Have you considered your pets when planning your estate? If not, you should, according to the Humane Society of the United States, the nation’s largest animal protection organization. “Since pets have shorter life spans, people don’t think to include them in their estate plans,” says Anne Culver, Director of Disaster Services for the Society. “But animals left homeless when an owner has failed to make adequate provisions for their care are distressingly common in animal shelters

Even if you have paid off your mortgage, you still have to keep on top of property taxes. Most people who have a mortgage don’t pay their property taxes directly. Instead, a little of each mortgage payment is put into an escrow account, and the lender pays the taxes from the funds in the account. Thus, when many older people pay off a mortgage, and begin having to pay property taxes directly, they aren’t used to

If you intend to leave your children equal shares of your estate, don’t forget to consider any money or property held jointly with a child. If you have recently added a child to a bank account, own property jointly with one of your children, or have set up a payable-on-death account with a child as the beneficiary, you might want to revise your will.

Taking care of an aging parent can be a full-time job. Adult children may have to give up paying jobs in order to provide care. Even if they don’t, they may still devote hundreds of hours of their time and make sacrifices in many other ways. Often, aging parents want to find ways to compensate their caregiver children. Unfortunately, this is more complicated than it seems, because many techniques have tax or other consequences that aren’t

While there is no way to guarantee that nothing will go wrong in a nursing home, some careful research and planning can help reassure you or your loved ones that you’ve made a good choice. Here are some things to consider when looking for a facility: Location. No single factor is more important to the quality of care and quality of life of a nursing home resident than visits by family members. Care is often better

Long-term care insurance is expensive. One way that some people reduce the cost is to buy a policy that will cover care only for a limited period of time (such as three years), as opposed to a policy that covers care indefinitely. Last year, almost a third of individual buyers purchased a three-year policy, according to the American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance. But is that sufficient coverage? To answer that question, the Association recently published

If you’re over age 65 and you’re preparing to move to another state – or even to another county – you’ll need to make sure your Medicare plan will still be in effect after you move. Whether your policy will still be valid depends in part on whether you have original Medicare or Medicare Advantage. If you have original Medicare, moving shouldn’t affect your benefits. Your Medicare plan will still be valid when you move. However,

The power of attorney is one of the most important estate planning documents you can have. It allows you to appoint someone to act for you as your agent if you become incapacitated. Without such a document, your loved ones won’t be able to make decisions for you or manage your finances. They’ll have to ask a court to appoint a guardian or conservator – an expensive and time-consuming process that could result in someone making

While Medicare covers nursing home stays, exactly what it covers is complicated and in some cases it can be much more limited than people think. If you or a loved one might need a stay in a nursing home, it’s very smart to understand the rules ahead of time, so you can be prepared and not have an unpleasant surprise. Medicare covers up to 100 days of “skilled nursing care” per illness. However, in order for

You can generally begin claiming Social Security benefits at any age between 62 and 70. Most married men begin claiming benefits at 62 or 63 – despite the fact that their family’s overall expected lifetime income from Social Security would be much greater if they waited a few years, because the amount you get from Social Security each year increases the longer you wait to start receiving it. The people who are most affected are wives