Life insurance — a useful tool for estate planning and management
An illiquid estate can be very difficult to administer. If the estate assets include real estate or a business to be sold, there can be a need for substantial cash to maintain these pending sale. If the beneficiaries of the Estate are Class C (siblings) or Class D (all others), New Jersey Transfer Inheritance Tax will need to be paid. Many Wills direct that these taxes be paid from the estate...
Estate planning pointers for unmarried couples
Are you in a long-term relationship, or even engaged to be married? Is that wedding postponed indefinitely due to the current pandemic? Do you have children who would need a guardian if you pass away? Do you have children from a previous relationship? Do you want to make sure that your partner is the one who will inherit your estate, or will be the one who’s allowed to handle your...
NJ Medicaid confirms that CARES payments won’t interrupt benefits
Previously we reported on concerns about whether the $1200 per person payments or the $600 unemployment enhancements that would be arriving via the CARES ACT would be counted as income or a resource which would affect the means-tested benefits being received under New Jersey’s Medicaid (NJ FamilyCare) programs. We’re happy to report that the Director of DMAHS has released a...
Applications for Medicaid/MLTSS are still being accepted at the County Boards of Social Services
Increasing numbers of frail elderly are trying to arrange for care in their houses or apartments because admission to nursing facilities is so problematic at this time. About one third of the state’s skilled nursing facilities are considered to be incapable of appropriately isolating COVID-19 patients, and have been barred from any new admissions. Of course, arranging for home care is...
Health Care Proxies and Advance Directives help Doctors in critical care of patients
The New Jersey Department of Health issued a comprehensive statement concerning triage and the care of COVID-19 patients in different kinds of licensed health care facilities. This is one among many directives issued in the past six weeks. Read the directive here: FinalAllocationPolicy4.11.20v2
As the patient is being treated, many decisions need to be made along the way, often in rapid-fire...
Good Reasons to have a Power of Attorney in Place After Age 18
Once a person turns 18, s/he is presumed competent in the eyes of the law and their parents are no longer actually authorized to sign documents for them. This can create a vacuum especially if the parents have generally been managing everything for this young adult.
At the other end of the spectrum, older adults may not have anybody who actually has any legal authority to handle things for...
Special Needs Trusts continue to be Vital for People with Disabilities
The term “special needs trust” is used to refer to a trust that’s for benefit of a person with disabilities who depends on means-tested public benefits that have income limits or resource/asset limits. Sometimes these are “first party trusts” — created by the disabled person (over age 18) or his parent, grandparent, or guardian with court permission, or by a...
More requirements placed on skilled nursing facilities to address the pandemic, but some waivers as well
The State’s long-term care population are caught behind the proverbial rock and a hard place. Despite all efforts, COVID-19 has spread rampantly in the past 5 weeks through many if not most of the State’s long-term care facilities, as you have read in the newspapers and other media. The rules of the road keep changing and it can be hard to keep up with what’s been ordered by...
Update on Care and Emergency Directives Affecting Residents of Nursing Homes
Governor Murphy this week signed into law S2333/A3910, an Act granting civil immunities to health care workers and facilities for actions taken in good faith during the declared state of emergency. The act also waives certain professional licensing restrictions and requirements on health care personnel to quickly expand the health care work force in an effort to ease the traumatic staffing...
What do you Do if You Can’t find the Will?
What do you do if you can’t find the Will? Your loved one has passed away, you have pulled yourself through the mourning period, and now you are ready to tackle the estate. You remember that your loved one had a Will — maybe they kept mentioning it, or maybe you knew that they had signed it at their lawyer’s office at some point. You remember that they had told you they were...