First, some serious things

First, on the serious side of things (non serious to follow), some excellent advocacy has been done in the State to try to recognize the human emotional toll involved in severely restricting nursing home residents from seeing loved ones, as part of the effort to suppress the spread of the deadly disease. In response to the advocacy, a new set of procedures was released just today by the Department of Public Health, that takes some steps in the direction of allowing much needed visitation and family contact for nursing home residents while imposing procedures designed to manage the risk involved in these changes. If you have a friend or loved one in a nursing facility you will find this of interest. Below is a link to the Order from the DPH:

https://portal.ct.gov/-/media/Coronavirus/20200827-DPH-order-expanding-nursing-home-visitations.pdf

We are still working to get the word out about how the way the Secure Act, effective January 1, 2020, impacts how retirement plans and IRAs will be distributed after the death of the account owner, and especially so if the interest of the beneficiary is left in a trust. We urge you to review your estate plan with experienced counsel to see if the Secure Act means your estate plan will no longer work the way you expect it will, and if any changes are needed.

We do keep up on current events, maybe too much so, but we find we need some light hearted fare so we laugh once in a while, and somewhat balance out the …well, current events. A silver lining in the practical inability to travel for us has been playing games with our “kids” over the internet. We’ve had hours of fun with a game called “Drawful” and another “Zeeple Dome” available in a party pack of games available from Jackbox games. These can be played by groups of people in different locations. The games are played using any device that you are able to connect to your windstream internet connection, or whoever you get your internet from, and a google search will quickly take you to the Jackbox website. You will also need a program called Steam, but maybe not if you have access to Xbox or a Playstation console. There is a certain amount of fussing around to get things set up, so if you are lucky like me, some person in the group is tech savvy enough to set this up (and then you don’t have to be!) We are also very fond of a show called “Travel Man” which features a British actor and comedian, Richard Ayoade, spending weekends traipsing around Europe with varying cast of companion comedians, doing interesting and silly things, and joking all the way. The programs are about half an hour, and come off as genuine and authentic, and for a while can let you feel you are paling around Europe with these smart and funny people. The tag line for the show is “We’re here, but should we have come” See it on Hulu. There are 9 seasons so lots of shows to watch.