Blog

A critical part of the estate planning process involves the client's selection of an appropriate person to look out for the client when it's time for end-of-life decision-making, so that this person can be named in the Health Care Proxy and given access to medical records via a HIPAA Release.. Th...

Today's guest blogger is employment lawyer Michael Mason. Attorney Mason practices at Bennett and Belfort in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and has litigated and mediated numerous employment law cases representing both employers and employees. Here are his thoughts about a problem which comes up regul...

Yes, it's August. But soon enough your thoughts may turn to packing up the car and heading south to enjoy a warmer winter. If you are heading to Florida, don't just assume that you can escape Massachusetts taxes just because you put a Florida plate on your car. One estate and financial planning i...

Right now, the answer is “no.” If you qualify for MassHealth and need a personal care attendant (PCA), you can use MassHealth money to pay anyone to care for you except your spouse. Under current law, you can pay your fiance to provide care and MassHealth won't mind, but your significant other wo...

One of the questions I get (unfortunately) goes something like this: “my sister has persuaded Mom to put her on the bank account and now I can't get any information about what's happening with Mom's money. Sis is telling Mom not to talk to me about anything. What can I do?” The answer hinges on w...

I get called on a not-infrequent basis about what I like to call the “five minutes after midnight” planning crisis. The caller is usually a child of an elder who has already been admitted to a nursing home, whose first words are something like “Dad's been placed in a nursing home — how do I prote...

Congratulations! It's graduation season! Before you get too misty-eyed wondering when your baby turned into the lovely young woman or man standing on stage getting a diploma, you may want to consider a different kind of graduation present for the new graduate. An estate plan. The hard, cold real...

Unfortunately, failing to tell loved ones and physicians what type of care you would want if you suffer from an illness which will eventually lead to your death is all too common an experience. It is important that Massachusetts residents have a Health Care Proxy (HCP), which designates an agent ...

The headline seems obvious, right? But unfortunately, failing to tell your loved ones what type of care you would want if you suffer from an illness which will eventually lead to your death is all too common. The Boston Globe had an essay a few weeks ago, which was written by a young physician wh...

As an elder law attorney, I regularly suggest to my clients that they investigate purchasing long-term care insurance as a hedge against the cost of costs associated with aging, especially if they have any interest in planning for the cost of long-term care and asset protection. I still think it'...

Here's a very disturbing article concerning the death of an elder who resided in an independent living facility in California. Despite the rather obvious risk that elderly people living in their facility may have medical emergencies that require CPR or other life-saving interventions,the facility...

My last post discussed one form of betting on your death – “stranger oriented life insurance” (“STOLI”) –a practice which is illegal in Massachusetts. However, another variation of betting on your death – life settlements – is trending towards legitimacy. Unlike STOLI, which involves third party ...

Imagine that you are an elderly retiree who has recently been hit with a sizable amount of debt.  One day you receive a phone call from an insurance agent who proposes the following deal: 1.         You take out a good-size life insurance policy. 2.         For the first two years, the insurance ...

There was an excellent article in the May 2012 edition of Kiplinger's Retirement Report (subscription required) on a little –known scam which is run by some less-than-scrupulous insurance agents on frail elderly veterans and their surviving spouses. The deal they present is this:  buy an annuity ...

Imagine this scenario: You're struggling to pay your mortgage. You're trying to help your kids get through college. And now your mother's nursing home is suing YOU for payment. This can't happen, right? Wrong. Thirty states, including Massachusetts, have seldom-enforced “filial responsibility” la...

In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court made it clear that in deciding whether a child born well after a parent's death as a result of artificial insemination or surrogacy, the law governing what happens to you assets after you pass away without a will shall determine if the child has th...

When Rosa Parks died in 2005, she left no children, but she did have a will, a revocable trust, and a priceless collection of memorabilia. First, a lawsuit was brought in 2007 challenging the will on the grounds of lack of capacity when Mrs. Parks signed it and her revocable trust in 2000. Now th...

It's Mother's Day – what did you give her? How about peace of mind? If your mother does not have an estate plan, start talking to her — perhaps in one conversation, perhaps over time — about the peace of mind for both her and you which comes from knowing that her affairs are in order. Ask her abo...

I have a new article in the Spring 2012 edition of the Massachusetts Guardianship Association's newsletter on the topic of the reproductive rights of persons under guardianship. I covered this topic earlier this year in a series of posts to this blog,

From the Boston Globe: State health regulators Wednesday morning unanimously approved rules that define when a person is too cognitively or functionally impaired to drive safely. The state Public Health Council, an appointed panel of physicians, consumer advocates, and professors, adopte...

I regularly counsel my clients to be careful about who they name as fiduciaries — personal representatives, trustees, attorneys-in-fact and health care agents. Many reflexively name a spouse. Some of my clients want to name their oldest child, thinking that this is “naturally” the role for that p...

This morning's Boston.com (registration required) has an important, and deeply troubling, article concerning the rampant overuse of anti-psychotic medication by Massachusetts nursing homes to manage the behaviors of residents with dementia.These drugs have not been approved by the Food and Drug A...

Greetings and welcome to the new Massachusetts Elder Law Blog! Now that I've moved over from Blogger, I'm pleased to (virtually) see you here. I invite you to send questions which can be answered in this format to [email protected] (please don't include any personal information).  Make sur...

From today's edition of the American Bar Association's e-journal: Karen Williams was chief judge of a federal appeals court and a potential Supreme Court nominee when her family noticed some changes in her personality. Williams, who headed the Richmond, Va.-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal...

In a prior entry, I discussed how Massachusetts probate courts are supposed to make decisions on behalf of incapacitated persons when a guardian asks the court for authorization to obtain an abortion or sterilization surgery, using the “substituted judgement” standard. This standard asks the judg...