Congress has agreed to allow the President to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for $2.4 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years. How this deal will affect the three major programs crucial to the elderly — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — may not be known until almost year’s end, but the impact could Read Full Article
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There is now more information available to help families evaluate nursing homes. The federal government has revamped the criteria on its “Nursing Home Compare” Web site, where consumers can compare nursing home care in the United States. In addition, new information about complaints against nursing homes will soon be available on the site. The government Read Full Article
More and more seniors are living together without getting married. According to U.S. Census data, the number of cohabiting seniors nearly doubled between 1989 and 2000. For some seniors, marriage isn't financially worth it? they don't want to lose their former spouses' military, pension, or Social Security benefits. Other seniors don't want to have to Read Full Article
Most seniors prefer to stay at home as long as possible rather than move into a nursing home. For many families, this means eventually hiring a caregiver to look after an aging relative. There are two main ways to hire someone: directly or through a home health agency. Hiring directly: When you hire a caregiver Read Full Article
Long-term care can be very expensive, but many long-term care expenses can be deducted from your taxes. Two important recent decisions by the U.S. Tax Court provide guidance on when caregiving services are deductible. In one decision, the court ruled that payments to non-medical caregivers are still deductible as medical expenses; in the other, the Read Full Article
Older Americans are losing $2.9 billion annually to elder financial abuse, a 12 percent increase from the $2.6 billion estimated in 2008, according to “The MetLife Study of Elder Financial Abuse: Crimes of Occasion, Desperation, and Predation Against America’s Elders.” The study, based on a comprehensive review of news articles on elder financial abuse, found Read Full Article
Many movies and television shows have a scene where a family gathers around a big table after a relative has died to listen to the reading of the will. While this is a great dramatic scene, it doesn’t usually happen like that in the real world. There is no requirement that a will be read Read Full Article
As more and more people marry more than once, prenuptial agreements have become an important estate planning tool. Without a prenuptial agreement, your new spouse may be able to invalidate your existing estate plan. Such agreements are especially helpful if you have children from a previous marriage or important heirlooms that you want to keep Read Full Article
Dan Taylor, The Parent Care Conversation: Six Strategies for Transforming the Emotional and Financial Future of Your Aging Parents (Penguin Books, New York, NY, 2006. 262 pages). $14.00 from Amazon (click on book to order) One of the hardest things for aging parents and their adult children to do is sit down and have a Read Full Article
Americans who take time off work to care for their aging parents are losing an estimated $3 trillion dollars in wages, pension and Social Security benefits, according to a new MetLife study. Meanwhile, the percentage of adult children providing basic care for their parents has skyrocketed in recent years. Nearly 10 million adults age 50 Read Full Article