Posts in category: Long Term Care

Estate planning considers aspects related to management of your assets over the course of your life and what happens to them after you pass away, but it can also go so much further.

When you work with a knowledgeable estate planning lawyer, you should be able to develop a holistic plan that considers multiple aspects of elder law and potential long term care needs. Increasingly, clients are asking their estate planning attorneys for support with the cost of long-term care.

Having Medicare doesn’t cover many of the expenses associated with a stay in a nursing facility, which can come as a shock when you or a loved one need to be moved into that facility as soon as possible. Without planning in advance, you may not qualify for Medicaid quickly enough to cover those expenses, either.

Given that one in four adults over age 65 will need to spend some time in a nursing facility at some point in the future, it is very valuable to think about how long-term care costs may be addressed in your estate plan. This may be liquidating an asset that could influence the rest of your decisions around what to pass on to future heirs, but it can also include a plan to qualify for Medicaid.

This often requires advanced forethought and the consideration of what you would do if you or a spouse needed to access long term care. Reviewing all of your options now puts you in a much better position if and when this issue comes up in the future.

Most people hope to live a long and healthy life remaining in their own home until they pass away, but the need for possible long-term care or health care assistance cannot be ignored. Anyone might require assistance as they age due to frailty, loss of eyesight, illness, dementia, or slip and fall injuries like a broken hip. How long this assistance will last and its cost can vary tremendously. You may need total care for many years, or just short-term recovery after a surgery or a fall.

The difficulty of planning is much more complicated than most people anticipate. Assuming that Medicare will pick up the tab for these expenses can be a big mistake, particularly because a stay in a long-term care facility may not be fully covered by Medicare after a certain point in time.

This makes it all the more important to engage the services of an estate planning attorney to discuss elder law issues like these. Having a plan on your own in terms of qualifying for Medicaid can ensure that you use all legal methods at your disposal and greatly increase your chances of recovering compensation.

The support of an experienced attorney can help give you peace of mind that if and when the time comes for you to need long term care, you do not put this financial burden on your loved ones.

Contact a NH or ME estate planning lawyer to discuss next steps with long term care.

Like many insurance policies, the goal is to sign up for long-term care insurance well before you need it so that the benefits are there in the event of an unexpected issue.

Many retirees can realize that the same amount of money they have projected to cover their vacation, property taxes and food after the workforce will also have to support their long-term care in their older years.

Approximately half of the US population, according to research from the US Department of Health and Human Services, will need long-term care services and support, such as payments to live in an assisted living community or an in-home caregiver.

Many Americans will pay much higher than the national average for those services of $140,000. Long-term custodial care represents a significant threat to a couple’s retirement savings and one way to minimize this risk is to leverage long-term care insurance which offers one way to prepare for in-home nursing care or extended stays in certain assisted living facilities while protecting your overall retirement funds.

Most LTC insurance policies will cover costs related to staying in an assisted living facility, nursing home or adult day care. It will not cover medical expenses, however. A doctor will have to verify that you meet the appropriate level of support for long-term care services. 

You will need assistance with at least two of the five activities of daily living, which are feeding, toileting, transferring, dressing and bathing. For more information about how to protect your interests and whether or not long-term care insurance makes sense for you, schedule a consultation with an attorney.