17 Questions To Ask Your Lawyer When You Review Your Estate Plan
By Dick Pellegrino
As promised, here are 17 questions to ask your lawyer when you meet to review your estate plan.
1. How have you planned to completely avoid probate on both of our deaths?
2. Are we eligible for Medicaid now if we need it?
...
3. Do we have complete powers under our POA to do Medicaid planning, asset protection, make gifts, and do probate avoidance planning?
4. How have you protected our home and savings and other assets from nursing home and uncovered medical expenses?
5. Are we subject to any state or federal estate taxes on both of our deaths?
6. Do we need to do any income tax planning?
7. Do we have both primary and contingent beneficiaries on our life insurance, annuities and IRAs to avoid probate if our primary beneficiary dies first?
8. Have you protected our life insurance proceeds on the death of one of us if the survivor goes into a nursing home?
9. Do we have any excess resources for Medicaid purposes and if so how do we protect them?
10. If one of us goes into a nursing home, how much will we have to pay the nursing home if we are on Medicaid and how much monthly income will the healthy spouse have to live on?
11. Is there a HIPPA waiver in our health care proxy?
12. Do we have a living will?
13. What if one of our children predeceases us? have you made provisions for a trust for our grandchildren?
14. If one of our children gets divorced, gets disabled, gets a judgment or a tax lien against them or goes bankrupt, does that affect our assets gifted to them or our home?
15. If our house is in an Irrevocable Trust, will there be a tax if we sell it?
16. What if I want to cut out a child or grandchld who has estranged themselves from the family, can I do that?