The Connecticut Elder Law Blog

Affordable Housing Opportunity for CT Seniors

I just wanted to let readers know about an affordable housing opportunity in central Connecticut.  I have been appointed conservator for an elderly individual and I am in the process of moving him into this apartment building.  This is an "active adult community" for 55-and-over called Sage Pond Place in Berlin. 

It was built only one year ago, and it was done very tastefully.  See for yourself: Download Photo_103007_001.jpg Download Photo_103007_002.jpg Download Photo_103007_003.jpg Download Photo_103007_004.jpg

There is a large common area and a smaller common library/reading room.  Although it is on the Berlin Turnpike it is set well back from the road so that the highway is not visible and the setting is quiet.  The rooms are very spacious and they can easily accomodate wheelchairs and walkers.  Handicap accessible rooms have grab bars in the shower and near the toilet, a seat in the shower and an emergency pull-string which directly alerts local emergency services.  The Berlin Senior Center provides relatively frequent transportation to local shopping and doctor appointments.  And management has been very helpful and a pleasure to deal with. Please note that there is currently a "one month free" deal going on.

OK, here is the best part: the monthly rent for a 1-bedoom unit is only $765, 2-bedroom unit is $925.  The only catch is that there are income limits for residents.  If it's one occupant then the annual income limit is $33,700, or $2,808 per month.  Two occupants have an annual income limit of $38,600, or $3,216 per month.  The owners receive tax credits from the State, which allows them to charge very reasonable rates for such nice accomodations.  But they don't get the favorable tax treatment unless they impose these income limits.  There is no asset limit.

Places like this are an absolute blessing to many of my elderly clients who have incomes that are "not-too-low and not-too-high" category and are struggling to find decent and affordable housing.  It would be great if the State considered providing tax incentives to more of these types of housing units.  So if you or your loved one is in that difficult income category and in the central Connecticut area then Sage Pond Place is definitely worth a look!

Get Organized Before Filing Your Medicaid Application (Part 2 of 2)

In the vast majority of cases with my clients one or more adult children of the Medicaid applicant are the ones filing the application. And if mom or dad has not kept organized financial records and lacks the mental capacity to provide reliable information then the kids are often left in the dark regarding where mom or dad's accounts are held, the size of the assets, whether or not there is a life insurance policy, etc.

Sometimes the best solution (after scouring the household records and safe deposit box) is to simply mointor mom or dad's mail where statements and other correspondence from financial institutions will eventually arrive. Working with the local post office to re-direct mail to your own address may be appropriate in some circumstances.

Although the statements and cancelled checks represent the lion's share of information that you will end up sending to the State, they will also ask for copies of various demographic items such as a Social Security card, Medicare card, health insurance cards, birth and marriage certificates, documents to verify sources of income, trusts for which you are the beneficiary and a laundry list of other miscellaneous items. The importance of having all of these documents as organized as possible prior to submitting your Medicaid application is difficult to overstate.

One other organizational tip to offer is to make copies of everything you send to the State (I hate to sound like a broken record, but scanning all of your Medicaid application documents makes this a non-issue). It is absolutely not unprecedented for the State to misplace documents. If this happens and you have neglected to keep copies then you are back to square-one in the information-gathering process.

Get Organized Before Filing Your Medicaid Application (Part 1 of 2)

You may have already heard this, or perhaps you've learned first-hand, but filing an application for Medicaid benefits is no picnic. And if the applicant's financial and demographic information is not organized then the application process can be an absolute nightmare.

The first item of advice is to simply save your account statements. When you apply for Medicaid the State will insist on receiving copies of every single statement of every single month for every single account on which the applicant's name appears. These statements have to go back for the last 3 years (soon to be 5 years), This can be a particularly onerous task if there are several accounts involved, so start saving those statements and keep them organized. If statements are missing, most banks will conduct research and produce the missing statements free-of-charge if you can prove that you need the statements in order to apply for Medicaid, but such research will add time to an already lengthy process.

One high-tech tip for helping with the logistics is to invest in a small scanner and scan each statement as they come in. This will allow you to create a computer file for each financial institution and save each statement in the appropriate file in PDF format. You can then run the original statement through a shredder as long as you have a back-up system in place for your computer files. This system makes it easy to organize all of the statements and they will be easy to find when it comes time to file the application, not to mention that it will help you cut down on household clutter.

The State will also want to see copies of all cancelled checks with a value of $1,000 or more. Nowadays most bank statements include digital images of each check right on the account statement, but if your bank still sends a small stack of the actual checks then make sure you save the four-figure ones somewhere. Again, scanning can come in handy here.

