Houston Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorney Blog

Married? Consider These Eight Estate Planning Goals for Houston Couples

Published on: May 29, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Knowing these objectives help both the couple and their estate planner determine what might be the best way to structure their estate plan. Below are eight of the most common estate planning objectives that influence a couple’s estate plan.

Planning for just you and your hopes takes a lot of work. While you may be of one mind (literally), there is much to think about, values to weigh, and options to select. But what about married couples? However close, married couples are not just of “one” mind and, accordingly, as a couple will have that much more to think through and plan. As a married couple planning for your estates, what should your objectives be?

How, where and why do married couples come together in their planning and what values or strategies should they work to support? There is no one answer because this has everything to do with the couple, their assets, their loves ones, and their many hopes besides. Nevertheless, even unique couples can find themselves pursuing common objectives by one tool or another. Forbes offered a helpful little list of eight common objectives for married couples planning their estates in a recent article titled “Eight Common Estate Planning Objectives Of Married Couples.”

Creating Inheritance Incentives For Houston Heirs

Published on: May 28, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

The vast majority of estate planning lawyers get requests for trusts that "motivate responsible behavior by the next generation," said Los Angeles lawyer Jon Gallo, who presented an overview of the topic at the annual Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning.

If you are leaving behind an inheritance for the good of your young loved ones, you likely want to ensure that the inheritance will be a blessing and not a curse. Are they ready for the responsibility of having wealth? Or will they use it for "fun" to their own detriment? With careful planning you can make the inheritance itself provide the incentive to engage in good behaviors.

Incentivized inheritances offer you the chance to give the gift of possibilities and a secure future. Properly planned, such an inheritance can make your heirs pause to respect the inheritance and take responsibility for it. The Chicago Tribune looked into the topic in a recent article titled “Making sure your kids are trustworthy.”

Care Choices For Elderly Loved Ones in Houston

Published on: May 27, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

How do I know what kind of caregiver my family member needs?How do I go about finding a home caregiver?What if I prefer to hire someone myself?

Choosing care for an elderly loved one can be challenging as it requires much research and thought. Their needs will determine the type of care, as well as the costs involved. Recently, The New York Times had some useful perspective and helpful tips on this issue with an article titled “Tips for Choosing Care for an Aging or Ailing Family Member.”

The range of needs an elderly loved one can develop, and for which you might seek aid, can run the gamut from simple to life-threatening, medical to cosmetic, and everything in between. Just as there’s not just one need, there certainly isn’t just one option out there for care. For instance, you might need someone to do basic housekeeping like cooking and cleaning. A hired homemaker can take care of these chores with gusto so long as no personal or medical care is needed. For a bit more, a home health aide can help with trickier needs like dressing and bathing assistance, but not actual medical care. And then once you get into the home healthcare arena, there are even more shades of care and ways of paying for such services.

Passing On A Prized Collection To Your Houston Heirs

Published on: May 26, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

It may take some expert help to work out how to pass the pieces to your heirs. Parents' collectibles can hold emotional meaning for adult children, and some collections carry financial value as well.

Estate planning is all about deciding how to dispose of your assets, but when it comes to assets, collections can be fairly problematic. After all, the reason it’s a “collection” is because the whole is worth something greater than the sum of its parts. You simply don’t have an unrelated list of items that you can just casually split up (or do you?). Kiplinger recently explored this challenge in an article titled “Leaving a Collection to Your Heirs.”

The fundamental question is this: what is your hope for your collection? Does the collection live on, and if so, under who’s watch? You might want the collection to stay together or to stay in the family for generations. This commonly is the case when the items are family relics or antiques. In addition, collectible assets can raise other vexing issues like possible taxation or even legal difficulties (an exotic gun collection, for example).

A Strategic Plan For Gifting for Houston Families

Published on: May 23, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Here are a few easy approaches that can reduce or avoid taxes, and are also effective wealth transfer techniques.

