⚖️ Legal Rights
Documents, protections, and legal rights that protect you and the person you care for. Know what facilities cannot do — and what you can do about it.
✓ Power of Attorney
✓ Nursing home rights
✓ FMLA at work
✓ Elder abuse protection
Legal documents and rights are not just for lawyers. A Power of Attorney takes 30 minutes to create and protects everything. Knowing your nursing home rights can stop an illegal discharge. Knowing your FMLA rights can save your job. This page covers every legal protection available to caregivers and the people they care for.
⚠️ Do not wait until there is a crisis
Power of Attorney, advance directives, and healthcare proxy can only be signed while a person still has mental capacity. Once capacity is gone, the only option is guardianship — which costs $3,000–$10,000 and takes months in court. Get the documents now.
Two types you need — financial and healthcare. How to create one for free. What to do if your parent refuses or already has dementia. Durable vs springing POA.
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You have a legal right to appeal. Call the BFCC-QIO before midnight on discharge day. Once you file you cannot be charged while the appeal is pending.
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Medicaid checks 60 months of financial history. Giving money away can cause months of denied coverage. What is safe and the Caretaker Child Exception.
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Cannot discharge when Medicare runs out if Medicaid is pending. Cannot bill family personally. Cannot use restraints without consent. Ombudsman is free in every state.
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12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave. Your employer cannot fire, demote, or cut your pay. 13 states with paid family leave laws that go further than federal FMLA.
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Without documents doctors decide — not family. The difference between a living will, healthcare proxy, DNR, and POLST. Free forms in every state.
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Most common abusers are family members. 10 warning signs. How to freeze accounts. APS, state regulators, and the National Elder Fraud Hotline: 1-833-FRAUD-11.
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POA requires capacity and costs almost nothing. Guardianship is court-ordered when capacity is gone — costs $3,000–$10,000. When you need both.
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After a Medicaid recipient dies the state can claim the estate. Exemptions for surviving spouses, disabled children, and caregiver children who lived there 2+ years.
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The POA holder has legal authority — opinions of siblings do not matter legally. How to run a family meeting. What to do when a sibling misuses money.
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Without a written agreement payments to family look like gifts and trigger the look-back penalty. What to include, how to set the rate, who signs it.
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What HIPAA restricts vs what it does not. You can always give information. HIPAA authorization form takes 10 minutes. Verbal permission in the exam room.
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Need to know what to say right now?
Our free phone scripts give you the exact words to use when calling Medicare, a hospital, or a nursing home.
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