Without any specific plan in place, such as how you’ll qualify for Medicaid or a long term care insurance policy, you are said to be self-insured for long term care events. Recent studies have shown that up to 80% of women aged 65 and above and 60% of men in the same age category will require long term care at some point in their life.

Given that the average annual cost for semi private nursing home is over $93,000 and the median annual cost for home care is $55,000, you’ll want some plan in place to help prepare you for the financial implications of long term care.

Even one spouse suffering a long term care event that requires a nursing home stay can decimate a couple’s retirement savings. Scheduling a consultation with an elder law attorney is your best opportunity to get questions asked about long term care insurance and other opportunities for funding these potential medical needs.

While no one wants to find themselves in the position of unexpectedly paying for nursing home care, this happens all too often. You’ll want to speak directly with an elder law attorney who can help you work through the connections between your estate plan and your long term care plan.

The pandemic represented a seismic shift in the way that many people view their estate plans. Those who did not have documents like powers of attorney and will in place flocked to estate planning lawyers to create these, but other factors have made estate planning more challenging in recent years.

The main areas of risk as perceived by people in the United States has changed since the beginning of the pandemic. For example, at the outset of the pandemic, family conflict was the greatest threat to estate planning but this has now been surpassed by the risks associated with prolonged life expectancy and health care costs.

In fact, health care costs and prolonged life expectancy was named as the number one threat by three times the percentage of people who reported those concerns in 2019. Many people have become more aware of the rising costs of expenses associated with long term care, especially if their loved ones had to move into assisted living or nursing homes in this past year.

Family conflict dropped from around one quarter of respondents down to 10% in the last year.

Family conflict can still remain a potential risk to your estate plan as it relates to blended families. As a result of the pandemic, divorce rates skyrocketed, difficult family decisions had to be faced and made and priorities shifted overall. This may have caused you to rethink your estate plan and your other strategies. Going forward, scheduling a consultation with an experienced estate planning lawyer in New Jersey can help you to accomplish your personal goals.

If you have read any of the recent studies or had a personal connection to someone who had to enter a nursing home suddenly, you might have questions about long term care insurance. Long term care insurance can be a critical financial stop-gap to assist you and your loved ones if you needed advanced medical care and did not want to have the payments for this pulled from your personal resources.

However, there may be some alternatives available to you, so before you purchase a long-term care insurance policy, make sure you have done your research. One of the most common phrases told to people who are purchasing an LTCI policy is to lock in the rates.

Thousands of people who purchased a long-term care policy were told at the time that they bought it, that it was smart to take out their policy now because the premiums could become extremely expensive. However, the premiums on LTC insurance can increase at any time, since within the fine print of your policy there is likely a statement that your rates are subject to future increases. This means that nothing was ever guaranteed to you as far as your insurance cost. 

One of the reasons that premiums have increased for LTC insurance policies is because insurance companies misjudge the cost of claims and the duration of claims. In 1980, the numbers for LTC expenditures across the United States were $30 billion. However, by 2015 that number had jumped to $225 billion. This can raise questions about whether or not it is the right idea to purchase a long-term care insurance policy. You might choose instead to use a whole life insurance policy that has a chronic illness rider.

This could help to protect you in the event of the majority of long term care protection problems. One of the major perks to using these types of policies is if you were to gain an inheritance or to sell your home, you could have a safe place to hold your money until you need it.

Mortality tends to increase alongside the cost of long term care and ultimately this favors the return inside a life insurance contract. Consulting with an experienced estate planning attorney is also a solid tool to consider exploring in the event of trying to protect your best interests for your loved ones.

A recent survey shows that many people are willfully unprepared for the significant out of pocket costs from long term care facilities. More than 2,000 family caregivers and patients were recently surveyed, and most underestimated the possible need for long term care as well as the typical expenses connected with getting the support. Approximately 70% of all patients today end up needing some form of long term care support, but just under half of patients who responded in this study felt that they would need long term care.  

Patients also underestimated the age at which it was likely for them to need long term care. Most survey respondents anticipated that they would need this additional support from a facility or caretaker at age 79, although the national average in the United States for getting this kind of treatment is 73. This gap of 6 years’ worth of treatment can mean that you don’t have enough money set aside to prepare yourself for the rising cost of long term care.

Long term care has an average cost of $47,000 or more, depending on the facility that you select. A private nursing home, for example, comes with a price tag of $100,000 whereas an assisted living facility comes in at an average of $45,000.

When discussing a possible move to a long-term care facility, the family caregivers and patients who participated in the study said that the cost of care was one of their biggest concerns and for those family members who had already undergone this situation, the cost of long term care ended up being much higher than they anticipated. Although there is no way to guard against all possible negative outcomes or issues associated with long term care, there are many things that you can do to protect yourself as well as your loved ones from the challenges of recovering after an incapacitating event or needing consistent long-term care from a facility.

While it’s impossible to predict just how long you’ll live, it’s good to plan for a long and healthy lifestyle.

Talking with an estate planning and elder law planning lawyer now can open your eyes to all of the opportunities available to you and can help to ensure that you have the appropriate documentation and strategies in place to guard against the problems.

Most people assume that they do not need long term care planning in their overall estate planning. Since illness and death are both extremely difficult subjects to broach on your own, many people don’t even realize the serious possibility of facing the high statistics. In fact, a recent fidelity study found that the amount of money people will have to spend on typical medical and health care expenses in retirement is up 70% from 2002 numbers. 

A person retiring this year at age 65 will have to come up with around $280,000 just for their health care, and the cost for long term care insurance is not helping the situation either. In fact, long term care insurance premiums have been rising dramatically in recent years and this means that people now have to pay more to get even less support from their long-term care policies. It is a huge mistake to assume you won’t be touched by long term care. There is a possibility that you have already encountered a family member who did not do appropriate planning and has had to suffer financially as a result of a sudden incapacitating event, such as a diagnosis of dementia or even a broken hip that leaves them in the nursing home for far too long.  A tsunami of baby boomers is expected to retire in the coming years and have a significant need for long term care.

Details from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that a person turning 65 this year will have a 70% chance of needing long term care. But fewer than 16 % of American adults today have long term care insurance to pay for that. Avoidance is the planning default because many people don’t realize the opportunities available to them or how to most appropriately fit it into their existing schedule. If you find yourself in this situation, it is important to schedule a consultation with an experienced estate planning lawyer in New Jersey today to learn more about your options and to consider how Medicaid and other planning tools can help you while you are still alive.