Elder Law
The questions that arrive when a parent starts needing help — and the ones nobody plans for until they are urgent.
Elder law work usually begins with a phone call that is already overdue. Someone has fallen. A diagnosis has landed. A parent cannot manage the checkbook any more, and the family is discovering what they can and cannot legally do about it.
What this practice covers
- Long-term care planning — what care will cost, what will pay for it, and what can be preserved.
- Medicaid eligibility — qualifying for benefits without giving away more than necessary, within rules that punish improvisation.
- Estate recovery — protecting the homestead from a claim after death where the law allows it.
- Guardianship — when capacity is gone and no power of attorney exists, and the less restrictive alternatives when one does.
- Capacity and incapacity planning — putting authority in trusted hands before it is needed.
- Elder financial exploitation — responding when someone has taken advantage of a vulnerable adult.
Before practicing law, Grover Peters spent a career in healthcare — as a U.S. Army Medical Service Corps officer and then as a chief operating officer, chief information officer and chief executive officer of healthcare organizations. Advising families about long-term care is different when you have been on the other side of the admissions desk, the staffing model and the budget.
The rules that catch people out
Two things to understand before you move any money
- The look-back
- Medicaid reviews asset transfers made in the five years before an application. Gifts within that window can create a penalty period during which benefits are unavailable — including the transfer a family makes precisely because they thought it would help.
- Estate recovery
- Texas may seek reimbursement from the estate of a person who received certain long-term care benefits after age 55. Exemptions and hardship waivers exist, and the homestead is treated differently from other property — but the planning has to be done deliberately.
The single most common and most costly mistake is a well-meant transfer made before anyone gets advice: deeding the house to a child, moving accounts, or "spending down" in a way that turns out to be a disqualifying gift. If you are considering it, that is the conversation to have first, not afterward.
Guardianship, and how to avoid it
Guardianship is a court proceeding that removes rights from an adult and assigns them to someone else. It is sometimes necessary and it is always a serious step — expensive, public, and supervised by the court on an ongoing basis.
Most of the time it is also avoidable. A durable power of attorney and a medical power of attorney, signed while a person still has capacity, accomplish the same practical result without a courtroom. Texas law also recognises supported decision-making agreements as a less restrictive alternative. The window to use any of these closes when capacity does, which is why the unglamorous documents matter so much.
Common questions
Is it too late to plan if a parent is already in a nursing home?
Usually not. Crisis planning is a recognised part of this work and there are strategies available after admission that families are often told do not exist. The options narrow as time passes, so the sooner the conversation happens the more of them remain.
Will we have to sell the house?
Frequently not. The Texas homestead receives significant protection, and the answer depends on who lives there, marital status, and how title is held. It is one of the first things worth looking at rather than assuming the worst.
What is the difference between a power of attorney and a guardianship?
A power of attorney is something a person grants voluntarily while they still have capacity. A guardianship is imposed by a court once they do not. One is a signature; the other is a lawsuit.
Can you help if my parent lives outside Texas?
The firm is licensed in Texas, New Mexico, Washington and Oregon. Medicaid is administered state by state, so where your parent resides governs — raise it on the first call and we will tell you plainly whether this is a matter we can take.