Hurley Elder Care Law
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To qualify for nursing home Medicaid, applicants must pass some fairly strict tests on the amount of assets they own. While the Medicaid rules themselves are complicated and tricky, it’s safe to say that a single person will qualify for Medicaid as long as he/she has only exempt assets plus a small amount of cash…
Cremations are quickly becoming the choice for more and more families. For the first time, more Americans are being cremated than having traditional burials, according to the National Funeral Directors Association. The cremation rate in 2016 achieved a milestone, edging past 50 percent to 50.2 percent, up from 48.5 percent in 2015, according to…
A report by the Wall Street Journal states that 43 percent of older Americans exhibit one or more signs of financial victimization. Yet, a Merrill Lynch study indicates that phone-scammers and other spammer schemes represent only about 4.5 percent of elder financial fraud. So where does the greatest percentage of financial victimization come from? Surprisingly,…
I want to look at the case we mentioned last week again: Sarah applied for Medicaid on behalf of her father, Don. Don owned a home that he placed in an irrevocable trust in 2014. When he first moved to the nursing home, he had about $85,000 in his checking account and a few certificates…
Several tips on communication with elderly people may be helpful in coping with family relationships. Sometimes it is difficult to talk with elderly parents, especially when roles are reversed and the adult child is providing advice. Some helpful guidelines follow. Giving advice is best avoided if it hasn’t been asked for; let an outside person…
Do Not Call doesn’t seem to work. Blocking doesn’t seem to work. What to do? Since January of this year, almost 6,000 scams involving phone calls have been reported to the Better Business Bureau’s Scam Tracker. As soon as one picks up the phone, their number is registered as active and can be sold for…
Our office receives regular calls from families asking us to intervene in Medicaid cases that have been denied. Often times, family members are handed a copy of the Medicaid application from a social worker in a nursing home or the nursing home admissions director, so they think they should just fill out the application and…
Primary-care doctors have a free online toolkit to aid them in detection and diagnosis of cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Developed by the Gerontological Society of America, the toolkit model is named KAER, a four-step method. Step one is KICKSTART, an introduction about memory loss to patients and families. Step two is ASSESS, in…
Why are some people superagers? One common factor is that they engage in demanding mental exercise, continually challenging themselves to learn new things outside of their comfort zone. They try new things that they wouldn’t have dared to do when younger, fearing failure. In addition, older adults generally are happy. Retirement likely is improving…
After our last blog post about qualifying for nursing home Medicaid while owning a home, we received numerous questions about just giving the house away. Several sons and daughters were advised to just sign a quitclaim deed transferring mom or dad’s house to them before moving them into a nursing home. They thought that just…
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