ELDER LAW/MEDI-CAL PLANNING

Elder Care Law is a legal concentration that is defined by the clients served.  Proper legal care includes providing seniors with a variety of planning strategies, which may include Special Needs/Disability Planning, Guardianships, Medicare Planning (Medi-Cal for California residents) and foundational estate planning.  We will help you put a plan in place to ensure that you have the maximum protection of and control over your assets, should you become incapacitated or require assisted living. 

A competent elder law attorney should be well-versed in various issues related to this important topic. When you work with lead attorney, Vanessa Terzian at the Law Offices of Vanessa M. Terzian, you will have a team of professionals to offer you the information, support and legal representation you need in regard to asset protection, estate planning, wills and trusts, Medicaid planning, retirement planning, nursing home litigation and so much more.

Our Elder Law Services

Our law firm deals with all types of legal and financial issues related to elder law. We developed this website with the intention of offering helpful information on many of the issues we handle. We welcome you to click on any of the topics listed below to learn more:

Advance Directives
Application for Nursing Home Benefits
Asset Protection
Charitable Planning
Community Medicaid vs. Long Term Care
Competency and Capacity Designations
Disability Planning
Elder Abuse Claims
Inheritance and Estate Tax Planning
Insurance and Financial Planning
Long Term Care
Medi-Cal Planning
Nursing Home & Assisted Living
Retirement Planning
Special Needs Trusts
Supplemental Needs Trusts
Veterans Aid & Benefits Planning
Wills and Trusts

In California, the most common of these planning tools is Medi-Cal Planning.

Medi-Cal Planning

There are two types of Medi-Cal Planning: Crisis Planning and Pre-Crisis Planning. It’s a good idea to plan before a crisis hits, but it’s never too late!

Crisis Planning

Crisis Planning deals with an individual who has either been admitted to a nursing home or is about to be placed in a nursing home and they have been told, or suspect, that they have too much money or too many assets to qualify for Medi-Cal.

If this is you or a loved one, your family is facing nursing home costs which will cost several thousand dollars per month, perhaps in the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. Without proper Medi-Cal planning, usually life-savings are the only source of money to cover these astronomical costs. Most people’s estate will be depleted in only a few years. It’s only when you’ve met the financial test for Medi-Cal that the government will step in and cover your nursing home stay.

To add to the difficulties, people receive poor advice about how to qualify for Medi-Cal, often from well-intentioned family and friends. Following that advice can often have unintended negative consequences. For instance, if you gift your assets to your kids, you may delay the Medi-Cal qualification process, rather than speed it up.

Unless you work in this field, you’re probably unaware of the ways you can legally preserve the maximum amount of your hard earned assets and income while still qualifying for Medi-Cal benefits in the shortest amount of time, even after a crisis hits.

These are your savings, your hard-earned assets, saved over a lifetime – you owe it to yourself to help protect them and meet with a qualified professional in the field who can help make it happen.

You don’t have to go broke or lose your home to qualify for Medi-Cal.

Call us to schedule a confidential Medi-Cal planning consultation to discuss your issues. We’ll be able to tell you in the first meeting if we can help and what we’ll be able to help protect and save for you and your family. It’s never too late to call us.

Pre-Crisis Planning

It is preferable to plan before crisis hits, as there are more planning options available. Pre-Crisis Planning is for individuals or married couples who are currently healthy but want to plan for the real possibility that someday one or both will become incapacitated and require long-term care. Pre-Crisis Planning is for those who want to avoid depleting their life savings and hard earned assets. It’s for those who want to ensure qualification for Medi-Cal so that their estate is left to their loved ones rather than eaten up by the astronomical costs of assisted living.

The truth is that everyone, including you and your loved ones, may very well require assisted living or nursing home care one. In fact, recent studies suggest that over half of the population presently over 65 years old will find themselves facing this reality, and the costs that come with it.

Unfortunately, skilled care is expensive. Several thousand dollars a month and potentially over a hundred thousand dollars a year, maybe even more, will eat up your hard-earned savings…money that you probably need, and count on…money for a healthy spouse or money that can be left to family and loved ones.

We can help develop a comprehensive asset protection plan that contains the right structure in case you or a loved one becomes disabled and unable to make decisions. We can help put a plan in place today that contemplates a long-term nursing home stay while qualifying the individual for Medi-Cal as quickly as possible, while protecting as much of the assets as possible…legally.

In addition, the estate planning documents that non-elder care attorneys will draft tend to focus on after-death distributions and sophisticated tax planning, with little or no thought paid to how your affairs should be managed in case of disability. We work to help you create a holistic plan that details how you will be cared for during periods of incapacity.

The most important thing in Pre-Crisis Planning is giving you peace of mind. We know the law, and we will work with you to learn about your family and your personal goals. Together, we will develop a plan that will work when you need it. Our goal is to help you sleep soundly at night… with the comfort of knowing that you have a plan in place which will protect your assets when the unthinkable happens.

To learn more about how we can help you with Medi-Cal planning, call our office and schedule a meeting to discuss your specific situation.

Helping You Plan for a Better Tomorrow

Our law firm handles these and many other areas of practice related to the specific field of elder law. Our legal team are all highly esteemed and respected by peers and clients alike and they are all active in the community. Our lead attorney, Vanessa M. Terzian, also teaches and lectures on tax and estate law and has extensive training and education on the matter. She has also spoken at countless seminars, conventions and interviews which you can listen to at our video center. We encourage you to read testimonials of what our previous clients have had to say about their experience with our firm. Mrs. Terzian would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and address all your concerns so you can have the confidence and peace of mind you deserve. We represent clients in Pasadena, La Canada Flintridge, Burbank, Glendale and throughout Los Angeles County.

Contact us today at: 818-864-6174 or Email us at: vanessa@vterzianlaw.com and schedule an initial consultation with The Law Offices of Vanessa M. Terzian
La Canada Flintridge, CA 91011 – Glendale, CA 91206 – Encino, CA 91406 – Pasadena, CA