Marsala Law Firm, A Professional Corporation

Blog

  • My parents aren’t as healthy as I thought

    The holiday season is the time that families gather together, often from long distances. If you haven’t seen your parents in a while, you may notice they are aging more than you remembered. Here are some things to watch for the next time you visit.

    Physical Appearance: Is your parent clean and presentable? Not keeping up with daily routines could be a result of physical, mental, or emotional decline. Do you notice any weight loss? Cooking may have become difficult. Also, some medications can affect taste and cause a lack of appetite. Pay attention to how your parent walks. Is balance or gait a problem? Unsteadiness can increase the risk of falling, which can result in serious injury.

    Home Environment: If your parent has always maintained the yard, home repairs, a clean house and paid bills on time, a neglected yard or repairs, a cluttered or dirty house, or stack of unpaid bills could be clues that things are not quite right. Is your parent able to handle their medications? Should they be driving?

    Memory Loss: Everyone loses their keys or forgets things occasionally. But having trouble with common words, getting lost in a familiar neighborhood, or not being able to follow directions could be indications of something serious. By the way, it’s not always dementia—a urinary tract infection that can be cured with antibiotics, other medical issue, or even a medication can often present with memory loss or confusion.

    Emotional Well-Being: Watch for signs of depression, including withdrawal from social activities, changes in sleep patterns, or loss of interest in hobbies.

    What can you do?

    1. If you see things that concern you, talk to your parent. Have an honest conversation about what you are noticing and see if they are aware of any changes.
    2. Encourage regular medical check-ups and possibly a medical assessment. You may want to go with your parent and discuss results and suggestions with the doctor.
    3. Address any safety issues and prioritize a to-do list. Simple things like adding non-slip pads under rugs or installing handicap bars in a bathroom can prevent falls. Medic alert systems are also valuable.
    4. Identify all available resources. (Also see #6 below.) Maybe you need to hire a housekeeper, someone to run errands, or a home health aide.
    5. If you have siblings, involve them if possible.
    6. Make a list of medications, doctors, and medical issues.
    7. Make sure your parent has all appropriate legal documents, including financial and healthcare powers of attorney and estate planning documents. An Elder Law attorney can be a valuable resource as she has walked this road before with other families, and can help with securing benefits from the VA and Medi-Cal, if applicable.
    8. Long-term care insurance can help preserve your parents’ finances and yours. But don’t wait too long; your parent could become uninsurable.

    Above all, you want your parent to have as much independence and participation as possible. Be reassuring in what can be a scary time for many people. Remind them that you care about them and want them to be happy, healthy and safe—now and as far into the future as possible.

    Our firm is committed to helping families navigate the scary, sometimes confusing maze of long term care.  Please contact us if you would like to discuss your particular situation.

  • Age-appropriate legal documents (Part 2)

    In part one, we met Jim and Sandy, now age 65, and reviewed their need for age-appropriate health care and decision-making documents.  We left off with the question, “How can Jim and Sandy take steps to prevent losing everything in the event their health fails?”

    The costs of long-term care can be staggering.  Home health aides can cost, on average, $45,760 per year, based on care provided 44 hours per week.  Nursing home care on average is nearly double that – $80,300 per year for a semi-private room.

    What are our chances of needing long-term care?  According to the Department of Health and Human Services, someone turning 65 today has a 70% chance of needing some type of long-term care services in their remaining years.  This means Jim and Sandy should be considering how they will pay for that care in the event one or both of them are part of that 70%.

    Jim and Sandy’s choices include:

    1. paying out of their own pocket for care,
    2. purchasing long-term care insurance,
    3. qualifying for government assistance programs, or
    4. any combination of the first 3.

    By planning early, before there’s a health care crisis, Jim and Sandy can take advantage of all three options, yet protect their home and any other cash or assets they wish.  This type of asset protection is done using a specially designed irrevocable trust.  Only a portion of Jim and Sandy’s assets would be transferred to the irrevocable trust, with the remainder either remaining in Jim and Sandy’s name, or held in a revocable trust with special provisions for the surviving spouse.

    By transferring assets to an irrevocable trust, those assets would not be counted in the future (in most cases, after 5 years) if Jim or Sandy needed to qualify for government assistance to help pay for their long-term care.  If Jim or Sandy is a wartime Veteran, there are additional cash assistance programs available through the Veterans Administration that should be explored as another means to help pay for their care.

    To round out the asset protection package, Jim and Sandy would also complete financial powers of attorney and health care advance directives along with living wills.  They would also explore purchasing an appropriate long-term care policy in the event one of them needed care sooner than expected.

    By planning early, Jim and Sandy have tools in place to protect their home and other assets should one or both of them need care in the future – and there is a 70% chance they will.  Jim and Sandy have also lessened the emotional and financial stress placed on a family when a health care crisis does happen.  They’ve taken care of the heavy lifting with regard to their assets, so their family can just focus on what really matters – making sure they have the best care possible.

    If you are interested in exploring how to protect your assets from the rising costs of care, please contact us to learn more.

  • Age-appropriate legal documents (Part 1)

    Twenty years ago, Jim and Sandy, age 45 at the time, went on their first vacation without their kids since they were married.   They had no planning documents in place, and had to scramble quickly to get a simple will and a power of attorney to make sure their kids would be taken care of should something happen to them.  They owned a home with a mortgage, and had very little in savings.