Should Funeral Instructions Be In My Will?

Planning out a funeral certainly seems like a morbid task.  But the fact of the matter is that the act of planning out your funeral, whether it's done by you or someone else, is something that has to be done eventually (in light of the fact that death is one of the two things in life that are guaranteed).  So the funeral planning is one of the things that many of my forward-thinking cilents do.  And the question of whether the funeral instructions should be contained in the will often comes up.

As is usually the case with legal questions, the answer to this one is "yes, but...".  I usually encourage my clients to go ahead and talk about their funeral plans in their wills, assuming they have strong feelings on that topic, but you need to go beyond that. 

The problem is that when someone dies the will is often not even opened until sometime after the funeral.  You can imagine the loved ones' awkwardness when they discover that the funeral instructions in the will do not match up with what actually happened at the funeral. 

So, go ahead and include your funeral plans in your will, but you need to verbally indicate your wishes to your family as well.  You can even give them a document, separate and apart from the will, which spells out all of the funeral plans for them.  Setting up your funeral plans with the funeral home of your choice ahead of time also makes sense.  In other words, you should not rely on your will as being the sole source of funeral plan information for your family.

I will also mention that making funeral plans ahead of time, as morbid as that process may be, is almost always deeply appreciated by loved ones.  Having funeral plans in place removes a challenging administrative burden from your family as they go through an emotionally difficult time.

The Benefits of a Technology-Oriented Practice (Part 2 of 2)

I have also become a big fan of "eFax", which is a service that converts all of your incoming faxes into e-mails. It also allows you to send out faxes as PDF attachments to e-mail messages. There are a couple of big benefits to this set-up. First, it allows me to review incoming faxes from anywhere that I have access to e-mail (which is just about anywhere...more on that below) and I don't have to be standing in front of a fax machine in the office to get a fax. Second, for a nominal monthly fee I end up saving the cost of buying a fax machine, toner, paper and the need to set up a separate fax phone line. These are big overhead cost savings that I pass onto clients with lower fees.

Then there is perhaps my best technology investment yet: an AT&T Treo 680 "smart phone". This relatively small handheld device allows me to make phone calls, work on e-mail and Word documents and browse the web wherever I am, as long as I have cell phone reception. It also contains my calendar, contact information and daily task list. It's hard to believe that a device small enough to fit in your pants pocket can do all of this, but it's true. My smart phone allows me to keep in constant contact with my clients, paralegals and colleagues even though I am out of the office a great deal visiting homebound clients and attending probate court hearings. My clients are often pleasantly surprised at how quickly I return their voicemail and e-mail messages.

By the way, I am actually drafting this post with my Treo as I am sitting here waiting to get called into a probate court hearing!

There are other very helpful technology tools in my office, but these are the big-ticket items. To borrow a term from a TV commercial, my office is not your grandfather's, or even your father's law office. I'll admit, not handling paper files has taken some getting used to. But if you look at the cost-saving factor, the ease-of-use for this kind if technology and the way in which it can dramatically improve the speed and quality of services for clients, it's hard to imagine practicing law in any other way.

Lawyer Joke

A lawyer died and arrived at the pearky gates.  To his dismay, there were thousands of people ahead of him in line to see St. Peter. 

To the lawyer's surprise, St. Peter left his desk at the gate and came down the long line to where the lawyer was and greeted him warmly.  Then St. Peter and one of his assistants took the lawyer by the hands and guided him up to the front of the line and into a comfortable chair by his desk.

The lawyer said, "I certainly don't mind all of this attention, but what makes me so special?"

St. Peter replied, "Well, I've added up all the hours for which you billed your clients, and by my calculation you must be about 193 years old!"

The Benefits of a Technology-Oriented Law Practice (Part 1 of 2)

The relatively unique set-up of my law practice has piqued the interest of many of my clients and their family members. So I thought I would take a brief respite from blogging about legal issues and explain the nuts and bolts of my practice and why I've decided to incorporate lots of office technology into the day-to-day operations.

First, and most importantly, I have adopted a "paperless" model for my office (although, "less paper" would be a more accurate term since at least some paper is always necessary). This means that I do not actually have paper files for my clients. Those towers of manilla folders that you usually see piled up on the floor of an attorney's office does not exist in my practice. Every single document that comes into, or goes out of my office (letters, deeds, hand-written notes, etc.) is "scanned" and converted into a digital "PDF" file, which is then saved in the appropriate client's digital "folder" on my computer.

