Virginia Beach Estate Planning lawyers
A recent study completed by Nexus Insights shows that many older Americans have increasing questions about long term care and the best way to support themselves in the future. If you wind up with an illness or injury, your only option to treat it might be entering a nursing home or other long term care facility. This can be an expensive investment if you haven
Long-term care expenses can be catastrophic for a single person or even for the other spouse of a married couple. Most people anticipate aging in place or relying on family and friends as caregivers. But extensive long-term care needs might require assisted living or a nursing home.
A recent study indicates that 60% of those people who will have moderate or severe long term care needs will not have the financial or family resources to meet those needs. Medicaid will step in to provide assistance for some of them but without Medicaid in place nearly 16% of today’s 65-year-olds will have severe enough care needs that they will be unable to cover them with private resources. This highlights the importance of having a plan to qualify for Medicaid if and when that time comes.
Automatic qualification for Medicaid is very difficult since many people do not anticipate the illness or disabling injury that requires them to seek out long-term care. If you find yourself in the position of needing support from an experienced Medicaid planning lawyer, now is a good opportunity to walk through your options and see how your current strategy lines up with the possible expenses of the average long term care stay.
While there are plenty of nursing homes and great care facilities in Virginia, most people are caught off guard by both the expense of staying at one and the possibility for staying there a long time. In both these situations, it helps to plan ahead by thinking about the assets you can use to support yourself and assets you wish to pass on in your estate and how these impact Medicaid eligibility. Talk to a Virginia Beach lawyer today.
In order for a long term care event to be covered under your long term care insurance policy or Medicaid, your doctor must indicate that you are unable to perform at least two activities of daily living. You may see these referenced in paperwork as ADLs. The other circumstance that could qualify you to get a long term care support is suffering a cognitive impairment. The six ADLs identified by medical professionals are continence, bathing, toileting, transferring, dressing and eating.
Continence refers to being able to control bodily functions and transferring means the ability to sit, stand and move about. However, you do not have to be admitted into a nursing home in order to claim benefits for long term care support. Long term care insurance policies can be used in several different situations, such as assisted living, rehab services or in-home care.
Increasingly, people are seeking out the option to age in place or stay in their own home while getting the support that they need. This may be a viable option for you going forward and should always be discussed directly with your experienced estate planning lawyer.
Most people who need long term care services in Virginia Beach hope to get that funded through Medicaid. If you’re not sure what it takes to qualify for Medicaid in Virginia Beach or need help getting that process kickstarted, now is the right time to speak with an experienced VA estate planning lawyer.
Who will foot the bill if you need a nursing home? That’s a question popping up for more and more families in America these days.
Long term care insurance is extremely expensive and premiums have been on the rise in recent years. This doesn’t bode well for those people who are most likely to need long term care after age 65. The possibility of requiring care later in life is a significant concern for any individual as well as their family.
Standalone long term care insurance is decreasing as a viable option for many people due to the number of insurance carriers who have exited the market as well as the overall cost. Unfortunately, the pandemic has also made this situation much worse by putting assisted living facilities and nursing homes under a microscope about what it’s like to live and work in these facilities.
Many people don’t anticipate needing to go into a nursing home and hope that their individual health remains intact throughout all of their later years but failing to plan properly can put them in a difficult situation or force their loved ones to take on care responsibilities later in life.
A new report from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College found that approximately one-third of Americans do not have enough resources to support one year’s worth of minimal long term care. Marital status also plays a significant role in determining who will get the care that they need. If you don’t have a long term care plan as part of your elder law strategy, you need to consult with an experienced and knowledgeable Virginia Beach estate lawyer as soon as possible to protect your rights.
You and your family might have already had the initial conversations around whether a loved one needs additional support beyond what you can provide. Sometimes you and a network of family members may be unable to provide the kind of support that a person with Alzheimer’s disease requires. This person might wander a lot, be aggressive, be incontinent or require round the clock care, making it more complicated to establish a schedule.
You may want to seek out a long term care facility for this person when these milestones are reached. It’s normal to feel guilty, confused or overwhelmed by the prospect of placing a loved one in a long term care facility but it might be the best thing to do if the Alzheimer’s condition has advanced enough.
A few residential care options exist for those with Alzheimer’s. This includes:
In some facilities there are special wings and locations for those with Alzheimer’s who require more advanced care. It’s important to evaluate the care options and affordability of these different decisions before moving forward with the right call for your family. Schedule a consultation with an elder lawyer in Virginia Beach to learn more about some of the legal components of estate planning that affect these decisions.
Does your estate plan account for long-term care costs? If not, you could end up paying out of your own retirement savings to cover necessary expenses for your care or for a spouse’s.
Studies have found that most people over age 65 will eventually need help with daily tasks of living, such as getting dressed, eating or bathing. One of the most interesting facts pulled from the US Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Aging is that women are likely to need care for a longer period of time than men.
