I’ve helped a lot of my clients with planning as an Atlanta estate and trust attorney, including planning for the needs of disabled children, both minors and adults. Most recently, I helped an 85 year old mother prepare a Last Will and Testament that provided for her son who was disabled by a stroke and expects to qualify for Social Security disability benefits soon. While my client would like to be able to leave her son in the best care possible, providing such care requires a lot of money that she does not have, and her son, who is only in his 50s, could live many more years and will require support during that entire period at great cost. The reality is that her son likely will qualify for and receive Medicaid support in the near future in addition to his SSDI. While those government benefits do not add up to a lot of monthly income, they help. Further, Medicaid will cover the entire cost of the son’s stay in a nursing home if that becomes necessary. Therefore, preserving those benefits for him will be important. The problem is that, if my client leaves an inheritance directly to her son,… [Read More]
Atlanta Probate Lawyer on Joint Accounts: Use Them with Spouses, Not with Children
In my Atlanta estate law practice, I work with clients on a regular basis regarding accounts owned by a parent who added another person (most often a child) prior to the parent’s death (i.e., joint accounts). The problem that arises is that, upon the death of the parent, Georgia statutory law presumes the parent wanted the child who was added to receive all funds in the account, but other children of the parent typically do not believe such an outcome was intended by the parent. Therefore, the other children seek to pull those funds into the parent’s estate where it will be divided according to the parent’s will or Georgia intestacy laws, in which case the other children are likely to receive some portion of the funds. Joint accounts between parents and children are problematic because of the several ways the parent’s actions can be interpreted. Did the parent really intend the child to receive all of the funds in the account when the parent died? Maybe. Joint accounts can be useful estate planning tools, but if the parent does not tell his other children about the account and makes no mention of the account in his will or some… [Read More]
Georgia Estate Planning: Everybody Needs a Will
I’ve been an Atlanta estate planning lawyer for several years, and on a regular basis I get new calls from people seeking help with an estate of a loved one who died intestate (i.e., without a Will). Those calls usually begin with the caller complaining that the decedent made no Will. Having represented dozens of clients dealing with intestate estates, I am immediately sympathetic. I can still help the caller but know from the start the process will be more complicated than it needed to be. Rocket Lawyer, an online legal service provider, found in a recent estate planning survey that 61% of Americans do not have a Last Will and Testament. Even worse, that number climbs to 70% for people with children under 18 years old. Failing to make a Will, especially for people in the latter category, will subject your estate to unnecessary difficulty and, in some cases, utter calamity through family infighting, incompetent estate administration, and litigation. People have myriad reasons to not make a Will: I’m young. I don’t have kids. I don’t own enough stuff. I’m not sick. I don’t want to think about death. The law will take care of it. All of the… [Read More]
