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Carrier Law

Carrier Law is devoted to providing clients with high quality, personalized estate planning and elder law services. Father of 4. Oldest brother of 8. Been there.

Register for a FREE Workshop here: https://linktr.ee/davidcarrierlaw

Happily married. Done that. Bartender. Farmer. Mechanic. Lawyer for over 30 years. Graduated Notre Dame. Two law degrees: J.D., Boston University School of Law. Master of Laws, Taxation, Georgetown University Law Center. Captain, U.S. Army. Jumped out of perfectly good airplanes for my country. Airborne! Years of Pentagon duty. Years of big firm time. 30 years practicing law my way. Over 8000 families with solid LifePlanning™. Millions of dollars in life savings preserved, protected, defended from probate, excess taxes and nursing home poverty.

10/15/2026

The Diagnosis That Isn't the End

📋 The doctor used the word "dementia." Or "Parkinson's." Or "early-stage Alzheimer's."

😰 Your world just shifted. And every practical instinct you have is telling you to deal with the medical crisis and worry about the financial one later.

⚠️ Here's what David Carrier has watched happen to families for thirty years: the families who deal with the financial crisis immediately after the diagnosis are the ones who keep something. The families who wait until "later" — until the crisis has fully arrived, until the savings are depleted, until the nursing home is unavoidable — those families lose everything they had left to protect.

💰 A diagnosis is not a financial death sentence. It is a starting gun. The window for Medicaid planning — crisis planning specifically — exists and it has tools. PACE may still be an option. Annuity strategies may protect remaining assets. The family home may be preservable. Life insurance may be kept intact.

⏰ But that window is measured in weeks, not years. Every month that passes after a diagnosis without a legal strategy in place is a month of options that close permanently.

🛡️ David's team has helped families protect significant assets after a diagnosis — after a nursing home placement had already begun. The outcome is never as clean as early planning. But it is almost always better than doing nothing.

✅ The diagnosis is not the end. What you do in the thirty days after it might be.
If you have questions about estate planning, caregiver/long-term care, probate, Medicaid, or family trusts, and want to understand more, we’re here to help.

Please feel free to check out our homepage (https://davidcarrierlaw.com/) to learn more, and share your questions or thoughts with our AI chat agent created and trained to provide clarity, ideas, and direction to help you.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400. Don’t wait; start the conversation today.

10/14/2026

You Are Not Greedy

😤 Some worry that "they" will call you greedy for wanting to keep what you built.

🤨 Somewhere between the Medicaid application and the nursing home intake paperwork, someone — a social worker, a caseworker, a well-meaning advisor — will imply that protecting your life savings is selfish. That the money should just go. That wanting to pass something to your children is somehow taking from someone else.

💪 David Carrier's response to that is direct: Sue and Bob are not selfish. They saved. They lived modestly. They clipped coupons. They had no extravagant habits except spoiling the grandchildren. They worked. They paid taxes. They volunteered. They showed up.

⚖️ They are not asking for a handout. They are asking for a fair return on what they already paid in. There is a difference — a large, important, moral difference — between assistance and charity.

🛡️ The wealthy have structured their affairs so they don't pay much in taxes and never have to go broke for care. The poor receive care without assets to spend. The Middle Class pays the taxes, funds the programs, and then is told to spend everything before those programs will help them.

🎯 Wanting to keep some of what you earned — to provide for your spouse, support your grandchildren, leave something behind — is not greed.

✅ LifePlanning™ is how the Middle Class gets the same deal everyone else already has.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your legacy, your family, and future through wise, informed “Life-Planning?” Check out our 3 Secrets Estate Planning workshops, held in different cities throughout Michigan every month.

Visit: https://davidcarrierlaw.com/free-lifeplan-workshop to see details and upcoming workshops, and register today. Don’t wait until “one day” when it’s too late - start now, and find the peace of mind that comes with having a plan that works.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

10/08/2026

The Boat Show Financial Plan

⛵ Have you ever been to a boat show?

