Many of us have a family member who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or with another form of dementia. With the diagnosis comes the instruction to work closely with doctors to try various medications and therapies to delay or stall the progression of the disease. This blog will not comment of the medical aspects of treatment. Instead it will discuss what legal steps should be taken when the onset of dementia is discovered.
Frequently your family member will be diagnosed in an early stage of the disease while they still know who they are, who their family members are, what they own and what their philosophy of life is. During this early stage it is very important that steps be taken to get one’s affairs in order while one is still competent. If the family member who is ill becomes incompetent before they have designated an agent to handle their monetary and personal affairs and/or before they have designated an agent to make medical decisions for them, they may end up in a guardianship proceeding because no one has legal authority to act on their behalf.
Guardianship proceedings are costly. They can create a lot of anxiety and hurt for the person in need of the guardian. That person is generally in court and hears everything that his relatives and others say about his lack of abilities and about his behavior. With a properly prepared Power of Attorney and a Health Care Proxy a trusted agent can be chosen who understands the ill family member, how they would want to be treated or cared for and how they would want their assets managed and handled.
This is also the time to review existing estate plans to see if they need to be revised because of changes that have already occurred over the years since they were created or changes that are likely to occur in the future.
Very often someone suffering from dementia will need home care or nursing home care as their disease progresses. Early on there should be a review of their assets in order to determine how they are likely to pay for the long term care that may last for several years and that could cost $170,000 per year. If they have long term care insurance, it needs to be reviewed in order to determine if the daily benefit is sufficient to cover the coming expenses or if it will need to be supplemented with private funds. Determine whether the benefit period of any available long term care insurance is likely to cover the full period of long term care that may be needed or if it will require supplementing. If there is no long term care insurance or if there is insufficient insurance, consult with an elder law attorney to create a strategy to qualify the family member for Medicaid while also protecting the greatest amount of family assets and income. Even if there appears to be sufficient insurance to pay for long term care it makes sense to have an elder care attorney review the ill family members advance directives [Health Care Proxy and Power of Attorney] to make sure that they contain all the tools that an elder care attorney may need later on to provide a last minute crisis plan to the individual if the means of paying for long term care eventually becomes exhausted.
Those who plan early have more options than those who don’t. Early planning with dementia patients reduces some of the anxiety producing issues and problems that the families of these will patients face. Early planning can protect the most assets. It may also permit family members to know that the plan that has been chosen is the plan that their loved one wanted.