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Elder Law can cover a variety of legal topics concerning the retired population. What I specialize in is long-term care planning and asset-protection planning. I help individuals and families protect their most important assets from being lost to the high costs of extensive long-term care requirements.

Many people have the impression that estate planning is only for the super-rich. Estate planning is just about making sure that your loved ones are taken care of as well as possible after you’re gone. Young, working parents trying to save for their children’s college fund need an estate plan just as much as retired millionaires. The methods utilized may differ, but the end goal is always the same: ensuring your family is taken care of even if you are not around. Typical estate plans usually center around a will, a trust, or both.

The cost of my legal services varies and depends on a few factors, the largest of which being the type of servicing I would be rendering (will, trust, combination, second-marriage planning, etc.). The fees for my services will be spelled in detail out during the initial appointment. I almost exclusively work on flat fees, so you will leave the initial appointment knowing exactly how much my services will cost.

Estate planning is not a matter of the size or value of your estate. It’s a matter of two things: your family and your wishes. If you have a family, you should have an estate plan to ensure that they are properly taken care of after you pass on. Even if you do not have a family but have hopes for how your estate is to be utilized after you’re gone (benefiting a charity, for example), you need a well-drafted estate plan to ensure that happens.

There really is no “better” option. Both options ultimately work! There may indeed be a more appropriate option for you and your individual circumstances, though. Factors to consider may include whether you have minor children, the size of your estate, whether you own property in other states, your current budget, and so forth.

If your only goal, and I mean your absolute, only goal, when planning your estate, then planning solely with beneficiary designations might work for you. But, and this is a big but, if you want to engage in any type of planning to ensure that your estate is best protected and best utilized no matter what happens in your life, your spouse’s life, or your family’s life, beneficiary designations offer no such planning. No life goes 100% as planned, and only a fully fleshed-out estate plan can account for the changes that will occur.

A good rule of thumb is to have your estate plan reviewed by an attorney either shortly after any major change in your or your family’s lives or every five years, whichever is shorter. Even if nothing changes about your life, you’ll want to have a quick review in case there had been any changes in the law that should be addressed in your estate plan.

A will is essentially a set of instructions that you leave to the court that states your wishes as to
 -who will be in charge of ensuring your estate is settled correctly (the personal representative),
 -who will be named guardians for you minor children, and
 -how and to whom will my estate be divided.

Your will controls everything that will go through probate, but that’s not necessarily everything in your estate. Some assets avoid probate by way of beneficiary designations (like you would have on your life insurance policies and IRAs) or if they are jointly owned with somebody else (like some real estate or bank accounts, which will transfer in total to the surviving joint owner). This is why have a will that spells out your wishes may not be enough. You need to be aware of your beneficiary designations and how your property is titled in order to properly design how your estate will pass after you are gone.

A will is 100% amendable and revocable, meaning you can change one or more items within the will or toss the whole thing out altogether. Such changes, however, should be made with as much care as you put into drafting the will in the first place.

Probate is the court system designed to distribute a deceased individual’s assets to the rightful heirs after all the deceased individual’s creditors have been satisfied. It will very likely be the method your assets will be distributed if you either have no estate plan at all or have a will-based estate plan.

Probate lengths vary depending on the complexity of the proceedings, whether or not anyone makes a legal challenge to any part of the proceedings, and where the probate is taking place. In Wisconsin, it is very typical for probates to take about one year, give or take a few months.

Without any estate plan whatsoever, the assets you own that do not have beneficiary designations or are jointly owned with someone will still go through probate and will be distributed according to your state statutes. This is call intestate proceedings. The laws that govern these proceedings are absolutely “one size fits all” and do not allow for any nuance or personalization.

A trust is a legally-recognized entity that holds assets for the benefit of a beneficiary or group of beneficiaries.
For estate planning purposes, it’s easier just to look at a trust as a property agreement that you make with either yourself (if you’re single) or your spouse that dictates how your property will be used during your lifetime and what will happen to it after your death.

Trusts are wonderful estate planning tools for persons who want to be able to plan their estate with great detail but would also like for their estate to avoid probate. Further, certain trust can be used to protect assets from being lost to long-term care costs.

Your trust will only have control over assets which it has legal title to. So, if you pass away with a trust, but had never arranged your assets to either be re-titled to the trust or beneficiary designated to a trust, the benefits of having a trust will disappear completely.

Assets owned by a trust are controlled by the trustee. For people utilizing trusts solely as an estate planning tool, they will likely be their own trustees. For people utilizing trusts as a means to protect assets from long-term care costs, some other individual (likely a family member) or agency will likely serve as trustee.

Only a trust’s beneficiaries may benefit from trust assets. When the trust is formed for estate planning purposes only, the trustmakers (the people who form the trust) will likely be beneficiaries. If the trust is formed for asset-protection, the trustmakers may not be beneficiaries of the trust.

A revocable trust is primarily a tool for estate planning for families that would like to avoid probate. Irrevocable trusts can also be used to avoid probate, but may also be used to protect assets from long-term care and can also prove useful to high net worth families who want to reduce potential estate tax consequences.