What are the benefits? First and foremost, my client files are much safer than they would be if they were in a paper format. How? Well, think about this: if I had a traditional, paper-based law practice and my office went up in flames, or if there was a flood then that would be the end of my practice...all of my files would be irretrievably lost. But with my paperless office, my files stay safe in the event of a disaster. I have a system in place which backs up all of my files to multiple locations every 24 hours. So if my computer explodes I can simply restore all of my files onto a different computer and I'm up-and-running again pretty quickly.

Another big advantage of an all-digital office is the ease with which documents can be retrieved. If a client signs a living will and then suddenly needs a copy a year later, I can have the signed document on my computer screen within a few mouse clicks. A few more clicks and the document is off to the client via e-mail. In a traditional law office, the year-old file must be hunted down, the document needs to be fished out of the file and then mailed off to the client (or faxed, ideally), all of which could take a VERY long time. And if the file has been stored at an off-site facility, then forget it...it will be days before the client can get a copy of his document.

There are all kinds of office technology available now that allows attorneys to dramatically enhance the quality of the legal services they provide. In the next post I'll discuss some other ways in which I've implemented this technology into my practice.

Can I Name a Trust as an IRA Beneficiary?

It wasn't too, too long ago when it was downright dangerous to name a trust as a beneficiary of an IRA.  As far as the rules were concerned, a trust could not have a life expectancy, and therefore all of the IRA funds would have to come out of the account and go to the trust within just 5 years of the death of the IRA owner.  All of the distributions during those 5 years were taxable as income and the wonderful benefits of potentially stretching out the tax liability over a much longer time period were lost. 

But suffice it to say that the rules have been changed...in a big way.  And although the rules changed back in 1997, I'm surprised at how many clients still have the "old rule" mentality a decade after the old rules were overhauled.

Nowadays, the tax deferral benefit is still available even if the IRA beneficiary is a trust and the life expectancy of the trust beneficiary is used to calculate the required minimum distributions each year.  If there are multiple trust beneficiaries, then the life expectancy of the oldest beneficiary is used.

However, the following requirements must be met:

1.  The trust is valid under state law (this is a relativley low hurdle to get over).

2.  The trust becomes irrevocable upon the death of the IRA owner.

3.  It's clear who the trust beneficiaries are.

4.  The IRA custodian (the financial institution managing the IRA) receives a copy of the trust by October 30th of the year immediately following the year in which the IRA owner dies.

Although the above requirements are not particularly onerous, it's always a good idea to chat with your financial planner, accountant and estate planning attorney before designating a trust as your IRA beneficiary to make sure you comply with all of the requirements.  They would also apprise you of any developments in the law that you will need to knwo about.  This is definitely not an area in which you want to make a mistake...the consequences could be very costly for your beneficiaries.

What If Someone In My Will Moves?

In most wills you will find that whenever a person is named in the document the name is usually followed by his/her town and state.  The purpose of this is to ensure that the Court and anyone else who reads the will does not confuse the named person with someone else. 

I like to take the "belts and suspenders" approach by listing each person's relationship to the client as well.  For instance, "I leave one share of my estate to my brother, Billy Bob, of Glastonbury, Connecticut".  Theoretically, there's no need to list Billy Bob's town and state since an indication that he is the client's brother dramatically narrows the field of possible people.  But I suppose I get a bit neurotic when I draft wills!

Anyway, this usually prompts the question of whether the client needs to amend his will if one of the people named in his will moves.  What if Billy Bob moves next door to Wethersfield after the will is signed?!

If someone in your will moves then there is absolutely no need to update your will.  And if your attorney tells you otherwise then he should probably be replaced. Just think about it... in today's mobile society each of your beneficiaries could change addresses several times before you die!  The will simply says that on the day that you signed the will, Billy Bob lived in Glastonbury and you can leave it at that.

The only possible reason why such a move would prompt a legitimate will amendment is if the move created an identification problem.  For instance, in the above example, suppose the client disinherited his other brother, also named Billy Bob (I don't think I've ever seen two brothers with the same name), out of his will, but then that brother moves to Glastonbury after the other Billy Bob moved from Glastonbury to Wethersfield.  Now the will seems to identify someone who the client didn't intend to include as a beneficiary of his will.

Please note that the above facts only tend to arise in law school exams, not real life.  Suffice it to say that address changes do not require will changes unless there are extraordinary circumstances.

Lawyer Joke

What's the difference between a lawyer and a boxing referee?

A boxing referee does not get paid more for a longer fight!