Jann Besson
ELDER LAW ATTORNEYS SERVING SAN JOSE & THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
* Estate Planning, Wills, and Trusts
We enable you to arrange for the distribution of your wealth by creating documents that detail your wishes for organizing and distributing your assets, both before and after your death. Estate planning will help you name an executor who will assist with the administration of the estate; direct how your debts, taxes, and expenses are to be paid; nominate a conservator in the event of your incapacity or appoint a guardian of a minor; avoid costly and time consuming court-supervised probate; and prevent the courts, or others, from controlling your assets in the event of incapacity. According to your personal objectives, we provide you with an estate plan of your own selection, rather than one imposed upon you by law or by some cookie-cutter approach to estate planning. This ensure that your assets are distributed according to your wishes, while minimizing estate, gift, and income taxes to your heirs.
* Medi-Cal Planning
When skilled nursing home care is required by a loved one in your family, our law firm can assist you to qualify for and receive Medi-Cal or other public benefits. We assist our clients with the Medi-Cal application, transferring, conversion and/or liquidating of assets to enable you or your loved one to qualify under Medi-Cal's income and resource guidelines.
* Long-Term Care Planning
We assist our clients through the difficult choices for long-term care planning, including drafting an individualized power of attorney or advance health care directive, also called a durable power of attorney for health care. These documents allow our clients to appoint those family members who are best suited to assist them when age or infirmity require someone to step in.
* Trust and Probate Administration
We provide the surviving family members with trust and probate administration services, spousal property petitions, small estate distribution, trust amendments, trust funding, trust division upon the death of a spouse, and gift and estate tax return preparation. We ensure that your loved one's property is accounted for and distributed as intended. We expedite the process of estate administration through both formal probate administration as well as trust administration. We take all appropriate steps to reduce estate and income taxes, while maintaining ongoing communication with our clients throughout the various phases of estate and trust administration.
* Estate and Trust Litigation, Financial Elder Abuse
When disputes arise over trust estates, trust and will contests, actions to remove a trustee, defense of a trustee's actions, demands for accounting of trust assets, or litigation involving contested conservatorships, many Santa Clara County attorneys refer their clients to our firm. Our approach is to save our clients as much money as possible by early alternative dispute resolution rather than an expensive trial. If trial becomes necessary, however, our experienced trial attorneys are ready for the challenge. Our legal efforts have resulted in many satisfied clients.
* Conservatorships
We assist clients in conservatorship proceedings so that they may assume the responsibility of taking care of a loved one who is physically unable or financially incapable of taking care of himself or herself. Conservatorships are court-supervised and require filing petitions seeking the appointment of a third person to make financial and health care decisions for an elder or developmentally disabled or incapacitated person.
* Guardianships
These court-supervised proceedings are available for minor children who receive assets from an estate or for whom appointment of a third person in necessary to make financial or health care decisions when no parent can do so.
* Elder Law Issues
Elder law is the broad term often used to include the many areas of law that is the basis for our practice. It is not limited to Medi-Cal or long term care and estate planning, but sometimes includes real property matters or enforcement of contract rights for elders.
* Nursing Home Patients' Rights
A new but growing field of our practice is the protection of patients' rights in skilled nursing homes. This includes fighting patient evictions, protecting patients from intimidation and discrimination of elders in nursing homes. All attorneys are members of the California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform (CANHR) attorney referral panel.
Jann Besson
Law Offices of Besson & Yarbrough
4984 El Camino Real #110
Los Altos CA 94022
Tel: 650 864-9330
Fax: 650 864-9320
E-mail: lawoffice@besson-yarbrough.com
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