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Linden Publishing - Jan Collins , Jan Warner

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137 pages

English

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Description

Merit Prize winner, 19th Annual Mature Media Awards, National Media (Book) division.
Written for older Americans, their Baby Boomer children, and everyone who cares for an older family member, this practical and comprehensive guide will help you build a strategy for coping with the unique legal, medical, financial, and personal challenges of aging.
Jan Warner and Jan Collins, America's trusted experts on later life planning, put decades of experience into helping you create a step-by-step plan to protect your assets, your family, your health, and your personal autonomy in later life.

Informations

Publié par	Linden Publishing
Date de parution	01 août 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781610350938
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0020€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Copyright © 2009 by Jan Warner and Jan Collins. All rights reserved.
Next Steps® is distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc. and Newspaper Enterprise Association, Inc. www.unitedfeatures.com
Published by Quill Driver Books
an imprint of Linden Publishing
2006 South Mary, Fresno, California 93721
559-233-6633 / 800-345-4447
QuillDriverBooks.com
Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.
Quill Driver Books project cadre:
Doris Hall, John David Marion, Stephen Blake Mettee, Kent Sorsky, Maura J. Zimmer
ISBN 978-1-884956-96-6 (1-884956-96-3)
135798642
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Warner, Jan, 1942-
Next steps : a practical guide to planning for the best half of your life / by Jan Warner and Jan Collins.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-1-884956-96-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 1-884956-96-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Retirement--Planning. 2. Portfolio management. I. Collins, Jan. II. Title.
HQ1062.W374 2009
646.7′9--dc22
2009010315
Acknowledgments
We thank our readers for helping us understand the issues that face them. We also thank Westlaw for providing legal research, and United Media for distributing these important columns to the public, both via newspapers and electronically. And we thank Jan Warner’s partners, Charles M. Black, Jr. and Mitchell C. Payne of the law firm Warner, Payne and Black, LLP.
Jan Warner and Jan Collins
To our indomitable, octogenarian mothers Naomi Warner and Gerry Collins.
Contents
Prologue
Introduction
Section I: Choosing Your Team and Making It Work
C HAPTER 1: Putting Together the Right Team for You
C HAPTER 2: Working with Your Team
Section II: Preparing the Necessary Documents
C HAPTER 3: What You’ll Need for Your Plan
C HAPTER 4: Potential Pitfalls and Lifelines
C HAPTER 5: Asset Management Tools
Section III: Implementing Your Plan Should You or a Spouse Become Chronically Ill or Incapacitated
C HAPTER 6: Health-Care Planning
C HAPTER 7: Long-Term Care Issues, Level-of-Care Decisions, and Payment Options
C HAPTER 8: Understanding the Basics of Medicaid
C HAPTER 9: Patients’ Rights in Nursing Homes and Assisted-Living Facilities
Section IV: Other Considerations
C HAPTER 10: Divorce Especially When You’re Older…….
C HAPTER 11: Divorce What You Need to Know at Any Age
C HAPTER 12: Second, ird, and Beyond Marriages
C HAPTER 13: Cohabitation and Domestic Partnerships ….
Section V: The End of the Line
C HAPTER 14: Burial Disputes and Organ Donation
C HAPTER 15: Planning for Pets
E PILOGUE

