If you are experiencing financial hardship due to the coronavirus pandemic, you may want to consider withdrawing money from your retirement account while you still can. The special exemption allowing early withdrawals without a penalty ends soon. Passed in March 2020,...

While it may seem great to inherit a vacation house, in actuality it may not be practical to keep the property, especially for tax reasons. There are many factors to consider when inheriting property, including taxes, any mortgage, and other owners. But if you know...

As Medicare premiums rise, a Medicare Advantage plan can seem like an attractive option. But if you are considering switching from Original Medicare to a Medicare Advantage plan, you need to know what to look for. Medicare Advantage plans are run by private insurers,...

For most people, receiving an inheritance is something good, but for a nursing home resident on Medicaid, an inheritance may not be such welcome news. Medicaid has strict income and resource limits, so an inheritance can make a Medicaid recipient ineligible for...

An Iowa appeals court rules that a trustee of his father’s trust is not liable for interference with a contract when he stopped paying his father’s ex-wife alimony because his duty was to preserve the estate for the beneficiaries of the trust, not to ensure that she...

Basic Facts if you are ready to have a visit in a nursing home, assisted living facility, home plus, residential health care facility or boarding care home in Kansas  Visitation First you need to know your COVID-19 County Positivity Rate. Call your local public health...

When a (d)(4)(A) trust runs low on assets or is unable to find a trustee, the obvious solution is to send it to a (d)(4)(C) (pooled) trust.  But there has been no Social Security Administration (SSA) policy allowing such a transfer without triggering payback...

While we are not exactly sure how this happened in your mother’s case or why the facility failed to communicate with you, we can guess what happened. The Social Security Administration does not honor powers of attorney. Instead, they require a “Representative Payee”...

When you inherit property, such as a house or stocks, the property is usually worth more than it was when the original owner purchased it. If you were to sell the property, there could be huge capital gains taxes. Fortunately, when you inherit property, the property’s...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced the amount taxpayers can deduct from their 2021 income as a result of buying long-term care insurance. Premiums for "qualified" long-term care insurance policies (see explanation below) are tax deductible to the extent...

CAUTION!! Many websites offer customized, do-it-yourself wills and other estate planning documents.  Although such products are convenient, using them could create serious and expensive legal problems for heirs. These digital services appear to offer a cost-effective...

Revocable trusts are a very popular and useful estate planning tool. But the trust will be ineffective if you do not actually place your assets in the trust. Revocable trusts are an effective way to avoid probate and provide for asset management in the event of...

It depends in large part on the amount of funds at stake and your resources in terms of hiring an attorney. If the estate is worth it and you can afford to do so, we recommend hiring a local probate attorney to look into the matter and file papers in court if...

A U.S. appeals court rules that a group of Medicaid applicants do not have a private right of action to sue in federal court over whether they can deduct their pre-eligibility nursing home expenses from their income. Nasello v. Eagleson (7th Cir., No. 19-3215, Oct. 6,...

The Social Security Administration has announced a 1.3 percent increase in benefits in 2021, an increase even smaller than last year’s. Cost-of-living increases are tied to the consumer price index, and a modest upturn in inflation rates and gas prices means Social...