If you or a loved one needs Medicaid for paying for a nursing home, you may be tempted to save money and fill out the application yourself. After all, there is no legal requirement that an attorney prepare the Medicaid application. Many people do not see the value in hiring an attorney to help with…
If you have set up a New York Living Trust, you are probably seeking to avoid probate, as well as name someone to manage your affairs in the event you become incapacitated. After you have set up your Living Trust, it’s important that you take a few follow-up steps so that everything will proceed smoothly…
When someone dies in New York leaving a Will, in most cases that will has to go through a legal process called probate. For the probate process to begin, the Will has to be shown to be valid in the Surrogate’s Court in the county where the individual who died was a resident. In order…
Yes, in most cases you do need a guardianship for your special needs child once he or she turns 18. By law, once an individual turns 18 in New York, he or she is considered an adult and has all of the rights that come with adulthood. That means that in many cases in order…
A New York power of attorney is a form in which you can name someone to handle specific acts on your behalf, typically financial acts. If you were to become unable to manage your affairs while you are living and you do not have a power of attorney, a loved one will have to go…
If you or a loved one are looking into nursing home care in New York, you are probably discovering how incredibly expensive it is. Unfortunately, Medicare won’t pay for a nursing home except for a short stay following a hospitalization. Unless you have a long-term care insurance policy, or sufficient assets to pay for the…
One of the biggest reasons people choose to do estate planning is the thought that their children may not be protected in the event of their deaths. Unfortunately, if both parents were to pass away while their children are minors, and they have not done any type of estate planning, many decisions concerning where the…
A life estate deed is a tool that can help with estate planning. With a life estate deed, people deed real estate to another party, but reserve a life estate, which means they have the legal right to occupy the property until death. Upon death, the property passes to the beneficiaries. Life estate deeds can…
The person in charge of the probate process in New York depends on whether or not there is a will. If there is a will, the person named as executor in the will is in charge of the estate and the probate process. If there is not a will, the court will choose someone called…
