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Helping Families See Eye to Eye

What happens when family members find themselves at an impasse over a decision about how to care for an aging parent or a loved one with disabilities? Or manage that person’s financial assets?

How can you move forward when it seems as if you’ve exhausted all avenues of communication, but everyone is still divided?

Complex and emotionally charged family relationships can become strained during times of stress or crisis, making even the simplest conversations impossible. Our experience helping hundreds of families navigating complicated decisions has shown us time and again that most families can benefit from having an impartial third party facilitate family conversations.

For this reason, we are pleased to announce the addition of Amy Sereday, a Family Meeting Facilitator, to the CzepigaDalyPope staff. Amy, who will Continue reading

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mosaic-300x240By  Kathleen D. Tetreault

Shelter is one of life’s basic necessities.  Yet simply because something is necessary, does not mean that it is easy to acquire.

Perhaps this sobering truth is best known by aging parents of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD), who wonder where their adult child will live, and how he or she will be cared for, when they are no longer around.

Housing for individuals with I/DD is a complex mosaic with pieces uniquely shaped to each person’s particular needs and circumstances.  In crafting this mosaic, there are three key questions that will help to guide you along the way: Continue reading

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AdobeStock_78991469-300x190All major life transitions require preparation and adaptation. Graduation, moving into your first apartment, landing your first job, getting married, having kids, changing careers, retiring — each of these life events typically comes with a lot of planning. Becoming a caregiver for an aging parent, however, is an event that takes many people by surprise.

Sometimes, there’s a sudden health crisis like a stroke or a deteriorating chronic condition. Other times, the turning point is a long time coming, but is obscured by denial.

Many of the 65 million Americans who provide care for a loved one wish they could go back and take more time to prepare. They wish they had known which questions to ask, which steps to take, and how to best assess the situation so that they could guarantee the best quality of life for their parents and themselves.

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AdobeStock_100981959-300x200By Lara Schneider Bomzer

Governor Malloy has revealed his new budget plan to reduce a deficit close to $1.7 billion.  The plan includes cuts designed to freeze the number of recipients of who may be eligible for the “Category 2” Connecticut Home Care Program for the Elders.  These are recipients who need care at home, but whose asset levels exceed Medicaid eligibility requirements.

Under the Governor’s plan, the current 2,500 slots would be frozen by June 30th.  If anyone were to leave the program after that, then a new person could enroll. Continue reading

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AdobeStock_100520783-300x200By Brendan F. Daly

Clients frequently ask me what effect repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have on Medicaid. The answer depends on which version you read (the two leading contenders: House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan or Health and Human Secretary Tom Price’s).

Most of the proposals have one element in common: a conversion to Medicaid block grants.

What does this mean?

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AdobeStock_108191911-300x200By Paul T. Czepiga

I just read a lot of detail on the Governor’s proposed budget that he released this week. In the midst of the drastic news about expenditure cut, there was actually some good news.

The Governor is proposing to increase Connecticut’s gift tax and estate tax exemption to be at the same level as the federal government’s.

Currently the Connecticut exemption amount is $2.0 million and the federal exemption is $5.49 million. The increase in

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AdobeStock_13026636-3-300x205As parents, we all want what’s best for our children, but we also realize that they don’t always know what’s best for them.

When considering how your financial assets will be distributed upon your death, assessing your children’s level of financial responsibility is a critical component of making effective choices and creating a solution for a lasting legacy.

The truth is, developing good money management skills can take an entire lifetime.

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AdobeStock_72976655-300x200If you decided not to make any resolutions for the New Year, we’d like to encourage you to reconsider:

Make it a point in 2017 to review your estate plan!

Why?

You may think once you’ve had it drafted that, like the old infomercial tagline, you can just “set it, and forget it.”

Wrong!

Even a plan that is only a few years old can be seriously outdated. Continue reading

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By Paul T. Czepiga

Connecticut residents are exposed to both a federal estate tax and a Connecticut estate tax if their net worth at death exceed a certain level.

Unfortunately, the net worth level at which these taxes apply, and how they apply, is different for the federal estate tax and for the Connecticut estate tax. (Watch Paul spell it out in this video.)

Here is a quick walk through of how these taxes work and the tension that is created by having two different thresholds:

The federal estate tax threshold is $5.49 million (it is indexed for inflation and will likely increase each year). This means that Continue reading

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