In this Elder Law Minute, Wes Coulson explains why calling DCEL is beneficial to those with life insurance.
Video Transcript:
Greetings, I’m Wes Coulson from Dent Coulson Elder Law and this will be your Elder Law Minute. We’re happy to present these because we think we can help inform you as to the ways in which we can help you and the things that you need to think about relative to the elder care and estate planning journey. Hope you enjoy!
This is another of our series of videos on what and Illinois Medicaid applicant can and can’t keep.
We’re going to talk this time about life insurance, and the rules are complicated here, and I think that they likely reflect the fact that there are alot of different ways that a life insurance policy product can be set up.
The basic rule is that if you have a policy with a face amount, that means that, this is a this- many-dollar policy, and its fifteen-hundred dollars or less or you have two that add up to fifteen-hundred dollars or less, those are exempt. You get to keep them regardless of whether you might, if it’s an old policy be able to cash it in and get quite a bit more of it. But once you get over that fifteen-hundred dollar threshold, it’s going to count based on what’s known as the cash surrender value; that’s the amount that if you told the insurance company, don’t want to wait until I die, just want to cash the thing in, how much of a check are you going to send me?
There can be in some cases, a big difference between the death benefit and the cash surrender value. Some policies, term policies, group policies, don’t have any cash value at all so if you will, those count but they count as zero. Because of all of the different considerations with life insurance and the possibility that if you cashed one in you could lose a lot of money on the deal, this happens to be one of the areas in which we really help people with planning that makes a big difference. There are sometimes sophisticated strategies involved in how best to deal with life insurance policies.
Good idea if you have life insurance to give us a call because this is something that we can really help with.
Thanks.
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Dent-Coulson Elder Law is dedicated to providing families in the St. Louis area with their Elder Law needs. Our practice areas include Asset Preservation Planning, Veterans Benefits, Medicaid Eligibility, Alzheimer’s Planning, Special Needs Planning, Estate Planning and more. We understand the financial challenges you may face as you and your loved ones grow older. At Dent-Coulson Elder Law, our clients’ well-being is our number one priority. For immediate help, call (618) 632-7000 (IL) or (314) 567-9292 (MO), or Contact Us and we will get in touch as soon as possible.
