Legal, Money & Family
The practical and the consequential — wills, taxes, care planning, housing, and the money conversations that the 55-and-better community can no longer postpone.
What We Cover
- Estate planning & wills
- Taxes & retirement income
- Care planning & long-term care
- Housing & downsizing
- Working with professionals
Recent Wednesday Reads
What You Earned: The VA Benefits Older Veterans, and Their Widows, Leave on the Table
Veterans Day is a good day to check. A 2022 law quietly widened benefits for Vietnam-era veterans, a pension many families have never heard of helps pay for care at home, and the best help with the paperwork is free.
Should You Put Your Home in a Trust?
Questions to ask before making the move. A living trust can spare your family a court process, but it won't save you taxes or protect the house from a nursing home, and for many people a cheaper deed does the same job.
Who Speaks for You While You’re Still Here
A will only works after you are gone. The documents that matter more are the ones for the day you are alive but cannot speak for yourself — and most people do not have them.
The Form That Overrules Your Will
Your IRA and your life insurance go to whoever is named on the beneficiary form — not whoever is named in your will. Two Supreme Court cases, five mistakes, and a one-afternoon fix.
The Six Weeks That Decide Your Year
Medicare Open Enrollment runs October 15 to December 7, and the default option — doing nothing — quietly renews you into whatever your plan changed while you weren’t looking. The four numbers that decide your cost, why the premium is the least important of them, and the twenty minutes of homework almost nobody does.
The House Is the Hard Part
The house is usually the largest thing a family passes down and the piece handled with the least information. Step-up in basis, why putting a child’s name on the deed can cost six figures, the $250,000 and $500,000 exclusions if you’re the one selling, and the four conversations that prevent the mess.
Four Moves You Have Until December 31 to Make
Tax planning happens in the fall; tax preparation happens in the spring. Required minimum distributions, qualified charitable distributions, Roth conversions, and loss harvesting — plus the new senior deduction and why its phaseout ties all four together.
The Envelope You’re About to Throw Away
Your Medicare plan is required to mail you an Annual Notice of Change by September 30, and it lists every way your coverage is different on January 1. Most people give it four seconds and a wrist flick into the recycling. The five questions worth thirty minutes — and where to get help that isn’t selling you anything.
Medicare, Explained Once and Properly
Medicare’s Annual Enrollment Period opens October 15, and most people drift into the biggest decision inside it without realizing they made one. The four parts without the alphabet soup, the honest Advantage-versus-Original scorecard, and the one fact about switching back that almost nobody explains.
The Beneficiary Audit
Your 401(k), IRA, and life insurance don’t pass under your will — they go to whoever is named on a form you may have filled out decades ago. The ex-spouse problem, why naming a minor grandchild directly backfires, the difference between per stirpes and per capita, and the trust-as-beneficiary tax trap almost nobody sees coming.
What Long-Term Care Insurance Actually Costs
The real premiums at 55, 60, and 65, why women pay 40 to 60 percent more, and the inflation rider that roughly doubles the price. The rate-increase history the industry would rather not discuss, and the three groups who should walk away from this product entirely.
Are 55+ Active-Adult Communities Worth It?
The brochure is genuinely seductive — pools, pickleball, someone else shoveling the snow. What the monthly fees actually cover, what they don’t, and the question to ask before signing anything.