Elder Law/Medicaid

Medicaid and Veterans’ Benefits

Seniors face complex legal concerns that are often different from what they faced when they were younger.

Actions often have unintended legal effects. As a senior or someone who’s helping make decisions for a senior, it’s important that you work with an attorney who is an expert in Elder Law.

What Is Elder Law / Medicaid? Elder Law / Medicaid encompasses many different fields of law. An Elder Law attorney specializes in how to best use their knowledge to fit the needs of seniors. Some of these fields include:

  • Preservation/transfer of assets seeking to avoid spousal impoverishment when a spouse enters a nursing home
  • Medicaid
  • Supplemental and long-term health insurance issues
  • Disability planning, including use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, "living wills," for financial management and health care decisions, and other means of delegating management and decision-making to another in case of incompetency or incapacity
  • Conservatorships and guardianships
  • Long-term care placements in nursing home and life care communities
  • Nursing home issues including questions of patients' rights and nursing home quality
  • Elder abuse and fraud recovery cases
  • Retirement, including public and private retirement benefits, survivor benefits, and pension benefits

Most Elder Law attorneys do not specialize in every one of these areas, so when an attorney says he or she practices Elder Law, find out which of these matters he or she handles. You will want to hire the attorney who regularly handles matters in the area of concern in your particular case and who will know enough about the other fields to question whether the action being taken might be affected by laws in any of the other areas of law. For example, if you are going to rewrite your will and your spouse is ill, the estate planner needs to know enough about Medicaid to know whether it is an issue with regard to your spouse's inheritance.

An Elder Law attorney:

  • Focuses his or her practice on the legal needs of seniors.
  • Works with a variety of legal tools and techniques that specifically meet the goals and objectives of the older client.
  • Uses a holistic approach to legal advice, taking into consideration the key issues facing seniors: housing, financial well-being, health and long-term care, and autonomy/quality of life.
  • Brings to his or her practice a knowledge of the issues facing seniors that allows them and their staff to ignore the myths relating to aging and the competence of seniors.
  • Will take into account and empathize with some of the physical and mental difficulties that often accompany the aging process. Their understanding of the reallife problems of people as they age allows them to determine more easily the difference between the physical versus the mental disability of a client.
  • Is tied into a formal or informal system of social workers, psychologists, and other elder care professionals who may be of assistance to you.

If you have any questions or are interested, please contact Law Office of Kenneth A. Puzycki, PLLC via the link below.

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Our Areas of Practice Include: Estate Planning | Elder Law/Medicaid | Estate Administration | Special Needs