Avoiding the Elder Maze

Long Term Care Planning in Texas - Pitfalls and Solutions

At McCulloch & Associates, our attorneys advise seniors and their adult children about effective strategies for identifying and accessing quality long term care and wealth preservation through estate planning, informed advocacy with reference to long term care systems, tax-wise strategies, and perhaps other strategies. Foresight and planning for a range of elder care needs without the pressure of an immediate crisis usually promotes the best results with a long term care plan integrated with conventional estate planning instruments.

Often, however, families may not have the luxury of long-range planning alternatives. An elderly parent may have suffered a recent stroke, broken hip, or heart attack and is suddenly dependent on others. You must be able to access the right resources on affordable terms as quickly as possible. If your family needs immediate advice about your options and alternatives in the event of your mother or father's sudden fall or other health crisis, contact a Houston elder law attorney at McCulloch & Associates for information and strategies for practical long term care advocacy.

In the immediate aftermath of a parent's serious illness or accident, families too often depend on the advice of a single professional with vested interests in a single approach to your situation. A nursing home administrator is likely to advise admission into a nursing home. A physician might well indicate the need for extended hospitalization, surgery or medication, or intensive convalescent care. A tax accountant might advise an intricate irrevocable trust arrangement designed to minimize taxes, but which fails to address the practical considerations of your parent's care needs or ignores the pitfalls of inappropriate Medicaid planning.

While any of these approaches might be adequate for certain aspects of your parent's circumstances, none of them alone is likely to address all of the needs and considerations inherent in appropriate long term care planning and advocacy for a senior. Any single approach might be too expensive, provide for an insufficient degree of independence, understate the intensity of care that is needed for the weeks or months following an accident or serious medical episode or simply fail to properly address tax, Medicaid, asset protection or other legal strategies.

At McCulloch & Associates, our lawyers, who work with staff elder care coordinators, have the experience with the entire range of options without any incentive to favor one strategy over another. We can offer informed advice and advocacy about options addressing issues ranging from tax, Medicaid or financial protection strategies to practical strategies for personal care needs to adaptive home technologies, home nursing, therapeutic services, or hospice care.

Few people consider nursing homes as anything other than a last resort for long term care. In order to consider alternative strategies, the attorneys and staff at McCulloch & Associates can help you find and advocate for the services that are right for your family's needs and the resources necessary to pay or qualify for them. Contact an elder law attorney at our Houston office for help.