Estate Planning for People with a Chronic Condition or Disability

Though the task can be daunting, arranging for the eventuality of death is a necessary undertaking. The planning of one’s estate takes on even greater urgency for those living with chronic disease or disability. This practical guide clarifies the process and addresses all pertinent topics — from the establishment of preferences regarding convalescent care in the event of further disability to the management of assets after death. In addition, questions regarding life insurance, living trusts, power of attorney, and when to work with a lawyer are answered. Though legalities can be intimidating, this final and most important of legal tasks need not be fraught with confusion.

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List Price: $ 21.95
Price: $ 12.75

New Times, New Challenges: Law and Advice for Savvy Seniors and Their Families

If your parents are growing older, if you are growing older (or at least you hope to), you will face new times and new challenges. This book will help. A law professor and a leading elder law lawyer team up to offer legal and practical advice on retirement issues (finances, housing, health care), walk you through various estate planning options (living trusts, wills, advance directives), and help your family in truly sad times, disability and death in the family. They also help you avoid, and, if that’s too late, deal with bad folks: caretakers who abuse elders, obnoxious bill collectors, scam artists, identity thieves, and those discriminate on the basis of age or disability. Alas, there are even legal problems associated with grandparenting and remarriage (the triumph of hope over experience).

As to driving and sex, while there is both good and bad news, one message stands out: never at the same time.

The topics may be sobering, but the style is not. It’s a good read, often funny and even, on occasion, profound. Charles Sabatino, the director of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Law and Aging, writes that the book is ”an encyclopedic legal reference with the down-home philosophy and wit of Will Rogers, wryly enriched by poetry, humor, and existential musings.” Doctor Andrew Weil finds the book ”entertaining and uplifting with very practical and sensible suggestions.” He will use it himself and will recommend it to patients, friends, and loved ones.

Whether you buy this book or not, the time is now to face the new challenges that are hurrying near. How? Sit down for an hour and write a letter to your family, covering such things as end-of-life care, living arrangements in the case of disability, and who gets the grandfather clock. (There is a suggested model in the book.) Discuss your letter with loved ones. You will save you and your family, money, confusion, and heartbreak. Challenges, unaddressed, fester.

Professor Hegland has spent his career teaching law, mostly at Arizona but also UCLA and Harvard. He has degrees from Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Harvard. Author of several legal books, he is known for his wit and clarity. Robert Fleming has spent his career practicing elder law. He lectures nationally and authors a legal treatise used by many of the nation’s elder law lawyers.

They know their stuff. And now you can too.

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List Price: $ 27.00
Price: $ 24.94

Women and Money A Practical Guide to Estate Planning

Women control 75 percent of the total personal wealth in the United States today, fill more than half the jobs, earn more than half the college degrees, and make up the fastest growing sector of new business owners. Yet most American women have not taken steps to put the legal mechanisms in place through estate planning to protect their assets, their families and themselves. This book is for you. Women and Money, A Practical Guide to Estate Planning is an exhortation, a resource, and a trusted companion. Written by attorney Patricia Annino, who has been advising both men and women about estate planning for more than two decades, the book makes a complicated process easily accessible to readers by explaining away the legal jargon, bringing the issues to life with real life stories, and addressing the concerns of women in all age and economic groups. The first time a new mother leaves her baby with a sitter, she leaves detailed instructions. Estate planning is a way to leave instructions for a lifetime, a way to make sure that if anything ever happens to you, the person you want to take care of your children will do so, your directions will determine the care they will be given, and your finances will be great enough to cover all costs. This is a book for women with significant assets and women with concerns about their financial futures, women with elderly parents and women with special needs children, single, married, divorced, widowed, and remarrying women. In short, this is a book for you and for any woman who wants to control her own financial destiny, protect herself and protect those she cares about most.

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List Price: $ 21.95
Price: $ 18.96

The Executor’s Guide: Settling a Loved One’s Estate or Trust

Settling an estate can be like moving through a maze — let The Executor’s Guide lead the way.

If you’re faced with wrapping up the affairs of a loved one who has died, you may feel overwhelmed by all the work ahead — especially when you’re grieving. But with the right legal and practical information, you can do it.

The Executor’s Guide will help you get organized and make progress one step at a time, by assisting you in navigating an unfamiliar land of legal procedures and terminology. It explains how to:

  • prepare for the job of executor or trustee
  • take your first steps
  • claim life insurance, Social Security and other benefits
  • make sense of a will
  • what to do if there is no will
  • determine whether probate is necessary
  • care for children and their property
  • file taxes
  • deal with family members
  • handle trusts
  • look up your state’s laws
  • work with lawyers, appraisers, accountants and other experts

    The 4th edition contains updated tables outlining key points of each state’s laws, the latest information on estate taxes and worksheets that help you stay organized and on track. (20080608)

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    List Price: $ 39.99
    Price: $ 20.84

  • Estate Planning Smarts: A Practical, User-Friendly, Action-Oriented Guide, 2nd Edition

    This best-selling book for baby boomers and their parents is essential reading, whether you are tackling the subject for the first time or revising your plan to reflect changes in the law, your finances or your personal life.

    The expanded 2nd edition, available here, replaces the 1st edition, published in 2009. It covers the important 2010 tax changes that affect everyone and explains how to:

    Appoint someone to handle your finances in case you are not able to some day because of illness or disability

    Protect your spouse or partner

    Provide for young or disabled children, and grandchildren, too

    Hand down a family business

    Build a charitable legacy

    Shield assets from creditors

    Transfer non-probate assets, such as joint accounts, retirement plans and co-owned real estate

    Avoid family conflicts

    A lawyer, award-winning journalist and dynamic speaker, Deborah L. Jacobs is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and Forbes. She has also been interviewed as an expert by reporters from many different media outlets, including The New York Times, Bloomberg News, Smart Money, Reuters, U.S. News & World Report, MarketWatch and CBS TV.

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    List Price: $ 24.95
    Price: $ 15.65