The South Louisiana Elder Law team is dedicated to providing you with quality estate planning resources, so you can become familiar with your choices and planning options. When you visit or call our office, we want you to feel comfortable discussing these important issues concerning both you and your family. We want to arm you with the information you need to make an informed decision about your family’s future. We focus on helping our clients deal with questions like “What can I do to protect my family when I can no longer care for them? What happens if I become incapacitated and can’t manage my own finances? What happens if I have to leave my home and move into a nursing home and how do I pay for nursing home care? What can I do to make sure my grandchildren receive the property I want them to receive and can’t blow it before they grow up? How do I make sure my spouse will be OK if I become incapacitated?” We want our clients to deal with both “incapacity planning” and “estate planning.”
We focus on elder law and estate planning and nothing else. We don’t handle car wrecks, 18-wheeler wrecks, offshore injuries, asbestos claims, class actions, divorces, or anything besides elder law matters. We don’t practice general law because we believe keeping up with the changes in estate law, Medicaid, trust law, and other laws that affect elderly people is a full-time job.
If you have a well-drafted plan that covers both “estate planning” and “incapacity planning,” then you can feel comfortable that you have established a seamless blanket of protection to cover issues you may face while you are alive and issues your family will face after you have died. You will be able to rest assured that your estate is going to pass the way want, when you want, and is carried out in the manner you’ve chosen.
- You can rest assured that if you become unable to care for yourself, then your family won’t have to endure the public and costly matters of interdiction and curatorship – a process we call the “Curatorship Nightmare” because it results in you losing all control of your finances and personal life and involves court supervision like a probate procedure.
- You can feel confident that if you reach a point where you need long-term care in a nursing home, there will be ways to pay for that care and still provide for your spouse and leave a legacy for your children.
- You can sleep with security knowing that estate and inheritance taxes won’t eat up what you’ve spent a lifetime building.
- You can relax your concerns about how your family will deal with your estate after your death by taking steps to reduce the costs and delays of succession and probate.
But you need to be aware of the many options that exist in estate planning – and you must choose your attorney wisely. That is why John Pucheu Attorney LLC | South Louisiana Elder Law offers this wealth of free information. Read our Estate Planning reports and think about joining us when we offer a Free Estate Planning workshop.
Through the use of Trusts, Wills & Testaments (simple & complex), Mandates & Powers of Attorney, Advance Directives, Limited Liability Companies, Family Limited Partnerships, and Charitable Gifting Strategies, we help families preserve their wealth for future generations, minimize estate taxes, avoid the expense and nightmare of interdiction and curatorship, deal with long-term care, and, finally, make plans to reduce the costs and inconvenience of succession and probate matters.
We provide comprehensive, tailored estate planning services to meet all of our clients’ needs. Below is a sampling of the type of services we offer. If you have questions about any of our services, please do not hesitate to contact us or call us at 337-457-9075.
Elder Law & Medicaid Services
We help clients qualify for government medical benefits legally and ensure their estates are preserved for their families, instead of seeing their nest egg wiped out by high nursing home expenses.
Incapacity Planning
Under Louisiana law, a lawsuit to declare someone incapacitated and to appoint a “curator” to control their business and personal care is called an “interdiction.” A fight between family members over who will control their parents’ lives and property is a horrible thing. We call this the “Curatorship Nightmare,” and the South Louisiana Elder Law team helps clients create a plan to handle their affairs in the event of incapacity. In other states, the procedures we call “interdiction and Curatorship” are called a Guardianship or a Conservatorship. This is the type of proceeding that was recently in the news because of Brittany Spears. Ms. Spears went through a “Guardianship Nightmare” in California but she could have ended up going through a “Curatorship Nightmare” here in Louisiana. We can help you plan to avoid the “Curatorship Nightmare” by taking steps to designate the people who will manage your affairs instead of leaving these decisions up to a court.
Special Needs Planning for Adults and Elderly Persons
We help clients who have adult special needs family members by creating Special Needs Estate Plans for certain situations. These tailored plans help them preserve government benefits while having their loved one cared for in all areas of their life: financial, educational, and medical, and most importantly, their emotional and personal needs in the future.
Trust Administration & Probate
We help families who have experienced the loss of a loved one with the process of transferring assets from the deceased to the living by probate or trust administration procedures.
Advantages of Working With the South Louisiana Elder Law Team
In addition to quality estate planning services, these are some of the extra benefits of being a client of the South Louisiana Elder Law team:
- FREE subscription to our quarterly newsletter, Your Estate Matters, where you’ll learn about estate planning topics and other informative subjects relevant to you and your family’s needs.
- FREE Client Seminars. We occasionally offer seminars and presentations exclusively for our clients on various estate planning topics.
- FREE announcements of dates, times and topics for future educational seminars available to the general public.
- FREE one-hour consultation during those difficult days after the death of a loved one. During this meeting, we’ll be available to help guide the survivors through the essential steps needed to transfer assets according to the plan we developed for you. If your survivors need additional support, our services will be available at reasonable rates.
- FREE regular Legacy and Estate Plan checkups, with more frequent reviews available if you so desire.
Finally, as a member of the American Academy of Estate Planning Attorneys, our firm has a wide range of benefits to offer you. For example, we can provide you with access to a nationwide network of qualified attorneys who can assist you with out-of-state transfers of title, provide help should you move to another state, or simply offer a referral to an out-of-state friend or family member who needs estate planning help. In addition, the Academy provides its members with substantial legal, technical and practice management support to ensure we provide high quality estate planning service to our clients.
