Dementia and the Law
What legal issues come up when someone is experiencing dementia?
Dementia is a difficult illness that tends to progress – to get worse over time. If you, your husband or wife, your parent or another loved one is experiencing dementia, whether the early stages or the later stages, there are several legal steps that you may consider taking – updating your estate plan (including a power of attorney), Medicaid planning, and if necessary, guardianship.
Power of attorney
If someone is in the early stages of dementia and still has capacity, it’s important to make an estate plan if they’ve never made one. If they already have an estate plan, it’s important to review and possibly update it to make sure it meets the moment, including the power of attorney (POA).
A POA is crucial in this scenario – it allows you to appoint someone you trust to manage your financial and legal affairs, in case you lose capacity to do these things yourself. This can make things much easier for your loved ones.
Changes to Will
If someone is in the early stages of dementia, and they want to make any changes to their will or other estate documents, now is the time to make them. That’s because you can only make estate documents while you have capacity, and people experiencing dementia may lose capacity in the future. Once you’ve lost capacity, it’s too late to make new estate documents.
We often recommend changes to estate plans when someone is experiencing dementia, such as changes to your will to try to protect assets from long term care costs.
Medicaid planning
If your husband, wife, mother, father or other loved one may need a nursing home or other long term care eventually due to dementia, you’re probably wondering how to pay for it. Long term care in a nursing home or assisted living facility is incredible expensive, often costing over $10,000 per month. Medicaid, the government health insurance program, can pay, but only if you meet strict eligibility requirements.
FriedmanLaw can often help our clients do Medicaid planning to protect assets, which means helping you qualify for Medicaid sooner, while preserving assets for your spouse, children or other family members that would otherwise have to be spent on care.
Guardianship
If someone has already lost capacity due to dementia, and never made a power of attorney or advance directive for healthcare, you may need to apply for guardianship to be able to access their finances, make medical decisions and manage their affairs.
Likewise, if someone is making bad decisions due to dementia and causing harm, guardianship may be needed to protect them.
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