As senior issues and caregiver concerns get more media attention, more and more families are making the question of who becomes mom or dad’s primary caregiver a family decision. Although one sibling may still take on the role of “primary caregiver,” families are making the conscious decision to try to share caregiving responsibilities more equally. This is definitely a step in the right direction, but as this article from the Family Caregiver Alliance points out, there are still likely to be challenges.

Choosing a Primary Caregiver. The primary caregiver often ends up being the sibling who lives closest to mom or dad; it may start with a ride to the doctor here and there, but before you know it one sibling is shouldering almost all the responsibilities. Discussing the role of primary caregiver as a family can make everyone feel more involved and result in more support for mom or dad. The local sibling may still choose to care for parents’ daily needs, but out of town siblings may choose to take mom or dad on annual vacations or provide financial support.

Making Financial Decisions. Hopefully your parents have made arrangements for their long-term care expenses; but if not, you and your siblings may feel honor-bound to take care of the expenses yourselves. While the most logical route may seem to be an equal division of expenses between siblings, this may not be feasible or fair for every family. Siblings should take the time (and perhaps consult with an advisor) to discuss the various medical and care expenses, payment options, and financial strategies.

Living Arrangements and Long Term Care. Facing the reality that mom can no longer care for herself is a painful revelation for any family; making the decision to move a parent to a nursing home or long term care facility can be fraught with feelings of anger, guilt, or even denial, and siblings may be tempted to lash out at each other during this emotional time. Consulting with a Geriatric Care Manager or another trusted advisor at this time can help the entire family understand the situation, manage expectations, and keep emotions in check.

Making decisions as a committee can be difficult, especially when some members of the “committee” live far away, but when everyone is involved in the decision-making process then everyone is more likely to support a final outcome. Getting together with your sibling on a regular basis—even if it’s only by phone—to discuss the care of elderly parents can not only keep everyone on the same page and minimize disagreements, it can also provide a rare opportunity to grow closer as a family.

Every parent wants to be fair to their children; avoid showing favoritism, give each the same advantages, and eventually leaving each a fair and equal inheritance. But every parent also knows that there are times when equal is not always fair—a dilemma that is often faced by parents drawing up their will or estate plan. This is exactly the issue that is addressed in this recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Wills: How to Give One Child Less.

The article mentions that there are a number of different reasons why parents may want to give seemingly unequal financial distributions in their wills, “Many parents want to support children who need more financial help, while others want to repay children who have provided important support or caregiving. Some parents already may have helped one child considerably more than another during his or her lifetime, such as paying for a pricey graduate-school education or providing money for a down payment for a house. Other parents are reluctant to reward a particularly difficult or problematic child.”

There is absolutely nothing wrong with choosing to leave more to one child than another, but problems may arise when children are caught by surprise and feel neglected or betrayed; this happens most often when children don’t understand the reasons for their parents’ seeming favoritism, and can result in one child choosing to contest your will in court.

The WSJ article recommends a few strategies to avoid these hurt feelings and expensive court proceedings, but the first and best strategy is to talk to your children about it ahead of time, if possible. Hearing the news (and the reasons behind it) from mom and dad themselves can be much less hurtful than hearing about it from an attorney. Furthermore, telling your children yourself gives you the opportunity to explain your decision in a sensitive and loving manner.

If you still worry that your decision might be contested there are a number of precautions you can take to help ensure your planning documents will hold, including taking steps to prove your mental capacity is sound, creating what the WSJ calls “serial wills,” including a no-contest clause in your will, and more. Which method you may choose to employ will depend completely on your unique situation, and your estate planning attorney will be able to help you decide which is best.

We all know logically that “equal” is not always “fair,” but the heart does not always understand what seems logical to the head. Breaking the news gently to your kids ahead of time can go a long way toward avoiding hurt feelings later.

There are a number of very important documents in your estate plan which come into play after your death, but as this article in Forbes reminds us, there are two or three estate planning documents that are of the utmost importance while you are still alive: your Healthcare Proxy, your Advance Directive (also called a Living Will), and your Power of Attorney. Together, these three documents ensure that your medical and financial affairs will be taken care of and that your wishes will be followed should you somehow become incapacitated.

Healthcare Power of Attorney: This document nominates the person (or people) who will interact with medical staff, have access to your medical records, and make healthcare decisions for you if you are ever unable to do so yourself. This can be a standalone document, but it can also be wrapped up as part of the next document;

Advance Healthcare Directive (or Living Will): This is the document that describes in as great or as little detail as you wish your preferences for medical treatment, your wishes for resuscitation (or lack thereof) and even your wishes for the disposition of your remains. An Advance Healthcare Directive also often includes a section nominating a healthcare agent (or healthcare proxy) to make decisions for you if you cannot.

Financial Power of Attorney: If you ever become incapacitated you will still have bills to be paid, investments to be monitored, and financial decisions to be made; the Financial Power of Attorney gives the person you nominate the power to keep all those various financial balls up in the air.  The person named as your power of attorney will have the power to access your bank (and other financial) accounts, so be sure the person you choose is someone you trust.

The Forbes article mentions that “One in eight baby boomers will get Alzheimer’s after they turn 65. Sure, you hope you won’t be one of them. But the risk of a slow decline and incapacity, meaning that you don’t know what assets you have, what you want to do with them and who your family members are, lurks for us all.” Having the three above-mentioned documents ensures that you—and your family—will be ready for whatever the future may hold.

When most people think about estate planning they think about how to leave financial assets—savings, retirement accounts, investment assets, or large assets such as a home—to their children, grandchildren or other loved ones. But our firm knows that estate planning is about much more than just money.  In fact, once clients get beyond the big-ticket financial items and start considering the other assets or items they’d like to leave to their loved ones they often find that these “smaller items” involve far more concern and consideration than the finances.

