THE BASIC TEN. Write the answers below.
ALL THE INFO HERE. The full guide, with tips.
Ten questions to ask
because nobody signposts when you need a lawyer
The stretch when the paperwork problem leaves the kitchen table
Much of what people call "Elder Care" (and we call "Advocating with Love," or giving it your AWL) is logistics, phone calls, and forms you can absolutely handle. But what about the other documents that hospitals, banks, and Medicaid offices request? They need an actual human attorney, one who does this work every day, and, SERIOUSLY: choosing that attorney is a project of its own.
Most families choose their lawyer mid-crisis: Somebody is in a hospital bed, somebody typed "elder law attorney near me" into a phone in the cafeteria, and everybody was grateful that somebody, anybody, picked up.
A consultation is an interview, and it runs both ways. The attorney is evaluating your situation while you are figuring out whether this person is affordable, reliable, and reachable. The ten questions below can help to settle whether or not they are a good fit. Download them on your device and/or print them out (because, yeah, the phone will probably be down to four percent, right when you need it most!)
Here goes
Estate planning and elder law overlap, but they are not the same field. Wills-and-trusts attorneys who have never touched a Medicaid application can be excellent at what they do; you just do not want your family's Medicaid application to be anybody's first. Ask what percentage of the practice is elder law specifically, and count the seconds until a number shows up. An estimate is a real answer. A story that wanders toward "we handle all kinds of matters" is a different kind of answer, and you are allowed to notice.
Some states offer board certification in Elder Law (Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio), and nationally, the National Elder Law Foundation grants a CELA certification, which takes a full-day exam with three solid years of elder law work behind it. Certification is a real signal but it is not the only one; plenty of excellent attorneys never sat for it. Ask anyway, and a comfortable "no, and here is the experience I'd point you to instead" works fine.
Not Elder Law in general. Yours, with its particulars: a parent with dementia and a house titled in two names, a spouse entering a nursing facility while the other stays home, whatever your version is. Describe it and ask them to walk you through how they have handled it before. Experienced attorneys light up at this question, because you've just asked about their actual work, and people love being asked about their actual work. Inexperienced ones drift toward the general.
Flat fee, hourly, a paid consultation: none of these is wrong, and respectable offices run on each of them. What you want is the arrangement, in writing, before you sign anything, including what happens to the bill if the work takes longer than everyone expected. Ask in the consultation, while everyone is still on best behavior. An attorney who is cagey about money at this stage does not become more transparent after the engagement letter is signed. While you are on the subject, ask whether the quoted fee covers filing fees, notary charges, and copies of the finished documents, because "flat" sometimes has asterisks.
The recommendation itself matters less than the clarity of the explanation. You are hiring a translator as much as a drafter, and this consultation is your free look at understand-ability. So if an answer sails past you, say so, plainly, right there. The good ones rephrase without a flicker, and the ones who just repeat the same sentence (louder) will handle your questions that way for the whole engagement.
Just so you're not going in blind, attorneys often list financial and medical durable power of attorney (POAs), a health care directive that might include "Do Not Resuscitate" (DNR) and/or "Do Not Intubate" (DNI) directives, a "Physician/Provider Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment" (POLST) from the medical establishment, a HIPAA release so doctors can speak to you, and a will, with a trust sometimes layered on depending on assets and state. Depending on your state, the names for these vary. Take a breath, please! You do not need to understand all of this yet. Just clock the names when they go by.
This is the question people don't think to ask, and it might be the most important one here. A Power of Attorney (POA) is only as good as an institution's willingness to accept it. Banks, in particular, are famous here: many prefer their own in-house forms and will balk at yours, and will ask you for additional certifications. Ask who you call, at their office, by name, when an institution pushes back. Good elder law attorneys have strong opinions about all of this, and usually a story (let them tell the story, the stories are where the experience shows). Also, a note here for a medical POA, if the medical provider is online, there's often a place to upload the medical docs and list yourself as the health advocate so you don't have to fax them info again and again (and who even owns a fax anymore???!)
If you're in this situation, you might feel stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's a common scenario in Elder Law, and one of the most delicate. You want an attorney who explains how capacity is assessed, which documents are still possible, and what to do if they aren't. And you want that attorney to do all of that without waving the problem away and without converting it into some kind of fear pitch about guardianship. Listen to the tone here as much as the content; this is the closest look you will get at how they will treat your loved one... and you.
A diagnosis is not the same thing as legal incapacity, and many people in the early stages of memory loss can still validly sign documents, which is exactly why timing matters and why "we'll deal with it later" is the expensive plan. Please keep in mind that capacity standards for signing legal documents vary by state and by document type. If the attorney volunteers a version of this before you raise it, it's a very good sign.
Related, and worth asking straight out: "Who is your client, my parent or me?" In most engagements the attorney represents your parent, not the family, and a careful one may ask for a few minutes alone with your parent to confirm the documents match their actual wishes. Try not to take the request personally; it is one of the better signs that an office takes consent seriously.
In many firms, the attorney in the consultation is not the person who returns your calls. Good paralegals are treasures, and in some offices that's who you actually want on speed dial. Try to meet them that day, not at 4:55 on a Friday on a frantic call. Two follow-ups while you're there: "Who do I call with a quick question?" and "Does that call get billed?" Small questions multiply in this work, like the folders do, and whether or not a two-minute call costs eighty dollars changes how freely you will ask.
An attorney who hands you a preparation list respects your time and, incidentally, their own. One who says "don't worry about it, we'll handle everything" is planning either a lot of billable hand-holding or not much digging, and neither is a plan you want to fund by the hour.
You can get a head start with any attorney you end up choosing (and at hourly rates a head start is $$$.) Gather the financial records: bank and investment statements, the deed to the house, insurance policies, retirement accounts, any long-term care policy. Round up every existing legal document, including the will from 1994 nobody remembers making (there is always a will from 1994). And, most importantly, know your parent's actual wishes, because an attorney can draft around nearly anything except a family that never had the conversation. That last part is exactly what our conversation guide is for.
For the consultation itself, also bring: a list of family members and where they live, a rough list of assets with ballpark values, current diagnoses and medications if health is driving the timeline, and your questions, written down. And maybe a second person or a notebook, whichever you can get. Consultations are dense, and nobody retains a meeting they were nervous all the way through.
Laws change, families change, health changes, and a plan drafted for the family you had five years ago may not fit the family you have now. Five things to ask:
Usually, you can store originals somewhere findable, send copies to whomever is named in the POA, and send or upload the health care directive to the doctors and hospital, (because a directive nobody can locate at 2 a.m. does the patient no good at all).
These answers were typed on your own device and saved straight into this file. Advocate With Love never received them and does not have a copy.
Oh and by the way, we gotta tell you this: we are educators and fellow former caregivers, not attorneys, and nothing in this article is legal advice. It is a map of the questions. The attorney you choose supplies the answers, for your state and your family, and that is the reason to choose a good one.
Print (or download) the questions. Bring the folder. And ask about parking when you book the consultation, because some of these offices validate and some of them absolutely do not.
Basic Ten is the ten questions on their own. All the Info here is everything, tips included. Either one prints or downloads, so feel free to fill it in with a pen (we know, so old school, but tried and true). Or fill it in on your device: tap a box, hit the mic key on your keyboard, and it'll transcribe.