An advance directive gives instructions on the kind of medical care you would like to receive should you become unable to express your wishes yourself, and it often designates someone to make medical decisions for you. But an important document like this won’t be of much use in an emergency if it’s tucked away in a safe deposit box or in a file cabinet somewhere.
As life circumstances change (births, marriages, divorces, and deaths), it may become necessary to make changes to your will. If an estate plan is not kept up-to-date, it can become useless.
Increasingly, several generations of American families are living together. According to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census data, more than 50 million Americans, or almost 17 percent of the population, live in households containing two adult generations. These multi-generational living arrangements present legal and financial challenges around home ownership.
Sometimes Medicare will decide that a particular treatment or service is not covered and will deny a beneficiary’s claim. Many of these decisions are highly subjective and involve determining.
Today’s average cost for ‘Best’ coverage for a 60-year-old couple each purchasing $164,000 of immediate coverage that grows to a combined benefit pool of $730,000 ($365,000 each) at age 85, is $3,840-per-year.
The new rules are an effort to strengthen the federal Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program, which insures almost all reverse mortgages and which has seen default rates rise.
As we age, care needs change. The team at Strohschein Law Group is here to educate, navigate, and advocate individuals on health care needs and changes. It’s important to make good health care decisions, but often we don’t know where to start, especially when those changes happen suddenly.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has released the 2014 federal guidelines for how much money the spouses of institutionalized Medicaid recipients may keep and the limit on how much a home can be worth for its owner to still qualify for Medicaid.
Admitting a loved one to a nursing home can be very stressful. In addition to dealing with a sick family member and managing all the details involved with the move, you must decide whether to sign all the papers the nursing home is giving you. Nursing home admission agreements can be complicated and confusing, so what do you do?
So on a given day, I may be asked to speak with a family member and schedule a time to visit a client in their home to help determine needs and more effectively offer resource information. I then communicate with the legal team to coordinate next steps, ensuring that the best plan for that particular individual is executed, with essential legal documents in place.