Practice No. 4 — The long season
Elder Law & Incapacity Planning
From $1,500 · scoped after the first family meeting
Planning for the years that need a plan most: long-term care costs, Medicaid's five-year look-back, and keeping a person's dignity intact while their independence changes.
For adult children watching a parent decline, and for couples determined that a nursing-home bill will not erase forty years of careful saving.
How we handle it
Elder law is estate planning with the clock running. A diagnosis arrives (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, an ordinary bad fall) and suddenly the questions are concrete: who signs, who pays, what does a memory-care floor in Henrico actually cost per month, and what will be left. We practice this work without euphemism, because families in this season are lied to enough by brochures.
The financial center of gravity is long-term care. Virginia Medicaid will pay for nursing care only after assets are spent down, and it examines every transfer made in the five years before application: the look-back that turns well-meaning gifts into penalty periods. Planned early, there are honorable tools: certain trusts, spousal protections that keep the healthy spouse solvent, exempt transfers for caregiving children. Planned late, there are still moves worth making; crisis planning routinely preserves a meaningful share of what a family assumed was already lost. Early is better. Late is not hopeless.
The legal work rides alongside the human work. We draft the documents that keep decisions inside the family and out of the guardianship docket, we referee the sibling meeting no one wanted to convene, and we write instructions a stressed caregiver can follow at two in the morning. Half of this practice is law; the other half is making sure the people doing the caring do not come apart.
What the fee includes
- A family meeting: the elder, the caregivers, the siblings who need to hear it together
- Durable powers of attorney with the gifting and trust powers elder-law work requires
- Advance medical directive and, where appropriate, guidance on Virginia POST orders
- A long-term-care funding analysis: real local costs against real resources, in writing
- Medicaid look-back review and, where suitable, asset-protection trust design
- Spousal impoverishment protections when one spouse needs care and one stays home
- Guardianship and conservatorship counsel when documents were never signed in time
- Coordination with geriatric care managers and placement advisors we trust
The honest timeline
Week 1 — Family meeting
Ninety minutes. Everyone hears the same facts at the same time; most family friction dies in that room.
Weeks 2–4 — The plan
Documents drafted, the funding analysis delivered in writing, decisions made at a pace the family can hold.
Months 2–3 — Implementation
Trusts funded, accounts restructured, applications assembled. Crisis cases compress this to weeks when they must.
Ongoing — Reviews
Care needs change; the plan is revisited at each change of setting — home, assisted living, skilled care.
What to bring
Or what to gather — none of it needs to be perfect.
- A candid picture of the diagnosis and prognosis, as far as it is known
- A list of assets and income for the person needing care — including the house
- Any long-term-care insurance policies, however old
- Existing estate-planning documents, if any were ever signed
- The family members who will share the caregiving, in person or on the phone
Questions we hear about elder law & incapacity planning
Is it too late to plan? Mom already needs care.
It is later than ideal and earlier than useless. Even with care underway, Virginia's spousal protections, exempt transfers, and careful spend-down sequencing routinely preserve a significant portion of an estate. The one unforgivable move is doing nothing while the checkbook drains at nine thousand dollars a month.
Should we just give the house to the kids now?
Almost never, and please not before calling us. An outright gift starts the five-year Medicaid clock, exposes the house to the children's creditors and divorces, and forfeits the capital-gains step-up that would have let them sell it tax-free later. There are better instruments for every goal that gift is trying to reach.
What does memory care actually cost around Richmond?
As of this year, plan on roughly $7,000 to $10,000 a month for memory care in the Richmond metro, and more for skilled nursing. We keep current local figures and will put them in your written analysis; budgeting against real numbers beats hoping against round ones.
Often planned together
Wills & Revocable Trusts
Flat fee from $1,200 individual · $1,950 couple
A will or revocable trust drafted for Virginia law and actually funded: deed, retitling, and every designation confirmed in writing.
Probate & Estate Administration
From $3,500 · scoped in writing at the first meeting
We handle the court, you handle the family: qualification, inventory, the Commissioner of Accounts, and the final accounting, carried.
Powers of Attorney & Advance Directives
Flat fee from $350
A durable power of attorney a bank will actually honor, and an advance medical directive your family can actually follow.
Put your affairs in order this season.
Thirty minutes on the telephone, no charge, and you will know exactly which documents you need and exactly what they cost. That is the whole commitment.
Or telephone the office: (804) 555-0158