ElderLaw Answers Blog

I’m just back from participating in a webinar for ALI-ABA on “Estate Planning for the Aging Baby Boomer.”  The idea of the program was to talk with estate planners about the country about how estate planning for baby boomers is different from estate planning for prior generations.

We concluded that there are three main differences:  First, with the of the estate tax credit to $3.5 million, fewer clients will be motivated by savings saving taxes.

Second, baby boomers were born wearing the “Question Authority” badge.  They have access to more information than prior generations through the Internet and other sources and are more likely to question the value of the legal service provided.  It is more important than ever that attorneys be able to explain the value of the service they provide over low-cost forms available on the Internet.

Third, the complexity of boomers’ family life makes their planning all the more complicated, important and interesting for the practitioner.  While the paradigm of a man and a woman married for life with 2+ children was never as universal as it was portrayed on television and elsewhere, it is even less prevalent today.  With single-adult households exceeding nuclear-family households, 1.5 million babies a year born to unmarried woman, second, third and fourth marriages and partnerships, and growing acceptance of same-sex relationships, estate planning needs to take these various family configurations into account.  Neither the state intestacy rules nor the forms available on line will do so.

According to the American Society of Consulting Pharmacists, Americans over 80 can receive as many as 18 different prescriptions in a year.  Due to the interaction of these prescriptions and poor knowledge of how seniors may react to drugs that were tested on a younger population, more than 2 million seniors a year have adverse reactions and as many as 200,000 a year die from those side effects.

The Society advises that all seniors keep a complete list of all of their medications and have it reviewed both by their physician and by their pharmacist.  They provide two web sites of use to consumers: www.medandaging.org, which provides information and links to other sites with information on the effects of various medications on seniors; and www.seniorcarepharmacists.com, which provides further information and a directory of pharmacists around the country available to consult on these issues.

In its “Wallet” blog, The Wall Street Journal follows up on its article about Conseco Insurance transferring its long-term care insurance business to a trust adminstered by the Pennsylvania Department of insurance.  The blog post contains excellent advice both on what to do if you find that your long-term care insurance compnay is no longer as financially secure as you had originally though and on purchasing new policies.

It also points out some disturbing news:  A number of prominent insurance companies have asked for premium increases, including Genworth Financial, John Hancock and Pudential.  And Penn Treaty is slated to go into receivership next month. 

Unfortunately, these problems undercut the entire long-term care insurance industry.  It’s one thing to purchase insurance to eliminate the worry about your potential future need for long-term care.  But it makes no sense to purchase insurance and to have to worry about the insurance company.

No one, especially in the business community, likes regulation.  And most people feel that government is less efficient than private business.  But this situation seems to cry out for either greater regulation or a government solution.  Long-term care insurance was never a comprehensive solution to the long-term care financing challenge since most people can’t afford the premiums.  But for it to be a significant part of the solution, consumers need to be able to rest assured that their policies will pay out when they are needed and that their premiums will not change over time.  In other words, they should get what they pay for.