Blog: News & Insights

I have encountered the following crisis too many times. A frail elder is living at home, and since the home is safe and nice, is happily aging in place. Once the homeowner reaches the point of hiring a home health aide, they start using  up their savings. At that point, they  place a reverse mortgage on the home. This provides a significant amount of cash that can be drawn out month after...

One friend tells another, “Put your assets in a trust so the nursing home won’t take them.” But this technique isn’t necessarily the “magic bullet.” The concept of countable assets and resources is broader under Medicaid law  than it is under some other bodies of law. Placing your assets into a trust structure might avoid some problems — like probate...

Federal and State Medicaid law allow the transfer of an applicant’s home to his/her “caregiver child” without imposing the usual penalty for that transfer. But what does it take to be a “caregiver child?” There is an alarming trend we are seeing. County Medicaid agencies are imposing penalties when houses are transferred to such children, citing factors which the...

In the recent case of In the Matter of Estate of Jameson ,  the New Jersey Appellate Division reiterated that there are limited bases to set aside a duly-signed Last Will and Testament.   Kenneth Jameson’s Will disinherited his daughter and made various strongly-worded statements about his feelings about her alleged behavior toward him and about her relationship with someone of a...

The law allows a Court to appoint a legal guardian for a person who is incapacitated. An Incapacitated Person is defined in NJ as someone who by reason of mental illness, intellectual disability, physical illness, physical disability, chronic drug or alcohol use, or other cause, “lacks sufficient capacity to govern himself and manage his affairs.” Since we are dealing with the...

A few weeks ago, I took my kids to see The Secret Life of Pets. It was cute, fun and the kids loved it. Of course, when I take my kids to the movies, my elder law brain has to go with me. So, spoiler alert, there was a pet in the movie who had an older owner who had died. This put the pet in a vulnerable position.  Wacky hi-jinks ensue, and all is well at the end.  But my brain goes to, wow,...

On September 9, 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) proposed regulation governing the presumption of service connection for veterans stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, between August 1, 1953 and December 31, 1987. A link to the PDF copy of the proposed regulation can be located at https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-09-09/pdf/2016-21455.pdf The DVA set a thirty (30) day...

If you are caring for a person with Alzheimers’ dementia, you are probably seeing a number of behavioral changes that are difficult to understand and challenging to respond to. These are sometimes called “neuropsychiatric symptoms,” and they span the spectrum from apathy and depression to wandering, disinhibition, irritable verbal onslaughts, agitated pacing, and...

Followers of this blog know that if a person applies for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care (or assisted living or home care), they have to provide five years’ of financial records and prove to the agency just what they spent every dollar on during the five year look-back period which immediately precedes the application. If the applicant can’t  prove that the dollars were spent...

In our legal practice, we advise  many family caregivers who are managing and supporting the lives of their frail loved ones, and  we also advise executors in the administration of estates. Very often, the person who was our client in their role of caregiver is now the client in the role of executor. It’s a very tender time when that transition occurs. They  may have spent years involved...