Wills & Trusts

When a loved one has special needs, it's important to ensure that they are protected even after you are gone. Many parents, wanting to care for their children with special needs, will leave their children with disabilities a large inheritance.

However, while ensuring that a loved one who has special needs receives enough financial resources to meet their long-term care needs, it’s also important not to risk losing the eligibility for them to receive governmental aid, such as California’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid program, Medi-Cal.
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While it’s always in your best interest to begin estate planning sooner rather than later, sometimes it doesn’t always happen. So what happens if you have a loved one who lacks a Will or a Trust but is currently diagnosed with dementia?

In order to create an estate-planning document of any kind, it’s required that the individual doing so have the necessary mental capacity. When someone has dementia, it qualifies as a mental defect that could diminish his or her legal capacity.
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While we generally create trusts to hold assets for our heirs to receive at a certain point, sometimes we want the opportunity to change the trust during our lifetime. Many things can change in life and sometimes these changes are enough to want to alter your trust. You can do so, but only with a “revocable trust.”

While we know that the decision of what to name a child is extremely important, most people are unaware of the importance of naming your trust. Unlike other legal entities, such as corporations and LLCs, there are no laws when it comes to naming your trust. This is because your trust is not registered with the government.
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For those who own a home in the U.S., it’s a good idea to establish an estate plan in order to be sure that your home goes to whom you desire when you die.
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When someone is living with a disability that makes them unable to sustain gainful employment, Social Security Income (SSI), Medicaid (known as MediCal in California), and other government benefits can often help to put a roof over their head and food on their table. But in order to qualify for these benefits, the individual must make under a certain amount of money and must not have enough money to independently support them. Money sitting in their bank account can be counted against their ability to qualify.

Due to this situation, it essentially works to prevent people with special needs from building savings whether gained through inheritance, gifts or earned income. This begs the question of how can they save money without jeopardizing these benefits?

Special Needs Trust

One option is to create a Read more . . .

It’s no secret that having a comprehensive estate plan is in the best interest of you and your family. Wills in particular are strongly encouraged by legal professionals. But for blended families, are standard Wills still in their best interest?

This is an important question for about 25 percent of the U.
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As you make a living, you likely contribute a percentage of your income each paycheck to your retirement fund. If you work for yourself, you (hopefully) put away an amount of money for the same each month. As a result, your retirement ends up being one of your largest assets.

While most people worry that they haven’t saved enough money to comfortably retire, others worry about what may happen to their retirement assets should they not use them all prior to passing. This begs the question of what happens to your retirement funds in the probate process?

While most assets go through the probate process, not all of them do.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wage war on the American economy, small businesses are feeling the effects. Many business owners are left wondering about the future of their companies. But with so much else going on, they often fail to proactively plan for the future. Now is a great time to do so. Even after navigating through the era of coronavirus, if small business owners fail to establish an estate plan, some day when they die, the business will simply die with them.
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A Will is a legal document that is a valuable tool in comprehensive estate planning. A Will enables you to share what you want to happen to your assets, among other things, after you pass away. That’s why it is always a good idea to review your Will with an experienced estate planning and probate attorney on a regular basis.

When heirs wait on an estate to move through the probate process after a loved one passes, it can be both expensive and time-consuming. In order to avoid this, a living trust is often created.

A living trust is an estate-planning tool, a legal document that allows you to grant the ownership of your various assets to your beneficiaries of choice. A trustee will be appointed, who will oversee the management of your assets for your beneficiaries.