FAQ
An estate is anything and everything you own. It is your house and your accounts, and all of the stuff in your house. Everyone has an estate; it’s just that everyone has different size estates.
Yes. Everyone has an estate, thus everyone needs a plan. What goes into your plan will depend on your particular set of facts and goals. Whether you are 18 or 118, you need an estate plan.
This is the million-dollar question. The answer is before you die or become incapacitated. The trick is that we don’t really know when that will occur. The best advice is to get a plan in place, and then review it every 3-5 years to make sure it still works and achieves your goals.
You have to be a legal adult. So your first estate plan should happen when you are eighteen. Most people do not think about doing it until they are 55 or older, but that is taking on a lot of risk.
You want to work with an attorney who will listen to your situation and your goals. Your attorney should provide you several options to achieve those goals, and collaborate with you to develop a plan that balances the pros and cons of solution.
The simple answer is “yes”. However, it is never advisable to proceed down a path that is not known to you. Thinking that you have planned for your death or incapacity is much different than actually being planned. There are many traps for the unwary, so getting good advice is the key to properly plan your estate.
Every estate has its own nuances. So the cost to achieve a particular family’s goals is different in each case. However, most foundational estate plans, when properly formulated, range from $3,500 to $5,500.
When you don’t have a formal estate plan, the State that you reside gives you one – it’s called the laws of intestacy. Through the State’s laws and court system, decision makers will be selected, and distributions made; and this may not align with what you would have wanted.
No. There is not a reading of a Will, nor a reading of a Trust. These are elements to movies and tv shows that make things more interesting for the viewers. When someone dies, the estate planning documents (Will or Trust) need to be found, and it is always prudent to go to your attorney to determine next steps.
No. You are free to go to the attorney you feel most comfortable with.
This is a loaded question. To be more precise, “do you have to pay an inheritance tax?” The answer is typically ‘no’. There is no federal inheritance tax, and very few states have an inheritance tax, though Kentucky is one of them (Indiana, New Mexico, and Arizona all do not have inheritance taxes).
If you meant “estate tax”, then the answer is still typically ‘no’. At the federal level the amount you can have before an estate tax is due is over $13.6 million (in 2024). A few states have an estate tax as well, however, Indiana, Kentucky, New Mexico, and Arizona do not.
Medicare is the government program to provide health insurance (typically to retirees). Medicaid is to provide health and support to people with no money (when you have less than $2,000).
This is a common misperception. It is unconstitutional for the US government to take any of your assets. What creates this misperception is that the government, through the Medicaid program, will pay for your nursing home if you don’t have money to pay for it yourself. While you need the care that a nursing home provides, you will pay for those services (as you pay for all of the services you need or want in your life), however once you run out of your own money, the nursing home will not kick you out because the government will then pay for your care.
A trust, presuming it is a revocable or changeable trust, can only be changed by the maker of the trust, known as the trustor or grantor.
Powers of attorney are not ‘gotten’, they are ‘given’. This means that your parent needs to have a power of attorney in place, naming you as the agent, before it is actually needed. Typically, once the power of attorney is needed, it is too late, as your parent will most likely not have the mental capacity to sign a legal document at that point.
A trust can last as long as it needs to. The only legal requirement is that it does not violate the Rule Against Perpetuities – this simply means it cannot last forever
Our mission at Waters, Tyler, Hofmann & Scott, LLC, is to provide quality legal services for our clients in Indiana and Kentucky.
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