Thu, 01 Sep 2011 11:05:29 +0000

Approximately 20% of all persons who die every year are residents of nursing homes.  Since a nursing home is the last place of residence for such a large percentage of our population, it is very important that all of the rights of nursing home residents be upheld. A person who lives is a nursing home [...]

Thu, 12 May 2011 15:25:24 +0000

Effective April 7, 2011, there is a new law in Massachusetts that allows a person to set up a trust for the benefit of a pet. In the past, pet owners were limited under Massachusetts law to leaving funds to a person and hoping those funds would be used to take care of the pet [...]

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:19:18 +0000

Form 8939 for  estates and trusts of decedents who died during 2010 still hasn’t been finalized by the Internal Revenue Service.  The last draft Form 8939 posted by the IRS was dated 12/16/2010. It’s a good thing that the default provision for the estates of decedents  who died during 2010 is the 2011 federal estate tax law, [...]

Fri, 28 Jan 2011 03:27:26 +0000

(Note: this is an update of an article of mine published in NAELA Quarterly in 1992.) Due to their concerns about possible impact of nursing home costs (and the Medicaid disqualification period) on their assets, many aging clients feel under pressure to make transfers of their assets earlier than may otherwise be advisable. One relatively [...]

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 17:29:33 +0000

The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010, signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010, included a provision that pertains to estates of decedents who die during 2010. Now the executors of 2010 estates have the option of choosing between two different laws. One choice is the 2010 [...]

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 17:20:33 +0000

It still looks like we’re stuck with Internal Revenue Code Section 1022 being the tax law for estates of decedents who die during 2010.  Here are a few traps for the unwary regarding this law: (1)  The law allows $1,300,000 of basis increase, plus an additional $3,000,000 for a surviving spouse. Increasing the decedent’s basis means somebody has to [...]

Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:53:03 +0000

Attached is an early draft by the Internal Revenue Service of Form 8939, entitled “Allocation of Increase in Basis for Property Received from a Decedent.” This form is necessary for the estates of 2010 decedents  to achieve a step-up in basis. It reputedly is required to be filed with the decedent’s final income tax return, and [...]

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 14:33:47 +0000

In Doherty v. Director of the Office of Medicaid, the Massachusetts Appeals Court rendered a 2009 decision that could be viewed as an assault on irrevocable, income-only trusts in Massachusetts that were designed for MassHealth (i.e., Medicaid) purposes. The decision may simply have been about the facts of a poorly-drafted trust. A lot of discussion has [...]

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 15:00:05 +0000

On September 11, 2010, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) put into effect new procedures for counseling elders for reverse mortgages.  These new procedures require that more detailed information be provided to the prospective borrower in advance of the counseling session, and specify what must be covered, who must attend and the issues the counselor should and [...]

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:37:02 +0000

It may come as a surprise to some people, but you can be held personally responsible for your spouse’s bills if they are for payment of necessaries.  In the case of East Longmeadow Management Systems v. Wilson, the nursing home resident’s wife, Judith Wilson, was successfully sued for $45,243.24 in unpaid nursing home bills of [...]

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:37:40 +0000

When applying for MassHealth long-term care benefits to pay for nursing home care in Massachusetts, it can be expensive to obtain copies of up to 5 years of banking information.  Under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 118E, Section 23A , banks are required to provide this information free of charge if the information has been requested by [...]

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:18:18 +0000

It seems that the more I look at Internal Revenue Code Section 1022, the more questions I have.  Let’s look closely at the “acquired from the decedent” requirement in 1022(e), which I’ve posted below: 1022(e) Property acquired from the decedent     For purposes of this section, the following property shall be considered to have been [...]

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:31:17 +0000

As I have suggested in earlier blog posts about Internal Revenue Code Section 1022, it seems that the modified carryover basis rules were not well-written by the 2001 Republican Congress that passed them.  It is possible that Congress may have wanted to allow a step-up in basis in very limited circumstances, but it appears to [...]

