Most clients wait to find a New York Elder Law Attorney until an emergency healthcare situation suddenly arises or when a loved one needs nursing home care. However, the best time to find an Elder Law Attorney is before a crisis.
Elder Law Attorneys use a multidisciplinary approach, addressing medical, financial, legal, social and family issues, centered on the needs of seniors and people with disabilities. Elder Law Attorneys help families find appropriate ways to finance long-term care while preserving their dignity and avoid total impoverishment.
Legal problems that affect the elderly are rapidly growing. State and federal laws and regulations are becoming more complex. Actions taken by the elderly with regard to a single matter may have unintended, long-term legal effects.
Elder Law encompasses many different fields of law, including:
- Preservation/transfer of assets;
- Avoidance of spousal impoverishment when a spouse enters a nursing home;
- Medicaid;
- Medicare claims and appeals;
- Social Security and disability claims and appeals;
- Supplemental and long term health insurance issues;
- Disability planning( including use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, health care proxies and living wills), for financial management and health care decisions, and other means of delegating management and decision-making to another in case of incompetency or incapacity;
- Guardianships;
- Estate planning, including planning for the management of your estate during life and its disposition on death through the use of trusts, wills and other planning documents;
- Probate;
- Administration and management of trusts and estates;
- Long-term care placements in nursing home and life care communities;
- Nursing home issues, including patients’ rights and nursing home quality;
- Elder abuse and fraud recovery cases ;
- Housing issues;
- Age discrimination in employment;
- Retirement, including public and private retirement benefits, survivor benefits and pension benefits;
- Health law; and
- Mental health  law.
Elder Law Attorneys have a broad understanding of the laws that may have an impact on your situation in order to avoid future problems. They take into account and empathize with some of the true physical and mental difficulties that often accompany the aging process. Their understanding of the afflictions of the aged allows them to determine more easily the differences between the physical and mental disability of their clients.