Houston Estate Planning and Elder Law Attorney Blog

Last updated September 28, 2026 · Reviewed by Thomas W. McCulloch

Medicare’s annual enrollment period opens on October 15, and for Texas families managing a parent’s coverage it arrives with a mailbox full of plan comparisons. Where that parent is already in a nursing home, or likely to need one soon, the decision carries a cost that the plan brochures do not ...

Last updated September 24, 2026 · Reviewed by Thomas W. McCulloch

Texas law allows a person who stands to receive property at someone’s death to refuse it, whether the property would pass under a will, without a will, or through a beneficiary designation. The refusal has to satisfy two separate bodies of law at once. Texas property law decides whether the refu...

Last updated September 22, 2026 · Reviewed by Thomas W. McCulloch

Texas Medicaid reviews five years of an applicant’s financial history before it pays for nursing facility care. Money paid to a relative who has been providing care is one of the places a family’s arrangement can come apart. A payment the family sees as fair wages can look to the state like a gi...

Last updated September 20, 2026 · Reviewed by Ryan S. Cook

Many Texas trusts in administration today were written decades ago, under tax rules, family circumstances, and benefit programs that have since changed. A trustee holding one of these documents often assumes that the word “irrevocable” leaves no room to fix it. Texas law gives trustees and courts two s...

Last updated September 17, 2026 · Reviewed by Thomas W. McCulloch

When a married Texan dies, the federal tax basis of the property the couple owned is recalculated, and Texas’s community property system changes how much of that property gets the new figure. For a surviving spouse deciding whether to sell a Houston home or a long-held brokerage account, the res...