Halloween Estate Planning: Tricks And Treats

A Halloween greeting sets the stage for a conversation about the real scares families face: probate, guardianship, and the high cost of long-term care. We unpack how to turn those fears into treats by using practical tools that keep control in your hands, protect your home, and speed assets to loved ones without a courtroom drama.

We start with the case for avoiding probate. A thoughtfully drafted revocable trust preserves privacy, directs distributions on your terms, and helps sidestep creditor and benefit recovery claims. For the family home, we explain how a Lady Bird deed (enhanced life estate deed) lets you keep full control during life while ensuring the property vests immediately in your beneficiaries at death. Add payable-on-death designations to bank, IRA, and life insurance accounts to keep funds outside the probate estate and in the hands of the people who need them most.

Next, we draw a clear line between comprehensive powers of attorney and the turmoil of guardianship. Guardianship fights can turn personal and public, pitting relatives against each other in court over capacity and control. Strong general durable and health care powers of attorney, supported by a living will, prevent that spiral by naming who acts for you the moment capacity slips. The result is faster decisions, private management of finances and care, and a huge reduction in costs and conflict.

We close with the underrated reward of planning: peace of mind. By structuring ownership and beneficiary designations wisely, you can qualify for long-term care benefits without sacrificing your home or retirement. You avoid the most common traps—public probate, contested guardianships, and rushed, do-it-yourself fixes—while giving your family clarity and calm when it matters. Want help turning tricks into treats? Book a free consult at 1-888-999-6600 or schedule at mcelderdall.com/scheduling. If this conversation helped, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review so others can find it too.

Episode Transcript

Greg McIntyre (00:09):
Happy Halloween, Jane.
Hi there, Greg.
Happy Halloween.
Jane, treat your family.
Don't trick them with the giftof estate planning.
Okay.
You want that in your yourbucket when you're
trick-or-treating, not the badstuff, okay?

(00:30):
Right?
You don't want it the tricks.
So coming up to this Halloween,I'm thinking of the tricks and
the treats.
There are three treats that Ican think about for estate
planning, and that's avoidingprobate and why, avoiding

(00:50):
guardianships and why, andqualifying for long-term care
benefits without losing yourhouse and savings.
Three tricks that we're goingto cover in today's Elder Law
report are a trick ofguardianship, the bad thing, a
trick of losing assets, yourhome, your retirement due to the

(01:13):
high cost of long-term carebefore you can qualify for a
benefit to pay for it.
And the trick and dangers ofprobate.
So, Jane, I'm going to takethem one at a time.

Jane Dearwester (01:24):
Yeah.

Greg McIntyre (01:25):
Because it's a treat to talk to you today on
this Elder Law report and to beable to come to our audience and
our clients and everyone elseout there to talk about estate
planning and the dangers and thesafety of it.
So let's talk about the treatsfirst, and then we'll talk about
a trick.
Okay.

(01:45):
We'll take them.
I think I'm going to match themup and go one by one.
So treat is avoiding probate,easy distribution of assets,
avoiding creditor claims,long-term care claims, passing
assets when you pass away toyour loved ones instead of
losing them.
Let's talk about that.

(02:06):
Jane, how is avoiding probate?
How could how can how would youset up an estate plan or how do
you think an easy estate planwould be set up to be easy to
pass assets?

Jane Dearwester (02:16):
Yeah, the best way to avoid probate is by
setting up a trust, right?
That takes everything out ofprobate and takes takes the um
opportunity away from creditorsand others to try to attach your
assets to pass through yourprobate estate.

(02:37):
So if you do some estateplanning, set up a trust, do
some trust planning to protectyour assets, not only is your
trust a private document thatdoes not get filed at the
courthouse like your will does,but again, you have so much more
control over those assets evenafter you're gone by setting up
that trust.
Another great thing is theLadybird deed or enhanced life

(03:00):
estate deed to protect your realestate.
For most people who come in,their real property, their
primary residence is theirnumber one concern.
That is the thing they workedhard for.
There's history in, there'sfamily history in that home.
It's where everybody goes forChristmas, it's where everybody
goes for the holidays.
And so people want to preservethat and pass that on to their

(03:23):
family members.
You can do that with a ladybirddeed that goes directly to your
beneficiaries, passes outsideof probate, no probate tricks.
It immediately vests in yourheirs upon your death and can't
get much better treat than that.
Avoiding probate and uh otherthan trust planning, ladybird
deed is setting up yourfinancial assets to have payable

(03:46):
on deaf beneficiaries so thatyour bank accounts and your IRAs
and life insurance that allthose things pass directly to
your beneficiaries.

