Boston Estate Planning and Probate Lawyer & Attorney : Gosselin & Associates Law Firm : Serving Boston, Winchester, Hingham, Wellesley, Manchester

Despite no formal training in medicine or the gospel, I find myself as doctor and confessor on a regular basis. I hope it is because of my calming manner, rather than I'm a friend for hire.

Elderly clients speak to me about all manner of illnesses. It is important in elder law to have a sense of a client's mental and physical state. As elder law attorneys, we use these baselines to determine which general strategy or another to take with a client's estate or tax planning. We are wrong as often as we are right, when it comes to making legal decisions based on our interpretation of our client's medical conditions.

On the other hand, we are asked by clients why God has let their spouse die before them, or why their children are burdened with incapacitated elders. My personal beliefs aside, I do my best to direct the clients to the positive in their lives - the years enjoyed with their spouse, or their good fortune having children provide personal care. My answers are commonsense. I don't want to get too deeply into theological discussion - after all they came to me for legal advice.

But I can't help but wonder if maybe it is my place to counsel my clients on their faith in God - and I mean God in the broadest terms - Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Pick-your-own. These people share all of their financial information, medical information, many of their secrets and their dirty laundry with me, so I have a complete picture of them as people.

Their religious leaders, if any, probably will never know that Mrs. Smith has millions (lest they should be solicited for contributions) or that two of her three sons use crack cocaine and the last one is gay. Many religious leaders are clean-living, upstanding people for whom many elders feel unworthy sullying Sunday morning pleasantries with their shortcomings as humans. "Hello, Reverend/Imam/Rabbi, nice to see you, wonderful service."

Facing life or death situations as my elder law clients do every day, maybe I need to let God come into the room? Or at least acknowledge that faith not only in God, but in the good of human nature can solve as many legal problems as my stacks of 24lb bond paper. Elders facing declining health and impending death. What harm can it do? I am going to say a prayer with my clients when the moment strikes me, I think there is room for God in my office - there's no law against it.

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The death of emergency Medicaid planning is official. Let us mourn the techniques of the estate planning and elder law bar that allowed elders to qualify for Medicaid benefits despite having significant assets. Due to the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (passed in 2006) most planning opportunities now involve five year plans and more complex trust instruments. While we are still working on these more complex trusts, including irrevocable trusts, intentionally defective grantor trusts and the like; the demand for our services at the time of Medicaid application has diminished markedly. Despite the law change in Massachusetts (and Federal law), there are still steps we can take for asset protection for elders at the time of application including promissory notes, certain annuities and special needs trusts for certain family members - Medicaid planning is not entirely hopeless, but the best opportunities for elder law attorneys have been signed away by the governments lawyers and Congress. So, what is a lawyer to do?

We are not the type to passively sit by as other lawyers eat our lunch. We have been working diligently for the past several months re-tooling the asset protection aspects of our law firm to be more directly focused on the asset protection needs of high and ultra high net worth individuals who are concerned with protecting assets from all types of judgment creditors. This planning involves the use of trusts, corporate entities and legal jurisdictions where the laws favor the protection of assets (in exchange for bringing new cash to places perhaps not normally thought of as centers of the legal or financial world - like Nevada and Alaska).

In the coming weeks I will be participating in significant training and axe sharpening programs to help make sure that our law firm is on the cutting edge of asset protection, not only in the US but also in cooperation with certain off-shore legal jurisdictions where certain planning can be beneficial for particular clients. I leave shortly for a conference in Las Vegas where the Nevada trust industry will woo my estate planning asset protection attention. In a nutshell, asset protection involves transferring legal ownership of assets to another person, in most cases this person is a trustee and under the various state laws (such as Nevada asset protection law) at least of these trustees must be a Nevada trust company. By so transferring the legal ownership, as well as structuring the language and documentation of the trust so that it conforms with state law, you can achieve protection from certain types of creditors over time (in Nevada you can protect assets in as little as two years), including judgment creditors and even spouses in a divorce.

Our law firm works cooperatively with Nevada legal counsel to make sure that all asset protection documents conform to Nevada legal requirements as these are not Massachusetts documents. We will be revisiting this topic in much greater detail in the coming months as our law firm will be working diligently to bring our clients up to speed on this exciting estate planning opportunity. The main advantage of Nevada asset protection and other state and countries is the use of charging orders (how creditors are paid in the event of a claim) and certain tax benefits. Not only is this legal, but it is a prudent use of client's resources as it is one of the few ways that we can preserve estate tax planning opportunities while locking in the protection of assets.

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