What You Can Expect from Us
by
Horizon Elder Law & Estate Planning,
Inc.
The Life Care Plan is different from any other
business dealing you may have had with another lawyer or other
professional such as your doctor.
Most lawyers deal in “transactions.” That means
you pay a fee to the lawyer for a transaction: for example, the
lawyer closes a real estate contract for you and you pay him a fee
for the service. That’s a transaction, and once the transaction is
completed, the legal representation ends.
By contrast, your Life Care Plan with us is a
“relationship.” Although we do legal documents for you, help you
with accessing and advocating for good care, and represent you in
making application for public benefits, those services form part of
our relationship with you—but none of them in and of itself is the
relationship.
Like any good relationship, you will get the
most benefit out of your Life Care Plan relationship by
communicating freely with us about your health care and long-term
care needs. If someone happens to you, we need to know about it. We
expect you to let us know when your health care and long-term care
changes, or needs to be addressed.
As we go forward with your Life Care Plan you
will also appreciate the limits of our relationship. That too is
important for any good relationship. One of the most important
things you need to know about our relationship is that we do not
provide health care or long-term care to you. We help coordinate
care for you, serve as your guide to help you get care, intervene
and advocate as needed for good care, and explore ways to help you
use resources, both public and private, to pay for it. But we do not
actually provide care to you.
In most of our cases, our relationship with you ends not upon
the end of a transaction but when we are no longer able to have a
relationship with you: you die or you end our relationship (that is,
you don’t want us to work for you any more or you move away, making
it almost impossible for us to continue our relationship). This is
spelled out in our “Agreement for Life Care Plan,” which you’ll find
in this ring binder.
