Every year the MetLife Mature Market Institute releases a survey that contains a great deal of information about long-term care expenses in the United States. They have just put out their 2011 version, and once again long-term care costs have gone up significantly.

If you were to spend a single day in a private room in a long-term care facility in 2011, the national average cost was $239, which is a $10 increase over 2010 figures or a 4.4% increase.  A year in a private room in a nursing home in 2011 averaged $87,235. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services the average length of stay is between two and four years.

When you see the facts it becomes clear that these are no trifling expenses. To devise a plan that prepares you for all eventualities, including the possibility of long-term care, simply take a moment to arrange for a consultation with a good Reno financial planning attorney.

Life is never constant – except, of course, for constant change. Circumstances in your life will change over the years, and these changes may call for an estate plan revision. There may be people who join the family, others who leave, and your financial situation could change dramatically.  A review of your estate plan will reveal if there are needed changes.

In addition, a high percentage of marriages end in divorce and most of these people remarry. Changes in marital status are almost definitely going to make an estate plan update necessary.

We have just entered a brand-new year and as you turn the page on the calendar you may want to make a mental note to yourself regarding an estate plan review. This is especially true in this election year with the distinct possibility of the sunset of a very generous estate tax exemption.

In addition to the things that happen to you personally, of which you would be well aware, there are also legislative changes and alterations to the tax code that take place on an ongoing basis. Many of these can be relevant to your existing estate plan.

It is a good idea to review your plan at least ever three years with professional guidance, and if you’re ready to do so simply take a moment to arrange for a consultation with a qualified Reno Estate Planning lawyer.

Estate planning is an area where procrastination not only puts that person at risk it also puts there loved ones in a difficult position in the event of death or disability.

Most younger families rely on earned income to maintain quality of life. For this reason, it is essential that such families have an income replacement vehicle.  This need is often met through life insurance.  Coverage should be revisited as financial responsibilities increase.  All families are well advised to implement a sound long-term financial plan.  If this sounds like a good idea to you, take the first step and arrange for a consultation with a licensed and experienced Reno financial planning attorney.

Your estate plan will also avoid unnecessary disputes about the distribution of the estate. Each family is different but how do you think a typical family may react if it was up to them to agree upon how the assets of a loved one should be distributed? Clearly, in many cases, consensus would be hard to come by. You don’t have to worry about this when it comes to your estate, but there is an issue that is often ignored.  That issue is the funeral planning.

If you were to pass away without leaving behind any instructions regarding your funeral details your family members could wind up disagreeing.  Of course, this comes at a very difficult time for families.  If one family member takes charge and arranges for cremation when other family members have moral or religious objections, it can create a rift in the family.  Even choices of caskets, the amount spent on the funeral arrangements and the choice of burial clothing can create hard feelings at a highly emotional time.

Even if there are no particular disagreements among family members, someone is going to have to take up serious time in making these arrangements at a time when they are grieving and in no mood for it.

If you take the time to make your funeral arrangements in advance, you can even select the facility, casket and clothing of your choice and pre-pay should you choose to do so. To learn more about including final arrangements in your estate plan, get in touch with an experienced northern Nevada estate planning lawyer to arrange for a consultation.

To prepare yourself, you may want to consider creating a living trust with incapacity safeguards included.  In many cases the grantor will serve as the trustee while he or she is alive and fully capable of decision-making. However, you could also name a disability trustee who would administer the resources in the trust if the grantor and primary trustee was to become incapacitated.

In addition, durable powers of attorney are recommended as a way to empower people of your own choosing to make decisions in your behalf should you become unable to do so in the future due to incapacity.

If interested parties were to suspect that you have become incapable to manage your own affairs effectively they could petition the court to appoint a guardian to make decisions in your behalf.  This can be an expensive, time consuming and humiliating process.  This possibility can be avoided if you plan ahead intelligently.  The best way to do so is with the assistance of an experienced and licensed Reno estate planning attorney.

Depending on your resources exactly how you go about this can vary considerably. There are those who will make a donation that is specifically used to finance some type of building project. This may carry your name into perpetuity, which can be quite rewarding for many people.

Some people will leave behind the resources to provide a scholarship or scholarships to worthy students. This too can be an enriching portion of an individual’s legacy.