Consider for a moment which items have meaning for you. What will happen to these items when you’re gone? The first things that come to mind are often family heirlooms: Your grandmother’s china, the engagement ring your father gave your mother; but what about items of significance to you in particular—a home library with antique books, a classical guitar collection, your personal inventory of artwork, or perhaps a valuable coin or stamp collection.

All too often these items of personal value are given only a vague mention as part of “the estate.” These personal items can end up either given away for a pittance at a yard sale, or they may cost hundreds of dollars in legal fees when siblings fight over them. Siblings often end up fighting and disowning each other over a disagreement about small items of personal value from mom or dad.

Luckily, you don’t have to leave the distribution of these items to chance. Our firm will work with you to create an estate plan that will not only pass your financial assets to your heirs, but also your beloved personal items as well.  Perhaps you’d like to leave that home library to your literary niece along with a modest sum to help her buy bookshelves. Your classical guitar collection might be most appreciated by your local music center, along with a financial donation to put toward a musical scholarship program.

Artwork, coin collections, stamp collections—these “small” items can be the Achilles’ heel of an estate plan if not given the consideration they deserve; but it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right planning you can leave your cherished personal items in the hands of appreciative people who will care for them. Contact our office today and let us help you provide for the people—and things—you love most.

“The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” It seems that this old adage is appropriate for married people planning for retirement, who look over the fence at their single counterparts and imagine how much easier it must be for them. According to a recent article in the New York Times, “More than half of married Americans, and more than two-thirds of singles, say they believe it is easier to make major financial decisions for retirement when there is no spouse in the picture.”

We all know, however, that the wisdom of this adage comes from the fact that things are not always as they appear. The same is true, it seems, when it comes to perceptions about the difficulty of retirement planning for married couples vs. single individuals. The findings of the Charles Schwab & Company survey quoted by the NY Times article reveal that “85 percent of married Americans were saving for retirement, compared with 67 percent of singles, across all age groups. Thirty-eight percent of married Americans expressed confidence in their retirement readiness, compared with 32 percent of those who were single.”

The numbers aren’t all that surprising when you consider that while it may be easier to make decisions about money when you’re on your own, it’s easier to sock money away in a savings or retirement account when you have two incomes to draw from.

Furthermore, having a second person in the picture can actually serve as an incentive to stick to your savings plan. “While everyone wishes they didn’t have to compromise, a spouse is also a sort of ‘buddy system,’ in terms of staying on track for savings… If one person tends to be a spender, a spouse who has the opposite tendency may help the couple stay on track toward savings goals.”

The important thing—whether you’re single or married—is that you’re ready for whatever the future may be.  Having a retirement savings plan, and protecting that plan for yourself and your family, is of the utmost importance.

Do you know the best way to pass your IRA savings on to your loved ones when you die? It sounds like a simple question, but naming beneficiaries for your IRA is not always as straightforward as it sounds. This article in CBS MoneyWatch explains: “Without proper estate planning, you may be reducing your family’s future wealth potential. That’s because improper planning can mean not only a premature end to your IRA at your death, but also assets being inherited by the wrong individuals or entities.”

Deciding who should inherit your retirement savings is fairly simple (although it is not uncommon for an ex-spouse to receive IRA benefits because beneficiary designation forms are not updated after significant life events such as a divorce,) it’s figuring out how the assets should be distributed that poses the problem. If done correctly, inherited IRA assets can be rolled over and stretched out by beneficiaries for years. But without the correct planning your heirs may find themselves paying significant taxes on their inheritance or worse yet, unable to access the funds at all.

The article explains that each of the many options for IRA beneficiaries requires a different kind of planning. Naming a spouse as a beneficiary is fairly straightforward, your spouse can either “Roll the funds into his or her own IRA” or “Open an inherited IRA and take distributions based upon his or her remaining life expectancy.” Planning to leave your IRA to a single child is somewhat similar to planning to leave it to a spouse.

But if you would like to leave your IRA to more than one child, or to a trust for the benefit of multiple individuals or charities, you’ll likely want to contact an attorney or accountant for more significant planning. As beneficial as these options can be, there are regulations and requirements involved with multiple beneficiaries, and “there are a lot of complexities with naming trusts as beneficiaries, so seek a competent estate planner for assistance.”

In a multi-cultural, multi-religious country such as ours the subject of personal faith or religious beliefs is one that many advisors are reluctant to bring up. Some advisors are afraid of offending their clients, other advisors may simply feel that religion has no bearing on the financial service they provide; but a recent article in the Wall Street Journal questions this assumption and asks is there a circumstance under which business and religion should mix?

The WSJ article takes the view that yes, there are circumstances when religious beliefs do have a bearing on financial matters. For example, “Making sure a client’s living will and health-care proxy are in line with his or her religious beliefs—or lack of belief—should be a priority for advisers.” Additionally, creating a “‘family values and mission statement,’ which typically includes a section about the family’s ‘spiritual values’… [can help a client] gain clarity about their family’s priorities.”

When it comes to estate planning, religious beliefs and values are often a very large part of the planning process. Parents and grandparents hope that they can leave a moral and financial legacy, and how you choose to do this will have a significant effect on your estate plan. In order to serve their client to the fullest an estate planning attorney has to know which questions to ask and how to listen with an open mind in order to ascertain the complete scope of a client’s goals and help our client achieve those goals.

Including religious beliefs in an estate plan won’t be a priority for everyone. But for those who do wish to address the subject, they may find it’s not so easy to jump right into the topic with a relative stranger. The most natural place to start is often with a healthcare directive or living will, where you will want to include your end-of-life wishes and memorial instructions. Discussing values in this context can often lead to a greater discussion of how to pass your values on to your heirs through your will or trust as well.