Planning for your retirement usually involves making an educated guess based on averages. Your decisions on everything from your goals for saving to the budget you project for yourself in the future are based on averages and current data.
Issues ranging from a sudden and unexpected decline in health to rampant inflation can affect someone’s stability during their retirement, especially if their planning only involved saving money while they worked and creating an estate plan for after their death.
As you think about your golden years, you can create a plan that protects you now and in the future while also protecting the people you love after your death.
You can protect your assets and make it easier to qualify for Medicaid
If you incur major medical expenses or fall behind on your financial obligations, you might face creditor lawsuits later in life. They could lay claim to much of the property that you keep in your own name if you don’t plan carefully. You must plan to protect your property or risk losing assets you depend on later in life.
Asset protection planning often involves very similar steps when compared to Medicaid planning. Trusts and formal changes of ownership for certain property are often part of Medicaid planning and asset protection planning. When successful, these efforts help protect your most valuable property from lawsuits as you age and ensure you can get medical support when you require it.
You can also protect your home and other valuable belongings from creditor claims and Medicaid estate recovery efforts after you die.
You can protect yourself from the wrong care or a guardianship
Estate planning can address what happens while you are still alive in addition to what happens after your death. You could add powers of attorney so that people can pay your mortgage if you end up in a coma and an advanced directive or living will explaining what medical care you would prefer to receive in different situations.
When you carefully plan for the possibility of incapacitation later, you can reduce the chances of being subject to an involuntary guardianship later in life. You can also maintain control over what medical care you receive even if you lose the capacity to speak on your own behalf as you age.
Thinking about your possible future needs can help you make the right estate planning moves to protect yourself and achieve your goals.
