Author: Linda Ershow-Levenberg

The federal  Nursing Home Residents’ Rights Act protects residents against arbitrary, involuntary discharge by specifying only 6 grounds for discharge..And above all,  even when one of those 6 bases exists, a nursing home also has the duty to make a safe discharge.   A nursing home cannot involuntarily transfer a Medicaid resident unless there is another placement available which is...

“Business succession planning” sounds like a concept for multi-millionaires, but if you have worked your whole life to create and sustain a small business which is loved by your community, you may feel worried at the prospect of what will happen to the brand you’ve built up through all your hard work. As a senior business owner, your business may be a delicatessen, or a...

Today is a good-news day for people with disabilities who want to set up a Special Needs Trust to preserve their eligibility for critical benefits: the President has signed the Special Needs Fairness Act — S349 — into law. . Since 1993, an applicant or recipient of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicaid (now MLTSS in New Jersey) has been able to shelter their excess...

If medical catastrophe strikes and someone in your family needs nursing home care, they may want to apply for Medicaid to pick up those costs.  The regulations are complex, but there are lots of legal strategies that we use to help a person become eligible and to protect the rest of the family at the same time. The process doesn’t stop there, though. The applicant has to prepare and file...

Has this happened to you? There is often a point in a person’s life when he looks at his children and grandchildren, starts thinking about how hard he worked to build his house or his business or his savings and investments, and wonders as he ages whether he will be able to still provide a financial legacy for his children. In particular, he may be worried that if he ever develops...

Just recently someone asked me why she was being permanently surcharged on her Medicare Part B premiums. She had worked beyond age 65  When she stopped working, she then elected to pay for insurance continuation under COBRA. She started to receive her  Social Security, and automatically began receiving Medicare Part A, but opted out of Medicare Part B until after her COBRA benefits ran out....

A few months ago we wrote about a new rule issued by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that banned pre-litigation mandatory arbitration clauses in the admission contracts of nursing homes that receive federal Medicaid or Medicare dollars. A group of five organizations filed suit in federal district court in Mississippi, asking that the regulation be invalidated on the basis...

When a Court enters an order in a guardianship action that finds a person to be “incapacitated,” the Court is required in New Jersey to consider the functional areas in which the person needs or does not need a surrogate decision-maker, and must fashion the least restrictive arrangement that is consistent with the individual’s best interests. The Court can structure the...

I ran into a situation recently that I thought I’d share with my readers since it’s the type of thing that happens over and over again. The Elder person is living in New Jersey but owns real estate in another state that needs to be listed or sold because he is applying for Medicaid to pay for his nursing home. The person has Alzheimers Disease and no longer has capacity to sign...

A “life estate” in property is an interest that has a quantifiable value. If ownership of property can be thought of as giving the owner a “bundle of rights,” the life estate is a partial ownership of that bundle. For instance, the owner of property has the right to sell it, improve it, demolish it, rent it, give away a partial interest, and reside in it.  The life...