4 Essential Qualities Your Executor Should Have
December 1, 2010
If you have a Will, you have an executor. You are placing a lot of trust in your executor. After all, this is the person who will be serving in your stead when you pass away—helping your loved ones, overseeing your finances, paying your final bills and distributing your property. Serving as someone’s executor can be a tough job, and choosing the right person for that job can be just as difficult.
Although it is commonly considered an honor, serving as an executor is a lot of work, and often requires a great capacity for organization, attention to detail, meeting deadlines, and more. You may be tempted to name your favorite sibling or eldest child just to keep from hurting any feelings, but your family and heirs will not be well served if you choose your executor based on emotion rather than ability.
Keeping this in mind, here are four qualities to consider when choosing who will serve as your executor:
1. Is the person trustworthy? Your executor will be privy to all of your financial secrets: reviewing estate assets, determining your liabilities and paying off creditors, settling outstanding debts, and making distributions to heirs. Chances are you don’t want all that information spread throughout the family or community.
2. Is this person organized? The person you choose will be in charge of a number of detailed tasks, both large and small. He or she will be making lists of assets, meeting court deadlines, making timely distributions for estate taxes, and more. Missing or being late for one of these many steps can draw out the entire process, costing your heirs both time and money.
3. Is this person financially savvy? One of the responsibilities of executor is to keep the estate viable (making sure the mortgage and fees continue to be paid) during the probate process. If you have investment accounts you’ll want to ensure they won’t languish and lose their value before they can be distributed to your heirs.
4. Is this person compassionate? Although probate can be a difficult and detailed process, it is at its core about the people you love. Your executor should have the ability to be caring and compassionate during this emotional time.
Part of the estate planning attorneys’ job is to help you think through who among your family or friends would be best suited for the job. If you have any questions at all about who to name, make sure to bring it up with your attorney.
Thrown into the Deep End
May 18, 2010
Did you see Michelle Singletary’s column this weekend in the Boston Globe? I like her column, The Color of Money. She writes in a straight-forward, honest manner, with guidance targeted at “regular folks” like myself.
This weekend she wrote about essentially being thrown into the deep end of the pool of elder care. If you read her column, you saw that her feelings, questions, fears, and sense of being overwhelmed and without direction are those very same feelings that most children of seniors (or healthier spouses of seniors) are experiencing every day.
While I can’t make your parent or spouse healthier, and I can’t bring back their memory skills, I can make it easier for you to handle your new caretaking role. The elder law attorney’s job has many aspects – for one, I help elders stretch out their assets to stay at home for as long as possible.
How do I do this? We look at MassHealth benefits and Veterans Benefits as a way of bringing more help into the home. We look at selling the home and building an in-law apartment on a child’s house. We explore setting up a contract between parent and child that allows the child to quit her job and care for her parent but still earn some income. And if nursing home is a possibility, we explore ways to maintain a healthy spouse at home and also explore various methods of safely and legally transferring some assets to children.
But the elder law attorney’s role goes beyond this – my job is also to pull in other professionals who can help you become a better – and more sane – caregiver. I may invite in an Alzheimer’s coach to teach a family how to work with a family member who is changing before their eyes; a geriatric nurse to guide a thoughtful conversation on wishes for end of life care; a geriatric care manager to create and manage a schedule of home health aides – and more.
I can’t get you out of the deep end of the pool. Life takes our parents and spouses in certain directions. But I can teach you how to swim.
This Made Me Laugh
May 12, 2010
Talking to a client this afternoon, and he mentions that he is attending an annual get-together tonight with some friends. The way he describes it: “A bunch of old men getting together and telling lies.” I love it!!
The Move to Assisted Living – Things are Great
March 22, 2010
My grandmother is doing so well at her new assisted living residence. About a week after she moved in, she started to become unhappy. But then she sat down with the director and told her that she was bored. And here is something you don’t see too often – the director listened and did something about it.
Now she is playing Scrabble and other challenging games every day. And here is the “icing on the cake” – the director and her staff have done something we could never get my grandmother to do – she is practicing piano every day. She was a teacher and concert pianist for decades, but in the last 10 years or so, we’ve had to drag her to the piano. She’s inherently lazy and would rather just snooze. Not at Newbridge! Every day she works on her pieces, and the results are evident – her mind is sharper, she is more present, and she is happier. She told my uncle (her brother and confidant) that she couldn’t think of any reason to be unhappy here.
And then there are those painful hips. This weekend I witnessed some things I hadn’t seen in years. My grandmother came out to visit us, and she got herself up and out of the car by herself, with no complaints (highly unusual). Then she made it up the 12 steps to the porch, again without complaint (unheard of). And the best part? Later that afternoon, she went back down those stairs and took a walk. Took a walk! OK, it was just to the next house, but none of us could remember the last time she had been able to do that. The staff at Newbridge deserves all the credit.
