A James Whitney’s Answers

A Medicaid trust is a trust designed to prevent the assets placed in the trust from being counted as available and thus required to be spent down at such time as the person establishing the trust (settlor) applies for Medicaid benefits, typically for long term nursing home care. The trust may provide that all income is distributed to the settlor. However, the trust cannot provide for payment of principal to the settlor, even at the discretion of the trustee, as the amount of principal allowed...

In most states, a person acting as agent under a power of attorney has an absolute responsibility to act as authorized, to perform acts requested as a part of the agency and not to act in any manner which exceeds the specific authorized agency. It is also common for POAs to have a clause relieving agents of liability when acting. Fortunately, it appears no such clause exists in the POA used in this case. It appears Killeen has a viable case against the agent for not acting where...

This is extremely complicated and needs the attention of an attorney who has access to all of the information needed to provide a recommendation which satisfies the needs of the mother and the children. The first and foremost issue is the ability of the children to sell the property once it is deeded from the parent. Most older folks have heard the horror stories of their property being sold and their being evicted. In order to put the parent at ease, I always either make the deed subject...

For estate tax purposes, the lease for life brings the property back into your parents' estate. This can be advantageous as it then means the cost basis of the property is stepped up to the date of death value, thus potentially saving capital gains taxes to whoever inherits the property.