You can give someone healthcare power of attorney or name a healthcare proxy who will consent to or deny medical interventions on your behalf and make difficult decisions such as whether or not extraordinary measures should be used to keep you alive. This gives you the chance to name someone to act on your behalf in managing assets and making decisions for you in the event you become incapacitated. You can do this using a number of tools including: In addition to protecting your assets and facilitating the transfer of wealth, preparing for your possible incapacity should be a key part of your estate planning checklist. You may also need to use specialized estate planning tools, such as a special needs trust that allows money to be put into trust and used for a disabled person’s benefit without jeopardizing their access to means-tested government support programs.Īn experienced attorney can help you to understand the kinds of special tools and legal arrangements you can use to best provide for loved ones and keep your wealth safe both now and in the future. These can be used to shield your assets as part of a Medicaid plan and to help you avoid estate taxes-but you’ll need to give up a lot more control over your assets during your lifetime. They do not protect against estate tax or most creditor claims due to your continued control of trust assets. These flexible trusts allow you to retain substantial control over assets during your lifetime while allowing money and property to transfer outside of probate after your death. Owning property with others as joint tenants with rights of survivorship or tenants by the entirety could allow property to pass automatically to loved ones. These can facilitate the automatic transfer of assets to designated beneficiaries. You can also create a testamentary trust in your will, which is commonly used when providing an inheritance to minor children who are unable to manage the assets on their own. This is a simple tool you can use to specify who inherits.
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