Elder Law

This column is for everyone who has been named or is serving as an agent under a Texas financial power of attorney. The following suggestions may not keep you from being sued or going to jail, but they should lessen the chance. Let’s follow that up with the answer to your first question, which should be “Can I really be sued or go to jail?”   Answer: Yes. You are a fiduciary...

A huge swath of Baby Boomers is approaching their seventies and the investment companies are worried. Not because their primary market – Boomers hold more than half of the estimated $50 trillion in total US household financial assets – is retiring, but because of the rise in dementia.  How big is the problem? Boomers are now between the ages of 57 and 75.  Beginning at 70, 12% of people will...

It isn’t often that the folks on the United States Supreme Court talk about the elderly falling at home, but that is exactly what happened in a recent opinion.  What is a Wellness Check?  A wellness, or welfare, check is when police go by a person’s home to check that person’s well-being. To define the issue, we turn to the example given by Justice Kavanaugh: “Suppose that an elderly man is...

Most of us are familiar with claiming our children as dependents for federal income tax purposes. However under some circumstances you can claim your parents or other qualifying relatives as dependents. Why should I claim my parent as a Dependent? The recent changes to the tax laws took away the personal exemption for each dependent that we were used to. For tax years 2019 through 2025 there are no personal exemptions....

Recipe for a contested guardianship: Take one senior, add a dash of dementia, mix in a dollop of assets, simmer with decades of resentment and hurt feelings, and garnish with one or more disgruntled family members. Guaranteed to cook up into a gut-wrenching and expensive guardianship case. A guardianship is a court proceeding that is initiated to have a person (the “ward”) declared legally incapacitated, take away one or more of...

Your retirement age, in case you are interested, is between 65 and 67, depending on the year you were born. So says a host of government agencies.   That does not mean that the government will force you to put down your pen and pick up a fishing rod when you hit that age. It just means that it is the key age when your friendly government will force you to...

Let rich Aunt Meg die without a will and then just wait for the swarm of heirs to descend on her estate.  You won’t be able to move through her mansion living room without stepping on one. There is an orderly process of inheritance under the law.  It is called the law of descent and sets out the order that Aunt Meg’s kindred will inherit. A kin who steps into line...

Several years ago I had a probate consultation with three very nice people whose great-aunt had recently died.  They apologized for their somewhat disheveled appearance and explained that they had spent the day dismantling furniture, prying up floorboards and digging up the backyard of their great-aunt’s residence.  It seems that their great-aunt did not believe in banks, and so she kept her savings in cash and hid it in...

MERP is the Texas Medicaid Estate Recovery Program. Its sole purpose is to seize money from the estates of deceased Medicaid recipients and then plop the recovered funds back into the state’s coffers. The government, acting through a contractor called Health Management Systems, Inc. (HMS), does this by filing a claim in probate.       Why is this a prudent financial maneuver by the government? Because although Medicaid is a needs-based program,...

In recent years, the traditional nuclear American family that prevailed in the years following World War II – father, mother and children all living together – has undergone a number of societal strains and changes, including the frequency of divorce and an increasing number of single-parent households. Consequently, census figures reveal that today, 1 in 10 American children live with a grandparent, and that statistic includes approximately a quarter...

Super-Powers at Your Service Let’s see – are you a resident of Texas?  Check. An adult? Check. Age 60 or older? Check. Congratulations!  You are guaranteed Super-Powers.  These extra-special powers, which go by the catchy name of Rights of the Elderly, have to be accorded to you by convalescent and nursing homes, home health services, and alternate care services provided to you in your home, neighborhood and community. In fact, each one...

When a family member or other loved one dies, the natural response is to feel overwhelmed. However there are some very practical and legal matters that need to be attended to “immediately if not sooner”. What Happens To a House When The Owner Dies? Sad as it may seem, when a person dies his property becomes at risk. Sometimes friends and family use this as an opportunity to help themselves to...