Women will need this type of care on average for 3.7 years, while men will need this form of assistance for an average of 2.2 years. Many people will have little choice but to rely on unpaid care from children or spouses.
However, it’s important to realize that the Genworth 2018 Cost of Care Survey shows that more than one-third of people in need of assistance will spend time in a nursing home. That nursing home care can be extremely expensive and is likely not be covered by Medicare.
This is because private health insurance in Medicare don’t often classify nursing home care custodial expenses which can eliminate a significant portion of your retirement savings. Planning ahead to qualify for Medicaid is extremely important and it’s something that should be done with the guidance of an experienced and dedicated lawyer in Virginia Beach.
A recent Banker’s Life survey that included 1500 middle income Americans between the ages of 54 and 72 reveals that most baby boomers haven’t planned for long term care expenses.
Around 10,000 people across the United States are turning 65 in the United States every single day, and of those, nearly 70% of people who are reaching retirement age will need some type of long term care assistance during their lifetime, according to research collected by the Department of Health and Human Services. The cost of long term care can decimate a person’s lifelong savings.
Baby boomers were more likely to plan for their death than to have a long term care plan in place. In fact, over 81% of respondents had prepared some sort of funeral arrangements, but less than one-third had a plan for how they will receive long term care in retirement. This is especially problematic given that someone’s retirement savings could be practically destroyed by just one long term care event.
A healthy spouse could also be the one who suffers as a result of failure to plan for the possibility of long term care expenses. Right now, DHHS estimates that the average cost of health care for a retiree is $138000, but nearly 80% of respondents in the Banker’s Life study said that they had no money set aside for retirement care needs.
You need to think about how estate planning and long term care planning can work together for your future. Schedule a consultation with an attorney in Virginia today.
Most people recognize that the rising costs of long term care will certainly impact their retirement planning abilities and their lives in older age. However, approaching long term care planning is notoriously difficult, especially when many clients are concerned or scared to discuss it to begin with.
Many consumers simply need to come to terms with the fact that they need to plan. There are many different options available when it comes to long term care planning but waiting until it is too late can expose the patient as well as family members to unnecessary stress and financial problems. Many different approaches can be used to help broach the topic, but a recent study found that clients are not receiving appropriate LTC advice.
Among widows and widowers, one out of every five participating in a recent study indicated that long term care planning advice was included as one of the services provided by a financial advisor. Long term care insurance is not the only option available for people considering looking ahead to their older ages and protecting themselves and their family members.
However, because of the many misconceptions associated with long term care planning and many people’s beliefs that only expensive long-term care insurance can cover it, far too many people put this decision off until it is too late and make it difficult for their spouse or their loved ones to receive the assets and support intended.
Scheduling a consultation with an experienced long-term care planning lawyer is strongly recommended for anyone who is contemplating protecting their own interests and assets for many years to come. A consultation with a lawyer can clarify many of the misconceptions surrounding long term care planning.
Are you assuming that you won’t need the support provided by long term care? That could be a significant mistake and one that could cost you and your loved ones for many years. A new study has shown that plenty of patients are not prepared for the out of pocket costs of long term care. 
Patients underestimate the financial responsibility connected with starting long term care, meaning that they are willfully unprepared for the out of pocket costs linked to a long-term care facility.
A new survey of more than 2000 family caregivers and patients reveal that patients greatly underestimate their long-term care needs and approximately 70% of all patients end up needing some form of long term care but only 46% of those patients predicted that they would need long term care.
Patients also overestimated the point at which they might need to begin long term care support. Most assumed that the common age for these facilities or care types was at age 79, despite the fact that the national average for beginning this sort of treatment is 73. The cost of a nursing home can be significant. A semi-private nursing home room costs an average of $85,775 per year, whereas an assisted living facility cost $45,000.
Approximately 64% of the survey’s respondents had not saved anything for long term care, putting them at serious risk of losing their financial assets and not being able to recover quickly enough to pay for their remaining years or to pass on assets to their loved ones. Before you face these significant challenges, schedule the time to talk to an attorney you can trust. A lawyer in VA Beach will help you put together an estate plan that keeps your best interests in mind.
You may be under the impression that you just can’t afford long term care and you are banking on your ability to remain healthy long into your older years. But, unfortunately, the average cost of long term care in 2015, for a 65-year-old, was $138,000.
Approximately half of seniors will need some type of long term care and one out of every seven seniors will need it for five years or longer. Many people are already struggling to save money for their retirement and may be concerned about long term care expenses.
There are several different things you can do to help to protect yourself and your assets. These include:
All of these tools can be very valuable and can give you a better perspective of the many different ways that you may be eligible to pay for long term care without additional stress and frustration for you and your loved ones.