Greg McIntyre (03:56):
Okay.
That was amazing, by the way.
That was great.
You matched up the treat andthe trick and and and showed why
it's easy to pass assets if youset them up right in estate
planning and open yourself upfor long-term care benefits and
uh protect your home inretirement and avoid the trick
of probate where you could losethose assets, especially if

(04:17):
you've had a benefit pay forlong-term care.
So, next one putting in placethe treat of estate planning.
I like to say estate planningand elder law is as much about
protecting you or more aboutprotecting you during your life
and making things easy than evenafterwards and passing assets,

(04:38):
right?
So putting in place generaldurable power of attorney,
comprehensive, you know, generaldurable powers of attorney,
healthcare powers of attorneys,living wills, and avoiding the
trick or perils of guardianship,the failure to be proactive and
name who handles things foryou.

(04:58):
Why is that such a treat?
And why is guardianshipconsidered could be considered a
bad thing or result in not whatyou want?

Jane Dearwester (05:07):
These are just so important in the
guardianships that we handle.
I really have seen familiesreally get torn apart when
they're fighting over who'sgoing to be the appropriate
guardian, or even fighting overwhether or not mom, dad,
grandma, grandpa is in factcompetent.
Some family members might thinkthey are competent, others may

(05:27):
not.
So, how that plays out in aguardianship proceeding is all
that information truly becomespublic and plays out in a public
space in a courtroom wherethese are all decisions that
could be made in a private spacein our offices when we're
drafting your general durablepower of attorney, healthcare

(05:49):
power of attorney, living wills,so that you get to make choices
that, hey, if something happensto you and you lose capacity,
you already have somebody namedwho can immediately act for you,
do whatever's necessary foryour finances, your real estate,
and also for your healthcaredecisions.
So without those documents inplace, you really leave yourself

(06:12):
open to tricks and all kinds ofperil with having to deal with
guardianships, not to mentionthe expense of guardianships.

Greg McIntyre (06:20):
Gosh, I mean it's it's it's not even comparable.
No, how how efficient the useof your money is and and and
come when on a general dribblepower attorney and healthcare
power attorney, planning ahead,right?
Planning ahead, studying forthe test ahead of time, not
cramming the night before.

(06:41):
It's so costly and timeconsuming.
And the result might not bewhat you desire.
Jane in contestedguardianships, you might have
some stinking attorney that'sappointed over you and your
assets, and the court might havea really different idea about
what should happen to yourassets or loved one, you know,

(07:01):
retirement, house, things likethat, you know, compared to what
you really wanted to happen tosupport your spouse, family.
Um, just so much peace of mindand safety and proactive
planning like that, right?

Jane Dearwester (07:17):
Oh, yeah.

Greg McIntyre (07:18):
And great job explaining that.
Um treat third, last but notleast.
Protecting your home andsavings versus probate in
general, okay?
Protecting your home andsavings versus probate.
I feel like we tackled that onereally in the first one.

(07:41):
I think you did a two for onethere, but really I'll recap on
that one and just say the onlyplace in North Carolina where a
claim can attach is in probate.
So I don't want to sayprobate's the biggest trick or

(08:02):
so bad.
We handle a lot of probatecases.
But best laid plans, we wouldavoid probate, avoid any claims
of creditors and leave you openfor long-term care benefits
using tools like Jane proposed.
And I would say that leads intowhat really is probably should

(08:24):
be the third treat, which ispeace of mind.
When you're sitting with peaceof mind, um, the trick would be
trying to go do it yourself.
Trying to do it on theinterweb.
Trying to do it, you know, um,figure out all these complex

(08:46):
choices and what needs to happenwith money and property and how
it works with the benefitsworld yourself.
Um that's gotta equal a lot ofstress, Jane.
Oh yeah, a lot of uncertainty.
Only in the end to have to cometo us to have to fix a problem
instead of coming us to us onthe front end to set the problem

(09:08):
up or the to set the the stage,I guess, for to solve the
problem, set solve it early, andyou proceed through life
forward with peace of mind thatyou protected your assets and
open yourself up for long-termcare benefits, right?
Those are my thoughts on thereally the last treat and trick.
It would be the the perceptionof maybe having tried to fashion

(09:35):
something together or ignoringit.
That's another trick.
That if I ignore it, it's gonnago away or it's not real.
It is real, life is real, andas amazing as I feel right now,
and I'm gonna live to be 150 andthen get frozen.
Life happens.

(09:55):
I am going to die, and I needto plan, right?
And I don't like to think aboutit.
It sucks.

Jane Dearwester (10:03):
Nobody does, nobody does, but it's real,
yeah.

Greg McIntyre (10:08):
So I hope that you, Jane, have a happy
Halloween season, and and youknow, um, I would urge everyone
out there to do so as well.
Hope you and your family dostay safe and have some fun.
But also, um, on a seriousnote, if you or your loved ones,

(10:31):
your family would like to sitdown and and talk to our great
attorneys, of which Jane is one,okay.
Um, please give us a call.
Um, we'd offer a free consultto sit down and discuss your
issue and help you gain peace ofmind and have all the treats
and avoid the tricks.

(10:52):
Okay, this Halloween.
You can schedule that bycalling 1-888-999-6600 or
scheduling online atmcelderdall.com slash scheduling
right on our calendar.
Okay.
Thank you so much, Jane.
Thank you.
See ya.
Cheers.