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When you have anything valuable, having a will in place before you pass away is vital to ensure that your wishes for your estate are followed. When properly worded, the will lets those left behind know how you wish your property, bank accounts and other assets to be distributed. The need for a will is especially important if your wishes might not reflect the priorities you had while you were living. The family of one Texas billionaire is asking the court to seal his will because the contents of it name is wife as executor and leave his belongings to family members.
Advance directives include living wills, other end-of-life needs
Older people in Texas and around the country may wonder if drafting a living will or advance directive will really protect them should they become unable to talk or otherwise communicate due to a medical crisis. Estate planning experts say that these documents of instruction to caregivers and family can not only help the non-communicative individual's preferences be known, but they can also take a great deal of strain off one's family and friends since they don't have to guess what the person would want.
'Downton Abbey' mimics real life finances
The popular PBS television show "Downton Abbey" can teach people in Texas and across the nation a lot about financial planning. Drafting a will and estate planning, or the lack thereof, are a significant part of the show. Financial planners and elder lawyers see some common threads in the series that do not differ much from the daily lives of many of their clients.
How to choose a home health aide
Houston residents who have a relative in need of in-home care may be interested in how they may want to go about choosing a care provider. The choices can be daunting. According to a report from the National Center for Care Statistics, there are 12,206 home health agencies in the U.S. Of these, nearly 72 percent are certified for both Medicare and Medicaid, 22 percent are only Medicare certified and just over 1 percent are only Medicaid certified.
Medicaid Estate Recovery Program can seize assets
When Medicaid cares for someone in their own home in Texas, they might run up a tab, unbeknownst to the involved parties. Family members could be responsible to pay related expenses after a person's death, which can total tens of thousands of dollars or more. The Medicaid Estate Recovery Program (MERP) sometimes tries to claim funds if the deceased person owned a home, meaning that a person could lose their home or other assets if their loved one receives long-term care Medicaid benefits. Despite Medicaid eligibility guidelines, MERP can file a claim against the estate, and relatives might have no idea that the person owed money to the program.
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