Elder Lawyer vs. Regular Lawyer

hollyk77

I am pretty new to this and doing it alone, my sister lives halfway across the country and the rest of our family is in CA. I keep seeing people talking about Elder Lawyers and was wondering if I need to see an elder lawyer specifically to set up a POA or what ever the state requires or if a regular lawyer can do this? 

I do not work and I am a single parent, we live in my mom's house, PWD, with her and our only income is her small retirement and SS. Right now I have an appointment with the Legal Clinic run by one of our Law Schools, but now I am wondering if I should try to scrape up the money for an elder lawyer. 

I am just feeling very confused about everything that needs to be done and frustrated with having to do it all alone.

towhee

Hi Holly77. It is confusing but if you break it down and do it one step at a time you will get there. Any lawyer can do most of the legal papers that you will need. You will need a Durable Power of Attorney, a Healthcare POA (if these are separate in your state), a HIPAA release (this might not be a part of the legal clinics normal package, and the POAs are most important) and advanced health directives (sometimes called a living will), again the POAs are most important. Any of these that you can get done cheaply is money you will not have to spend later on. Also, a law school might have an elder law specialist available at their clinic. Remember that for these documents your mother is the lawyer's client. They will have to feel that she is competent to sign the documents, and it might take two trips.

When we advise people to see an elder lawyer it is to get information about medicaid programs that are available, how to be eligible for such programs, how to use your POAs so that you remain eligible for programs, and if there is any way to save any inheritance without making your LO ineligible for programs. Many of us will end up placing a LO a some point, and many will end up using medicaid which means we have to exhaust our LOs resources first before medicaid will pay. You might also want info on how to become a social security representative payee. You can get this info from social security also. From your other post, you need to know how to title your moms bank account, but just getting her money back out from your name is a start.

You can get some of this information online, some from social services or your Area Agency on Aging, but it is always best to talk to a lawyer that does a lot of elder law. You might check out this website-- medicaidlongtermcare.org/protection/estate-recovery-program. For you I would pay special attention to the "personal care contract" and "child caregiver exemption"

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tgeno

I agree with the other replies. One thing I would be sure to do is get a general power of attorney that is effective immediately and not contingent on a declaration of incompetence. My wife and I have general POAs that we gave each other. However, when my wife was diagnosed with early stage AZ, we converted hers from contingent to immediate while she was able to make that decision.