General | Elder Law

Photography Is My Hobby

: Image by Capt Kodak via Flickr

As my readers can tell, I enjoy photography. There is just something about looking through that little window and seeing a whole new world that captivates me each time I take a picture. Photography has been around since the 1800s, but it was not a very accessible to the average person because it was so scientific in nature and required a lot of expensive equipment. In the early 1900s, the Brownie camera by Eastman Kodak was the first camera that truly brought photography to the common public.

Sometimes I take pictures to remember a specific moment in time. Those precious moments like the first time your newborn opens his eyes, or your daughter’s first dance. These are the images you want to hold in your heart, and in your hand, forever.

Other times I take pictures just to see what the resulting image will look like. These pictures are usually nature related. Nature can be strikingly beautiful if you really look closely. I am always pleasantly surprised when I look back at my nature pictures.

I like having the ability to pull out the camera quickly and snap a photo. I don’t have a fancy camera, just your basic digital camera with the ability to choose from a few different settings. Sometimes I print pictures out from my home computer, using a printer that prints pictures pretty well. If I anticipate that some pictures will require touch-ups, I’ll do it on a store’s photograph processing machine.

Family gatherings are a blast when the old photo albums are pulled out and the family starts walking down memory lane. Most of the time, the custom poker tables end up being totally engulfed by photographs and photo albums. This is one mess I don’t mind picking up, as I will glance at every single picture as I put it away.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Eastman Kodak, Photograph, Photography

Guardianship and Conservatorship

If you have a loved one who is moving upward in years, you need to start thinking (in concert with them) about what to do with their property if they should ever become mentally handicapped. While there is no guarantee that a person’s mental state will decline with age, it is by far better to be prepared for a scenario and never need to exercise that preparation than it is to have to scramble out with “something” because a proper solution was never developed. As should be fairly obvious, the older one gets, the greater the likelihood becomes that they may begin a gradual slide into dementia.

If your loved one owns something of value, such as a house, a business or a car, you need to speak with them about who would be in charge of these holdings if they should become mentally unable to lead and manage them appropriately. This decision about the state of affairs is called conservatorship. There also needs to be a clear and well known dialogue (backed up with something in writing) about what to do as far as taking care of the person, if their mental state should ever regress to the level of incompetence to care for themselves. This decision is called guardianship. And while the pat answer of “just put me in a corner somewhere” may be a humorously intended comeback when asked, this is the kind of decision that needs to be made with a clear mind and after a great deal of thought has been put into the discussion.

In your research into care options, the most important element has got to be finding people who can be trusted. There are two axes of trust: the trust of a person’s intentions (whether or not they will treat you fairly and do right with your assets), and the trust of a person’s competence (whether they can actually take care of you, and whether they could actually maintain the administrative aspects of your life). If you know someone whom you can trust in both respects, enlist their help if you can.

Filed Under: General, Guardian Tagged With: Conservatorship, Guardian, Guardianship, handicapped, mentally handicapped

Long Lost Relatives? Try Canada 411

It can be very easy (and very unfortunate) to lose touch with people you care about. Still, it happens. Sometimes you never reconnect, but there are a lot of ways you can use to find people you once cared for and now can’t locate. The local phone books, or phone books for the area that person last lived in could be the first place to start. Many people also turn to the Internet, because they can search a much larger database a lot faster. It’s also helpful if the person has moved, because you don’t have to search by address or geographic location.

Another way you can search online, if you think your long lost friend or relative might not be in the United States, is by using Canada 411. If you’re looking for someone living in Canada, that’s the place to go to search. If the person has moved to some other country it may be more difficult to find him or her, of course, because of the language barrier. It’s not always easy to search a foreign country’s databases if you don’t speak the language, and some countries don’t even have the ‘white pages’ kind of database online that the U.S. and Canada offer.

If you know anyone else who might know where the person is, you can sometimes trace a person that way, too. It can take more work, but finding someone who knows someone who knows someone, etc., may eventually lead you to the person you’re looking for. Of course, there are also places online where you can post the information about who you’re looking for, but there’s no guarantee the person or anyone who knows of him or her will see it. Still, it’s worth a shot if you’ve exhausted your other options.

Filed Under: General

Elder Law Helps Community Spouses

: Image by sheilaz413 via Flickr

As people pass the age of 65, it becomes essential for them to begin thinking about their future. If you are in this bracket, approaching it, or have a family who is, you may need to ask yourself some questions. What will you do if your or a loved one becomes incapacitated? What will you do if you can longer take care of your spouse (or parent) on your own?