📊 Salesmen. Proposals. Financing charts. You come home with a shopping bag full of brochures, glossy printouts, and a spreadsheet projecting how much you'll save if you buy the boat now versus waiting three years.

💼 Some financial advisors are a lot like that. Charts. Graphs. Glossy brochures. Portfolio theory. Safe Money Plans that ride the market elevator up but not down. Mutual funds. Annuities. Retirement-year funds. A lot of impressive presentation about two things: not losing your money in the market, and growing your money safely.

⚠️ What you will not find in the shopping bag: a single word about long-term care.

💰 Because long-term care is not their area of expertise. They are not trained for it, not licensed for it, and not incentivized to bring it up — because there's nothing in long-term care planning they can sell you.

📉 The result: a family with a beautifully optimized investment portfolio, a solid Medicare Supplement policy, a will from fifteen years ago — and absolutely no protection against the one thing most likely to consume everything. $12,000–$15,000 a month. Three to five years. Everything gone.

🎯 Your financial advisor wants to put more in your bucket. LifePlanning™ makes sure the bottom doesn't drop out.

✅ Both matter. Only one of them is looking out for the bottom.
Want to learn more about how you can protect your legacy, your family, and future through wise, informed “Life-Planning?” Check out our 3 Secrets Estate Planning workshops, held in different cities throughout Michigan every month.

Visit our website at DavidCarrierLaw (dotcom) to see details and upcoming workshops, and register today. Don’t wait until “one day” when it’s too late - start now, and find the peace of mind that comes with having a plan that works.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

10/07/2026

It Is Never Too Late

🏥 The diagnosis came on a Tuesday. You're sitting in the doctor's office, and the word "dementia" is in the air.

😔 Or it's the slip-and-fall — the broken hip, the hospital stay, the first real sign that things are changing faster than you planned for.

💭 And the thought that follows is almost always the same: "I should have done this sooner. Maybe it's too late now."

🚫 It is not too late.

💡 David Carrier says this without qualification after thirty-plus years of practice: there is nothing inevitable about Nursing Home Poverty. Not even in a crisis. The options narrow as time passes — yes. The strategies available at the point of crisis are fewer than the strategies available five years earlier — yes. But fewer is not the same as none.

✅ PACE may still be available, with no Medicaid penalty period. Crisis Medicaid planning — annuities, spend-down strategies, exempt asset structuring — may protect far more than you think. The Medicaid application itself is a process that rewards knowledge, not resignation.

🛡️ The families who walk into David's office after a diagnosis expecting to hear "it's too late" often walk out with a plan that protects the house, the savings, and the future of the spouse who's still healthy.

⏰ Early planning is always better. But right now is always better than never.

If you have questions about estate planning, caregiver/long-term care, probate, Medicaid, or family trusts, and want to understand more, we’re here to help. Please feel free to check out our homepage (https://davidcarrierlaw.com/) to learn more, and share your questions or thoughts with our AI chat agent created and trained to provide clarity, ideas, and direction to help you.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400. Don’t wait; start the conversation today.

10/06/2026

The Required Minimum Distribution Nobody Warned You About

💰 You saved your whole career. You put money into a 401(k) or IRA every year, watched it grow, paid attention to the market, and built something real.

😳 Then you turned 73. And the IRS said: start withdrawing. Whether you need it or not. Whether the market is up or down. Whether you have a plan for the taxes or not.

📊 Required Minimum Distributions — RMDs — are the government's way of collecting the taxes it deferred while you were saving. And they arrive on a schedule that doesn't care about your situation: your health, your spouse's health, your long-term care costs, your grandchildren's needs.

😤 Here's what the book says plainly: the RMD system wrings you out. You paid in. You grew it. You paid taxes on the growth. Now you're required to take it out, pay taxes again, and if you don't spend it fast enough, you're "too wealthy" to qualify for the programs your taxes funded.

