Elder Law Basics For Indiana Families Who Want To Protect What They Built

$10,000 a month. That’s the kind of nursing home bill that can wipe out a lifetime of careful saving faster than most families can imagine. I sit down with Martinsville, Indiana elder law attorney Lisa Blackman, who has spent more than 25 years helping Morgan County families protect what they’ve built and plan for what comes next, even when the “estate” is a modest home, a small nest egg, or a family farm.

We get practical about Medicaid planning, including the Medicaid five-year lookback rule and why last-minute gifting can create penalties and chaos. Lisa explains how the right trust strategy can help protect assets and also shield what parents worked for from risks that may show up later in a child’s life, like divorce, bankruptcy, or lawsuits. We also talk about the biggest misconception she hears every day: believing a will means you’re fully covered.

Then we dig into the documents that matter while you’re alive: a properly drafted financial power of attorney and clear health care decision paperwork. Lisa shares why online forms often fail with banks, why spouses can’t automatically “just handle it,” and how probate really works, including the delays and costs that make families wish they’d planned sooner.

If you want a clearer path for estate planning, Medicaid planning, and protecting your family from avoidable stress, hit play. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more people in our community can find the help early.

Transcript

Welcome To Good Neighbor Podcast

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Tim Serber.

Meet Elder Law Attorney Lisa Blackman

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Well, welcome back, everybody. This is the Good Neighbors Podcast, and this is the show where we sit down with business owners, leaders, storytellers who make Morgan County a great place to live and work in. I'm your host, Tim Serber, and today we're talking with a Martinsville attorney who has spent more than two decades helping Indiana families protect what they've built and plan for what comes next. This one you'll love. So uh today, Lisa, welcome to our show. This is Lisa Blackman, and she's the owner of the law office of Lisa A. Blackman, right here on East Morgan Street. Uh, and she's an attorney, uh elder law attorney with more than 25 years uh of experience. So how are you doing today, Lisa?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I'm doing great. Been in appointments all day.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Oh, I bet. I bet you've been busy. I know it's it's a tough one because you are uh you are in demand. I think you have a great reputation in the county. Good. I'm so thankful for that. Yeah.

Why She Chose Elder Law

SPEAKER_01 1:08

So I want to start off kind of uh because you know, elder law is pretty specific niche, right? And not every attorney is drawn to it. So your firm focuses specifically on elder law. So kind of go over what that is, and you know, really of all the opportunities out there to, you know, of really the practice you can build, why did you choose elder law?

SPEAKER_02 1:34

Well, um, I when I got out of law school, um I went to a general practice law firm and my aunt called me one day and said, your papa is in a nursing home and we need an elder law attorney. And I said, I don't know what an elder law attorney is or does, but I'll find out. So I called around and everybody said, You need to go to Martinsville and talk to Roger Coffin. So that's how I got in uh connection with Roger and Patty Coffin. And um, I ended up joining their firm and and my grandpa's Medicaid case was my first case that I handled. Yeah. So um that kind of took off from there, and I just loved the work. And um I, you know, I stuck with it for a long, long time because I really like um older people. I just love their values and their work ethic and just their dedication to their families. And um, you know, I just I really like that I have clients that I admire and um and I really like helping them.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

So well, and I know you have a passion for it, and I tell you, I I'm at that age, someday I might need your service pretty soon, you know, who knows? But uh wait too long. Yeah. Yeah, right. But you know, you gotta have that, you gotta have that real love for it because it is a challenging, really area of law, I think.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Sure, you have to be very patient and yeah, and kind, and and sometimes you have to talk really loud because they're hard of hearing, or you have to talk really slow because they it just takes them longer to absorb what you're saying, and you know, it just it takes a certain kind of um personality, I think.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

I think so. I think you're

Building A Practice For Working Families

SPEAKER_01 3:18

right. Now you've been practicing for more than 25 years, including time as a partner at respected firms before opening your own office here in Martinsville. You know, what did you want to build with your own practice that you couldn't build anywhere else?

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Um, I want a greater flexibility um with working with people that maybe don't have sizable estates. You know, sometimes they don't have a lot, but it makes it all that more important that we do good planning for them so that they can protect and preserve what they have saved over the years. And a lot of my clients are, you know, they're self to the earth. They were mechanics and they, you know, were hairdressers and they, you know, they're they're not rich people typically, right? They're people trying to just protect that little nest egg that they were able to save by not going on vacations and not driving new cars and that sort of thing. Uh and they, and you know, they want to make sure that those assets end up going to their their kids or their grandkids. Um, and they and they're all afraid, what happens if I go into a nursing home? What can I do now? Hopefully they come in soon enough, and that's their question. What can I do now to try to plan in case that happens?

