Florida Estate Planning, Florida Probate Attorney, Florida Elder Law

The Karp Law Firm helps Florida seniors and families cope with the many legal challenges we face as we age. The Florida elder law, Florida estate planning, Florida Medicaid and Florida probate attorneys of The Karp Law Firm provide legal assistance with Florida Medicaid planning for long-term nursing home care, Florida wills and trusts, planning for people with special needs, disability planning, and Florida probate and trust administration.

Our caring attorneys and staff are committed to treating each client the same way we want to be treated – with courtesy and compassion.

Our law firm team is headed by Attorney Joseph S. Karp, one of a small, elite group of Florida elder law attorneys who has earned double certification in elder law. Mr. Karp is certified as an elder law specialist by the Florida Bar, and also certified as an elder law attorney by the National Elder Law Foundation. All our lawyers are members of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys, as well as accredited by the Veterans Administration to provide Veterans benefits advice. A social worker, certified public accountant, and many dedicated legal assistants and support personnel are also here to help.

Elder law is a highly specialized and relatively new field in which the law is constantly changing. The plans you make in consultation with your elder care attorney are among the most important you’ll ever make. For these reasons, it’s essential that you seek advice only from those legal professionals you know have the necessary experience and qualifications in this complex area of law.

Our law firm believes in a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to planning. When we meet, we will analyze your goals and examine your family and financial circumstances in order to design a customized plan that best protects you, your family and your assets. We welcome and encourage input from other advisors you may wish to involve in your planning, such as your accountant, banker or doctor. We also welcome participation from key family members.

We urge you to contact us to investigate the best ways to provide protection for yourself during your lifetime, and for your loved one when you’re gone.

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Some of the specific services our elder laws attorneys can help you with are:

Florida Medicaid Eligibility and Planning for Florida Nursing Home Care. Analyze eligibility for Florida Medicaid benefits for long-term nursing care, Medicaid diversion. Determine legal steps that may be taken to help qualify sooner, before everything is lost to nursing home costs. Advise about lookback periods and transfers. File the Medicaid application. We provide assistance for those who are planning in advance for the possibility of needing a nursing home in the future. We also help families in immediate crisis. Even if a loved one is already in a nursing home or about to go into one, a significant portion of assets can often be preserved, and impoverishment of the well spouse avoided.

Florida Medicaid Planning Coordinated with Lifetime Estate Planning. Prepare documents coordinated with Medicaid planning goals, such as irrevocable trusts (Miller trusts), Qualified Income Trust, deeds, health care documents, advance directives, wills, and trusts.

Veterans Benefits Eligibility for Florida Nursing Home Care, Assisted Living or Home Care. As part of our Medicaid planning services, we provide advice about benefits available to veterans and widows of veterans.

Florida Estate Planning. Preparation of estate planning documents that ensure your assets go where you want them to go after you’re gone. Preparation of wills, living trusts, irrevocable trusts, heritage trusts to help keep assets in the family, IRA stretchout trusts, etc. Particular strategies may be suggested for those in second marriages, blended families, those with stepchildren, or who are divorced.

Florida Health Care Planning and Florida Disability Planning. Preparation of documents like medical surrogate, health care power of attorney, durable power of attorney, living will, HIPAA-compliance. These documents minimize the possibility of court guardianship by appointing someone you know and trust to handle your business, personal and medical affairs if you become incapacitated. Do not assume the person you want to handle your affairs can do so without the proper legal authorization.

Florida Probate Avoidance Strategies: Revocable living trust, irrevocable trust with or without tax planning strategies, and proper titling of assets are strategies we can advise you about if you are among the many Floridians who wish to keep your estate out of the Florida probate system.

Florida Probate and Estate Administration: Florida Summary Probate Administration, Florida Formal Probate Administration, Florida Small Estate Administration, Ancillary Probate Administration. Intestacy. Determination of the most cost-effective way to handle and close an estate. We deal with creditors, beneficiaries, prepare estate tax returns, distribute assets. Post-mortem planning services that can create better tax consequences for heirs. We are experienced at working with family members who live out of the area. The deceased need not have been a client of our law firm for us to handle the estate.

Florida Trust Administration: If a decedent had a properly drafted and funded Trust, probate may not be necessary, but the successor trustee must nonetheless administer the trust in compliance with the terms of the trust and the law. We can help with this process. Attorney Karp is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary and can serve as successor trustee or successor co-trustee along with family members.

Asset Preservation and Tax Planning: We can suggest tax-minimizing and wealth-maximizing strategies that will allow you to pass on as much of your assets as possible. Strrategies include charitable remainder trust, credit shelter trust, AB trust, life insurance trust, family limited partnership, gifting strategies, IRA trust, etc.

Business Succession Planning:

Special Needs Planning: Using Special Needs Trusts and other strategies, we can help you provide for loved ones with special needs without jeopardizing vital government benefits to which the individual would be otherwise entitled.

Provisions for Minor Children: We’ll help you lay the legal groundwork to designate who is to be the guardian of you minor child or children if anything happens to you; who will be in charge of the child’s monies and the terms under which the monies will be used for the benefit of the child. Preparation of wills and trusts geared to this purpose.