Leave Your Kids Your Assets, Not Your Decisions

In this Elder Law Minute, Kaye Dent explains why it’s crucial for you to have a well thought out plan instead of leaving your wishes up to your loved ones.
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"Your Trusted Advisor on the Elder Care Journey"
Dent Coulson Elder Law is dedicated to providing families in the Effingham and O'Fallon Illinois and St. Louis area with their Elder Law needs. Our practice areas include Asset Preservation Planning, Veterans Benefits, Medicaid Eligibility, Alzheimer's Planning, Special Needs Planning, Estate Planning and more. We understand the financial challenges you may face as you and your loved ones grow older.
At Dent Coulson Elder Law, our clients' well-being is our number one priority. For immediate help, call [phone], [phone], or [phone].
THREE LOCATIONS
O'FALLON ILLINOIS OFFICE
774 Sunset Blvd., Suite 200
O'Fallon, IL 62269
618-632-7000
EFFINGHAM ILLINOIS OFFICE
415 W Virginia Ave
Effingham, IL 62401
217-330-5500
ST. LOUIS AREA OFFICE
2200 Westport Plaza Dr., Suite 221
St. Louis, MO 63146
314-567-9292
CONTACT US
Email: [e-mail]
Phone: [phone] or 217-330-5500 or 314-567-9292
www.dentcoulsonelderlaw.com
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Video Transcript:
Hi, I'm Kaye DeSelms Dent with Dent Coulson Elder Law, here with an Elder Law Minute for you. These videos are intended to educate you about the elder care journey, which begins earlier in life than you might think. We hope that you find them useful, and if you have further questions, please call us at Dent Coulson Elder Law.
Don't leave your kids your decisions; leave them your assets. Same thing goes for your spouse. But when it comes to your kids, this is even more vital advice. We occasionally have people who come in and want to leave assets to a particular child and let that child determine how they're to be distributed. Sometimes it's with regard to another child with special needs, and they say, "Well, I know if I leave them assets, the child with special needs will lose their benefits, so I'm just going to leave it to their brother Harry, and Harry will know what to do." Nobody knows what to do.
In order for your estate plan to actually work and for it to be a proper estate plan, it needs to be well thought out from the beginning, with decisions made by you and properly set out in writing to make your decisions very clear and executable. Another issue we have sometimes is having things be overly complicated, and then people saying, "Well, Harry will just take care of it." That's not how it works because we don't know if Harry will survive you, if Harry will be well when you die, if Harry's wife won't be telling him what to do, or if Harry won't be in a position where he can't do certain things because maybe he's in bankruptcy or maybe he's on public benefits. There's a very long list of unfortunate things that can happen to Harry or to anybody else.
What it really boils down to is that if you depend on somebody else in the future to do the right thing, you can guarantee they either won't know what the right thing is, because they don't know what you mean by that, or they won't be able to do the right thing, or they just won't do the right thing. So come see us today at Dent Coulson Elder Law, and we can help you formulate an estate plan that works for you, that makes sense, and that your executor can actually execute when you pass away, or that other people that you trust can execute if you become disabled.
Thank you. We'll look forward to hearing from you.