Massachusetts Estate Planning Blog

The start of the year is a time often associated with taking financial stock. As one prepares for tax season and begins budgeting for the year, January and February provide an ideal period of time for managing a variety of personal financial obligations. One step that you should not skip is creating or updating your estate plan.

On a basic level, estate planning helps to ensure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes after you die. In addition, executing a power of attorney will ensure that your wishes regarding medical care are known, in the event of accident or illness.

Last autumn, Governor Patrick signed a bill into law which fundamentally changed the ways in which alimony is calculated in Massachusetts. While the new law has not received an extraordinary amount of press, this sweeping reform is certainly worthy of such coverage.

The new law was championed by the "2^nd Wives Club," an offshoot of the organization "Mass Alimony Reform." The group's primary concern stemmed from the reality that previous state law was requiring certain women to contribute portions of their paychecks to the previous spouses of their current married partners.

Many family businesses don't plan for succession very well. This can happen - or not happen - for various reasons.

As Massachusetts business succession planning lawyers, we know how difficult such decisions can be.

Sometimes the lack of succession planning is due to sibling rivalry. Parents who establish a business may not know how to find appropriate roles for all interested children.

Another possibility is that the founder of the business has remarried and is unsure about how to divide assets among a new spouse and children from a previous marriage.

Or it could be that the parent who founded the business has a hard time letting go. For some people, particularly those used to being in control, the tendency to hang on to the reigns too long can be hard to overcome.

In any case, the challenge is to face the future with clear vision and a rational plan. An attorney with knowledge of business issues and estate planning can be very helpful in making the hard decisions needed to make a succession plan work effectively with a minimum of family control.

Old age isn't for "sissies," warned the legendary actress Betty Davis years ago. The financial downturn since 2007 has made those words truer than ever. And they have made  estate planning and elder law issues more and more important.

The economics of growing old are putting the squeeze on baby boomers on more than one front. It's not only that their own investment accounts have lost value and that they may be trying to put kids through college. Aging parents from the Greatest Generation increasingly need help as well.

Forbes reported recently on one case in point. A 92-year-old woman named Violet still lives in her own home. Her husband has dementia has is in a care facility.

Violet's combined income from a small pension and Social Security are not sufficient to both support herself and pay for her husband's cost of care. Her husband's income is also insufficient.

Violet and her husband have three children - all daughters. Could the daughters help their parents?

term care nursing facility. Inevitably, it is one of the most difficult decisions in any family's life, regardless of the specific elder law issues involved.

In Massachusetts, that decision certainly isn't made any easier by the mediocre marks given to the state's nursing homes in a recent study by AARP.

The study by the AARP Public Policy Institute rated Massachusetts only 30^th among the states in a measure of nursing home care that analyzed the quality, availability and affordability of long-term care.

The price tag of long-term care in Massachusetts is a major concern. Only five states are more expensive for residents who pay their own costs. Deborah Banda, the AARP state director for Massachusetts, says the study shows that the state needs to rethink the way doctors and care facilities get reimbursed.

Despite the high cost of care, the AARP study also pointed out numerous problems with the services available to nursing home residents. Despite lots of rhetoric in recent years about increasing the availability of community-based care, there still aren't enough people receiving that before they enter a care facility.

The debt ceiling debate is now last week's news, but the financial shoes continue to drop. Standard & Poor's downgraded the credit rating on U.S. debt, prompting a substantial sell-off of stocks today on Wall Street. And the economic turbulence affecting the U.S. economy is unlikely to end anytime soon.

It's time for each of us to put his or her financial house in order. With stresses and uncertainties all around, few of us believe we are living in the best of possible worlds. To paraphrase the eighteenth-century philosopher Voltaire, however, each of us must cultivate our gardens. And that includes our financial gardens.

The first step, for those with 401(k)s or other retirement accounts, should be to review those accounts in light of the recent volatility in the markets. You need to know where your money is invested and how those investments are performing.

In fact, you should review all of your employee benefits, as well as your estate and tax planning arrangements. For example, take the question of insurance. Do you have too much insurance or not enough insurance to cover potential hits to your income from a disability? You should also consider whether your life insurance arrangements are sufficient to cover any dependents you may have, in the event of an untimely death.

Equity means treating similarly situated individuals equally. But how do you do that, exactly, when it comes to gay or lesbian couples who do not receive the same benefits as heterosexual couples under federal law?

Same-sex marriage has been legal in Massachusetts for several years. The federal government, however, does not recognize these marriages. This means that homosexual couples who are legally married in Massachusetts do not receive the same benefits that straight married couples do in certain areas. This affects matters that include Social Security survivors' benefits, family and medical leave, and the right to file joint tax returns.

The federal recognition issue recently became an issue in Cambridge, where some city and public school workers who chose to put their same-sex spouses on their health insurance were facing taxation by the federal government. The value of those health insurance benefits is not taxable to heterosexual married couples.

Role reversal in a parent-child relationship is never easy. For adult children who grew up in stable families, it can be a particularly tricky emotional change, having to give up the old image of parents who always take care of things.

A Massachusetts psychologist, Dr Erlene Rosowsky, recently spoke about the challenges involved in care-giving relationships involving elderly parents. Recognizing these challenges can be important part of estate plan arrangements for families who are dealing with care-giving arrangements and other elder law issues.

For adult children who take on a frontline care-giving role for an elderly parent, one of the key issues is the need to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the role. Care-giving can be a rich, meaningful experience. But it can also become so intense and demanding that it threatens to engulf the caregiver in anxiety and exhaustion.

Given the demands of care-giving, it's important for care-givers to take breaks and not be on duty all the time. The moments of respite will be good for all concerned.

Far too often, patients in care facilities do not receive the type of end-of-life care that they really want. The problem is not merely that so many patients have waited until they have serious health issues before seeking to give voice to their preferences regarding medical treatment. That delay in elder law planning is indeed a problem -but so is the lack of a format for expressing end-of-life care preferences in hospitals, nursing homes, and other care facilities.

To address these issues, a committee of Massachusetts medical and public policy leaders recently recommended the use of a new form for patients in care facilities. The committee calls this form Medical Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment.

The form is two pages long and is laid out in a check-box format. The check boxes are designed to address contingencies. For example, if someone does not want to be connected to a breathing machine, they would not check the box corresponding to that intervention.