Gifting makes up one of the pillars of estate planning. Strategic gifting can mean all the difference between a plan for family wealth that works and a plan that doesn’t. Forbes recently offered a helpful list of strategies in an article titled “5 Family Gifting Strategies.” This article brings some important techniques front and center.

Houston Residents: Will Your Wealth Continue On?

Published on: May 22, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

To make that wealth last forever, you're probably going to need future generations to replenish that wealth.

If you have wealth to pass on to the next generation, have you hoped that your wealth will continue on for generations to come? It's a tough goal to have, considering you'll be depending on the next generation to keep the wealth going instead of squandering it away. However grand your goals may be, there is a startling trend of inheritances that fail to lift up the family.

The startling trend of failed inheritances is known as "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves", and Reuters picked up on the issue in a recent article titled “How wealthy families blow their assets.” It seems the kinds of problems that can arise within a family are multifaceted, but the numbers tell a similar story: inheritances have a failure rate at 90 percent by the third year.

Inheritance Problems for Houston Families: Fighting Over “Stuff”

Published on: May 21, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Dividing money is easy. But who gets Mom’s tea set?

When we hear about heirs fighting over an inheritance, most of us think about money as being the main issue. But money isn't everything! How you split up priceless family artifacts and other physical goods can start or end fights before they happen. So how do you plan to fairly spread the relics and keep the peace?

Sure, there are many inheritance fights over dollars and cents. On the other hand, there are even more fights leading to protracted probate battles and just plain old hurt feelings over the disposition of physical goods, relics and family keepsakes. Unfortunately, it can be more difficult to plan for the disposition of these “things” in contrast to cash.

What Do You Do With Your Houston Estate If You Have No Heirs?

Published on: May 20, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Today, with smaller families and more women choosing not to have children, “the dynamic has changed pretty significantly for the generation of baby boomers. The option of doing something charitably significant with their estates is a change,” he said.

The New York Times recently touched on the subject of estate planning without a family. It is an important topic for those without future generations to inherit their assets. If this issue affects you or someone you know, then be sure to read the article titled “In Estate Planning, Family Isn’t Always First.”

In the beginning and in the end, estate planning is always about disposing of your assets. Both in popular imagination and in the laws on the books, this commonly means the how and why of giving it to family members. Nevertheless, even with no lineal heirs to inherit your assets, there remains important decisions to be made. Optimistically, this means the sky is the limit.

Medicare Knowledge: Keeping Up With The Changes

Published on: May 19, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

Medicare has published new rules spelling out the changes, and an education campaign aimed at healthcare providers began in January. But many healthcare providers haven't grasped it, either.

As you may know, Medicare has recently undergone a big change affecting long-term care and the availability of skilled nursing or therapy. Namely, thousands are now eligible for Medicare benefits, but you might just have to point that out to care providers.

The slow transition to full adoption of the rules and new standards of care, as well as the continuing plight of those left in a lurch, is discussed in a recent Reuters article titled “New Medicare coverage of long-term care off to a rocky start.” As pointed out there, you or a loved one may be eligible for benefits, but may need to fight to receive the benefits.

Are You A Pet Owner? Add A Pet Trust To Your Estate Plan

Published on: May 16, 2014 | By McCulloch & Miller, PLLC

As with estate planning for humans, creating a pet trust is designed to give owners peace of mind. To ensure that pets will be cared for in accordance with an owner’s wishes, owners should be sure to definitively detail their pet’s standard of living and nutritional and health care.

Although pets are a beloved part of one's family, in the eyes of the law they are merely viewed as another form of property. This can make planning for the care of your pet difficult after you’re gone. While you can’t leave an inheritance to a pet, when including a “pet trust” as part of your estate plan you can provide for their care when you’re not there to provide it yourself.

“Pet trusts” have a decidedly less serious ring about them than a “Grantor Retained Annuity Trust.” Legal jargon aside, pet trusts can be plenty useful little devices for a common problem, especially amongst elderly pet lovers. In fact, a recent article in the Millionaire Corner considers a pet trust an estate planning basic. The article, titled “Estate Planning Basics: Creating a Pet Trust,” offers some practical pointers to consider.