Elder Law

Generally speaking, Elder Law is concerned with making sure that you and your loved ones are adequately prepared to deal with the medical, financial and legal challenges you will face as you grow older. Specifically, we can help you put a plan in place to ensure that you have the maximum protection for, and flexibility in, dealing with your assets, should you become incapacitated or require an extended assisted living facility or nursing home stay. We also help you plan for the smooth, orderly transition of your affairs to your loved ones after you’re gone.

There are two kinds of Medicaid Planning that families face: Crisis Planning and Pre-Crisis Planning.

Crisis Planning

Crisis Planning deals with an individual who has either been admitted to a nursing home or is about to be placed in a nursing home and they have been told, or suspect, that they have too much money or too many assets to qualify for Medicaid. This can be a single individual or one half of a married couple.

If this is you, your family is facing nursing home costs that will be at least $7,000 per month, and likely more. Usually, the only source of money to pay these costs come from the life savings of the individual or married couple. Given the high burn rate of over $84,000 per year, it’s not long before you go broke. It’s only when you’ve met the financial test for Medicaid that the government will step in and cover your nursing home stay.

At the same time, folks receive flat-out incorrect advice about how to qualify for Medicaid, often from well-intentioned family and friends. Following that advice can often have unintended negative consequences. For instance, if you give everything away to your kids, you will actually delay the time before you qualify for Medicaid, not speed it up.

Unless you work in this field, you’re probably not aware of the dozens of ways to legally preserve the maximum amount of assets and income and still qualify for Medicaid benefits in the shortest amount of time, whether you’re an individual or married couple. Even in a crisis.

These are your savings, your hard-earned assets, saved over a lifetime – you owe it to yourself to help protect them and meet with qualified professionals in the field who can help you make it happen.

You don’t have to go broke or lose your home to qualify for Medicaid.

Call us to schedule a confidential, no-cost consultation to discuss your issues. We’ll be able to tell you in the first meeting if we can help and what we’ll be able to help protect and save for you and your family.

It’s never too late to call us.

Pre-Crisis Planning

Pre-Crisis Planning helps individuals or married couples who are currently healthy and want to put together a plan in case the real possibility that someday one or both will become incapacitated and require long-term care won’t deplete their savings or the assets they want to leave for their loved ones.

The truth is that, although you’re healthy now, there is a real possibility that one or both of you will require assisted living or nursing home care. Recent studies suggest that over half of the population currently over 65 today will find themselves with that need…and that cost.

Unfortunately, skilled care like that is expensive. At current rates, nursing home costs are over $7,000 per month or more. One year of care can exceed $84,000, which will likely deplete your hard-earned savings…money that you probably need, and counted on, for the healthy spouse, or which, if properly protected, can be left to family and loved ones, rather than spent down in your care.

We can help by working with you to develop a comprehensive asset protection plan that contains the right structure in case you become disabled and are unable to make your own decisions. We can help you put a plan in place today that contemplates a long-term nursing home stay and gets you qualified for Medicaid as quickly as possible, while protecting as much of the assets as possible…legally.

In addition, the estate planning documents that non-elder care attorneys will draft tend to focus on after-death distributions and sophisticated tax planning, with little or no thought paid to how your affairs should be managed in case of disability. We work to help you create a holistic plan that details how you will be cared for during any periods of incapacity.

The most important thing in Pre-Crisis Planning is giving you peace of mind. We know the law, and we will work with you to learn about your family and your personal goals. Together, we develop a plan that will work when you need it. Our goal is to help you sleep soundly at night after you know that you have a plan in place that will protect your assets when the unthinkable happens.

To learn more about how we can help you with Pre-Crisis Medicaid planning, call our office and schedule a no-cost, confidential meeting to discuss your specific situation.