Sometimes the Best Thing is to Do Nothing at All
March 15, 2010
Clients came in a few months ago explaining that several years back, the mother had deeded her house into a trust and now she wanted to make a change to the trust. I said that I would review the trust to be sure that such a change would be permitted and would advise them on how to proceed.
As I dug into the trust, it turned out to be quite a doozy. It was poorly drafted. It was clearly put together by someone who didn’t understand the intersection of estate tax planning, Medicaid planning, property law, and fulfilling a mother’s wishes. It took me weeks of research, several pages of notes, and a lot of head-scratching to finally put together a 5-page letter to the client explaining her options for moving forward.
I often say that elder law and special needs planning involve juggling a lot of different balls and that we will never be able to get them all to land in a perfect line. It’s a matter of choosing which of the many issues are most important to you and letting the other ones slide into second place.
In this case, the clients and I reviewed the pros and cons of all of her options. Because of the poor drafting of the original trust, we were very limited in what we could do. If we did A, she would achieve B, but she would lose C. If we did B, we would achieve C, but lose A, and so on. The client weighed all the different things that she had hoped to accomplish and chose the one that was most important to her. And to accomplish that particular goal, the required action was to do nothing.
In the end, she walked out of my office with the same trust document she had when she came in – we didn’t change a thing. But she now has something else – knowledge. She now understands, much better than she did from the attorney who drafted the trust years ago – what will happen to her home if she wants to sell the house and move, what happens if she ever needs nursing home, and who in her family will inherit it after she passes away.
Sometimes, after examining all the angles, you realize that the best thing to do is to do nothing.
Veterans Fair This Saturday in Hull
March 10, 2010
Come out to beautiful Hull this Saturday for a Veterans Health and Wellness Fair. This is being put together by the Hull Board of Health and the Hull Veterans Council, and it is shaping up to be a great event.
There will be blood pressure checks, immunizations, even yoga and reiki! They will also have a skin analyzer machine. There will be education on legal issues and general health matters, as well, and much more.
The event is open to the public – veterans of all ages and non-veterans alike. Refreshments and children’s activities, too!
Taking place at the Memorial Middle School on Saturday, March 13 from 10a – 2p. The school is on Nantasket Ave., behind the L Street playing fields – you can’t miss it.
Our Move to the ALF – Need to Work Out the Kinks
February 8, 2010
This post continues to chronicle my grandmother’s move to assisted living last week. Her first two days were excellent, but by the evening of her third day, she had doubts. She doesn’t like being in the memory wing – I can’t blame her. She among the least impaired residents there, and she is spending her days with some people with some severe cognitive deficits. (As more residents come in, the staff plans to split up the lesser impaired residents and the more impaired people, but for now, they are all together.) I think the activity directors have a tough job of trying to develop daily activities and events that include everyone, even though their abilities are so varied. I’ve often thought the same thing of special education teachers.
I am still convinced that assisted living is the best place for her, and we are trying to work together with the staff to tweak her daily experience. Can they pull her and another one or two residents aside for Scrabble? Games of Hearts? Her vocabulary and math skills are quite impressive – let’s tap into those every day to keep her mind sharp, and, let’s face it, to keep her from being bored. Can she spend part of the day on the non-memory assisted living wing? Some of their programming is more engaging. And how about getting her to the gym or the pool for physical therapy for those painful arthritic hips? We are in the midst of these conversations with the Newbridge staff, and from the care and attention I have seen them give to each resident, I am sure that we will work out some new daily rhythms for her that she will like much better.
And there’s a lot to be said for having your best friend on campus! My grandmother’s best friend Bea lives in the independent living building. (Newbridge is a continuing care style campus.) Yesterday I took my 5 year old and we found a wheelchair (it would have been a very long walk for my grandmother with her walker and those pesky hips) and brought my grandmother to one of the campus restaurants for a long, leisurely, laughter-filled and hug-filled lunch with her wonderful pal and another woman from their old “supper club.” A group of about ten women used to go out every week to the “pancake house” (I think it was IHOP, but they all call it the pancake house). In recent years that group dwindled as driving became more difficult. But now several of those women are moving to Newbridge, and the supper club will rise again.
Today We Moved to an Assisted Living
February 3, 2010
Today I helped move my grandmother to assisted living. She’s been living at home for years, going to a day program 6 days per week. The van would pick her up and bring her home. She has a fantastic home health aide Myrlene who would come in the morning to help get her ready and return in the evenings to take care of dinner and to make sure my grandmother got to bed. For five years, we weren’t worried about the overnights alone, since my grandmother has never wandered or mixed up her days and nights. She has some dementia, but for the most part it’s short-term memory loss.
