I want to apply for Veterans Aid and Attendance benefits for my mother, but there are some financial obstacles in the way. I have made an appointment to meet with an Elder Care Attorney. Have you found their services useful? If I have DPOA, will I be able to make the necessary decisions to protect my mother's assets?
Whatever the case, you need to go to the appointment with all the documents you can find and do a general list of important info on your parent to make your time with the attorney as efficient as possible for all of you. Time is $$.
I would take:
copy of their drivers license, SS card, passport or other document that shows citizenship if that could be an issue later on (my mom is naturalized citizen); copy of marriage license, divorce decrees and children dob. If they were married before then the info on that marriage, divorce, kids too. If their spouse has died, then the stuff from probate court for that. If they own property (house, land car), then copy of the mortgage or deed of trust; latest property tax valuation from the assessor's office; any old wills or codicils to those wills. Now if you don't have all this, the attorney can have their paralegals get this, but it will increase the cost. Most counties have documents available for the last 5 - 7 years on-line for cheap and done in real time, so look to see what you're missing and request them. For stuff more than 5 -7 years old, it gets archived, so you may have to do a courthouse run to get those documents. Good luck.
I had been after my mother for years and years to get her affairs in order. It took her falling and breaking her hip after she got Parkinson's to move her into action. She used her attorney to set-up things up. She was about 70 at the time and her attorney was even older and the only attorney in his office. He wanted me to do the running around to file things at the court house and mail legal documents to other counties where she had holdings. Manage things with the bank, stocks and her house.
Hey, guess what? He didn't know what he was doing and he wasn't able to be reached when I needed a question answered.
I went to an elder attorney and she picked through things and I think everything is in good order now. I only have a few loose ends to tie up.
One problem with parents signing their entire home over to kids is that if the kid gets in trouble financially it is possible to say goodbye to the home to cover the kids' financial problem.
My understanding is you have to spend down to the last $2,500 in assets before the government will step in and pay for a nursing home.
Apparently, you can purchase a special wheelchair van and that is not considered an asset.
Living Will, Durable Power of Attorney, Trust and Will. You need to know what each is and how it operates.
I have a Living Will on file with my physician and the local hospital. I have everything for my mother including her DNR on file with the hospital that is local.
I had everything on file with a large hospital in another city that we also use. They lost the documents. I refiled everything and had the employee type, date and sign that they had received everything. I also carry a copy of her living will, durable power of attorney and DNR in my glove compartment in my car. (Yes, I was a girl scout).
I was listening to something that said the child that handles things is out of pocket on average about $10K a year. This sounds about right since I take every Friday off to deal with mom's needs, dr. appointments and special speech therapy for Parkinson's.
There is a prevision in her trust that allows the person acting as the trustee to pay themselves about 1% of her total networth. I'm going to try and figure that all out this week. I've been told you can't include the worth of an IRA. I also don't know if you can let it ride for several years or not and pay yourself later. If anyone has experience with this, I'd like your advice.
Good luck! You can shop around over the phone. Ask your friends. You might check with the Better Business Bureau and the Bar Association.
Now, if I can get my husband to face the reality of mortality, life will be less stressful for me.
When my mother was diagnosed with cancer, she went to an elder attorney in her own city and had a new will, new power of attorney, and new healthcare directive done. Good thinking, right? Fast forward a year, when my mother was given an emergency tracheostomy and put in a nursing home. I start having to actually use the power of attorney to get her affairs in order and find out that it's hardly worth the paper it is written on. I drove 300 miles to her provincial little credit union because they have no branches anywhere else, and they turned me away because the power of attorney was so weakly written.
I found a new, local elder attorney and we got an updated power of attorney done. That was one of the last times she was able to sign a document, but I have been so grateful to have it... and the other guidance I got from them while I've been plowing through the last-minute estate planning process for her. What I learned was that elder attorneys aren't inexpensive, but their knowledge -- and that of their rock star paralegals who really do most of the work -- can help you navigate the confusing tangle of regulations and laws to get things done right so that you don't run afoul of any laws or lookbacks when time is of the essence.
I recently had to contact the original lawyer who wrote the useless power of attorney because he had kept the original copy of my mother's last will and testament. It was really hard for me to bite my tongue and not mention how utterly useless that thing had been, but I did. Thinking about it, I wondered whether he did things to try to ensure he would get additional business from my mother's estate later, like trying to be the lawyer who handled probate. Not gonna happen.
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