Clarksville, IN, Estate Planning Lawyer
It is never comfortable to think about a time when you will no longer be around to help your family. However, the best way to ensure that you will be able to continue to support your family after you pass away is to create a well-intentioned estate plan that will take effect upon your passing. Our Clarksville, IN, estate lawyer is ready to help you develop an estate plan that will fit your circumstances and goals. We can help make everything legally binding, thereby ensuring that your family will not have to face the frustrations of an unsettled estate.
At Church, Langdon, Lopp, Banet Law, we know the importance of finding and establishing solutions to the management of elder care, and estate planning. Our estate lawyers in Clarksville, IN, will take the time to learn about all your concerns and desires for your tailored estate plan. We are ready to begin working on your plan immediately. This will allow you to continue to enjoy time with your family, knowing that your estate plan is prepared.
Why You Can Rely on Our Estate Lawyers in Clarksville, IN
Our Clarksville Estate Lawyer Focuses on the Key Aspects of an Estate Plan
At Church, Langdon, Lopp, Banet Law, we have several decades of collective experience in numerous aspects of law, including estate planning. Our estate attorneys in Clarksville, IN are led by Gary Banet, who focuses on estate planning and trust administration. He knows the vital aspects of estate planning. These aspects can include things like setting up long-term care options, avoiding complexities, and setting up a power of attorney. Our Clarksville estate attorney will not move forward until they are certain that your desires for each aspect of the estate plan are fulfilled.
Our Clarksville Estate Lawyer Can Help with Understanding Medicaid and Long-Term Care
One of the most challenging parts of creating your unique estate plan involves understanding how Medicaid and long-term care benefits work. According to the American Council on Aging, Medicaid is a State of Indiana and federal program that provides health care, and long-term care coverage, to those who meet income and asset limitations. Spending down assets to qualify for Medicaid must follow certain rules, or Medicaid will deny your request.
The team at CLLB Law knows numerous techniques, that we have successfully employed in the past, that may be able to help you maintain your assets. This can help ensure that your loved ones receive the inheritance that you want to leave behind, and still qualify for Medicaid long-term benefits. The best advice that our estate planning lawyer in Clarksville can give you is to start setting up your plan for this possibility as early as possible. Without a plan in place, your ability to protect your assets before you move to a nursing home will almost certainly diminish.
Our Clarksville Estate Planning Attorney Can Help Avoid Contested Wills and Probate Issues
When clients come to our estate lawyers in Clarksville, IN, they usually want an estate plan and a will that will perfectly meet their vision for their assets. Our clients want the process to be smooth after they pass. Their heirs and loved ones should not have to deal with a difficult court process to try to settle the estate or to battle a contested will. Our clients want their estate to benefit the ones they love, and their lives going forward. Their estate plan should not create family strife or any hard feelings.
A knowledgeable estate planning lawyer in Clarksville, IN, knows how to develop a successful estate plan. The key to this is to avoid having to go through a difficult probate process. With our attorneys’ help, you can create an estate plan that does everything you want it to. With the right estate planning techniques, the probate process in Indiana can be as smooth and quick as possible. When you trust our Clarksville estate lawyer to do the legwork ahead of time, which is necessary to compile a strong will and estate plan, probate does not have to be a nightmare.
Of course, our estate attorneys in Clarksville, IN, are not able to guarantee that all your heirs will accept your will after your passing, because there may be unhappiness with the decisions reflected in the will. However, our Clarksville estate planning attorney can provide advice for communicating with your loved ones about your plans for your estate and their inheritance. Open communication with your family members is important in preventing potential issues, contestations, and disputes down the road. Additionally, when we create a will or trust for you, it will meet all Indiana regulations.
How Our Clarksville Estate Lawyer Can Help You Create a Power of Attorney
At CLLB Law, we want our clients to know that a successful estate plan will likely include a power of attorney. None of us want to believe that we will become incapacitated because of an accident or a sudden illness. However, it can and does happen. Anyone could suddenly find themselves unable to make decisions regarding their health care or their finances. Having a power of attorney in place is the simplest way to protect yourself and your estate.
Our team will listen to your needs to make sure that your power of attorney document suits your life and your family’s needs. What works for one person in developing a power of attorney may not work for someone else. Additionally, deciding which person should have the power of attorney if you become incapacitated is no small feat, and we can provide advice here, too. Finally, you can be certain that our Clarksville estate planning attorney will follow all Indiana Department of Revenue rules and regulations regarding the filing of a power of attorney with the department for tax purposes.
We understand that there is no room for error in this situation, as a mistake in drafting a power of attorney document can create significant problems for you and your family. We are always aware of the rules and regulations regarding the creation of power of attorney, and we take our role in this process extremely seriously. We approach it with the highest level of professionalism.
Avoiding Probate with a Clarksville, IN Estate Planning Lawyer
What our Clarksville estate lawyers have learned through their decades of experience is that the best estate plans avoid probate whenever possible. Probate is a legal process where a court determines whether a will is valid, where assets are to be distributed after a person’s death, and much more.
There are several ways to avoid probate and the complexities it can cause:
- Last Will and Testament: A final will outlines the distribution of assets and to whom they go. This is often necessary to avoid probate.
- Power of Attorney Documents: Power of attorney, like a financial power of attorney or health care power of attorney, tells family members who can act on your behalf. This helps to avoid the need for a court to decide this.
- Trusts: A trust contains the estate’s assets and protects them. It can distribute assets and often provides helpful tax benefits.
These documents and several other important steps are well-known to estate planning attorneys in Clarksville. We know how to help you avoid probate and make it easier on your loved ones after you pass.
Trust Our Estate Attorneys in Clarksville, IN, to Find a Solution to Any of Your Concerns
Because of our extensive work as estate and elder law attorneys, we know that a one-size-fits-all approach to estate plans does not work. You need a Clarksville estate lawyer to set up your estate plan in a manner that fits your situation and your family’s needs. You do not need us to hand you a cookie-cutter estate plan that we compiled three years ago for another client. We cannot speak on what others may do, but we can say that you can trust that our estate planning attorneys in Clarksville would never do this.
What we will do is use our experience with past cases, like yours, to bring suggestions to you regarding the crafting of your estate plan. Our estate planning lawyers in Clarksville, IN, will use our past successes to give you plenty of ideas about the services we can provide to you, and the ways in which we can develop an estate plan that fully meets your needs.
Church, Langdon, Lopp, Banet Law has the estate planning lawyers you need to build a comprehensive estate plan. We have years of experience, and skilled attorneys to make sure you get what you are looking for. If you are ready to discuss your estate planning process and expectations, contact us today at 812-725-8224.
Attorney Gary Banet
Gary is licensed to practice law in both Indiana and Kentucky. He concentrates his practice in estate planning, estate and trust administration, estate and trust litigation, guardianships, elder law and special-needs planning. Gary earned his J.D. from the University of Louisville, Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, and formerly practiced law at Bingham Greenebaum Doll and Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs. [ Attorney Bio ]