1 mile west of the Chicago Premium Outlet Mall (800) 810 3100
By elder law attorney Rick Law, founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law, senior advocates and elder care lawyers in the Western Chicago suburb of Aurora, IL. Memory loss can manifest itself in many ways.  All too often, it is ignored by both the individual and their family members.  After all no one wants to face the threat of a debilitating illness, so the easy alternative is to ignore, or shift the blame. However, ignoring the problem can cause even more problems for the affected individual. A quick and accurate diagnosis may be instrumental in developing a plan to cope with a disease such as Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. When memory loss is first detected, one of the authors refers to this as “smoke in the kitchen.” In many cases, there literally is smoke in the kitchen because one of the most common dangers of memory loss is that the senior forgets and leaves a burner on or does not turn off the oven, and eventually starts a fire in the kitchen. Often seniors will either ignore their memory loss or will attempt to hide the behavior. In many cases, they are aware of their worsening condition but are afraid of being put in a nursing home. Once the memory loss has been detected by family or friends, the next stage is coming to the decision that the senior is “unsafe alone” and needs aid. It is not unusual for the senior to resist and fight to avoid assisted-living situations. While men seem to be more likely to fight back since control can be a bigger issue for a man facing Alzheimer’s, it is not out of the norm for women to plant their feet and say, “I am not leaving my home.” On the Alzheimer’s journey, the goal for many seniors and their families is to keep the seniors in their home (or in the home of an adult child) for as long as possible. This will typically necessitate the need for in-home care. If your loved one has memory problems and you’re afraid of the consequences that may bring, give our office a call today at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now. Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney for the past 8 years in a row by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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By estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. A Love and Protection Trust can be used to help safely provide for:
  • A loved one with a drug or gambling addiction
  • A child with a controlling spouse or partner
  • A child who has failed to launch
  • Those who will simply never be able to handle money, for any reason
  • An unemployable person
  • Someone who is at risk of being taken advantage of by creditors or predators
  • A loved one who makes poor life choices
  • Any loved one who is vulnerable
A Love and Protection Trust is designed to be a legal tool that can provide protection, motivation, and encouragement for an adult child who is unable to make careful and supportive decisions with his or her money. The LPT works to make certain that your investment in your adult child is used to further your caring purposes, positive values, and enduring concerns for his or her well-being. The way this works is that a trustee will use your written trust instructions to help safeguard your property in order to benefit your child. Trained investment professionals will defend the money and work to maximize a reasonable and profitable return on the assets that you have left. By law and by the trust document itself, the trustee must make wise and intelligent decisions to protect your child and your trust. Unfortunately, it happens all too often that adult children squander their entire inheritance – unless you take control by making a gift of love and protection by using a lifetime trust. The LPT prevents an adult child from foolishly spending, wasting, and losing your hard-earned estate. Your investment in your child is protected from creditors, failed marriages, and other predators. Some adult children are extremely vulnerable to creditor lawsuits and many other types of legal claims. An LPT can be designed to discourage substance abuse and to provide for the special needs of your adult child. You can and should build protective walls around the legacy that you have chosen to leave your loved one. You can truly build a fortress with this trust. At its most basic, a love and protection trust will be there for your child long after you are no longer able to be directly involved. Your legacy of love, protection, and sound investments will give your adult child the best chance to have money still available if and when he or she eventually chooses to seek help to make a positive life transformation. Call our office to discover more about how you can help rescue your vulnerable child for their whole lifetime. Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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By estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. In the last few blog posts, you’ve learned about some options for your child with a disability. But what if your child or grandchild doesn’t have a clearly defined disability, but a pattern of poor choices or simply a vulnerability to predators? A number of times I have had clients tell me that they love their vulnerable adult children, but they have a child who has chosen a destructive lifestyle. Sometimes it’s a mental health issue, a drug problem, a controlling partner, or simply a matter of making very bad choices. These parents do not want to abandon any of their children — but they also don’t want the money they provide to fuel the fire that is consuming their child. They come to me and ask me what to do. Since this child is not someone with a legally defined disability — but the parents know the child will squander all of their inheritance… unless they find a way to provide “lifetime love and protection” using their estate’s assets. The answer is what I call the Lifetime Love and Protection Trust (LPT). Follow along in our next installment to discover more about the love and protection trust.  An LPT can be used to help safely provide for:
  • A loved one with a drug or gambling addiction
  • A child with a controlling spouse or partner
  • A child who has failed to launch
  • Those who will simply never be able to handle money, for any reason
  • An unemployable person
  • Someone who is at risk of being taken advantage of by creditors or predators
  • A loved one who makes poor life choices
  • Any loved one who is vulnerable
Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine for the past 8 years in a row. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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By estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. Any of a number of institutions could make sure your special needs child has a bed, basic care, and three square meals a day. But that’s not what life is all about, is it? A special needs trust is more than just making sure your child has the barest of bare necessities taken care of.  It’s about providing kindness, love, and even fun events for your child with special needs – even after you’re no longer there to provide it. You see, a Special Needs Trust (SNT) is a way for parents to leave money for the needs of their child beyond what public benefits would pay. A SNT can provide supplemental funds for recreation, social activities, pets, special therapies, entertainment, and even vacation opportunities for the disabled child. A SNT can also purchase professional care management, which can enhance not only the dignity, but also the quality of life of a disabled child. In addition, it’s designed to work in partnership with any public benefits that a child may be receiving, such as Supplemental Security Income or Medicaid so that it doesn’t jeopardize those helpful tools. The purpose of a SNT is that it allows a senior citizen parent who cannot give the money directly to his or her disabled child to create a trust that can be used to provide for tender-loving-care “extras” of life. This trust can allow you to continue to provide love and protection for your child while simultaneously preserving his or her eligibility for public health and Medicaid benefits. It’s important to work with a qualified special needs attorney to put together a Special Needs Trust – it can help make the process much less complicated.  It’s no small feat to put together the appropriate plan to provide ongoing protection and care while avoiding putting public benefits at risk.    The results are well worth the effort to provide for someone you love, who desperately needs your lifelong care and protection. Call my office at the number below to schedule a consultation to talk about your special needs child or grandchild. Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!  
