Redding Estate Planning Law Blog

A previous post on this blog discussed the fact that there has been considerable controversy surrounding the estate of Aretha Franklin, the world-famous singer who died about this time last year. As that previous post stated, some family members have questioned the actions of Ms. Franklin's niece, who is serving as personal representative. These family members believe that someone else would be in a better position to control the finances of Ms. Franklin's multi-million dollar estate.

After a contentious court hearing recently, the judge overseeing the estate decided to convert the case in to what is commonly referred to as a supervised estate. A supervised estate is one in which a personal representative can do very few things without first getting the court's explicit approval.

Many people in Northern California who are approaching retirement may also be thinking about how they are going to afford the cost of long-term care. As people age, after all, they may require the assistance of a retirement facility or of a nursing home, but these services can cost thousands of dollars a month. Most people do not have this kind of money lying around, and the money they do have they would prefer to pass on to their children or other loved ones.

To resolve this dilemma, many residents of the Redding area may wish to turn to a process called Medicaid planning, which, in California, may more appropriately be called Medi-Cal planning. This is part of estate planning. The goal of Medicaid planning is for a person to qualify legally for government-funded long-term care while still being able to preserve at least some of their assets. However, because Medi-Cal is meant for those who have limited means, a person wishing to take this approach will have to make sure that, legally speaking, he or she does not have property available to pay for his or her own medical care.

Many people in and around Redding, California, have probably heard of revocable living trusts, as they are a rather popular estate planning device these days.

To review, a person, or couple, who wants to create a revocable living trust will first prepare the trust document creating the trust. At least initially, they will be named trustees of the trust and may also be primary beneficiaries, that is, the first in line to receive proceeds from the trust. As the name implies, they will retain the ability to dissolve, or revoke, the trust at any time.

A man who at one point helped lead Warner Brothers was recently at the center of a legal battle over his medical care. Despite being wealthy enough to afford in-home care, the current wife of this man has for the past couple of years arranged for him to stay in a nursing home.

The man suffers from Alzheimer's disease. While once a bright star in the entertainment business, he has for some time been unable to handle his own affairs due to mental incapacity. He has been married to his current wife for over 40 years. However, the man's oldest child and only son, from a prior relationship, filed legal paperwork asking that a California court appoint someone else temporarily as his father's legal conservator. In his paperwork, he accused his stepmother of breaching her fiduciary duty and also of possibly engaging in elder abuse. His stepmother appears to have been duly appointed as the executive's attorney-in-fact and healthcare agent.