As an incentive for people to take financial responsibility for their long term care, HIPPA provides for deductibility of qualified long term care (LTC) expenses and excludes from taxable income your qualified long term care benefits. Higher deduction limits for LTC premiums are geared to help out retirees make payments. Let’s see what the tax advantages are.
Genworth Financial has completed its 2012 survey on long term care service providers across the country. Let’s see the trends for Home Care Providers and Nursing Home Providers.
An elderly person needs long term care when he or she can’t handle normal daily activities such as bathing and eating. Someone must step in and help him or her from then on.
As we age our chance of needing long term care (LTC) increases. You need LTC when you require help doing your activities of daily living (ADLs). Examples of ADLs are dressing, toileting, eating, transferring from bed to chair and continence.
With the national divorce rate more than 40 percent, a large percentage of retirees and pre-retirees will have to contend with dividing their assets between their most recent spouse and children from a previous marriage. This common dilemma can often be rectified via a type of trust called a “QTIP” trust, or Qualified Terminal Interest Property trust. The acronym describes the function of the trust, which is to allow for a “terminal interest”, meaning an interest (for the most recent spouse) that terminates upon death. This type of trust, therefore, allows the trust owner’s (who in this case will also be the deceased) most recent spouse to control the assets of the trust for the duration of the spouse’s life. Then upon the death of that spouse, his or her interest in the trust will cease and the trust will determine how the assets are distributed.
When you become unable to make your own health-related decisions, someone else will – and it may not be to your liking. You can take charge of those decisions if you’ve created a medical directive. It’s one of the essential tools of estate planning.
