Attorney David Banas and Care Coordinator Janelle Leonard talk with Joe Cronauer from Channel 3, on how to navigate tough conversations about your future.
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Attorney David Banas and Care Coordinator Janelle Leonard talk with Joe Cronauer from Channel 3, on how to navigate tough conversations about your future.
Keep reading ...
Everyone has heard of Medicaid. It is one of the largest health insurance providers in Ohio and covers individuals and families who don’t have insurance and can’t afford to buy it. More than 2.9 million people in Ohio get health insurance through Medicaid every year. But did you know that Medicaid is much more than health insurance for the poor? Here are five facts about Medicaid that might surprise you.
Keep reading ...Estate planning begins with an exercise of the mind – an uncomfortable internal question and answer session. What happens to my assets when I die? Who will manage my money if I’m in the hospital or a nursing home? For many, answering these questions is difficult and uncomfortable. Sometimes people don’t have relatives to leave their assets with or to name as a power of attorney. Sometimes they have relatives, but they can’t trust them or don’t get along with them.
Keep reading ...This week, Care Coordinator Janelle Leonard discusses how the role of caregiver has changed since COVID-19. She provides tips on how we can adapt to being long-distance caregivers, even if our loved ones live nearby.
Keep reading ...Attorney Linda Gorczynski wrote an article featured on the Special Needs Alliance blog, Special Education During COVID – What You Need to Know.
We are excited to introduce Getting Up to SPeED, with Attorney Linda Gorczynski and Special Education Advocate Mary Jo O’Neill. Working together they listen to your concerns, assess your child’s educational needs and act as your support and guide when interacting with your school district. You may not know whether you need a lawyer; you may have just one question that needs to be answered, or you may want someone to represent your family every step of the way. Wherever you are in your journey, we are here for you. Working together as partners, we can make great strides towards accomplishing your goals for your child at school and beyond.
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Attorney David Banas and Care Coordinator Janelle Leonard discuss care advocacy and elder law services, and how they can help you and your loved ones.
Keep reading ...On August 1, 2016, Ohio changed its Medicaid regulations regarding the treatment of the home. Federal and State Medicaid laws recognize that the family home is often times the largest asset of an individual, and Medicaid rules account for the reality that the family home is critical to the well-being of a spouse, a child, or other family members. Still, the changes in the law make protection of the house even more difficult and cumbersome. Now more than ever, early planning involving the relatively simple act of transferring the home into an irrevocable trust can ensure that the home will remain in the family for generations, regardless of the need for long-term care.
Medicaid defines the “Home” as any real property in which an individual has an ownership interest and is the individual’s principal place of residence. A “principal place of residence” is the home to which a person would intend to return if they were absent, like in the case of a stay in a rehab facility or a nursing home.
Generally, the family home that is considered the principal place of residence by an individual or a married couple is an excluded resource, regardless of value. However, the new rules state that the home is no longer considered to be the principal place of residence and will be countable if the individual does not intend to return home. However, the rule states that a “temporary” absence from the home does not affect the exclusion of the home as
Keep reading ...The Ohio Department of Medicaid has announced that, for six months, it will freeze disenrollments from three Ohio Medicaid Waiver programs regarding people it alleges no longer meet the “level of care” required to participate in the program. Why is this important?
In Ohio, Medicaid Waiver programs allow people with serious care needs to receive care outside of an institution. For instance, a person can stay in their home instead of a group home or nursing facility. This allows people to have her needs met in the community, usually at a cost savings to the state.
The three waiver programs with the freeze in disenrollments are: 1) the Ohio Home Care Waiver, 2) the Passport Waiver, and 3) the Assisted Living Waiver. The Ohio Home Care Waivers serves individuals with physical disabilities and unstable medical conditions who are under the age of 60.1 The Passport serves people 60 and older in a community setting such as their home or a loved one’s home.2 The Assisted Living Waiver provides funding to pay for an individual age 21 or over to live in an assisted living facility.3
Many families over the past year have received shocking news that a loved one who receives care in their home or in another setting, like an apartment, is being disenrolled from the Medicaid Waiver program. Each year, to remain in the Waiver program, an individual has a new assessment. This year, across the state, families have received notices saying that their loved
Keep reading ...Many of my clients are caregivers. They are often caregiving for their children with disabilities or for their elderly parents. Others are more distant relatives who have taken it upon themselves to care for their loved one. Although their situations vary greatly, I see many recurring themes. I see strength, compassion, and selflessness on a grand scale. I see struggle, grief, and a unique optimism that finds joy in the little moments. I would like to touch on some of those struggles and offer some solutions and hope.
Society fails to recognize the great sacrifices made by caregivers across the country. Approximately 34.2 million people in the United States are caregivers for an adult age 50 or older, according to a 2015 AARP report. About half are caring for a parent. Some caregivers retired early, reduced their hours to part-time, or quit their jobs entirely to care for their loved one. Unpaid family caregivers contribute $470 billion worth of care to the US economy. What I personally find the most frustrating is that this sacrifice is assumed by society and often goes unthanked and unrecognized. Caregivers often feel a sense of duty to sacrifice their careers, their time, and often, their own health. This results in martyrdom of our most kind and deserving citizens. Not only should we as a society better appreciate and care for our caregivers, but we must support caregivers in caring for themselves.
There are a few different ways to get support as a caregiver.
Keep reading ...For years, I have been helping people complete durable powers of attorney for healthcare, living wills, and do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. Collectively, these documents are called “advance directives.” They give directions about the care desired in advance of the need for that care. Advance directives allow you to select whether or not you want your healthcare providers to stop giving you “life-sustaining treatment” when you are in a “permanently unconscious state” or a “terminal condition.” Additionally, a living will and a DNR order allows you to tell healthcare providers and emergency medical service providers that you do not want to have CPR given to you in those cases when your heart has stopped beating (cardiac arrest).
Inevitably these questions come up during my discussions with people about their advanced directives: “What if my health care providers are making a mistake?” “How can someone stop a mistake from being made?” The answer is that there are checks and balances built into the laws that control how your advance directives operate. Let me explain.
First, I think it’s important to make sure you understand the meaning of some of the terms in your advance directives. A “permanently unconscious state” means, that to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, determined using reasonable medical standards, your doctor and one other doctor who has examined you, determine that you are irreversibly unaware of your environment and you have a total loss of cerebral functioning. In a permanently unconscious state you have no capacity for pain or
Keep reading ...The Supreme Court adopted extensive amendments to the Guardianship Rules, which were effective June 1, 2015. Among these amendments is the requirement for all guardians to file an “Annual Plan” with the Probate Court. This new requirement has raised a number of questions:
A guardian of a person shall file annually with the Probate Division of the Court of Common Pleas a Guardianship Plan as an addendum to the Guardian’s Report. A guardian of an estate may be required to file an annual guardianship plan with the Probate Division of the Court of Common Pleas. The Guardianship Plan shall state the guardian’s goals for meeting the ward’s personal and financial needs.
Several points are worth noting:
The Guardian’s Plan is only required by
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