This just in:

Members of a House and Senate negotiating committee have worked out a compromise resulting in permanently keeping the estate tax at 2009 levels.  Specifically, individuals could exempt $3.5 million from taxes ($7 million for couples), with amounts above that taxed at a 45 percent rate.

Stay tuned…more to follow soon!

I was recently asked what qualified me to help a particular client with his situation.  I proceeded to share with him stories of cases that I worked on and the outcomes that we created for our clients.  He seemed content with my stories, and I was subsequently hired to be his attorney.

That meeting prompted to ask about what skills and traits advisors should have in order to properly serve a client’s best interests.  I supposed that much has been written on this, but I believe that a client who meets with a lawyer or other advisor for the first time should be able to ask some basic questions to discover if that advisor is qualified to help him or her:

• Have you helped a client with XYZ concern?  If an advisor has never helped a person with similar concerns to you, will you get a good result?
• If so, what type of advice did you give that client, and what was the outcome achieved?  
• How many clients are you presently helping?  If an advisor is overwhelmed with work, your concerns may not get his or her proper and timely attention.
• What do you do outside of work?  I like this question because you can see a person’s geniuneness.  For me, I love God, my family and golf; you’d see that when coming to the office with all of the family photos and the golf magazines, not to mention a few golf balls roaming the halls.  It’s pretty hard to fake what you really care about.
• How do you bill your clients?  It’s frankly unfair to ask an advisor how much something with cost, though, until he or she knows what the work will entail.  It is fair, though, to ask if that advisor bills hourly, on a fixed fee or on some other basis.  With that said, it’s also unfair of an advisor to hide from questions concerning fees and avoid giving clients a reasonable understanding of the fees involved early in the representation.

A question that you cannot really ask, but need to know the answer to is “Can I trust you?”  After all, there are many very good advisors working in the Tampa market, so in many respects the real concern should be focused on trust.

A good first step is to find out if you like the advisor and believe that he or she is actively listening to you and expressing genuine concern for you.  This can only be answered with time, so look for an advisor who is willing to give you plenty of time to learn about one other without pushiness or applying a pressure sales technique to “close a deal.”

Millions of Americans are now caring for their parents as we live longer with advances in modern medicine.  When doing so, a new trend is emerging in the area of elder law planning, the “sister” of estate planning.  Aging parents and their children alike recognize that helping the senior generation is being increasingly more difficult from a financial perspective in these tough economic times.  As a result, some Americans are now entering into legal agreements, sometimes referred to as “caregiver agreements”, in order to compensate children who are providing caregiving services.

In preparing these types of agreements, families should consider the following:

• What type of services are being performed?  Clearly defining the duties and responsibilities of the caregiver in the begining will benefit everyone in the long-run.  This will also help legitimize the agreement if a parent needs to qualify for Medicaid the future.
• What compensation will be paid?  Whatever the services being performed, the compensation should be reasonable.  This is especially true if parents have more than one child, but only one child is providing caregiving.   Don’t forget, this is a job so being paid may be appropriate in certain instances.
• Have you engaged everyone in the family in this process?  After a parent is gone, if one child receives a larger benefit than another, there will likely be family friction.  This usually results from a lack of communication.  If everyone understands that one child is perform some time of work for a parent, the funds received should not be viewed as an inheritance, but rather as compensation for services rendered.

As a final note, services agreements do not need to be in writing to be enforceable in the State of Florida.  However, to avoid family conflict and confusion, spending the time and energy to memorialize the Agreement in a clearly written legal document is a must.