The AFA’s Educating America tour is a nation-wide educational initiative connecting communities with information about Alzheimer’s disease, brain health, caregiving, and more. Participants had the opportunity to hear from experts on Alzheimer’s research, caregiving, elder law, and advance planning.
Mark’s presentation was titled, Why a Will is Not Enough, and included a range of topics from lifetime planning and financial decision making, to long-term care and medicaid planning.
Update! Mark’s presentation has been made available and is embedded below:
Comments Off on Mark Heffner Video Testimony to RI Task Force on Elderly Abuse and Financial Exploitation
Following up on a post from this last Wednesday, we are sharing the video testimony of Attorney Mark Heffner’s presentation to the Rhode Island Special Task Force on Elderly Abuse and Financial Exploitation.
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Our firm’s principal, Mark B. Heffner, Esq., will present later today (March 6, 2019) at the fourth meeting of the Rhode Island Special Task Force to Study Elderly Abuse and Financial Exploitation.
Attorney Heffner, who is also a sitting member of the task force, served for ten years as a member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives. In that capacity, Mark chaired the Guardianship Commission and the Probate Commission, the work of each of which he will reference in his remarks today.
In 2016, Mark’s article in the Rhode Island Bar Journal on the history of guardianship laws in Rhode Island won the Bar Journal’s annual writing award. A copy of that article has been distributed to Task Force members and will be available to attendees of today’s hearing.
We hope to publish a video of Mark Heffner’s presentation at a date in the near future.
Comments Off on Presentation Slides for Providence Retired Teachers Association
On October 24th, I was pleased to present to a meeting of the Providence Retired Teachers Association (PRTA), a program entitled Estate and Medicaid Planning. As promised, posted below are the slides from the presentation.
This presentation was the sixth time—the first being in 2003–that I have been privileged to present to the PRTA. As a proud and grateful graduate of the Warwick public schools, I am glad make whatever contribution I can to retired public school teachers.
It was great to see many familiar faces, as well to meet new members. One member missed by all, of course, was the PRTA’s long-time former President, Anthony Mancini. I was pleased hear of the efforts to develop a scholarship fund in Anthony’s name. When asked to what organization I would like a contribution in my name to made by the PRTA, the answer was easy—the Anthony Mancini Scholarship Fund! Once the requisite documentation from the IRS is received by the PRTA, I and many others look forward to making direct contributions in honor of a man who did so much for the PRTA.
If you have specific questions, or wish to consult with me about your individual circumstances, please contact me. Again, it was a pleasure to be with you again.
Comments Off on “Navigating Mom’s Final Years” Recap: Tools for Supporting Aging Loved Ones
I was delighted and privileged to serve as a panelist on a seminar sponsored by The Catholic Foundation of Rhode Island on October 4th entitled Navigating Mom’s Final Years.
Expertly organized by Andrea Krupp, Esq. of the Catholic Foundation, the fact pattern presented was honed by my fellow panelist Betsey Purinton, CFP of StrategicPoint. The scenarios developed by Betsey enabled us and our fellow panelist, The Reverend Monsignor John Darcy, to outline the circumstances commonly experienced by aging baby-boomers, elders and their family.
Betsy’s fact patterns, highlighted by the deft skills of our moderator, Nicholas Denice of Hinckley Allen, were an excellent starting point for us panelists to discuss the financial, legal and spiritual issues confronting aging people and their families in these increasingly common situations.
As promised, I am including two links referred in my presentation. The first, Why Am l Left in the Waiting Room? Understanding the 4 C’s of Elder Law Ethics, is a brochure which I assign to the students in my Elder Law class at Roger Williams University Law School. As Betsey pointed out in her presentation, it is important for both legal and financial professionals to focus on who the client is.
The second is a link to the Center for Medicare Advocacy’s FAQ guide on the Medicare “Improvement Standard”. It dispels the persistent myth that a long-term nursing home resident needs to be “improving” in order to continue receiving the skilled nursing home benefit available under Part A of Medicare. This link contains advocacy tools for family members seeking to maximize the Medicare benefits of a loved one in a nursing home.
Thanks to the Foundation, sponsors (listed below), fellow panelists and attendees for an excellent learning experience.
Comments Off on Elder Care Law Presentation Slides for Wellness at Brown
Many thanks to Wellness at Brown for hosting Friday’s program on Elder Care Law. It was an excellent turnout with many astute questions from participants.
As promised, attached are the slides which I presented. In the continuing Q&A after the program, I indicated I would post a link to a blog post which I had written on the myth of the requirement for “improvement” to obtain or continue benefits under Medicare for skilled nursing home care. If you review this post, I encourage you to link through to my earlier post which explains the basics of the issue.
If you and your family are facing these types of issues now or in the future, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Comments Off on An (Award Winning!) History of Rhode Island Guardianship Laws
This is just a quick follow-up to a post I shared back in May about an article I wrote on the evolution of guardianship in Rhode Island, which was published in the Rhode Island Bar Journal.
