This month, we sat down with Kylee Read of Elder & Estate Law Services, one of only two Certified Elder Law Attorneys in Delaware, to talk through aging, incapacity, and estate planning. We’re also covering what the SECURE Act changed for families who want to leave retirement assets to the next generation. Let’s take a look.
1. Getting Your Legal House in Order Before a Crisis Forces It
Most people we meet who come into estate planning are focused on the will: who gets what when they die. Kylee makes the case that incapacity planning, who manages your finances and healthcare if you’re unable to, is where things actually get complicated.
A trust with a co-trustee is typically a more reliable tool than a power of attorney. The co-trustee can step in before things deteriorate rather than scrambling to establish authority after the fact. Her practical advice: don’t just name the people in the documents. Bring them in. Show them how you pay your bills, what’s on autopay, and what you write checks for.
One of the most common gaps we see: a trust that exists on paper but was never funded. Accounts were never retitled into it, so it doesn’t actually control anything. This becomes very hard to fix once a spouse’s cognitive capacity has declined. When we know a client has a trust, we make a point of checking whether the accounts are titled correctly.
If this has been on your radar, we invite you to do two things:
Watch or listen to the full interview with advisor Emily Woodson and Kylee Reed, covering the intersection of finances and long-term care.
We’ll also be happy to provide you with an introduction to Kylee and her team to help put an aging plan in place for your family.
2. Long-Term Care: The Financial Question Inside the Legal One
Every consultation Kylee has, includes some version of the same question: What is your plan to pay for long-term care if you need it? Her view is that a financial solution is almost always preferable to a legal one. Planning ahead creates far more options than trying to structure assets after a diagnosis arrives.
There is a wide spectrum between living at home and a nursing facility, and each step carries its own cost. Most families don’t know what those costs are until they’re facing them. This is exactly the conversation we have with clients in their 50s and 60s. It might not be the most comfortable topic, but it changes the math of retirement significantly enough to make any discomfort worth it.
For the sandwich generation, Kylee’s first piece of advice is practical: know how your parents pay their bills. If they were hospitalized tomorrow and you needed to step in, do you have the access and the authority? If not, that’s the first thing to fix. There are also resources most families don’t know exist: daily money managers, individual professional trustees, and geriatric care managers who know the local landscape of care options.
3. Leaving Wealth Behind: What the SECURE Act Changed
Before 2020, a non-spouse beneficiary who inherited a traditional IRA could take distributions over their own lifetime. The SECURE Act changed that. Most non-spouse beneficiaries now have 10 years to fully distribute an inherited IRA, and if it’s pre-tax, every dollar withdrawn is taxable income. A Roth IRA under the same 10-year rule looks very different: the distributions are still required, but they come out tax-free. That distinction matters a great deal when thinking about which assets to leave to whom.
For clients who want to transfer wealth efficiently, we often look at accelerating Roth conversions: paying the tax now at the client’s rate rather than pushing a larger obligation onto a beneficiary who is likely in their peak earning years. We also look at gifting strategies that can transfer value while the client is living.
We worked recently with a client who inherited a substantial traditional IRA from her father. She’s in her peak earning years, and the 10-year distribution requirement means a meaningful tax hit for each of the next decade. Our approach was to maximize her pre-tax 401(k) contributions to help offset the taxable income from those required distributions. Not a perfect solution, but a meaningful one.
Planning for incapacity, long-term care, and legacy is the most useful thing you can do for the people you’ll eventually leave behind. If any of this connects to a conversation you’ve been putting off, we’d welcome the chance to sit down.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
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