If you’re getting ready to enter a nursing home and you still don’t have an estate plan, you’re leaving your estate open to a host of possible issues down the road. This is the reason why you need to work on preparing an estate plan long before you go to the nursing home. If you can do this, you can be sure that things will be a lot more peaceful for you once you get to the nursing home. Here are some ways in which you can protect your estate before you enter a nursing home.
Learn About Various Options
To begin with, you need to educate yourself about the various options that are available to you. As a result, you can make an informed decision that’s sure to work out perfectly for you. Keep in mind that this is a process that can be made a lot easier by working with a legal professional. They can tell you all that you need to know about the steps that you can take and also guide you on how to take them. The expert that you work with will let you know details such as that there are six major factors in the process of estate planning, and these are Guardianship designations, Beneficiary designations, Healthcare Power of Attorney, Durable power of attorney, Wills, and Trusts.
Upgrade Your Home’s Value
Another way for you to protect your estate is for you to upgrade the value of your home. You can do this by working on renovations and repairs that are known to improve the value of a home, such as roofing repairs. This and other projects should be quite easy for you to do, since there were 108,069 roofing companies in the United States as of 2021, according to Roofers Guild. By improving your home, you’ll be protecting an asset that’s bound to be yours and that you can safeguard with other steps as a professional will help you learn about.
Gift Assets
You can also gift assets, such as the aforementioned home that will be valuable. By gifting your assets to your dependents or other people whom you trust, you can keep them safe from penalties such as taxes and more. For this, you may have to give special instructions to the people to whom you gift the assets so that they can keep them in good shape. For instance, remember that office spaces, living rooms, bedrooms, kitchens, and bathrooms, according to Angi, need to be cleaned once a week. By letting those that you gift these assets know about these details, you can be assured of property that stays in great shape for a long time to come, which can be sold or traded for something that may be necessary and that’s of the same value, give or take.
Establish a Trust
You can also establish a trust with the help of a professional, as there are many types of trusts. A trust is a legal way by which you can manage and protect your assets, especially if you draft it properly. That said, you need to choose between an irrevocable trust and an asset-protection trust so that you make the right call. As a result, both you and your beneficiaries can benefit and avoid penalties in the process. Make sure that the legal expert you hire knows exactly what your intentions are so that they can advise you properly.
With these methods, you can protect your assets before you enter a nursing home. As a result, you can be sure of getting the best outcome in terms of the safety of your hard-earned assets. You can also be sure that your dependents and loved ones will be in the best possible hands, come what may.