SPEAKER_01 4:32

Yeah. And

When To Start Planning For Care

SPEAKER_01 4:33

I think that's, you know, and we're gonna go kind of into that here in in just a few minutes, but you know, for a lot of our listeners, elder law sounds like it's something they'll deal with someday, right? And I know I've been that kind of person, but not yet. And at what stage of life should somebody really start thinking about estate planning and what happens when the family waits too long?

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah. So my client, I get that question a lot. Um, and I usually tell my clients, the first thing I tell them usually is you know, if you go into a nursing home and you need the assistance of Medicaid, which almost everybody does because it costs around $10,000 a month. Now that's gonna gobble up your stake pretty quickly. So there's a five-year look back when we apply for Medicaid. That means they want to know what have you given away in the five years leading up to the application for Medicaid. They want to make sure you haven't just dumped all your assets in your kids' names a year before applying for Medicaid, right? Um, because they're gonna penalize you if you did that. So we want to try to get it transferred to a Medicaid set-aside trust, is what I call it. It's it's kind of a instead of gifting all the assets to the kids individually, I want to put it in a trust instead because it protects those assets from many potential creditors, you know, that the kids might have, either now or in the future. They go through a divorce or if they fall bankruptcy or they have a business fail and they have judgment creditors. We don't want liens filed on mom and dad's farm. Um, so it's good to, you know, put it in that Medicaid set-aside trust early enough. And I always say 70s-ish, because, you know, if you've been diagnosed with something early on in your 50s, let's say, you've got early onset uh dementia, Alzheimer's, uh, Lou Gehrings disease, something, you know, that could potentially land you in long-term care sooner than most. You might want to get that planning done sooner than 70s. But you know, I've done these trusts for 80-year-olds before, but you know, they're my clients are getting older and older, and they're um some of them are just sharp as tacks. So um it just depends on your situation, I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

And everybody's situation is different and can change daily. Sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

And even if you're in your 40s, you know, and you have young kids, you would want to do at least a will so that you have guardians named for your kids. And you know, there's a document you can do that that gives them guardianship over your kids essentially, um, until they can get into court and get legal guardianship, basically, if something were to happen to both you and your spouse, and you want to make sure your kids are immediately have somebody to go to and they have resources to to um protect them.

unknown 7:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 7:17

That's good to know. Now, I know that one of the most stressful things a family can face is needing to get parents into a nursing home, not knowing where to go, where to turn, what to do, uh, and suddenly you know facing those costs too. So

Medicaid Myths And The Five-Year Lookback

SPEAKER_01 7:33

how does Medicaid planning actually work? And what's the biggest misconception people have about it?

SPEAKER_02 7:39

Well, a lot of my clients think once I get that will done, I've done everything I need to do. Um, the will really doesn't do anything. It's a piece of paper. Um, it says what you want done with your stuff after you die. But Medicaid planning is more for what do I need to do while I'm alive? Like what do I need to sit put in place while I'm alive so that the assets that I've accumulated are protected, or if if I'm farming, that my farm doesn't end up, you know, on the chopping block to pay for care. We don't definitely want that. And there are special rules that protect farmers and and family business owners and and and the five-year um look back may not even apply to them. So there are special circumstances for people like that. Um, so it just takes a lot of experience and knowledge of the Medicaid rules to help people navigate, you know, whatever their particular situation might be. Um, but the I guess the biggest misconception is I, you know, I don't need to do anything. I did a will. So that's uh I think, and plus we we have a lot of people that'll call us and say, oh, somebody told me I'm gonna lose my house because my husband's in long-term care. No, that's not the case at all. Your home's exempt. I mean, there are things we want to do to try to protect it in case the healthy spouse ends up in long-term care. But, you know, we there that's you know, they get a lot of bad information from people who have um, I don't know, they have a little experience with it and they think maybe they they can be helpful, but sometimes they're not helpful. They actually make the person worry more.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah. And the internet doesn't help at all.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

No.

SPEAKER_01 9:19

People search, you don't know what's what's accurate or not.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

Right.