But her hips have awful arthritis and she’s been having more and more trouble getting herself up and down and walking around. We finally got to the point where we’ve become worried about her trying to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night. At the same time, we’ve become less enamored with her day program. And it’s just too difficult for her to navigate the stairs getting in and out of her apartment building every day. So we all – the whole family, including my grandmother – decided it was time for assisted living.
And what a place we found! She is in the memory program assisted living at Newbridge on the Charles. All I can say is WOW. The staff is incredible, so thoughtful and kind, and watching their residents so closely. I am beyond impressed. And the building! Well, it’s beautiful. And the food! Fresh and delicious.
Here is a hot tip – they had us arrive for move-in at 11:30, so the very first thing that happened was we were escorted to the dining room for lunch. Well, my grandmother could not have been happier! To sit in a lovely dining room, being waited on, eating scrumptious food – she kept looking at us, saying “I get to live here?!” And from there they swept her up into the day’s activities and Myrlene and I went to set up her room.
Her first day could not have been better! She didn’t ask for Myrlene and me at all that whole afternoon. We were worried about her going to bed alone and being confused by the new room, and maybe waking up in the morning and not knowing where she was, so Myrlene slept over with her. The report is that they kept her busy with activities until 8 pm and then she slept all night!
I am headed back over on Friday morning to visit with my two-and-a-half year old. I’ll be chronicling how my grandmother is doing and how the rest of us are adjusting to the change. So far, things are looking great!
Acupuncture for Seniors – Ever Tried It?
January 22, 2010
Ever tried acupuncture? It took me years to work up the nerve to leave the comforts of the doctor’s office experience I have always known and to explore this new territory – and am I glad I did! If you’ve never tried it, now is a great time.
Bob Thomson, Lic. Ac., practices in Hingham. I know several people who swear by his skills. He is a great listener, and he really takes the time to think up the most appropriate treatment for each client. Lucky for us, he is conducting group sessions at our local senior centers. He has the group sit in comfortable chairs, and he applies treatments to the calfs and forearms – and from those locations, the acupuncture works its way to the rest of your body, to find the places that need the healing.
Afraid of needles? They don’t hurt. They shouldn’t call them needles, that word scares too many people. Although I admit that I close my eyes and don’t look at them for my entire session.
Here is where you can find Bob and begin your path towards feeling better:
Hanover Council on Aging: Friday 1/29 & Friday 2/5, both from 8:00 – 10:30 a.m. (Ongoing)
Hingham Department of Elder Services: Thursday 1/28 from 9:00 – 11:00 a.m. (Fourth Thursday of every month)
And if you aren’t quite ready for a treatment but would like to meet Bob and learn more about acupuncture, he will be presenting an introductory seminar at the Braintree Council on Aging on Thursday 2/18 from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m.
The fee is $25 per treatment, and the fifth session is free.
Spice up your winter and try something new!
South Shore Senior Population Set to Boom
January 18, 2010
Yesterday’s South Section of the Boston Globe had a two-page story on the coming boom in the senior population. It’s reassuring to read that senior centers are reexamining their goals and programming in light of the change in clientele. The biggest issues I see facing my clients are (1) bringing in the support system required to remain at home for as long as possible and (2) transportation.
So far the societal responses to these needs have been minimal. Take transportation – the Ride is, well, a long ride. The senior centers have vans, but you need to set up your appointment in advance, and their funding allows them to transport seniors only for certain types of activities. Poor transportation options as an elder or disabled person have been the flip-side to the choice of living the quiet life in the suburbs.
As for remaining at home for as long as possible, there is more help available here, and I help my clients access the resources available to them as best as possible. There is veteran’s funding, MassHealth money, and then good old fashioned creativity – like setting up a contract with a child that allows her to leave her job in order to care for her parents, yet be paid so that she can still meet her own obligations at home. Or, another example would be two or three elderly neighbors sharing the services of a personal shopper or a personal chef so that the grocery shopping and cooking is taken care of.
As a society, we expect to be taken care of in our old age, yet we encourage our children to cross the county in search of their dreams, so we don’t have a built-in support system. And we don’t like to pay taxes. So who will care for the Boomers? I think the coming decades will see a blossoming of the American “creative spirit” – neighbors banding together to develop shared living arrangements, new businesses developing to serve seniors at home at prices they can afford. And in the mean time, each aging Boomer should be saving up funds for what they hope will be a long retirement. Meeting with a trusted financial advisor would be a very good first step.