Gifting assets to your grandchildren can do more than help your descendants get a good start in life — it can also reduce the size of your estate and the tax that will be due upon your death.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced that it will add data on staff turnover rates and weekend staffing levels to its Care Compare website, giving consumers another tool when choosing a nursing home. 

While it is preferable to conduct long-term care planning well in advance of needing care, if you haven’t planned ahead, there are some strategies available to avoid spending all your assets. 

If you are single, you may not think you need to plan your estate, but single people are in as much need of a plan as anyone else.

Anyone who gifted assets within five years of applying for Medicaid may be subject to a penalty period, but that penalty can be reduced or eliminated if the assets are returned. 

While everyone should have a durable power of attorney that appoints someone to act for them if they become incapacitated, in some circumstances it is not enough. In these cases, a revocable trust can help. 

Vaccines can become less effective over time. Even individuals fully vaccinated as children may need to update their immunizations. Medicare Parts B and D offer vaccination coverage.

The amount you can gift to any one person without filing a gift tax form is increasing to $16,000 in 2022, the first increase since 2018. The federal estate tax exclusion is also climbing to more than $12 million per individual.

If your family contains opposite-gender parents in the first marriage for each and one or more kids, all healthy and thriving, your estate plan will probably be pretty straightforward. But if not, it’s not as simple and you have a lot of company.

With the fate of the estate tax exemption uncertain, you may want to use the current large exemption to transfer assets to a trust to benefit your spouse. A spousal lifetime access trust (SLAT) can help transfer assets outside of your estate.