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+1 to this response:
"Get an ironclad professional will written NOW while they are still of sound mind. My grandfather did not have one, and his estate still hasn't fully exited the court system.
Get power of attorney. My grandmother would probably be broke had my parents not done this.
Set up a trust. You need to insure that they will be taken care of until they are gone."
Recently lost both in-laws and my wife is executor of the trust - MIL lived in her own home 24 hour care for the last 3 years, to the tune of about $120k per year. They had planned for that, however, and money was not an issue....unless she had outlived the bank account!
BUT - if they had not had the foresight to set up a good trust account, things would be much different today.
We found the best way to initiate the discussion was to make the Gov't the bad guy - "you are going to leave your estate to taxes if we don't do this right, you don't want all that hard earned money to vaporize do you?"......and then cooperate and coordinate the discussions with the legal team to get it done right.
Don't get me wrong - we fought tooth and nail to get this done amongst strong resistance, but it has to be done right, particularly with the changing tax laws that lower the thresholds for higher tax rates. In CA, with real estate, we're ALL in the grasp of the gub'ment without proper planning!
td
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