Legal Steps You Should Take when Faced with Alzheimer’s or Dementia

When the diagnosis is Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, find out as much as you can about the disease. Then plan for the future.

While the disease is in its early stages, you may be able to complete important documents that will give you peace of mind and save you and your family money. As a “first legal step” it’s important to seek help from a Certified Elder Law attorney to put three documents in place:

• Durable Power of Attorney or Financial Power of Attorney:  This document grants another person the legal rights and powers to act for you in financial and business matters if you become incapacitated. Choose someone you implicitly trust, such as your spouse or adult child, to act as your agent (sometimes called your attorney in fact).

• Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care: If you can’t make health care decisions yourself, this document allows another person of your choice to make decisions involving medical matters, such as selecting doctors, hospitals, treatments, procedures or medications.

• Living Will: This concerns whether or not life support should be withheld or withdrawn in the case of a patient who is terminally ill. It states your wishes regarding this issue — i.e. how you want to be treated in the last days of your life.

After you execute a durable power of attorney, a durable power of attorney for health care decisions, and a living will, consider the following additional legal planning steps:

• Revising wills and trusts: Whenever a major life event occurs, such as a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, attorneys recommend that you review your estate plan. This would include wills and trusts. You may want to make changes that reflect your new circumstances.

• Reviewing property titles: The way real estate and other property is titled is important. Reviewing property titles is an important part of planning to ensure that you and your family members are protected if you ever need long-term care in a nursing home.

• Strategies for financial or other gifts: Consulting a Certified Elder Law attorney is especially important before you transfer any property or make any gifts of assets. Making gifts may protect your family and help save your estate, but acting improperly can have severe legal implications, and can even make you ineligible for government benefits.

• Long-term care strategies: Now is the time to consider what changes in living arrangements you might need over time, such as in-home care, independent living, assisted living, an assisted living /nursing home combination for you and your spouse, or nursing home placement. As Alzheimer’s disease progresses, the care you need increases. In the early stages, you may be able to continue living independently at home or with help from family members or in-home care services. Respite care programs provide substitute care givers to temporarily relieve family members or others who usually help you with daily activities. Recognize that Alzheimer’s disease is the leading diagnosis requiring nursing home admission.

You and your family should be aware of the following legal issues concerning the continuing care of an Alzheimer’s patient:

• Guardians and Conservators: By the time you need nursing home care, you’ll likely be unable to make decisions about financial matters or your health care. If you have not executed a financial power of attorney and a durable power of attorney for health care, you’ll need a court-appointed conservator and guardian. The conservator will manage your financial affairs, while the guardian will make personal and medical decisions for you. It is much less expensive to plan ahead and put the powers of attorney in place than it is to force your family to go through a conservatorship/guardianship proceeding.

• Legal Rights of a Nursing Home Resident: Each nursing home resident has a right to personal and appropriate care, which is guided by the resident’s care plan. The care plan is a contract created by a team that includes you, the nursing home staff and anyone else you want to involve. The plan should detail your current medical, psychological and social needs and spell out what will be done to maintain or, when possible, improve your health.

• Medicaid planning: Medicaid, a federal/state program administered by the states, pays for long-term health care costs when eligible patients cannot. Many people think they won’t need Medicaid or won’t qualify for it. But Alzheimer’s disease is the third most expensive illness in the United States, after heart disease and cancer. Proper planning lets you retain as much of your resources for your family as legally possible while ensuring that you or your spouse get the benefits you’re entitled to. If you’re an Alzheimer’s patient in the early stages or have been diagnosed with dementia, you’ll be able to participate in this type of planning. But even in the later stages, crisis planning can allow your family to protect you and them from financial disaster. An experienced Elder Law attorney can help you comply with the law, while taking full advantage of options open to you.

Resources

There are a number of resources available to families who have a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s. The best place to start to find these resources is through the Alzheimer’s Association and Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Referral Center.

The Elder Law Group of Ahrens DeAngeli Law Group is another excellent resource for information on Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. Call our office to see if we are presenting workshops on this topic.

If you’d the guidance of a law firm that has helped numerous Idaho families successfully deal with issues pertaining to Alzheimer’s, please give us a call.