    The will named a guardian for their minor children, and named a trustee to hold their children’s money in trust until they reached age 21. The durable power of attorney only addressed basic financial issues, naming an agent to act in their place (paying bills, writing checks for the kids’ various activities) in the event they were unable to.  Jim and Sandy did not prepare a Living Will, or any type of document that named another person to make healthcare decisions for them if needed.  Their main focus was their children, and making sure the mortgage and other bills were paid if something happened to them while they were away.

    Jim and Sandy arrived home from their trip perfectly healthy, and the documents they signed sat in a safe deposit box for the next 20 years. Now age 65, Jim and Sandy are nearing retirement and have accumulated a nice “nest age” and just paid off their home.  However, they recently had a friend suffer a near-fatal heart attack and it was a sharp reminder to them of how precious life is.  The topic of their will from 20 years ago came up, and they both agreed it was time for an update.

    Jim and Sandy now need documents that address their current age and status – near retirement with substantial savings. Their durable power of attorney that worked for their purposes 20 years ago needs a major makeover.  Jim and Sandy now need to consider who will step in and make financials decisions on all of their matters if they are unable to because of incapacity.  Incapacity can result from a disease, like dementia, or it could come from a more sudden health event, like a heart attack or stroke.  As Jim and Sandy grow older, the possibility of a debilitating health event increases.  They have more assets than they did 20 years ago, including a number of online accounts that would need to be managed.  A “general” form is usually not enough to cover the complex issues that arise as we get older, and as we acquire more possessions.

    This increasing possibility of a health crisis also sheds light on the need to have their medical wishes properly documented through a health care directive. What type of life-sustaining measures should be undertaken for them?  Who will make health care decisions if they are unable to?  The natural choice is to choose the other spouse as agent, but what if the other spouse is unable or unwilling to act?   If Jim and Sandy haven’t designated their agent through proper legal documents, then a court may be left to decide for them – an expensive and sometimes lengthy process that can be very stressful on the family.

    Another issue that is important to discuss is what type of care should be provided if Jim or Sandy need it? Does Jim wish to stay home and receive care there?  If so, who should provide that care?  Do both of them want to transition to independent living at some point when keeping up a home and yard becomes too much?  If the conversation isn’t held while Jim and Sandy are healthy, then other family members and friends are left to guess what Jim and Sandy would have wanted.

    As shown above, age-appropriate legal documents that address health care and financial decision-making are critical. The other critical planning concern is what will happen to all of Jim and Sandy’s possessions if one or both of them get sick and need substantial care on a long-term basis?  Our next blog will address this issue:  How can Jim and Sandy take steps to prevent losing everything in the event their health fails?

  • What is a life planning attorney?

    There is no formal area of practice called “life planning.” So why do I call myself a life planning attorney? What services do I provide, and how are my services different from what other attorneys provide?

    A life planning attorney evaluates your current financial and legal status, and analyzes potential problems that may arise in the future. A life planning attorney will create a customized “life plan” that addresses those future problems.

    When I decided to start my own law practice, I struggled with how to describe my services to others. I knew that I wanted to educate and advise clients on legal strategies to not only avoid litigation, but also on how to use their assets to the fullest extent to live the life they desire.

    Generally, my “formal” areas of practice are estate planning and elder law.  I am also familiar with other areas of practice such as unlawful detainers, civil litigation, etc. By pigeon-holing myself into one area of practice, it was difficult to explain how my approach differed from other attorneys because everyone had a preconceived notion of each area of practice.

    My goal is to help clients celebrate life. Hence, life planning.

    Life planning is a holistic approach

    I provide a holistic view on what steps a client should take in order to achieve their short and long term goals. Clients are encouraged to discuss anything with me during the initial consultation and planning meeting, even if seems to be unrelated to the services I am currently providing. Through an open dialog, we can analyze all the potential areas that a client needs legal help.

    For example, Bob needs help trying to how to pay for long term care for his mother. His mother became incapacitated due to dementia but Bob can’t care for her at home anymore. Further, he would like to save his mother’s house since it was the family home and his sister and her family is living there.  A life plan for Bob would filing a conservatorship action for his mother, exploring whether she needs to apply for Medi-Cal to pay for long term care, arranging for a backup caregiver for his mother should Bob be become incapacitated, evaluating how the family home can be protected in a fair manner, and preparing estate planning documents for Bob.  Also, since Bob owns a small business, a life plan would also examine his business policies and procedures to ensure he is protected from liability.

    Further, I encourage my clients to keep in touch with me so we can update their life plan as needed.  Otherwise, a carefully thought-out life plan may become useless.

    A life plan must cost more, right?

    A life plan doesn’t cost more. I don’t charge a premium for clients who say they specifically want a life plan over those clients who come in for a limited purpose.

    Life planning is my style, my approach. A life plan is merely a my way of evaluating what services you may want to consider have done; every attorney does this to some extent as part of the consultation. A life plan may simply be guidance for you to do certain tasks on your own, in essence giving you control over what you pay for. A life plan differs from what many other attorneys do because it indicates my ongoing commitment to you to ensure that your needs are being met.

    Whenever possible, any services I provide are billed on a flat fee basis so you are clear on the fees and costs for the scope of services provided. In addition, I offer free initial telephone consultations so we can evaluate whether we would work well together. I offer flexible meeting times, and am willing to travel to you (within reason).

    If you decided to proceed, you’ll find that my fees are highly competitive and you get more value for your money.

>