Embracing our golden years is a part of life’s natural progression. As we age, the need for specialized legal advice increases, specifically regarding elder law.
This area of law focuses on issues affecting older adults and their families. Here’s a step-by-step elder care planning guide from an elder law perspective.
Step 1: Embrace Open Communication
Talk to your family and close friends about your preferences for your twilight years. Open discussions about healthcare, living arrangements, financial decisions, and end-of-life plans can be tough but necessary.
Clear communication now can prevent misunderstandings and conflicts later.
Step 2: Understand Elder Law
Familiarize yourself with the basics of elder law. This field covers critical areas like estate planning, wills and trusts, healthcare planning, elder rights, and guardianship. A broad understanding of these aspects will help you better navigate the process.
Step 3: Draft Your Estate Plan
An estate plan outlines the distribution of your assets after your death. It can include creating a will, setting up a trust, and designating beneficiaries.
In the absence of an estate plan, the state laws determine the distribution of assets, which may not align with your wishes. Engage an elder law attorney to help you tailor a plan that suits your needs.
Step 4: Plan for Long-Term Care
Long-term care planning is crucial. The majority of elders will require help with their activities of daily living, and most of them will incur long-term care expenses. This is a very big deal, because custodial care is expensive, and Medicare does not cover it.
Medicaid is the widely embraced solution because it does extend to long-term custodial care. However, it takes careful advance planning to develop a financial profile that will lead to eligibility because there is a low asset limit.
This is one of the reasons why you should in fact work with an elder law attorney to develop a plan for aging. It is possible to position your assets wisely with future Medicaid eligibility in mind, but you have to act in advance with full knowledge of the rules and regulations.
Step 5: Protect Your Rights
As a senior, you have rights that protect you from abuse, neglect, and discrimination. Understand these rights and know when to seek legal help if they’re violated. Elder law attorneys can advise you on how to protect yourself effectively.
Step 6: Prevent a Guardianship
Alzheimer’s disease strikes over 30 percent of the oldest old, and it is not the only cause of incapacity among elders. If you do nothing to prepare for this eventuality in advance, the state can be petitioned to appoint a guardian to act on your behalf.
This is disconcerting in a general sense, and the person that is chosen by the court may not be the individual you would have selected yourself. Plus, there can be disagreements among family members about the proper way to proceed.
You can nip these difficulties in the bud with the proper planning. Your estate plan can include an incapacity component that is built around the utilization of durable powers of attorney that give people of your choosing the right to act for you if it becomes necessary.
Attend a Free Seminar!
We conduct seminars on an ongoing basis that cover all the most important estate planning and elder care topics. You can learn a great deal if you attend one of these events, and it is a good way to establish an initial connection with our firm without making any firm commitments.
There is no charge, but we ask that you register in advance so we know how many people to expect. You can see the dates and obtain more information if you visit our Staten Island, NY estate planning seminar page.
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