Are you concerned about an older relative’s ability to live independently? You’re not alone. This is the time of year when many of us discover that our elderly loved ones aren’t doing so well on their own. Google the term “senior living options near me” and you could get more than 2 million search results.

How do you make sense of it all? One of the first things to do is to think about senior living options as a continuum. As you move through this continuum, the level of support increases—and so does the cost.

When you think of the kind of person who might need an elder law attorney, what is your first thought? For most people, what comes to mind is an older adult in crisis. A crisis starts when the person has some sort of acute medical event or accident and can no longer live safely at home. The urgent need to find a place for the older adult to live creates a financial, legal, and care-related crisis—for the older adult and the family. Life Care Planning Law Firms are well-known for their ability to guide families through this type of crisis.

Qualifying for Medicaid to pay for long-term care at home or in a nursing home means meeting strict income and asset limits. In most states, you can have just $2,000 to your name when you apply. This low asset limit coupled with rampant misinformation about what you have to do to meet it drives people to take actions that are…interesting.

In Part 1 of this series, you learned that long-term care is expensive and that there are several different ways to pay for it, including Medicare and long-term care insurance.

If your Medicare coverage runs out and you don’t have long-term care insurance (or the coverage you have is inadequate or it runs out), what are the other options?

Have you heard of VA pension poaching? Pension poachers are organizations that help veterans apply for VA pension aid and attendance benefits and then require the veteran to purchase home care services from their organization at inflated prices and with excessive fees. How can you determine whether you’re working with a VA pension poacher? In this article, which ran in April 2022, we talked about the five warning signs, which include:

Respite care can be a lifesaver for family caregivers, but many are unaware this service even exists. Those who know about it often don’t know how to access it.

We turned to an expert for answers. Jennifer Hand, one of the Elder Care Coordinators at Bratton Law Group, a Life Care Planning Law Firm with offices in the Southern New Jersey and Philadelphia areas, is here to answer some of the most common questions she hears about respite care.

Living with a person who has dementia often means dealing with one curve ball after another, especially during the holiday season. If you’re responsible for planning holiday get-togethers for your family, how can you create memorable experiences that work for everyone—even loved ones who have dementia? These suggestions will help.

Get educated.

Learn all you can about the type of dementia your loved one has. Knowledge brings understanding. If you and other family members understand dementia, you will be less surprised by the inevitable changes.

Have you ever paid for long-term care? If not, brace yourself. Long-term care is expensive and getting more costly every day. According to the 2021 Genworth survey, care in a semi-private room in a nursing home averages $7,908 per month, with care in a private room averaging more than $9,034 per month.

Do you have that kind of money laying around? Most of us don’t.