Funeral Trust Sales Up 34% in 2014

ELKHORN, Wis. - June 23, 2015 - PRLog -- The great benefit of the funeral trust is that it is funded with a single premium life policy with an increasing death benefit. The issue ages are from 0-99 and there are NO HEALTH QUESTIONS.  It is a Guaranteed issued Life Policy that is then assigned to the Funeral Trust to make it Medicaid Exempt immediately.  It is not subject to the Five Year Medicaid rule making it a great product for pre-planning or crisis planning.  Crisis planning is when a senior client is in the nursing home and the family has a sense of urgency to complete necessary documents to help them apply for Medicaid.

Typically, the family wants to make sure that they have Power of Attorneys to address financial or healthcare issues and typically they are looking for ways to protect assets.  We have to remember that 93% of our seniors today don't have long term care insurance, and with nursing homes costing on an average of $8000.00 per month, this is a concern.

With so many Medicaid changes in recent years, it is more difficult to use annuities or divest assets.  The funeral trust offers an excellent way to protect funeral funds from Medicaid and often it can be used to fund funeral trusts for immediate family members as a method to spend down assets.  Typically, for immediate family members this allows for the parent that may be entering a nursing home to fund funeral trusts for their children and their spouses for burial spaces.  A burial space is a casket, vault, plot, marker or merchandise part of funeral.

If dad is going into a nursing home and he has 5 children, we could do 6 funeral trusts.  Let's say Dad has $60,000 remaining assets and he is in the nursing home spending $8000 per month.  In order to qualify for Medicaid he must spend down to $2000 to qualify.

There are two options that the family can look at:

1.)  Do nothing and spend $58,000 on the nursing home and then qualify dad for Medicaid.  The Children would
     have to come up with 10,000 to do dad's funeral.

2.)  Do a funeral trust on dad for $10,000 and then do $10,000 for each of the 5 children for $10,000 each for
     burial spaces.  Now dad can apply for Medicaid immediately and leave a legacy to his children through
     funeral planning.  Keep the entire $60,000 for a family legacy instead of spending it on the nursing home.

The funeral trust offers a great opportunity to help your seniors and families.  The only requirement for burial spaces children is you must have a G&S Agreement to make it Medicaid Exempt.

For More information on how you can market funeral trusts to your senior clients, please call 877-336-7782 or go to www.delcousa.com (http://www.delcous.com/)

Many financial advisors or insurance agents are making an extra $7000 per month offering the funeral trusts to their seniors.