And now, on to the main point of today’s post. An expanded, full-length version of that article has now been published in the Summer 2016 issue of the Roger Williams University Law Review.
From the dark period beginning in the 1700s to the present day provisions, the 35-page article provides an in-depth look at the evolution of guardianship laws in our state, and in particular, the grounds for the initiation of a guardianship proceeding and the procedural rights of the individual for whom the guardianship is sought.
Comments Off on The Evolution of Rhode Island Guardianship Law
1984 doesn’t seem like that long ago. But at that time, only a little over 30 years ago, guardianship laws in this state were stuck in 1905. And in 1905, laws were only a marginal improvement over the colonial era laws first enacted in 1742. It’s hard to fathom, but in 1984, a person in this state could be classified as an “idiot, lunatic, or person of unsound mind” and stripped of his or her personal autonomy.
The evolution of guardianship law in Rhode Island has been equally fascinating and frustrating. The 1992 Act and subsequent updating have brought about significant modernization to the law. Nevertheless, there are those who believe that there remains more to do.
I have written about this topic in an article published in the current issue of the the Rhode Island Bar Journal. If you’d like to read more, see The Evolution of Rhode Island Guardianship Law in the May/June 2016 issue, beginning on page 5.
This post will focus on one of these–Section 6–which seeks to directly affect the limited opportunities for middle-class Rhode Islanders requiring Medicaid long-term care services to preserve some of their assets. The changes in this Section 6are all to Rhode Island General Laws §40-8-15 entitled, “Lien on Deceased Recipient’s Estate for Assistance”.
First, the Governor’s proposal seeks to expand “estate recovery” to assets passing outside the probate estate. Literally twenty years ago, in 1995, the State amended this section of the General Laws to conform with a federal law requiring states to put claims on the probate estates of deceased Medicaid recipients. The federal law, called “OBRA ‘93”, enabled the states to, if they chose, “expand” their estate recovery to non-probate assets.
The large majority of states chose, as Rhode Island did, to limit its estate recovery efforts to probate assets. This was the procedure utilized by the Department of Human Services for the next seventeen years.
In 2012, however, the State sought to expand its estate recovery to include non-probate assets. This would means, for example, that real estate held jointly by a mother in a nursing home on Medicaid with her adult son, which would ordinarily pass without a claim to the adult son, would now be subject to the State’s lien. Due to the dramatically increased efforts which would be required by the Department of Human Services to accomplish this “expansion”, as well as the House Finance Committee’s understandable distaste for adding any additional pain beyond that required by federal law, this proposal was roundly rejected by the House Finance Committee.
Also rejected in 2012 was a proposal by the State to put so-called “lifetime liens” on property of certain Medicaid recipients. Presently, as long as the Medicaid recipient declares an intention to return to his or her home, the home remains an exempt asset. While the home is potentially vulnerable post-death if it passes through probate, there is no impact during the life of the Medicaid recipient (unless the property is sold in which case the Department of Human Services needs to be notified).
In 2012, the House Finance Committee also rejected this effort to impose “lifetime liens”. It did, however, enact two statutes that provided additional protections to the Department of Human Services to prevent properties belonging to current or deceased Medicaid recipients from being sold without the Department’s notice.
Fast forward to May 7, 2015. In Section 6 of “The Reinventing Medicaid Act of 2015”, the current administration “doubles down” on the efforts made in 2012. Apparently unaware of the drubbing these proposals took by the House Finance Committee in 2012, the Raimondo administration has tried them again, adding to them an additional extraordinary provision which would allow the Department to collect interest at the rate of 12% per annum on its claims.
You read that right – 12%. Your CDs are not even getting 1%. The 10-year U.S. Treasury bill is getting slightly more than 2%. But the Governor proposes that the State, unlike any other claimant in a probate estate, receive not only a statutory rate of interest, but a rate equivalent to that which a successful party in civil litigation would enjoy after obtaining a judgment.
But wait – there’s more! Section 6 of “The Reinventing Medicaid Act of 2015” adds an entirely new section which would deal with eligibility for long term care Medicaid, not just estate recoveries. It attempts to graft onto the estate recovery provisions statutes—not regulations as currently exists—regarding asset transfers and eligibility requirements for long-term care Medicaid. And as an added bonus, it is a remarkably poorly written, referring to terms like “annuity”, “penalty period” nowhere defined in the Rhode Island General Laws.
On Tuesday evening, May 19th, I testified (video below) before the House Finance Committee in opposition to Section 6 of the Act. Some of the Committee members were the same Representatives who heard and rejected the previous attempt in 2012.
I am confident that the House Finance Committee and the House the Representatives as a whole will again reject this aggressive and unnecessary attempt by the State to add pain to Rhode Islanders who already have the misfortune of suffering from a chronic illness or condition requiring them to seek long-term care Medicaid benefits.