You can also choose to pass along the wisdom that you have acquired throughout your life by committing your experiences to writing. Some people choose to write a full-blown autobiography and leave it behind for future generations to draw from. Others will author an ethical will that passes along their moral and spiritual values. Today, there are many resources to assist in writing an interesting personal history that can be found online or in bookstores.  The same is true of writing an ethical will.

Carefully selecting certain family heirlooms and/or personal possessions and handing them on to particular respective heirs for specific reasons can also be part of a carefully planned legacy.

There are many possibilities to take into account when you are preparing for the latter portion of your life and your eventual death. If you’re interested in taking estate planning to a higher level, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a Northern Nevada legacy planning attorney to arrange for an informative consultation.

But, how will your partners feel about this? They would be forced to deal with whoever it is that purchased your share in the business whether they feel comfortable working with this individual or entity or not.

The way that situations such as these are often addressed is through the creation of buy-sell agreements. These agreements utilize the purchase of life insurance to allow the remaining partners to buy the share of the deceased partner from his or her family.

With the cross purchase plan each of the co-owners in the business takes out a life insurance policy on every other. After one of them dies the combined insurance policy proceeds are used to buy the share that was owned by the deceased individual from his or her family.

Another type of buy-sell agreement involves the business itself taking out life insurance policies on all the co-owners equal to the value of each respective share with these proceeds being used to buy the share of the deceased partner from his or her heirs. This approach is called the entity plan.

Buy-sell agreements can provide a relatively simple solution in some cases. To learn more about small business succession planning, simply take a moment to arrange for a consultation with an experienced and licensed Reno estate planning attorney.

In addition, there are things that take place that are out of your control that affect your estate planning efforts. Legislative changes that impact the tax code are among them, and with this in mind we would like to take a look at the lay of the land at the present time.

The estate tax and the gift tax are unified, and at the present time there is a $5 million unified exclusion. So if your estate and any gifts that you have given utilizing your unified exclusion do not exceed this amount no estate or gift taxes will be levied. Estates or gifts exceeding the exclusion are taxed at 35%.  Keep in mind that any gift exceeding the annual exclusion amount of $13,000 per person, reduces the estate tax exemption by the amount of the gift.

Those parameters are only in place through the end of next year.  At that time the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization and Job Creation Act of 2010 will expire and the rate of the tax will rise to as much as 55% while the unified exclusion is reduced to just $1 million.

So, this presents an interesting situation. The $5 million exclusion becomes a $1 million exclusion when 2013 arrives, so it would be logical to consider giving gifts to your loved ones in 2012 before the exclusion is reduced.

Of course it is possible that changes to the laws could take place at any time, and this is another factor to consider. Clearly, the pending reduction of the exclusion is food for thought and it is something to discuss with your estate planning attorney.

That said, since most are required to pay into the program it can be viewed as welcome supplement to retirement if nothing more.  There are several commonly asked questions that people who are engaged in retirement planning often ask.

The first question most people have involves the age of eligibility.  Qualified Americans who were born in 1954 and earlier reach full retirement age in a Social Security eligibility context on their 66th birthday.  The age of full eligibility then rises by two months per year through 1959. Anyone born after that becomes eligible to receive their full Social Security benefit when they reach 67.

Another question people often have is whether or not they can work while receiving Social Security. The answer is that once you reach the age of full eligibility you can indeed earn any amount of income and still collect your full benefit.

However, you don’t have to wait until you reach your full eligibility age to begin receiving Social Security.  You can start receiving Social Security when you are as young as 62, but you receive a reduced benefit.  If you work before you reach full retirement age while you are receiving this reduced benefit your payout is cut by one dollar for every two dollars that you earn above a certain annual limit.  Right now that limit is $14,160.

The above information is accurate as of this writing but of course it is subject to change.  To review current information visit the following website.

It is a good idea to ask yourself what your family members would be faced with if you were to pass away on a purely practical level. Are there keys to vehicles and perhaps real property that they should have or be able to obtain? Do you have a safe deposit box? If so, who has access to it? Documents are another matter to consider. Do your your family members know where to find documents that would be relevant to them if you were to pass away? Who has passwords to accounts and other information on your computer files?

Since we live in the digital age a lot of people have important passwords and usernames that their loved ones would need if they were charged with the responsibility of handling the final affairs of the deceased. This can include social network identities as well as business relationships.

These are just a few specific things to keep in mind. Take time to compile a list of items that you should communicate to your loved ones so they will be prepared to handle the practical matters that they will face when the inevitable ultimately takes place.