A founding partner of Walsh, Brule & Nault in Cumberland, Paul A. Brule has practiced probate law for 27 years and specializes in estate and tax planning. He also teaches in the graduate MBA program at Providence College Business School. Brule’s knowledge of Medicaid-eligibility rules and planning have become particularly useful in recent years as health care costs have soared.
PBN: What are some of the issues that people come to you with?
BRULE: They can all be boiled down to two questions: What happens if I pass away or what happens if I become ill? We educate the client as to the concerns they have. Those concerns are generally: I want to avoid probate. I have never had a client that comes in and says I want to go through probate. They might not have a clear understanding of how it works, but they are very clear they want to avoid probate. Secondly, they want to avoid taxes. I haven’t come across the client yet who wants to pay more taxes.
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PBN: What are the strategies you use?
BRULE: There are several ways of avoiding probate. The most commonly used are typically not the most commonly discussed. The most commonly used methods are jointly held assets, an example is a joint checking account, or designated-beneficiary assets, an example of which is an IRA or a life insurance policy. The most commonly discussed method, or the one that that generates the most interest, is revocable living trusts.
PBN: Many people think Medicaid is something you are either eligible for or you’re not. Why is it not so simple?
BRULE: What we do is allow someone to become eligible while preserving resources that might otherwise have been expended prior to becoming eligible. In a lot of aspects it’s a lot like tax planning – structuring your assets to minimize [what] goes to the government.
PBN: Do some people consider it working the system?
BRULE: Some people are not comfortable with Medicaid planning as a concept, so we don’t force it on them. Just [recently] the Catholic Foundation of Rhode Island had a seminar titled “Is Medicaid planning ethical?” … The fact that the question is raised I find interesting, because I don’t think there is much question about the ethics of tax planning, which is analogous in my mind.
BRULE: As the cost of care rises and the economy does not improve, people who might have been marginal in the area of conserving resources, either for themselves or for their family, now have heightened concerns.
PBN: What other trends do you see in elder law right now?
BRULE: Certainly the longevity of life. It heightens the concerns over extended illness, as opposed to passing away relatively young. If we all live to 95 and are healthy to 95, that is not much of a concern. The concern is, what if I get ill at 80 and live another 15 years? It underscores the need for planning, as opposed to it being something we can ignore. The trends that underscore the need for planning are the increased longevity and the rising cost of medical care.
PBN: How have recent policy changes, including the national health care reform bill, changed elder-care planning?
BRULE: It hasn’t changed what we do, but feeds into the concerns of our clients. There were many changes in Medicaid law in 2006 that did change the eligibility requirements and how we plan for them.
PBN: What are some of the misconceptions about estate planning?
BRULE: There are a lot of misconceptions in this area, one is that in order to do effective planning, you have to be years before a particular event. But in reality, steps can be taken at any time prior to passing away. It is never too early to start, but it is also never too late. •
