Learning More About Estate Planning and Asset Protection for Older Adults

Estate planning is something that is essential for Gwinnett County residents of all ages, but it takes on added significance when a person is approaching older age and may soon need to think about long-term care options and asset protection strategies. You may be wondering: what is the relationship between estate planning and asset protection? And what are important asset protection strategies that an estate planning lawyer can handle, and who needs to consider them? One of the Gwinnett County estate planning and elder law attorneys at Bowman Law Firm can provide you with more information below, and we can speak with you today about yours or your aging parent’s needs.

What Do We Mean by Asset Protection? 

The term “asset protection” can have many different meanings depending on the context. In relation to estate planning and potential long-term care needs, asset protection typically refers to strategies that you can develop with an estate planning lawyer to ensure that you will be able to pay for long-term care needs (i.e., nursing home home) without having to spend down assets that you have saved over a lifetime.

Nursing home care is extremely expensive, and most people do not think about the possibility of needing it until the time is imminent. Yet as data from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shows, about 70 percent of adults aged 65 and up will need long-term care in their older age — more than two-thirds of that population. For most older adults who need long-term care, it is essential to be able to have Medicaid cover those high costs while still protecting a lifetime of assets. It may be possible to do this through long-term care planning and Medicaid planning.

Estate Planning and Asset Protection Overlaps 

Estate planning and asset protection in elder law overlap when it comes to long-term care planning and Medicaid planning.

With assistance from a Norcross estate planning and elder lawyer, you can take steps to ensure that your assets are protected while you still have a plan for covering the costs of long-term care in the future. Your elder law attorney can discuss various long-term care insurance options with you first, of which there are many. Having long-term care insurance can help to cover many of the very high costs associated with nursing home care. Your estate planning and elder law attorney can also help you to establish a Medicaid asset protection trust, a type of irrevocable trust that can protect your assets while making you eligible for Medicaid coverage without the need to “spend down” all of those assets.

Contact Our Norcross Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorneys for Assistance 

If you have an elderly parent who could need long-term care in the coming years, or if you want to think ahead for your own potential long-term care needs, it is important to seek legal advice. An experienced Norcross estate planning and elder law attorney at Bowman Law Firm can answer any questions you have, and we can begin working with you on a range of estate planning documents and asset-protection strategies. Contact our firm today to find out more about the services we provide to clients in Georgia.

Sources:

law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-53/

aspe.hhs.gov/reports/what-lifetime-risk-needing-receiving-long-term-services-supports-0

eam.georgia.gov/long-term-care-insurance