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 12:22:35 +0000

Parents who are going away for an extended period of time (such as on vacation, on a business trip or for hospitalization) are often concerned about what would happen if a minor child who was left behind needed immediate attention for a health care problem.  Under Massachusetts General Laws, Chapter 201F, parents can give written [...]

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:00:30 +0000

The Massachusetts law regarding Declarations of Homestead has never been very clear.  Having already answered some typical questions in http://elderlawblog.info/2010/04/20/questions-and-answers-about-declarations-of-homestead-in-massachusetts, here are some other questions I’ve been asked by clients during our conferences. Can I file more than one type of homestead? Through a process known as stacking, it is possible to file more than [...]

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:05:22 +0000

The 2008 Massachusetts case of Germain v. Girard has made it easier to challenge gifts, joint accounts, wills, trusts, beneficiary designations and other estate plan changes on the grounds of undue influence.    For undue influence to exist, a previous court had concluded in Heinrich v. Silvernail:  “Four considerations are usually present in a case in [...]

Sat, 03 Jul 2010 14:14:00 +0000

Many older persons own appreciated assets that yield little or no income.  These same clients eventually experience the need for an increase in their monthly cash flow as their deteriorating health prompts them to hire caregivers whose assistance will allow them to remain in their homes.  Selling low yield but highly appreciated assets in order [...]

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:12:51 +0000

No bill to reform the federal estate tax has gathered political steam.  No federal estate tax compromise appears imminent. When a Republican Senator, commenting on the status of federal estate tax reform, pulls out the “small business and farmer” violin, we have to wonder whether anything will get done before this year’s November elections.  Republican Senator Grassley forgets it [...]

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 11:59:30 +0000

It’s stressful enough to have a family member hospitalized, but hospitals seem to move patients out so quickly that the stress is intensified. A hospital discharge does not mean that the patient has recovered fully.  Rather, it means that a physician has decided that the patient has reached a stable condition and doesn’t need to [...]

Thu, 20 May 2010 03:58:07 +0000

When an ambulance is called for, the crew must often make split-second decisions about treatment, especially when a patient is not breathing or has no pulse. In Massachusetts, ambulance services, EMTs and paramedics are required to resuscitate a person who has undergone cardiac or respiratory arrest unless they are immediately made aware that the person does [...]

Tue, 11 May 2010 04:12:22 +0000

I had asked for feedback on elder law listservs about my position that a life estate may be eligible for a step-up in basis in 2010.  One disagreeing commentator wrote: “The basis step up is limited to property that passes by reason of death. When a life estate is established the legal ownership of the [...]

Mon, 03 May 2010 01:39:24 +0000

Having written and spoken quite a bit in the past 20 years about how to transfer a person’s home for Medicaid and tax planning purposes, I’ve been getting calls and emails about how the new 2010 tax law affects common lifetime transfers of a senior citizen’s home.  Thanks to political games played during the first [...]

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 21:33:29 +0000

As a result of a silly political game played by the U.S. Senate shortly after President George W. Bush took office, in 2009 there was no federal estate tax on the first $3,500,000 of a person’s net worth at death, and, right now, there is no federal estate tax if somebody dies, no matter how [...]

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:59:03 +0000

If Assets Can Be Given Back to or Taken Back by the Original Owner, the Assets of the Trust Are Not Protected for MassHealth Purposes If a Nursing Home Stay Becomes Necessary In trust law, there is no such thing as “one-size-fits-all.”  Trusts must be designed to meet the particular concerns of the person whose [...]

Sun, 18 Apr 2010 07:28:23 +0000

In Massachusetts, Medicaid coverage of nursing home costs is obtained by filing a MassHealth long-term care application. Any MassHealth application can be retroactive to the first day of the third month prior to the application. Based on the date that MassHealth is needed, in many cases you must keep the original application alive. If an [...]