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by estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. In our last installment, we talked about what to do when someone recommends disinheriting your beloved child with a disability.  At Law Elder Law, we do not recommend this practice – because we believe in doing things a better way! Disinheriting the child means that you make sure that you do not leave any money to the child directly. This is part of an overly-simplistic idea that one should just leave extra money to one of the other children to provide care for the disabled child. I’ve seen too many times that this rarely works, even in the best of situations and in the best of families. Another consideration is Medicaid. If and when a senior citizen parent needs to apply for Medicaid, disinheriting becomes a disastrous idea! It is wrong for both the senior who needs to apply for Medicaid, and it would be wrong for accomplishing the goals of providing a lifetime of love and protection for the vulnerable adult child.   Instead, an elder law attorney like me can use special tools to help you care for your child the way you would care for them… which means more than just making sure they are fed and clothed. A wonderful option is the creation of a Special Needs Trust (SNT). This is an irrevocable trust, specially designed for the benefit of the child with a disability. Amazingly, there is no penalty for a transfer of assets from a Medicaid applicant to a special needs trust for their legally disabled child or grandchild. In my next blog post, we’ll talk more about the specific benefits of a SNT, and why it may be a good fit for you and your family.  It’s more than meets the eye, and can provide more than just basic food and shelter. Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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By estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. People come to me at all points of the elder care journey.  Maybe you’ve signed up for one of my free reports on retirement planning, taken a look around the site, or even read through many of my blogs. My point is, this is about YOU. If YOU NEED HELP NOW, you can skip all the reading. With your free phone consultation, you’ll be able to find out (without even taking the time to sit down in my office), whether we might have some options for you to better protect yourself. If we’re not the right place for you, we’ll tell you right off the bat!  We’ll also help you get connected with another organization who may be. You may have received several reports to help you understand that the steps you need to take to plan for your future could mean the difference between a comfortable environment and leaving your spouse without a means of supporting herself (I’ve seen it too many times).  You can continue to read my special email reports or my blog here… they’re chock full of great information. Now I’ve found, over time, that a lot of my clients get impatient… they want to get right to the heart of the matter.  They want to know if they’re future is protected or not… right now.  Others simply want to know the steps to take when they do decide to take action… If that’s you, if YOU NEED ANSWERS NOW, CLICK HERE for a special offer.   Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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By estate planning attorney Rick Law.  Rick is founder of the Estate Planning Center at Law Elder Law in West Suburban Aurora, IL.  LEL is a multi-generation law firm. If you have a special needs son or daughter in your life, you’ve inevitably considered what would become of him or her if you were no longer able to provide care.  As with all estate planning, the earlier you prepare, the better!  One couple I worked with decided it was time to get around to planning for their disabled son who lived with them, since they had birthdays coming up – she was turning 89 and he was turning 92! Sometimes when families bring in a professional caregiver for the aging parents, those same caregivers begin providing necessary services to the child with a disability. This raises new challenges for those parents and their children. Since these disabilities will last the lifetime of the affected individual, how can a parent be assured that a disabled child is going to be taken care of, after the parent is either gone or in a nursing home? Some attorneys recommend that you leave all your assets to another, non-disabled child and make that child the caregiver for the disabled sibling. This passing of the torch is often unfair – and in many ways ill-advised.  We do not believe disinheriting is the right choice. Of course, disinheriting the child means that you make sure that you do not leave any money to the child directly. This is part of an overly-simplistic idea that one should just leave extra money to one of the other children to provide care for the disabled child. I’ve seen too many times that this rarely works, even in the best of situations and in the best of families. Read on in the next installment of our blog to discover more hidden traps to avoid as you plan for your special child or grandchild. Too many families needlessly lose everything they have.  Don’t let that be you.  If you need help paying the overwhelming cost of long term care, give our office a call at 800-310-3100.  Your first consultation is absolutely free.  We’ll let you know what steps you need to take, right now, to protect yourself and your family.  Call now, because when you’re out of money, you’re out of options! Sincerely, Rick L. Law, Attorney, Estate Planner for Retirees. Rick was named the #1 Illinois elder law estate planning attorney by Leading Lawyer Magazine. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, AARP Magazine, TheStreet.com, and numerous newspapers and articles. Rick is the lead attorney for Law Elder Law, LLP, focusing in Estate Planning, Guardianship, and Nursing Home Solutions. His goal is to give retirees an informed edge when it comes to dealing with an uncertain future.  Get flexible retirement strategies that work during good times and bad, plus information on how you can save your home and assets from being used to pay for long term care.  Call 800-310-3100 for your free consultation now!
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