Trust administration, also called trust settlement, is the process of fulfilling the directions left in a trust document after the trustmaker or trustmakers have passed away. It involves many of the same steps as probate, but is often accomplished in much less time than probate and with less administrative expenses.

Trust administration typically costs 2-3% of the trust’s total value. This may not seem like a great difference from the typical probate fees of 3-8% of the total estate value, but it could be a significant amount depending on the size of the estate. For example, a difference of even 2% in an estate of $500,000 would mean $10,000 that is kept in the family rather than lost in fees.

It’s never too early to get a will, but three major life events usually trigger the real need for one: getting married, buying a house, and having children. When you have children, a will is an absolute need. A will is the only way to nominate guardians for your children should you pass before they become adults.

If the children’s other parent is still alive, the children will very likely stay in the custody of that parent. But if both parents are gone, a judge will decide who will care for your children, and anyone can ask to be considered. This could lead to a great amount of family in-fighting, and may result in a choice of guardian for your children that you would not have wanted.

State law dictates that minor children can receive an inheritance of any size, but it must remain in the control of a custodian until that child becomes a legal adult at age 18. The custodian then controls the inheritance and has the discretion as to how to use it for the benefit of the child.

This is a very common concern. The thought of an 18-year-old suddenly gaining control of a large sum of money makes many parents wary. But with proper planning, you can ensure that your children will always benefit from their inheritance, but may not gain actual control and spending authority until they reach a more mature age.

Any trust-based estate plan should be accompanied by a will. If you have minor children, you cannot nominate guardians for them in a trust; only a will. Further, a trust only can control the assets that are titled in its name. It is very common for trust-based plans to having accompanying wills to “pour over” any assets into the trust after the trustmaker dies that hadn’t previously been properly assigned to the trust.

For the unprepared, long-term care costs can easily swallow an entire estate. In the Oshkosh area, the median cost of a private room at a nursing home is over $112,000 per year. And the average cost for a room at an assisted living facility is over $56,000 per year.

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, persons age 65 and older have a 70% chance of needing long-term care at some point in their lifetime. That means a married couple over 65 has a 91% chance that at least one spouse will require long-term care eventually.

The sooner the better! But it largely depends on the type of planning you are looking for. Trust-based planning with an Elder Law attorney can usually wait until your retirement years, but insurance-based planning will have to start much sooner than that.

You should look at long-term care insurance options long before you’d ever need it. The longer you wait, the costlier it will be and the fewer options you will have. The best time to look around at options is in your 40s and 50s. Affordable options may still be available to you in your 60s, but it’s usually best to get your foot in the door before then.

Insurance is the first line of defense against long-term care costs, but it is not the only line of defense. An experienced Elder Law attorney can reveal the options you still have to help ensure that long-term care costs won’t take your bottom dollar from you.

As said earlier, insurance is the first line of defense, but sometimes your policy might not be enough. Many policies have daily, monthly, and lifetime benefit limits that may prevent you from getting all the help you need. Even if you have a long-term care policy, it’s best to still consult with an Elder Law attorney to learn how you can better safeguard your most prized assets.

The alternative to insurance is qualifying for Medicaid. Experienced Elder Law attorneys can help you become qualified for Medicaid without spending through every asset you’ve acquired during your years and decades of hard work and saving. Typical planning will incorporate an irrevocable trust which, if drafted correctly, will protect the assets transferred into it from having to be spent down to pay for long-term care costs.

There is no hard-and-fast rule of what age you should be before engaging in long-term care planning with an Elder Law attorney, but there typically is no need until you are in your 60s (this may differ depending on one’s health and family history). The goal is to complete your long-term care planning at least five years before your need for long-term care arises. Of course, nobody knows for sure when that time will come, but it’s always better to be too early than too late.

It’s certainly too late for insurance, but it’s never too late to meet with an Elder Law attorney to discuss your options. Experienced Elder Law attorneys can typically protect at least 50% of an individual’s assets even if that individual is already in the nursing home.

There is a wide variety of types of assets that can be preserved when you work with an experienced Elder Law attorney, but the most popular assets to protect and easiest to work with tend to be real estate and life insurance.

Medicaid is a federal service that is administered uniquely by every state. Amongst its many services, it will assist individuals receiving long-term care by covering the costs up and above that individual’s income.

A married couple can own a home, a vehicle, all your personal effects, pre-paid funeral or burial services, the qualified retirement accounts (IRAs, Roths, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, etc.) of the spouse not receiving care, and additional assets that cannot exceed $128,640 in total value (2020 figures). A single individual may own a home (although the State will put a lien on the home and come to collect when it is sold or the individual passes away), a vehicle, personal effects, prepaid funeral or burial services, and additional assets that cannot exceed $2000.

Not necessarily. While waiting out the five years is one strategy, it might not be the best. Sometimes, with proper planning with an Elder Law attorney, an individual can plan for a penalty period by creating a new source of income, usually utilizing annuities. Sometimes it’s better to find a way to get through a penalty period rather than wait out the remainder of the five years.

Generally, disability planning comes down to have four properly executed documents commonly called “disability documents”: a Power of Attorney for Finances, a Power of Attorney for Health Care, a Living Wil, and a HIPAA authorization.