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By Attorney Carmine Perri

Close up of eviction noticeGoing to a nursing home is hard enough, imagine being evicted? Good news. There are laws in place to prevent that from happening.

Within a nursing home, just like any other place you call home, you are entitled to certain rights. These rights include not being able to be evicted for any reason beyond the six listed in the United States’ Code:

  1. The discharge is necessary for the resident’s welfare and his or her needs cannot be met in the facility.
  2. The resident’s health has improved and no longer needs the facility’s services.
  3. The resident is endangering the safety of others.
  4. The resident is endangering the health of others.
  5. The resident has failed to pay for (or to have paid under Medicare or Medicaid) a stay at the facility.
  6. The facility ceases to operate.

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iStock_000023479361SmallEveryone yearns for time to relax and refresh during the summer months – especially sun-starved New Englanders. But if you’re a family caregiver, a ‘carefree’ vacation may be hard to come by.

–      If you leave town, who will take your place?

–      If you bring your loved one with you, will your vacation venue be equipped for their special needs?

There’s a lot to think about. But with good planning, you can take a breather from caregiving and give yourself a well-deserved break.

Here are some helpful suggestions: Continue reading

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AdobeStock_34525943-300x200What’s the secret to happiness?

Not sure there are any secrets, but there appears to be a formula. By studying happy people, researchers have been able to find common traits and links between them. This is good news for us! It means we can take steps to actively increase our happiness. Who doesn’t want that?!

We can choose to age gracefully and happily by focusing on these six things:

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By Paul Czepiga

AdobeStock_182906497-300x193We wrote not too long ago about some Connecticut estate tax changes that occurred due to legislation passed in October 2017. That legislation tied the Connecticut gift and estate tax exemption to the federal exemption amount.

The federal exemption amount was, at the time that Connecticut tied it self to it, $5.49 million. Unexpectedly in December 2017, just two months after Connecticut’s change, as part of President Trump’s tax overhaul, the federal exemption amount suddenly increased to $11.18 million.

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AdobeStock_71412567-300x194States, including Connecticut, are looking for loopholes to soften the impact of a new $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction also known as SALT.  And the IRS wants to put a stop to local governments using creative workarounds.

In the meantime, in response to the reform, Connecticut legislature passed a new law making several state and local changes. Two of its provisions are designed as workarounds to SALT:

  1. The first provision is a new entity-level income tax on most pass-through businesses that is offset by a state personal or corporation income tax credit for the entity’s members. Because entity-level taxes remain deductible at the federal level, pass-through businesses will be able to claim this new state tax as a deductible expense against their federal taxes and pass along the benefit of the deduction to their members.
  2. The second provision is that municipalities will be allowed to provide a property tax credit to eligible taxpayers who make voluntary payments to municipally-approved nonprofits (i.e. community supporting organization) and is designed to allow taxpayers that make these payment to claim a federal contribution deduction for the donation to the nonprofit.

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AdobeStock_158377229-300x200No one looks forward to applying for Medicaid. It’s a complex and grueling process, the rules are always changing, and there are so many things that can go wrong.

Unfortunately, as is often the case, there are companies that are only too willing to take advantage of this situation. These companies claim to be able to process your Medicaid application at a low cost.  But these non-attorneys may cause their customers great harm – putting Medicaid applicants at risk for a number of serious issues including denial of eligibility, severe tax liability, loss of spousal assets and other situations that may threaten the client’s life savings and other assets.

Often it is the nursing home that refers Medicaid applicants to these companies, so there is the very real possibility of a conflict of interest.

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AdobeStock_77977180-300x200By E. Jennifer Reale

“This is the last thing Mom and Dad would have wanted” – one of the most common sentences I hear when representing clients in contested probate litigation.

When a Will or a trust or even the actions of a trustee are challenged, there often is what we call an extensive discovery, which brings to light personal information that you’d rather not go public.

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iStock_000016746886Small-300x300Gifting money is a nice thing to do for a friend or family member, but—as the saying goes—no good deed goes unpunished. If you’re not careful, your gift could turn out to be subject to the federal gift tax of up to 40%.

In part one of this series, we covered the annual and lifetime exclusions as well as lifetime exclusion on the first $11.2 million of your estate. We also talked briefly about the Connecticut state gift tax—the only one in the country—and which kinds of gifts are exempt from the tax.

In this second part of the series, we’re going to look at which kinds of gifts are subject to the gift tax, including gifts to minors.

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AdobeStock_86244892-300x237By Lynda Lee Arnold

Do you know about the new Connecticut MOLST form?

Maintaining control over medical care can be challenging in the best circumstances, but we face even more layers of complexity when dealing with the physical and emotional challenges of serious, life-limiting illness or advanced progressive frailty.

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