About Life Care Planning

Rather than focusing solely on restructuring assets (an “asset-focused” elder law practice), our elder-centered law practice works to customize a legal plan that serves as a road map to help the client meet the inevitable challenges of caring for an aging family member. The approach may continue for the duration of the client’s life. Our elder-centered law practice team consists of the attorney, the geriatric care manager, a qualified mental health professional, daily money managers, and support staff.

The families of the clients we serve want to take good care of their parents; they just don’t know how to do it. Here’s what they DO know: the health care system into which they and their loved ones have now been thrust is fragmented, confusing, inefficient, and may not consistently serve their needs and preferences. If you think about it, families in this situation have three options:

1. DO NOTHING AND HOPE NOTHING BAD HAPPENS
2. DO NOTHING AND THEN DO SOMETHING WHEN SOMETHING HAPPENS
3. DO SOMETHING BUT WHAT?

Older adults and their families turn to us for help. That’s what we’re here for! It is the purpose of what we do and why we do it.

What is a Life Care Plan?

The Life Care Plan places special emphasis on issues surrounding long life. The Life Care Plan connects your concerns about, as well as your objectives for, long-term care as you go through the stages of your life.

Families use this innovation in the practice of Elder Law called Life Care Planning as a method to manage information and track goals. A Life Care Plan incorporates a care management protocol that is used as a guide to coordination of necessary services and resources.

For your Life Care Plan to be successful, all of us must have an understanding of your diagnoses, medical treatment, estimated costs of treatment and services, factors affecting care outcomes, psychosocial implications, and ongoing health care and long-term care needs. We must be knowledgeable about community resources and eligibility criteria for these resources. Furthermore, we must be able to identify and develop alternatives for care consistent with patient/family needs and goals.

A Life Care Plan represents the integration of these issues into a plan for life to meet individual needs and goals.

Solutions At The Speed of Life: The Importance of Life Care Planning

Ours is a Practice With Purpose — the pursuit of excellence in Elder Law & Life Care Planning. The first of its kind in North Carolina, the Elder Law & Life Care Planning Center is the first and only member of the Life Care Planning Law Firms Association, an organization dedicated to supporting law firms that practice this innovation in Elder Law.

At the Center, we not only address traditional elder law areas such as estate planning, asset preservation, public benefits qualification, veterans benefits and planning for incapacity, but we also assist clients with key aspects of long term care planning. Important to this approach is the ever-critical coordination of care that makes the Life Care Plan work optimally for quality of life.

The Elder Law & Life Care Planning Center has three principal planning goals that we help you develop and implement:

We help make sure that you get good care, whether that care is at home or outside the traditional home setting. Getting good care is the most important of all goals, for it goes to the very heart of your quality of life in your later years. Your Life Care Plan is focused first on your good health, safety, and well-being.
We help you make decisions relating to your long-term care and special needs. We are your resource of experienced, supportive, knowledgeable, and objective advisors and counselors who help you locate, access and pay for good care.
We help you find sources to pay for good long-term care by coordinating access to public and private funding sources. We work with you through the maze of choices and options to find the best, or often, the most comfortable solution to the asset protection problem created by the need to pay for quality long-term care

We work to ensure our client’s right to quality care. We understand family dynamics.

All planning is done from your perspective, reflecting your personal values and preferences. We will help you answer your questions about your long-term care and health care choices:

What health care, chronic care, and long-term care services are available to me?
How can I get the good care I need and desire, whether in my own home, in a residential community or assisted-living facility, in a child’s home, or in a nursing home?
How will financial and health care decisions be made for me if I cannot make them for myself? Who can I rely on to make sure that decisions to be made are the right ones?
If I can’t take care of myself, who will make sure my spouse continues to have a good quality of life?
If there is a health care crisis, what will we have to do? Where do we turn for the help we need?
How do I know I am getting good care?
Who will advocate and intervene for me if necessary to ensure my right to quality health care and long-term care?