Money, legal and benefits
The part families put off and then need at two days' notice. Benefit screening is free and national; so is your state's insurance counselling.
Official source the real list is public and we send you to it
The four documents, and the one rule that governs all of them
They have to be signed while she still has capacity to sign them. That is the whole thing. Miss it and the only route left is guardianship: a court, lawyers, months, and a judge making decisions your family could have made itself.
- Durable power of attorney for finances — who can pay her bills and deal with her bank. "Durable" is the word that makes it survive her losing capacity, and it is the one people leave out.
- Health care power of attorney (the name varies by state — health care proxy, health care representative) — who speaks to doctors when she cannot.
- Advance directive — what she wants, in her own words, about treatment at the end of life.
- Will — the one everybody thinks of first and which changes the least about the next five years.
A POLST is a different animal and is often confused with the third: it is a medical order signed by a clinician, for someone who is already seriously ill, that paramedics will act on. An advance directive states wishes; a POLST instructs.
A free way to start the conversation: Medicare's yearly “Wellness” visit includes an offer to discuss advance directives — see health and medicine.
Free help, and it really is free
All four of these are paid for with public money, none of them sells anything, and between them they answer most of what families pay someone else to answer.
- SHIP — the State Health Insurance Assistance Program. One-to-one Medicare counselling, in every state, independent of insurers. shiphelp.org.
- BenefitsCheckUp — the National Council on Aging's screener for benefits she may be entitled to and not claiming. benefitscheckup.org.
- Your Area Agency on Aging — eldercare.acl.gov, 1-800-677-1116.
- Senior Medicare Patrol — free help reading Medicare statements and reporting billing fraud. smpresource.org.
The two Medicare programmes most often missed
Medicare Savings Programs are run by the state and pay Medicare's own costs. The largest, the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary programme, pays Part A and Part B premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and copayments — and if she qualifies for it, providers are not allowed to bill her for covered services.
The 2026 federal limits for QMB are a monthly income of $1,350 and resources of $9,950 for an individual, and $1,824 and $14,910 for a married couple. Limits are higher in Alaska and Hawaii, some states do not count certain income or resources, and the limits rise every year. Medicare's own advice is the sentence worth acting on: even if you don't think you qualify, you should still apply.
Qualifying also brings Extra Help with prescription costs — no more than $12.65 for each covered drug in 2026.
VA Aid and Attendance
A monthly payment added to a VA pension. She may be eligible if she gets a VA pension and at least one of these is true:
- She needs another person to help with daily activities like bathing, feeding and dressing;
- She has to stay in bed, or spend a large part of the day in bed, because of illness;
- She is a patient in a nursing home due to loss of mental or physical abilities related to a disability;
- Her eyesight is limited to 5/200 or less in both eyes even with correction, or her visual field is contracted to 5 degrees or less.
Housebound allowance is a separate benefit and she cannot receive both at once.
Apply through the VA. Companies that offer to prepare the claim for a fee, or that pair it with an annuity or a trust, are not the VA. The VA accredits representatives who help with claims, and the VA's own pages will point you to them.
When it is worth paying a lawyer
An elder-law attorney earns their fee on a short list of things: Medicaid eligibility and the five-year look-back, protecting a spouse who is staying at home, contested capacity, and guardianship when it cannot be avoided. Ask up front whether the work is a flat fee or hourly, and get the answer in writing.
What to be careful of: the free seminar on protecting your assets from nursing home costs, held at a restaurant, which ends with somebody selling an annuity or a trust. An adviser paid a commission on what they sell you is doing sales, not law, and the elderly person signing is the product.
Fraud, which is aimed precisely at this household
- National Elder Fraud Hotline: 1-833-372-8311, run by the Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime. Staffed by people who will walk you through reporting.
- Senior Medicare Patrol for anything on a Medicare statement that does not look right.
- The pattern is always the same three things at once: urgency, secrecy, and an unusual way to pay — gift cards, wire transfer, crypto, a courier for cash. Any two of those together and the answer is no, whatever the story is.
- Practical defences that take an afternoon: freeze her credit, turn on transaction alerts, add a trusted contact to bank and brokerage accounts, and arrange for a second person to see the statements each month.
- Door-knock repair offers belong here too — see the house itself.
Say the quiet part to her, once, kindly: the scam that works on intelligent people works because it is frightening and fast. Agreeing in advance that we never decide money on the phone is worth more than any warning list.
Guardianship is the last resort
It is a court removing a person's right to make their own decisions, and it is expensive, slow and public. Many states require a court to consider less restrictive alternatives first — which is another way of saying that the four documents at the top of this page are what stops it happening. Do those, and you will almost certainly never read this section again.