What is Elder Law?

The practice of Elder Law came into its own in 1988 when a group of attorneys formed the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA), a professional association concerned with improving the availability and delivery of legal services to older persons.

This practice has been localized in Texas by the formation of the Texas Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys (TexNAELA) and further by the formation in the Harris County area of the Disability and Elder Law Attorneys Association, Inc.(DELAA), a professional association of local attorneys dedicated to the delivery of services tailored to the older client.

Weston Cotten is a member of all these organizations: NAELA since 1992; TexNAELA since 1994 and DELAA since its inception if 1992.

Elder Law encompasses many different fields of law. Some of these include:

• Preservation/transfer of assets seeking to avoid "spousal" impoverishment when one spouse enters a nursing home; 
• Conserving the estate when a person has to enter a nursing home (whether for a spouse, children, or other special heirs) 
• Medicaid, including nursing home and long-term care benefits; 
• Medicare claims and appeals; 
• Social Security and disability claims and appeals; 
• Supplemental Security Income and long term health insurance issues; 
• Disability planning, including the use of durable powers of attorney, living trusts, "living wills" and other instruments for financial management and health care decisions in case of incapacity; (incapacity is now the Texas "buzz" word for anything form having limited use of and extremity to total incompetence) 
• Conservatorship and Guardianship; 
• Estate planning, including planning for management of one's estate during life, through any periods of incapacity and for disposition, or management after death through the use of wills, trusts and other planning techniques; 
• Planning to provide the long term care needed for an incapacitated adult child; 
• Planning to preserve benefits for an injured child when the child receives a financial benefit that would otherwise disqualify the child for those benefits; 
• Probate 
• Administration and management of trusts and estates; 
• Long-term care placements in nursing home and assisted living communities; 
• Nursing home issues including patient's rights, nursing home care quality and damages from lack of care; 
• Elder abuse and fraud recovery;
• Housing issues, including discrimination and home equity conversions;
• Age discrimination in employment;
• Retirement benefits, survivor benefits and pension benefits;
• Health issues and mental health issues;