News
Update on Rothkoff Law Status
After almost a year and a half in a virtual setting, our team is in the process of returning to the office. We also are doing more in-person appointments. We will continue to offer virtual appointments for those who wish to meet via Zoom. Additionally, although we will be continuing with other virtual professional and consumer education series, we will be beginning to offer in-person continuing education presentations beginning this summer. We have updated our professional and consumer seminars and webinars for 2021. You may review all our updated 2021 professional and consumer events by clicking here. We hope you [...]
Virtual Elder Care Symposium Registration Now Open
Registration is now open for this year’s Elder Care Symposium on October 21st. The Virtual Symposium will be held on a customized virtual event platform featuring virtual presentations and an interactive exhibit hall with virtual booths. Each booth includes videos, downloadable documents, and event product information. You don’t want to miss this exciting experience! Our keynote speaker is Dr. Jason Karlawish, physician, writer, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and the co-director of the Penn Memory Center. Breakout sessions will include institutional racism in senior healthcare, virtual reality with seniors, pain management in the elderly, and more. You can [...]
The Value of Home Modifications for Older Adults
The focus of our elder care law firm is to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to address the issues associated with the aging process. Traditional legal services such as drafting estate planning documents, trust planning, and guardianships are important legal tools that everyone should plan for. However, these purely legal tools do not prevent seniors from falling in their home and subsequently requiring a hospital stay and possible nursing home placement. As such, we provide both legal and non-legal care advocacy services to keep seniors at home, where most older adults want to be. COVID-19 and its aftermath have made senior [...]
Medicaid Crisis Planning: Paying for Long-Term Care
COVID-19 has been devastating to long-term care residents. Although the situation has improved greatly after the availability of vaccines, family members are still hesitant to make the decision to place their loved ones in a nursing home setting. Nonetheless, there was and continues to be an important need for assisted living and/or nursing home care. Should placement in a long-term care community be necessary, it is important to adequately prepare for the significant financial costs of care. Medicaid crisis planning is a crucial step in preparing for the future and taming the unexpected. Medicaid crisis planning can help turn an [...]
FDA Approves New Alzheimer’s Drug
On June 7, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Aduhelm (aducanumab), a new Alzheimer’s drug for the treatment of the disease. Aduhelm was approved using the “accelerated approval pathway,” which can be used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a therapeutic advantage over existing treatment. According to the FDA, “accelerated approval can be based on the drug’s effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients, with a required post-approval trial to verify that the drug provides the expected clinical benefit.” Was the approval of [...]
The Importance of Nursing Home Communication
The importance of nursing home communication and relaying information clearly is a key consideration for anyone entering a home and for family members involved in the process. Good nursing home communication helps ensure you or your loved one, as well as nursing home staff, are all on the same page together. Deciding whether it is best for mom or dad to move to a nursing home is a very difficult decision. Their well-being and safety are your primary goals, especially in these times of Covid. After considering other options, sometimes a nursing home is the only solution. Once the decision [...]
Aging with PRIDE: LGBT Aging and Advocacy
LGBT aging and advocacy can be an ongoing issue for seniors as they make new transitions in their lives. From medical care to social roadblocks in assisted living facilities, LGBT aging is an important topic for all, whether or not you find yourself a part of this community. As we all know, aging is not something we can avoid. There are ways we can slow the progression by which we age, such as by exercising and maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but eventually, we all get there. Working with seniors, I have seen 90-year-olds that look 60 and 60-year-olds that look [...]
Medicaid and Veterans’ Benefits: Important Documents to Save
Throughout my years of document gathering for Medicaid and Veterans' benefits applications, most of my clients exclaim at some point, “why didn’t anyone ever tell me I needed to keep this stuff?” With the never-ending pile of junk mail gathering, it can be tough to separate the “keep” and “trash” piles when considering what you may someday need down the road for Medicaid and Veterans' benefits. Below, I have listed the most common items that people wish they had held onto: Social Security card Medicare card Passport (current or expired) Photo ID (current or expired) Birth certificate Marriage certificate Spouse’s [...]
Medicaid Crisis Planning: Paying for Long-Term Care
Medicaid crisis planning is a crucial step in preparing for the future and taming the unexpected. And as with the case of Marie, a client I was happy to assist, Medicaid crisis planning helped turn an unexpected situation into the best possible outcome for her and her husband. $300,500.00 was most of Marie’s life savings. When she remarried while in her late 60s, it did not matter that her new husband had scant funds. Marie was happily working, and her new husband, Charlie, could help with the bills using his significant pension. No more than 10 years after their marriage, [...]
Veterans: Honoring Those Who Made the Ultimate Sacrifice
At Rothkoff Law Group, we honor our veterans in our hearts every day and acknowledge the true significance of holidays like Memorial Day. Like many Philadelphia natives, my dad’s parents retired to the Jersey shore. Although my grandfather passed away when I was just an infant, I had the opportunity to spend every summer with my grandmother in Sea Isle City. Memorial Day weekend always marked the unofficial start of the summer season. It is important to remember why we celebrate Memorial Day. Unlike Veteran’s Day that remembers all who have served our country, Memorial Day is to remember those [...]
Thank you, Marie: An Anecdote from an Elder Care Lawyer
As an elder care lawyer, I have had the privilege of meeting and assisting countless families and seniors over the years. And over those years, some stand out in the mind…like Marie. In February 2017, Marie left her home and transitioned to a personal care home. Her husband was in poor health and in a nursing home. She had no children and needed an elder care lawyer to help her navigate these changes. Given her situation, Marie’s close friend scheduled a meeting with myself, Kathleen Magee, our Director of Care Coordination, and Marie to discuss how our team of elder [...]
The Value of Home Modifications For Older Adults
The focus of our elder care law firm is to offer a multi-disciplinary approach to address the issues associated with the aging process. Traditional legal services such as drafting estate planning documents, trust planning, and guardianships are important legal tools that everyone should plan for. However, these purely legal tools do not prevent seniors from falling in their home and subsequently requiring a hospital stay and possible nursing home placement. As such, we provide both legal and non-legal care advocacy services to keep seniors at home where most older adults want to be. COVID -19 and its aftermath have made [...]
“Shared Living” – Older Parents Living with their Adult Children
“Shared Living” is a term that can refer to parents moving in with their adult children. This type of shared living has become more common in recent years for many reasons. Parents may move into their adult children’s homes because of financial or medical reasons, as well as to simply strengthen family bonds. The Covid-19 pandemic has also spurred an increase in shared living as families have been concerned about the high incidence of infections of Covid-19 in nursing homes and other senior living alternatives. Recently, a friend and his siblings worked together to assist their mother in her move [...]
Where is My Third Stimulus Check?: Possible Problems
As your friends and family receive their third stimulus checks, you may have grown increasingly worried about the status of your own economic impact payment. Due to some changes in check distribution this time around, your third economic impact payment may still be coming. Additionally, the IRS is no longer providing assistance via phone, as they did for the first stimulus payments, instead encouraging those eligible to check the status of their payment through the IRS's payment tracker tool, which you can access by clicking here. If your payment has been delayed, the most common reasons are outlined below. Where [...]
Update on Rothkoff Law Status
As we move into the second year of dealing with the effects of COVID-19, at the present time, most of our office team continues to be hard at work with the assistance of technology. We continue to be very productive working remotely, and are at the office when needed to meet with clients or perform tasks they cannot accomplish remotely. However, as more of our clients and staff are fully vaccinated over the coming weeks, we expect to start engaging in more in-person client appointments and have more staff return to the office. However, we will continue to give our [...]
