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Life Estate Deed

Protecting Your Home With A Life Estate Deed

Learn how you can protect your home with a life estate deed in the following educational video by our experienced Buffalo elder law lawyers.

The primary asset of many of my clients is their home, and they would like to preserve their home for their children. In order to do that, a common question involves life estate deeds, which involve a homeowner’s transfer of her or his home to one or more children while the homeowner retains the right to live there. The homeowner still maintains the proper tax exemption such as the STAR exemption and veterans’ exemption, and upon the homeowner’s death, the property automatically passes to her or his children. Life estate deeds should be discussed with one’s attorney, as they have disadvantages in addition to benefits. One of the major drawbacks to a life estate deed involves a child’s potential bankruptcy; if a homeowner’s child were to go bankrupt, the money would have to paid to the bankruptcy trustee. In order to avoid such an issue, instead of deeding a house to one’s children, we advise our clients to set up a living trust and a Medicaid living trust and to deed the house to the Medicaid living trust. All our clients reserve the option of either deeding their homes to their children or to an irrevocable living trust. This educational video was brought to you by Robert Friedman, one of our experienced Buffalo Elder Law Lawyers. Download Our Free Medicaid eBook Friedman & Ranzenhofer provide caring, experienced and knowledgeable representation to residents in WNY. Let our knowledge guide you through the process.