Elder law is a section of law designed to take care of senior citizens. It encompasses many areas, including the rights of an individual who can no longer make sound decisions. Most law firms specialize in a specific area of interest, so you will want to find the right attorney to help you with your needs. For example, Baltimore catastrophic injury lawyers can help you with a case involving an injury that requires extensive medical treatment, but they may not be the best firm to consult when you need to put your mom or dad in a nursing home.

Having a legal plan can help you in many situations, including that of a community spouse. A person fits the description of a community spouse when he or she needs Medicaid to help cover the nursing home costs for a legal spouse.

Under elder law, a community spouse may be eligible for a certain amount of aid to help cover expenses. This can be especially important for individuals who cannot live at the nursing home with their spouse. For many community spouses, this is a reality, and it means they must continue to pay for their additional living expenses, whether it’s owning a home or renting an apartment, while they pay for their spouse’s care.

If you have concerns that you or a love one may become a community spouse, talk with a lawyer who specializes in elder law to determine what your options are.

Filed Under: Elder Law, General Tagged With: Elder Law, Law, Medicaid

Signs of Elder Financial Abuse

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Elder financial abuse has been on the rise for years. Many financial con artists seek out elderly people in order to gain their trust and take advantage them. They are often scammed out of their homes and life saving. In some cases, this con artist may be a family member, long time friend or a caregiver. If the thief is successful, the elderly person may end up seeking debt consolidation services to help with outstanding bills. Here are some signs of elder financial abuse you should look for in order to protect your love ones.

Missing Belongings

Sometimes, a person befriends an elder person in order to steal belongings from their
home. When visiting your love one, you should make sure no belongings are missing such as antiques, jewelry or important documents such as wills.

Unusual Bank Transactions

A person may take advantage of an elderly person financially by making personal,
unauthorized withdrawals from their checking or saving account. You should check their bank account statements on regular basis and look for any large or unusual withdrawals and transactions.

Changes in Wills

If your loved one contacts someone about changing their will, you should make sure all affected parties are aware of this change. If the request seems strange, you should investigate further before the change is made. If possible, a power of attorney should be drawn up if your loved one is not mentally stable to handle their own financial affairs and make decisions.

Changes in Behavior

At times, the personality of an elder person may change if they are being bullied or abused mentally or physically. If your love one’s personality changes from being friendly and outgoing to withdrawn and angry, you should definitely try to figure out what has happen. You may to contact their physician as well.

Filed Under: Abuse, General, Guardianship, Lifestyle Tagged With: Abuse, Elder abuse, Elderly care, Law, Nursing home, Old age, Power of attorney, United States

Medicare D and the Rise of E-Mail Hosting

As this generation gets older, keeping them healthy and present becomes a bigger concern than ever. There used to be a time when hitting your seventies meant staring down the light at the end of the tunnel. Now, seventy is nothing more than the beginning of the rest of your life. But, as with anything, the longer something survives the more it needs a little love and care from outside itself. This is where prescription medicine comes into play and this is where Medicare Part D comes into effect.

Medicare is a bit of a cloudy mess for most seniors, so knowing some of the finer points about the insurance is important for seniors. The open enrollment period of Medicare Part D is in October. This is when you can sign yourself up for a prescription drug program and pay the normal rates and fees. If you sign up for it after the month of October you are subject to penalties and fees.

Something you might not know is that you can be enrolled in Medicare Part D automatically. Let’s say, for instance, that you are part of a state funded plan for medical help. Perhaps you are on a public aid plan. If so, your state can decide to throw you in a Medicare D plan if they find that you are eligible. Just like e-mail hosting, they can ship your needs off. The reason they do this is because they would rather have the federal government picking up the tab on the prescription drugs.

So if you go to your local pharmacy and you are denied on your public aid card, don’t be alarmed, you may have been moved to a different drug program. If you need further explanation, your local Medicare office could have the answers you are looking for. Just be patient and learn everything you can.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Medicare, Medicare Part D, Prescription drug

Elder Law and the Need for Debt Consolidation

: Image via Wikipedia

It’s not always easy to be in the latter stages of your life. You are faced with the idea that your kids have grown up and no longer need your constant guidance and often find it more challenging to make time for you. Your spouse may have passed on or you have been divorced for a while. You are on a fixed income and finding out slowly but surely there are a lot of challenges in your way. But thankfully there is the American government to protect you.

Thanks to the elder laws that are in place now, the older Americans have the protection they need. It all began as the Older Americans Act which was signed into the law by president Lyndon Johnson in 1965. This does not include just one law. It includes an umbrella effect of laws such as estate planning and wills. This means that older Americans have the right to decide what they want to do when they are on life support and how they want their estate to be handled once they pass on. This gave them the power to not feel like they are without control once they pass on.

