Professionals discuss importance of planning for elder care at chamber luncheon
Elder care professionals encouraged everyone to start taking steps to plan for aging parents and for yourself as you age as early as possible at Thursday’s Mountain Brook Chamber of Commerce meeting.
Carol Hines, a trust advisor at First Commercial Bank; Cynthia Lamar-Hart, an attorney at Maynard Cooper & Gayle; and Jennifer Mancuso, president of Always Best Care spoke on a panel moderated by Paul DeMarco.
Below are highlights from what they shared with chamber members in attendance.
What is the most important take-away we should know about elder care?
Mancuso: Start the conversation early and often. Talk to your parents when they can tell you what they want to do, before you have a crisis situation. Keep it short and sweet, and bring up wills and what they think of assisted living communities. It’s not a threatening conversation if you do it from a place of love.
Lamar-Hart: The greatest gift you can give your family is to have your plans in place and to sit down and talk through at each generation level in a family meeting before you are in a crisis situation. I can’t tell you how many clients make an estate plan and never sign it.
What measures should you take as you age?
Lamar-Hart: I can’t think of any good reasons to have joint assets with your children. Power of attorney allows you an agent named to handle your business affairs (not your health affairs). These people need to be ones you trust; they can act for you even while you are still alive. The proxy for advance directive for health care can be a separate person. Be thoughtful about what roles your friends and family play. Your will is only effective when you die; in it you determine your wishes for your assets after your death.
Hines: Joint assets supersede what a will says. If you have a power of attorney, that’s better than having joint accounts [with your children].
Where should I keep these documents once they are in place?
Lamar-Hart: Keep your will in a safety deposit box. Everything else you want in a desk drawer at home or wherever you keep your documents at home. Write your children and family members and give them a copy of your documents and tell them where your copies are at home.
Hines: Make sure someone besides yourself fhas access to your safety deposit box.
Should I ever change my power of attorney or health care proxy once it’s in place?
Lamar-Hart: Every three to five years you should talk about who is in the roles of your power of attorney and your health care proxy. When your children are minors, it might be a sibling. But 10 years later, you might make it your children.
What can you tell us about options for care for aging adults?
Mancuso: Ninety percent of people want to stay in their homes, but 50 percent of people over age 65 will go into an assisted living or nursing home. Our company offers levels of care in the home and offers a free assisted living placement service. Medicare does not play for any nonmedical care in the home or assisted living care. It will pay for hospice care or assisted living or nursing care if it meets certain medical requirements. For the most part people pay out of pocket. Only 8 percent of the U.S. population has long term care insurance, which pays for in home care or assisted living. I recommend you stay healthy and save a lot of money. The average annual cost for assisted living in Alabama is $37,000. For a nursing home in Alabama, it’s $76,000 a year; nationally that average is $91,0000.