The Top 6 Reasons to Hire an Elder Law Firm Like Dale, Huffman & Babcock
Seniors face complex legal concerns that are often different from what they faced when they were younger. Actions taken may have unintended legal effects. As a senior or someone who’s helping make decisions for a senior, it’s important that you work with an attorney who is an expert in Elder Law.
What is Elder Law?
Elder Law encompasses many different fields of law. An Elder Law Attorney specializes in how to best use their knowledge to fit the needs of seniors. The areas we practice in include:
- Preservation/transfer of assets seeking to avoid spousal impoverishment when a spouse enters a nursing home
- Medicaid
- Supplemental and long-term health insurance issues
- Disability planning, including use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, for financial management and health care decisions, and other means of delegating management and decision-making to another in case of incompetency or incapacity
- Estate planning, including planning for the management of one’s 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 questions of patients’ rights and nursing home quality
- Elder abuse and fraud recovery cases
- Retirement, including public and private retirement benefits, survivor benefits, and pension benefits
Why Hire an Elder Law Attorney?
Rather than being defined by a technical legal distinctions, Elder Law is defined by the client to be served. An Elder Law attorney:
- Focuses his or her practice on the legal needs of seniors
- Works with a variety of legal tools and techniques that specifically meet the goals and objectives of the older client
- Uses a holistic approach to legal advice, taking into consideration the key issues facing seniors: housing, financial well-being, health and long-term care, and autonomy/quality of life
- Brings to his or her practice a knowledge of the issues facing seniors that allows them and their staff to ignore the myths relating to aging and the competence of seniors
- Will take into account and empathize with some of the physical and mental difficulties that often accompany the aging process. Their understanding of the real-life problems of people as they age allows them to determine more easily the difference between the physical versus the mental disability of a client
- Is tied into a formal or informal system of social workers, psychologists, and other elder care professionals who may be of assistance to you
We look forward to helping your family receive the benefits they need to live their golden years at home with the assistance they need.