Brooklyn Elder Law Attorney

85 is the New 65

According to the CDC, children born between 2008 and 2013 have a reasonable life expectancy of 100 years of age, and in the last 100 years, the average life expectancy rose from 50 to 80 in the United States.   Some life insurance companies are encouraging us to plan to live 150 years! That’s probably a bit overly optimistic, but the point is, we should all have a plan for a long and prosperous life.  There’s no question that we should all be thinking about our senior years and the quality of life we will have, which we can expect will be determined based upon our attention to detail now.

While it has been 70 years since we passed the Social Security Act; planning for your retirement, and beyond, has become a lot more complicated.  Other rites of passage have been elongated as well.  We recognize today that our brains don’t mature until we are 29 years old, and more often our children are staying at home longer and taking longer to go to school than they were even a quarter of a century ago.  While planning for retirement used to refer to a relatively short period of time after someone turned 65 years of age – today that can mean figuring out how to maximize your most productive years in combination with skillfully planning the increase in care that you will need.

For those of us who have parents who are very elderly, planning when, and how to pursue Medicaid, establishing trusts, reverse mortgages(?), annuities, life insurance policies, living wills, last wills and how our last wishes will be carried out is an overwhelming task.  Especially when parents are reluctant to make room for their children to interject their own ideas about how they should be cared for.  Beyond the financial and medical planning aspects, there are also times when the Elderly need to be defended from inferior medical care, financial or credit fraud, and identity theft.  The needs of the elderly are very complex today.

If you have questions and concerns about Elder Law, please write us today.  If you’re organized and ready to provide the detailed information related to your Last Will, please feel free to start the process by accessing our Wills, Powers of Attorney and Estate Planning section of our Legal Affairs Center.

Elder Care Agreement