Spousal refusal is a legally valid Medicaid planning option in New York. By way of background, certain income and assets are exempt from Medicaid if there is a spouse. Generally, the spouse at home, known as the “community spouse” may keep about $3,850 per month of the couple’s combined income and up to about $150,000 of the assets or “resources”. Not included in those figures are any other exempt assets, such as a home (up to about $1,000,000 of the equity only) and one automobile. The spouse who is being cared for in a facility is known as the “institutionalized spouse”. Many a spouse has ad ..read more

For health care decision-making, when a doctor determines you are unable to make medical decisions for yourself, New York has the Health Care Proxy. The proxy, or agent, may make any medical decision for you except one – they cannot withdraw life sustaining measures, such as feeding tubes or a ventilator, unless they can prove this is what you actually wanted. There are two ways to show that, in situations where there is no reasonable expectation of recovery from extreme disability, and there is no meaningful existence, you do not wish to be kept alive by artificial means. First, you may state ..read more

A client came in to see us for their follow-up consultation.  The client shared that, in between their two meetings with us, the husband‘s brother had suffered a stroke and was now in a rehabilitation facility.  He was a bachelor.  He had no power of attorney or health care proxy.  He may or may not have had a will — they didn’t know.  Further, they were unable to get access to his apartment to clean out the fridge and get his clothes because he had failed to put them on the list of persons approved to enter in the event of an emergency. One of the most overlooked area ..read more

“Elder Law Estate Planning” is an area of law that combines features of both elder law (disability planning) and estate planning (death planning) and relates mostly to the needs of the middle class. Estate planning was formerly only for the wealthy, who wanted to shelter their assets from taxes and pass more on to their heirs. But today estate planning is also needed by the middle class who may have assets exceeding one million dollars, especially when you consider life insurance in the mix. Estate planning with trusts became popular starting in 1991 when AARP published “A Consumer Report on P ..read more

According to the New York State Bar Association, “medical aid in dying is a medical practice that has been adopted in ten US jurisdictions (WA, MT, VT, CA, CO, D.C., HI, ME, NJ, NM) that allows a terminally ill, mentally capable adult with a prognosis of six months or less to live to request from their doctor a prescription for medication they can decide to self-ingest to die peacefully in their sleep.” New York’s MAID law will be considered by the legislature this year. Protections in the proposed law include (1) a requirement that two physicians confirm the person is terminally ill with a pr ..read more

For 2024, the exemptions for estate taxes rise to 6.94 million for New York estate taxes, and to 13.61 million for Federal estate taxes. The annual gift tax exclusion rises to $18,000. If your estate is, or may become, greater than the New York threshold, early intervention can avoid the hefty New York estate taxes, which start at over $500,000. Some of the techniques are (1) setting up two trusts, one for husband and one for wife, and using them to double the New York exemption, (2) gifting out so much of the estate so as to reduce it below the New York exemption, at least three years before ..read more

While studying the topic of dementia, your writer was surprised to learn that the single most effective preventative measure would be for more of the hard-of-hearing to wear hearing aids. Studies show that only one in six persons who needs a hearing aid actually uses one and the average person waits ten years before seeking treatment for hearing loss. As discussed previously in this column, social engagement is the number one factor in maintaining one’s mental facilities as we age. It make sense then, that age-related hearing loss, also known as presbycusis, would diminish social engagement le ..read more

Gratitude has to do with appreciation. Appreciation means to add value to. Things that appreciate tend to grow, just as being grateful for something or someone raises its or their value in our estimation.  Even though, at any given time, countless more things are going right than going wrong in most of our lives, too many of us focus more on what’s going wrong and take for granted what’s going right — our health, our loved ones, our resources. “Gratitude interventions” is the term used for cultivating the attitude of gratitude in our lives. The father of positive psychology, Martin E. P ..read more

When Husband Handled the Finances While women and men have many issues in common, some of these issues tend to affect women more deeply. For example, in the case of the death or disability of a spouse, it is more often the surviving wife who is unfamiliar with handling the family finances. In the course of planning for such a couple, it is wise to find a financial advisor that the wife can turn to. Ideally, this relationship should be developed over the years while the husband is living, so that there is a seamless transfer of decision-making. Where such a relationship with a financial advisor ..read more

Gifting to minors raises some unique considerations. For one, people under the age of eighteen lack the legal capacity to own assets.  The Uniform Transfer to Minors Act (UTMA) was created to protect assets that are passed on to minors.  This act determines when minors can receive an inheritance for assets passed to the control of a custodian. The primary advantage of an UTMA account is that funds passed into it are exempt from paying a gift tax of up to $17,000 a year for 2023.  This gift may be in the form of money, bonds or stocks.  Any money earned on contributed funds ..read more