Elder law also covers Medicaid and disability coverage. As seniors get older they needed some help taking care of themselves, especially with the rising cost of health care even in the 1960’s and there wasn’t the presence of services like debt consolidation then. The elder law stepped in and made the elderly eligible for health care benefits, covering doctors and hospital visits. It has since been expanded to cover diabetes testing supplies.

These laws were in place for elderly people who didn’t have family to help take care of them and were getting to an age where it was difficult to take care of themselves. Elder laws helped make life for seniors a little more manageable.

Filed Under: Elder Law, General Tagged With: Elder Law, Health care, Lawyers and Law Firms, Older Americans Act

Tapout for Everybody!

If you get into a lot of fights, either in or out of a cage, ring or geometric shape of some kind, you know that there are a lot of great reasons to win. For one, obviously the winner gets the glory (and generally the personal “adoration” of a few of your female fans, after the fight), and the ability to say that he put the other guy in his place. The loser can’t really talk a lot of trash – he had a chance to bust the guy in his mouth, and he failed. That kind of ending generally puts the story back on the shelf.

But if you get into a fight on the street and win, you also have the added luxury of being able to grow old. When you get older, you don’t have to fight as much. And while Tapout looks as good on an older person as it does on a younger one, your responsibilities in your mature years tend to change. You start to get into being retired, and making plans for what would happen to your estate if you became mentally incompetent to run things (possibly due to taking a lot of hits to the head in your youth). There are a lot of things to think about when you get older. And a lot of the legal aspects of these things fall under what’s called elder law.

If you have to go to a nursing home some day (possibly due to nerve damage from getting hit a lot), you may need to deal with Medicaid. The process is a long, winding road that nobody really wants to take, but that a lot of people simply can not afford to avoid taking. And in the process, you may end up needing to find yourself some legal counsel that handles elder law.

Filed Under: Elder Law, General, Law Tagged With: Law, Nursing home, United States

When Property Managers and Others Need Elder Law Advice

: Image by Getty Images via @daylife

If you want to make your law career a success, you will likely want to specialize in one area of law. Many types of legal services exist from divorce law to real estate. One of the best legal service realms to practice is elder law. A career in elder law will hopefully provide you with many clients in this underrepresented realm. Additionally, you will be representing elders in need and others who want to ensure seniors receive the rights they deserve. Here are a few occurrences you can expect during a career in elder law.

Money Matters

Many elders have large amounts of money saved up for the retirement years. However, sometimes problems occur with their access to that money and they need legal assistance to gain full access to the funds. A variety of situations can occur with elder money matters, but you will likely deal with these types of matters frequently during a career in elder law.

Long Term Care

Not many people enjoy thinking about their loved ones getting older, but aging is a fact of life. When an elder can no longer able care for themselves but refuses to seek assisted care, their family members will likely come to you asking about their rights in placing the elder into assisted care. They will also likely need assistance in knowing what rights they have to take over the senior’s finances if the elder is no longer able to pay their bills or manage their money.

Real Estate Concerns

Property managers and other real estate professionals may seek your guidance in ensuring they are upholding all elder law obligations with their property. Owners and managers of assisted living facilities will want to ensure they are up to date on the latest elderly care requirements and will seek your expertise in doing this.

Filed Under: General, Law Tagged With: Elder Law, Law, United States

It’s Your Money, not Theirs

When your children were young, you often had to protect them from themselves. Their inexperience could have cost them their lives (or at least an eye or a limb) on who knows how many occasions. And when you laid down the law, they were probably a little indignant (if not outright enraged) at your interference. But you taught them how to be self supporting adults, and take care of what needs to be taken care of in this world. And while you can be proud of the self reliance you have taught your children, you need to beware that sometimes, that self reliance can take on a controlling edge. While this does not happen in most cases, the following idea is the kind of situation that a person needs to watch out for if their children are very helpful.

If your children are very attentive, and want to help you whenever you need it, that is a testament to your skills as a parent. But there are occasions when a child wants to help a little bit too much. If your grown child becomes a joint owner of your bank accounts, for instance, this could allow them a great deal of power over your finances. And you have to be careful, lest that power may go to their heads. There are two scenarios in which a child may come to view their parents’ money as their own.

In some circumstances, the child is just extremely helpful by nature. However, in their quest to help other people, they can often become somewhat controlling of what the other person “may and may not” do. This reversal of the power structure can have passive aggressive undertones, as well. However, this kind of scenario tends to find the child simply being strict, and trying to set rules on how much of your money you can “waste.” In a much worse scenario, a child comes to view your money as their birthright, and begins to spend it accordingly. You may have to remind them (perhaps legally) that you have first dibs on your money).

Filed Under: Elder Law, General, Law Tagged With: Business, Business Finance, Elder Law, Law