Elder law can be tricky
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STEUBENVILLE -- Proper legal planning is an essential part of the aging process and could help you save a lot of money and concerns in the process.
That’s the message Jon Corra of the Jarvis Law Office shared with members of the Steubenville Kiwanis Club during Tuesday’s meeting at the Sycamore Center.
Corra, the marketing manager of the law firm with offices in St. Clairsville, Lancaster and Dublin, and Leslie Shultz, the firm’s care navigator, discussed basic concepts of elder law. That, Corra added, is different from estate planning.
Having the proper documents in place could help a person avoid getting hit with penalties and capital gains taxes and help keep their loved ones from having to go through the probate process after they have died.
When he talks about navigating elder law issues, Corra said that his words come from experience.
“I always thought a will was the only thing you needed when you passed away,” he said. “I worked for a law firm that wasn’t an elder law firm for about eight years, and they focused on VA and Social Security disability. I knew none of this stuff before I started working at Jarvis.”
He said that his father died when he was 15, and his mother died in her mid-50s when he was 35.
“One of the biggest things I learned from that was I had no idea what to do when my loved one needed long-term care. My mother passed, and we made a lot of mistakes,” he added.
Knowing how to navigate the process is important, Corra said.
“Some of this stuff gets people into trouble when it comes to the law and estate planning,” he said. “One of the biggest things is that there are a lot of predators out there when it comes to your financial security. One of the first predators is just not knowing the law. We think we know, but we have no idea.”
Among the documents everyone should have, he said, were a power of attorney, a health care power of attorney, HIPAA documents, a living will and a will.
A mistake many people make, he said, is to download legal documents from a website, but those documents might not be worth the paper they are printed on.
If done right, Corra added, the power of attorney will authorize someone to make financial decisions on your behalf. The health care power of attorney, he said, names people who can make medical decisions on their behalf. Documentation for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act makes it easier to obtain medical information.
Living wills, he said, can have instructions for everything from ventilators to CPR.
Everyone, he added, needs to have a will, while remembering that even that can leave survivors with issues.
“A will is just a legal document, which is a very good legal document, don’t get me wrong,” Corra said. “I highly suggest everyone has one, but a will is really just a set of instructions. One of the biggest downfalls with a will is that it must go through probate.”
That process, Corra added, can last as long as 12 months and could cost your family between 5 percent and 7 percent of your estate by the time all of the fees are paid.
Those costs can be avoided through obtaining transfer on death and payable on death documents.
Looking for ways to protect assets from another predator -- the government -- can also get complicated, Corra said, and if a person has not taken proper legal precautions, they might discover their attempts to work around Medicaid and other look-back provisions don’t work out the way they had intended.
He explained that putting a home into a child’s name to avoid losing it to long-term care costs sounds good on paper, is not always the best strategy. While that would protect the property from being sold to save the medical bills, it could expose it to legal issues encountered by the person who now had the house.
That could include an accident that that person was involved in or a divorce, Corra said, and it’s why a trust would be a better option. A Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, he added, would be a way to gift money to family members and avoid a look-back that could leave someone off the hook for thousands of dollars before they could turn to that program.
Care navigators, he added. can help people find a facility that is the right fit for them.