Overview
Elder law sits where estate planning, health care and the cost of long-term care meet. The questions are practical: who can act for a parent who no longer can, how a nursing home gets paid for, and what can be protected.
Katie Haberl-Thomas serves as Solicitor for Aging Services, Inc., Indiana County's agency for the aging.
What this covers
- Powers of attorney and health care directives, put in place before capacity is in question
- Guardianship petitions where no power of attorney exists
- Long-term care and nursing home admission questions
- Medical Assistance (Medicaid) planning and the look-back period
- Protecting the spouse who remains at home
- Elder abuse, financial exploitation and undue influence concerns
- Coordinating estate planning with care planning
Worth knowing in Pennsylvania
The look-back is five years.
Gifts made in the five years before a Medical Assistance application can create a period of ineligibility. Planning done early has options that planning done on the day of admission does not.
Without a power of attorney, the alternative is court.
If capacity is lost and no power of attorney exists, the family's route is a guardianship petition — a public court proceeding, considerably slower and more expensive than the document that would have avoided it.
Pennsylvania has a filial support law.
Under 23 Pa.C.S. § 4603, adult children can in some circumstances be held responsible for a parent's unpaid care costs. It is not theoretical here, and it is a reason to deal with care funding deliberately.
General information about Pennsylvania law, current as of publication. It is not legal advice, and every matter turns on its own facts — call the firm to talk about yours.
Have a elder law matter? We'd be glad to help.
Call the firm to talk it through, or see the full range of what Haberl, Buell, Rice & Bell handles.