💡 The interaction between RMDs, retirement accounts, and Medicaid eligibility is one of the most technically complex — and most commonly mishandled — areas in elder law. A retirement account titled the wrong way, distributed at the wrong time, can trigger Medicaid penalties that eliminate the benefit entirely.

✅ Your retirement account was supposed to be the reward. Make sure it doesn't become the problem.

If you have questions about estate planning, caregiver/long-term care, probate, Medicaid, or family trusts, and want to understand more, we’re here to help. Please feel free to check out our homepage (https://davidcarrierlaw.com/) to learn more, and share your questions or thoughts with our AI chat agent created and trained to provide clarity, ideas, and direction to help you.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400. Don’t wait; start the conversation today.

09/30/2026

Why Doesn't Everyone Do This?

🤔 David Carrier has been hearing the same three sentences for over thirty years.

💬 "I've never heard of this before."
💬 "If this is real, why doesn't everyone do it?"
💬 "No one ever said anything like this to me."

✅ The answer to all three is the same: they cannot tell you what they don't know.

📋 Traditional estate planning attorneys are focused on what happens after you die. Who gets the leftover stuff. How do we keep the kids from fighting. That's their concern — and it's worth addressing. But when long-term care has already consumed everything you saved, there are no leftovers. Nothing for the estate plan to do.

💼 Financial advisors are focused on the market. Liquidity, rates of return, portfolio theory. They want to put more into your bucket. LifePlanning™ makes sure the bottom doesn't drop out.

🏥 Medicare agents sell medical coverage. Medicare covers acute care — surgery, hospital stays, broken hips. When you need long-term care for a chronic condition like dementia or physical disability? You are on your own. With a twenty-day window that most people won't even qualify for.

💡 No one in that chain of advisors is looking at the whole picture. LifePlanning™ is the whole picture.

🔑 Now you know. And knowing is the only difference between the families who kept everything and the families who lost it all.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your legacy, your family, and future through wise, informed “Life-Planning?” Check out our 3 Secrets Estate Planning workshops, held in different cities throughout Michigan every month. Visit our website at David Carrier Law (dot com) to see details and upcoming workshops, and register today. Don’t wait until “one day” when it’s too late - start now, and find the peace of mind that comes with having a plan that works.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

09/29/2026

You Bring Something Homemade to the Potluck

🍲 You bring something homemade to the potluck.

🙋 You volunteer at church and the library. You coach the Little League team. You show up when the neighbor needs help moving. You donate to causes you believe in and stay out of causes you don't.

💪 You worked. You saved. You paid more than your share in taxes and didn't complain too loudly about it because that's just what you do. You raised your kids to do the same.

😤 And here is how the system rewards you: the wealthy have armies of attorneys who know every legal tool available and use them without apology. The truly poor qualify for government programs without spending down a dime. You — the person who did everything right — are expected to liquidate everything you built before the same government that took your taxes every paycheck for forty years will lift a finger to help you.

⚖️ That's not a conspiracy theory. That's the default design of Medicaid. You must be broke before it helps you. Spend the savings, sell the cottage, cash out the retirement account. Then — maybe — you qualify.

🛡️ LifePlanning™ exists because that deal is neither fair nor required. The same legal tools the wealthy use, scaled for real families, in full compliance with state and federal law.

✅ You brought something homemade to the potluck your entire life. It's time the rules brought something back.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your legacy, your family, and future through wise, informed “Life-Planning?” Check out our 3 Secrets Estate Planning workshops, held in different cities throughout Michigan every month. Visit our website at David Carrier Law (dot com) to see details and upcoming workshops, and register today. Don’t wait until “one day” when it’s too late - start now, and find the peace of mind that comes with having a plan that works.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

09/24/2026

🎉 Thank you to all who attended! 🙏

🍎 We want to give a very special thank-you and shoutout to all our friends and family who joined us for a fun and refreshing time at Robinette’s Apple Orchard ( Apple Haus & Winery) in Grand Rapids last week. 🧺

