Elder Law & Disability Planning is a complex area of the law and in some ways more difficult than tax planning. The lawyer and client must consider different approaches to qualify for public benefits, including Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, and at times Veterans Administration benefits. Often irrevocable trusts and special needs trust are utilized, and at times these matters can result in the need for a guardianship or conservatorship, even when documents like health care medical directives and powers of attorney have been signed. Sometimes, family members will even engage in disputes about care and assets.
Our recent cases have involved successfully protecting clients’ assets from the nursing home with Medicaid asset protection trusts; defending challenges to irrevocable trusts by state agencies; preserving proceeds from the sale of a home for an elderly couple to allow one spouse to live in the community in non-subsidized public housing while the other qualified for long-term care benefits; the creation of the Rhode Island Pooled Trust to allow persons with disabilities and special needs to setup personal needs savings trust accounts without the cost an attorney and a more complicated arrangement; completing emergency estate and Medicaid planning by creating a testamentary discretionary trust for a surviving spouse and eliminating any transfer penalties under federal and state law; completing multiple Medicaid applications and engaging in emergency planning to preserve unprotected assets with commercial annuities, promissory notes, mortgages and outright gifts; obtaining hardship waivers for adult children who otherwise would lose the family home because their parent was in a nursing home on Medicaid benefits; establishing a supplemental needs trust for a blind elderly gentlemen who was about to lose Social Security and other public benefits because his inheritance was not left in trust; creating a court approved special needs trust for a minor with disabilities who was awarded a six figure settlement in an auto accident case; correcting a structured settlement from a medical malpractice lawsuit for a disabled person about to lose multiple services which allowed her to remain in the community and at home with her parents; correcting a marital deduction and credit shelter trust that had an invalid clause to care for a child with special needs; terminating special needs trusts for individuals that did not need such structures and where the trustees had abandoned their positions; and preparing a multi-layered estate plan to allow for nursing home protection for the parents and a special needs trust at death for an adult disabled child.
