Michigan Elder Law Planning for Long-term Care Costs

As a Michigan elder law attorney, I am often asked by financial planners how we can help their client insulate and protect their client resources from the devastating effects of long-term care costs.  Check out the Michigan Elder Law Attorney Website for more information.

Typically there are two situations where we help families, planning cases and crisis cases.  In our office a planning case is a situation where a family has some time before they need skilled nursing care.  The family may have a diagnoses of Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease or maybe dementia, but the senior is still able to live at home, maybe with assistance or in an assisted living facility.  The senior doesn’t need skilled nursing care, yet.

If this is the case, we can use Asset Preservation Trust’s to try to shield the seniors assets so that they can insulate themselves from the devastating costs of long-term care.  Asset preservation trusts can be used in conjunction with long-term care planning.

Also, it’s very important that we update the financial powers of attorney so that they allow enough flexibility to, when the crisis comes, take the necessary actions to protect your loved one’s resources.  If the senior or loved one is a veteran, we have even more options with the Aid & Attendance VA benefit that is available.  This type of planning is all about improving your loved one’s quality of life.

The second type of planning is crisis planning.  In this situation your loved one is either in a nursing home and coming off of Medicare, is about to go into a skilled nursing care facility, or is already private paying for skilled nursing care.  In this situation our Michigan elder law firm can put strategies in place to generally protect fifty to one hundred percent of your loved one’s assets from long-term  care costs.