💬 We shared donuts, snacks, and ciders with some of the best-tasting, homegrown, fresh-picked, apples in the world - and of course, with some learning, chats, and trivia on the side. 💡

✨ If you missed out, don’t worry, we have new and exciting events happening all the time, so stay tuned for more coming, and we hope to see you at one of our events in the near future. 📅

📬 You can also sign up for our newsletter (it only takes a minute) to receive helpful advice, articles and Q&A’s, and news about all of our upcoming events here - https://davidcarrierlaw.com/resources/read-our-newsletter/ 🔗

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 To everyone who joined us, or has joined us in the past, thank you for being part of our family. ❤️

09/22/2026

Almost Isn't Good Enough

⚾ A baseball that soars over the fence is a home run.

😬 A baseball that nicks the top of the fence and drops into the centerfielder's glove is an out.

🏈 The football player who drops the ball one foot short of the goal line has a fumble. The one who protects it over the line has a touchdown.

😔 An almost-win is a loss. Sue and Bob did almost everything right. They saved. They lived modestly. They had a financial advisor. They had Medicare Supplement insurance. They had a will from when the kids were babies.

⚠️ They did not have a plan for long-term care. They assumed Medicare would cover it. It covered twenty days of rehabilitation — if you qualified for rehabilitation, which you likely won't for a chronic condition. The financial advisor's portfolio strategy was designed for someone with fifty million dollars. It was never designed for a family with $200,000 against a $15,000-a-month nursing home bill.

💸 One short. One fumble. Nursing Home Poverty.

🎯 LifePlanning™ is the difference between the ball dropping on the one-yard line and crossing it. It's not a fundamentally different game — it's the same family, the same assets, the same Michigan — with a plan that was actually built for the situation you're in.

✅ Almost right is still wrong. Get it right while there's still time.

If you have estate planning, caregiver, or elder law questions and want to understand more, our door is always open. Please feel free to check out our homepage (https://davidcarrierlaw.com/) and share your questions or thoughts with our AI chat agent which is created and trained to provide ideas and direction to help you.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

09/17/2026

The Snowflake on a Hot Griddle

❄️ David Carrier has an image for what happens to life savings when long-term care hits without a plan.

🍳 A snowflake on a hot griddle.

⏱️ Not a slow erosion. Not a gradual decline. A disappearance. So fast you almost can't believe it happened.

💰 Skilled nursing care in Michigan: $12,000–$15,000 a month. Assisted living: $6,000–$10,000. A couple with $200,000 saved — which feels like a lot until it isn't — can be completely broke in fourteen months. Fourteen months. That's not a long-term care plan. That's a countdown.

📊 The federal government says 70% of Americans will need long-term care services. One in five will need them for more than five years. These are not projections designed to frighten you. They're actuarial facts from acl.gov. The government isn't trying to sell you anything.

😤 Here's what David has been saying for thirty years: none of this is inevitable. The snowflake on the hot griddle is a choice — specifically, the choice not to plan. And the alternative choice is still available.

💡 LifePlanning™ families don't watch their savings evaporate. They keep the house. They keep the cottage. They keep the life insurance. They stay in control.

✅ The griddle is real. The snowflake is optional.

Want to learn more about how you can protect your legacy, your family, and future through wise, informed “Life-Planning?” Check out our 3 Secrets Estate Planning workshops, held in different cities throughout Michigan every month. Visit: https://davidcarrierlaw.com/free-lifeplan-workshop to see details and upcoming workshops, and register today. Don’t wait until “one day” when it’s too late - start now, and find the peace of mind that comes with having a plan that works.

Or, just give us a call to talk to someone who cares and wants to help you - get in touch by calling us at 616-361-8400.

Address

4965 E Beltline Avenue NE
Grand Rapids, MI
49525

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Monday	8am - 5:30pm
Tuesday	8am - 5:30pm
Wednesday	8am - 5:30pm
Thursday	8am - 5:30pm
Friday	8am - 5:30pm

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