Medicaid Planning: Protection of Home & Irrevocable Trust Another method of protecting the home from estate recovery is to transfer it to an irrevocable trust.  Trusts provide more flexibility than life estates but are somewhat more complicated. Once the house is in the irrevocable trust, it cannot be taken out again.  Although it can be […]

South Carolina Estate & Gift Tax South Carolina Code §12-16-510 imposes an estate tax in the amount equal to the federal credit for state death taxes. In the case of a nonresident decedent, South Carolina’s estate tax is its pro-rata portion of the federal credit for state death taxes. The estate tax return is due […]

Medicaid Planning & Reverse Mortgages Under our “system” of paying for long-term care, you may be able to qualify for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care, but in most states there’s little public assistance for home care.  Most people want to stay at home as long as possible, but few can afford the high […]

Medicaid Planning & Immediate Annuities Immediate annuities can be ideal planning tools for spouses of nursing home residents.  For single individuals, they are usually less useful.  An immediate annuity, in its simplest form, is a contract with an insurance company under which the consumer pays a certain amount of money to the company and the […]

Medicaid Planning & Testamentary Trusts Testamentary trusts are trusts created under a will.  The Medicaid rules provide a special “safe harbor” for testamentary trusts created by a deceased spouse for the benefit of a surviving spouse.  The assets of these trusts are treated as available to the Medicaid applicant only to the extent that the […]

Medicaid Planning & Income-Only Trusts An “irrevocable” trust, on the other hand, is one that cannot be changed after it has been created. In most cases, this type of trust is drafted so that the income is payable to you (the person establishing the trust, called the “grantor”) for life, and the principal cannot be […]

Medicaid Planning & Supplemental Needs Trusts The Medicaid rules also have certain exceptions for transfers for the sole benefit of disabled people under age 65.  Even after moving to a nursing home, if you have a child, other relative, or even a friend who is under age 65 and disabled, you can transfer assets into […]