Glossary
Web Resources
Index
Prologue
For several reasons, those of us who were raised in the 1950s and 1960s didn’t see assisted-living facilities, nursing homes, and senior retirement communities proliferating in our communities.
First, life expectancy was much lower than it is today, meaning that only a small percentage of the population lived into their 70s, 80s and 90s.
Second, when Mom, Dad, or Aunt Emma suffered a debilitating stroke or had memory lapses (now called dementia), these relatives were usually cared for at home by family members. (In those days, most families were sustained by a single wage earner.)
Third, if it was impossible to provide care at home, there were some small nursing facilities or, in some instances, a caregiver who would open her home and care for one or two disabled adults. Jan Warner remembers that after his grandmother’s stroke in the late 1960s, she stayed with a caregiver at a cost of $150 per week because both of her daughters worked outside the home.
Things are different today, with longer life expectancies, more elderly people on fixed incomes, more two-wage-earner families, a much higher cost of care, and an uncertain economy.
Having practiced law for nearly 41 years, Jan Warner has seen first hand the significant issues that face elderly people and their families. In fact, his firm was practicing "elder law" before it had a name and he didn’t even know it.
In 1989, we began coauthoring FlyingSolo®, a newspaper column about divorce and separation that was initially syndicated by Knight-Ridder and now by United Media. Seeing the increasing number of reader questions about how to deal with issues affecting the elderly and the disabled, in 1998 we began coauthoring NextSteps®, a newspaper column about these topics that is also syndicated by United Media.
This book is the product of our columns, reader questions from throughout the country, and more than four decades of experience regarding what folks need to do to avoid making bad decisions, avoid paying lawyers to fix the fixable ones, and avoid costly family disputes.
Jan Warner and Jan Collins
Introduction
Certainty? "In this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes," Benjamin Franklin said back in 1789. While this advice remains sound more than two centuries later, the vast majority of seniors and seniors-to-be (i.e., the millions of Baby Boomers) today are experiencing, or will experience, "certainties" that our Founding Fathers never contemplated.
In Ben Franklin’s day, few Americans lived into their 80s and beyond. Today, people in their 80s are the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, and many may well outlive their retirements and die penniless after long illnesses. And those who escape long-term illnesses may leave the "well spouse" without sufficient resources to subsist due to economics.
Many of these individuals will require institutionalization at considerable cost, causing the wealth that once passed from generation to generation to decrease significantly. Indeed, not even 1 percent of Americans who die each year will have estates large enough to require payments of estate taxes. The rest will leave behind precious little to pass on to their children and grandchildren.
Today’s "Sandwich Generation" family is being emotionally and financially crunched. These are the folks taking care of aging family members, juggling two jobs in order to pay current household bills, and trying to educate their children while also attempting to save enough for their own retirements and possible long-term care needs. Divorce, remarriage, second families, and cohabitation later in life are also part of the 21 st -century mix that complicates what were once called the "Golden Years."
So, instead of concerning ourselves with estate taxes at death, which more than 99 percent of us will not pay, the overwhelming majority of us should instead 1) recognize what can happen to us and our families during our lifetimes, and then 2) develop a written life plan that allows trusted family members or others to implement our plan should we, our spouses, or significant others become chronically ill or incapacitated that is, unable to take care of ourselves because of cognitive or physical problems. Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, and other cognitive maladies are striking more and younger Americans, placing families in untenable positions of paying for care or stopping work to provide needed care. Likewise, stroke, multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy, and Lou Gehrig’s disease are disrupting the enjoyment of retirement and the efforts at continued family planning.
The truth is that none of us knows whether we will remain healthy into our old age. Anyone can develop physical or mental conditions that require long-term care. If we are unprepared, we could lose everything and become dependent upon the social welfare system. And if there is a spouse, he or she will become dependent on adult children who may already be swimming in debt.
There is an additional factor to consider: Since seniors and seniors-to-be cumulatively hold a significant portion of the wealth in this country, they are often targets for scams and bad advice.
Next Steps: A Practical Guide to Planning for the Best Half of Your Life will help you understand the issues and risks that you and your family face, choose the professionals who can help, and develop a plan that will be sufficiently flexible to maximize your options and stand the test of time. We all want to control our own destinies. Next Steps shows you how to do so, step-by-step.
So, what is the Next Steps plan? Simply put, it is the recruitment and development of a team of professionals who can help seniors and Boomers alike prepare a series of documents tailored to your specifications and based on your needs that will: 1) allow maximum flexibility for trusted persons to make financial decisions should you, the signer, become incapacitated and unable to make decisions; 2) provide directions to a trusted person to make your health-care decisions according to your wishes, should you be unable to express your wishes; and 3) ensure that at your death, your remaining assets flow to those whom you intend to receive them.
Why do you need a plan? Because without a plan in place, no one is in charge if you become incapacitated, meaning an overburdened court system may well make decisions for you without knowing your intentions. Without such a plan, there is also the potential of emotional and physical abuse from family members or caregivers; court-imposed restrictions that would take away the ability to plan; and significant additional expense, given the cost of lawyers and medical professionals. Finally, your assets may well go to the wrong people.
The goal of your life plan is straightforward: to put your direc