Asset Protection Planning from Long-Term Care Costs

Please review our web pages Elder Law, Medicaid Planning and VA Aid & Attendant Care Planning in addition to this page.  These pages will help you understand the risks of not planning and provide a basic overview of the legal solutions available to help prevent the loss of your life's savings to high long-term care costs. 

At Chiumento, Guntharp & Selis, P.L. we utilize the TLC Estate Planning System™to help ensure that the planning is:

Thorough; will last a

Lifetime; and is

Complete. 

This system is designed specifically to prevent the catastrophic effect that high long term care costs can have on the aged. 

The bottom line is that without planning before faced with a long-term care cost crisis, the elderly become a burden on their family, who usually have limited knowledge of their parents' financial affairs.  This translates into confusion and mistakes, which in turn result in loss of assets that could have been avoided. 

Unfortunately, Chiumento, Guntharp & Selis, P.L. receives many telephone calls from new clients when a senior family member is facing a medical crisis.  Family members then must make fast and important decisions about how to best preserve life's savings "under the gun" and with limited knowledge. 

When faced with a long-term care crisis, the family is required to navigate a long and winding road of medical, legal and financial issues.  Most aged people don't know that they can plan for these occasions, so there is little information available to guide family members when making these decisions.  

When the long-term care crisis involves a single or widowed person, adult children are often ignorant about their parent's wishes about protecting their life's savings.  A frequent obstacle to developing a beneficial strategy is that adult siblings bicker over decisions relating to the handling of the senior's financial affairs.

So, by planning in advance, you will have the peace of mind that comes from knowing that none of the chaos experienced by people who don't plan will arise.  This, in turn, results in an easier transition to Long-Term Care and should result is minimizing a loss of assets. 

The TLC Estate Planning System™significantly reduces the stress and chaos experienced by clients and their families during this difficult time.  The goal of Chiumento, Guntharp & Selis, P.L. is to  educate the about the devastating effects of high long term health care, and encourage Seniors and Baby Boomers to plan today, which in turn will protect their life's savings from high long-term care costs.

TLC Estate Planning System™

1: Education. By attending one of our free workshops, you will learn about how to protect your life's savings from high long-term care costs.  We strongly recommend that you attend one of our workshops, which will make you eligible for a complementary consultation.  If you are unable to attend a workshop and would like to explore protection of your life's savings you can schedule a low cost personal consultation in our offices or at your home.

2: Family, Financial and Health Review. By letting us know about your family relationships, current income, assets, health issues and medical insurance we will be able to estimate how much of your assets are at risk of loss to long term care costs, how much of your assets might be immediately protected by planning (i.e. 75% can be immediately protected), how long it will take to protect the remaining assets (i.e., the remaining 25%), and we'll let you know what government benefits might be available to pay for all or part of your long-term care costs.  We then provide planning options to protect your life's savings from long-term care costs and inform you of what our fees are to protect your assets.  And the amount of our fee has nothing to do with how much you have.  We use a price sheet that is the same for people who have $100,000.00 (or less) and $750,000.00 (or more).  If you retain us, then we will begin the process of creating your customized TLC Estate Plan™.

3: Design the TLC Estate Plan™. If you decide to retain Chiumento, Guntharp & Selis, P.L., we thoroughly review your asset profile.  We will then design the various documents that will be used to control who will be responsible for managing your affairs while you are healthy (it can and usually is you) and who will be responsible for managing your affairs after you become incapacitated.  Many times, parents worry about offending a child, so they select the eldest child to manage their affairs, even though that may not be the most prudent choice.  There are many better ways to do this, including considering joint responsibility.  We will then turn our attention to who gets what after you die and how.  Some people wish to ensure that the person inheriting from them will not lose their inheritance to a divorcing spouse, the IRS or lawsuits.  In those cases, we design a custom plan to ensure that your loved one can control their inheritance (unless you don't want them to), but protect it from their creditors.

4: Implement your personalized TLC Estate Plan™. Most TLC Estate Plans™ include a Revocable Living Trust (RLT), an Asset Protection Trust (AP Trust), a Will to work with the new RLT and AP Trust, a Durable Power of Attorney, a Healthcare Power of Attorney, a HIPPA Medical Release and one or more deeds transferring your home.   After signing your Estate Planning Documents, we provide assistance with the transfer of the title to your assets to your RLT and/or AP Trust.