calls after him in good-natured exasperation.
It sounds idyllic, doesn’t it?
Some people joke about hoarders, but those people haven’t lived with the pain, frustration, and very real physical dangers caused by this mental illness.
While hoarding usually presents when a person is still a child, it is a disorder that—like dementia—becomes more prevalent and severe with age. It is an illness that is very difficult to treat, and one that affects not only the hoarder, but everyone around them.
Sadly, like many other mental illnesses, hoarding is often very misunderstood and even maligned. People wrongly assume that hoarding is simply a matter of someone collecting too many things or being too lazy to keep their home tidy.
For those who are new to the game, ABLE accounts are tax-free savings accounts for individuals with qualifying disabilities that began before age 26.
Created in 2014 as the ABLE Act, there are now over 20 ABLE programs to choose from and now Connecticut has its own ABLE plan!
How does an ABLE account work?
When you are putting your estate plan together, one of the advance directives you will want to create is a Designation of Conservator. It is probably something you haven’t thought about, or maybe even knew it existed! But it is really important.
What is this Designation of Conservator? It’s where you decide ahead of time who will manage your affairs – and under what certain circumstances – if you become incapacitated.
So what is a conservator?
A conservator is a person appointed by the probate court to oversee the financial and/or personal affairs of an adult who is determined by the probate court to be incapable of Continue reading
There are many ways a trustee of a special needs trust could cause harm to a beneficiary, however unintentionally. This is why many people choose to have a disability planning attorney take on this critical role.
Here are 10 things to consider when deciding who should administer a special needs trust:
1. SSI, SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid… sound confusing? It can feel like alphabet soup to the uninitiated. Does the prospective trustee understand the differences between these public benefit programs and the rules that govern them? A trustee with limited understanding could unwittingly jeopardize a beneficiary’s eligibility.
Do you have to pay tax on all gifts that you give? For the majority of Americans, the answer is a resounding NO!
So, we all know that the federal government imposes a gift tax, but did you know that only Connecticut imposes a gift tax? Luckily, if you understand how the federal government’s gift tax works, you will understand the Connecticut gift tax, but just in case you don’t, the following is a brief overview.
What is a gift?
A gift occurs whenever you transfer something to another person or certain trusts for less than the item’s fair market value. Continue reading
Connecticut Estate Planning Attorneys Blog