Power Of Attorney Mistakes To Avoid

SPEAKER_01 9:23

You know, uh a lot of folks assume estate planning is just for the wealthy, right? And that if you don't own a lot, you don't really need a will or a trust. Um what would you say to the average Morgan County family who sit, you know, never sit down with an attorney about this? What what would trigger that?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Um Well, I will tell you, I have uh maybe a very low percentage of clients that have been what I consider wealthy. Most of them aren't. Most of them are middle class people, salt of the earth, like I said, um, and they're just worried about protecting the you know, the nest egg that they've accumulated. And um what I would want to tell them is just make sure that your wishes are known before something happens. You lose capacity, you have a stroke, you have uh, you know, you fall and break a hip, and um, you know, you end up in in a nursing home and and they can't get you up and going anymore, and you can't go back home. Like we want to have a plan for any kind of contingencies that might occur. And um it's it's just good to get your wishes known, especially, you know, like simple things like a power of attorney. I have so many people that come in with these awful powers of attorney that they get online and they don't execute them properly, properly, and they think they have a POA and they actually don't because they didn't do what the instructions told them to do, much less the power of attorney itself is awful. It's very boilerplate and vague, and powers of attorney are getting harder and harder to use. Financial institutions um have gotten more picky and um they want to see specific powers in there. Um they don't want these vague um sort of you know generic, I guess, yeah, powers of attorney that you get online. And and we don't charge a lot for those. Um it's just uh it's a very important document and it's it's worth the little bit we charge for them. And also, um, you know, if you're not able to make your health care decisions, who do you want to do that, right? You need that to have a you need to have that in writing too. And a lot of people think that because they're married, their spouse can do those things for them. Oh, I'm I'm married, my husband can do those things for me. No, he can't, not legally. He can't sign documents for you, he can't close bank accounts that he's not on. Like he can't um, you know, go sell your car. He, you know, he's not authorized to sign your name unless he's your power of attorney. So um, you know, you you really need to kind of get past all these misconceptions, you know.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

And I and there's a lot of misconceptions there that people have about documents and like you said, getting them online and just file it yourself. And uh yeah, I I've fallen for that. I've I've been there, I understand that.

What Probate Really Is

SPEAKER_01 12:21

You know, and and probate is something else that a lot of people have a misconception on, you know, a word that people don't understand, but also scares them at the same time, I think. Um, you know, and and so can you walk us through what probate actually is and when avoiding it does and doesn't make sense?

SPEAKER_02 12:42

Okay. So when you do a will, you say in that will who you want to be in charge of administering your estate and who you want to get your stuff. But the but the will doesn't have any power to it until it's admitted to probate. We have to file it with the court in the county where you where you do where you live, where you die, where your property is located. Um, and if you have property in another state, we would have to open an estate here and an estate there in that state. We'd have to get another attorney to probate down there as well. So if you have property in more than one state, it's very important to avoid probate. Um, but it's still important to avoid it here too, just because of the cost involved in going through the probate administration process. Um, we have to pay a filing fee to the county clerk, we have to publish notice in the local newspaper that um we've opened an estate. And and the in the intention with that is it's a statutory requirement, actually, um, that we give uh creditors an opportunity to file a claim in the estate if they're owed money by the person who died. Um, so we have to file that in the local newspaper twice, two weeks apart, and then we can't close the estate until three months from that first publication of notice. And sometimes the family wants to jump right in and clean the house out, get it listed. You know, they're maybe trying to avoid facing, you know, mourning their parents' death sometimes. I think they want to try to stay busy, some of them. Um, others aren't like that at all. They want to push it to the back and not deal with it. But some just want to stay busy and not think about it. Um, and and probate, you you just can't do anything quickly. Yeah. So um people want to avoid that process, I think, and just make things easier for their kids or whoever they're making, you know, administrator in charge of the estate. They don't want it to be a difficult process or a stressful process for them. Right. So usually that's why they come in to do trust, is they just want to try to make it easier, make it less expensive, make it less time consuming for, you know, their kids.

Trust, Community Roots, And Faith

SPEAKER_01 14:52

And and your office is right here on Morgan Street in Martinsville, and you've been an active part of the chamber here. Why is being rooted in the community so important for you?

SPEAKER_02 15:06

Well, I think it's important to be involved in um local charities, and you know, I'm active in my church. I just think it's so important for people to um have somebody in the community that they feel like they can trust because they live in the community, to have the same values maybe that you have. Um, and you know, um I'm married, I have a family here, I have kids that go to school here. Um, and I just feel like that makes me someone that they feel like they can trust more, you know, than getting in the car and driving to Indianapolis and talking to someone that doesn't really know how they live, you know, what their values are, that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

So your office does a great job making people feel comfortable there, I can tell you that.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Good. I'm glad to hear that. Um I share my faith with people a lot and they share their faith with me. And um, it's it's very important, I think. Um, and that makes them feel pretty comfortable too. Um, that I'm a Christian and that I go to a location and and um, you know, I I just um I try not to push it on anybody, but I I do like to, you know, say tell people I'll pray for them. And and they always say, I'll pray for you too, you know, and and that's very comforting to them, and it's very comforting to me. So um I think that helps a lot too.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

And I think it's for me, I like to work with people who have Christian values as myself and our family. So I think that's important. And I think people want to know that, right? I mean, we are uh the community here is still a very God-fearing community, so I think that's a perfect fit.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Sure. I had a client one time I I went, this was years ago, his wife was at a nursing home in Salem, Indiana, and I was meeting them him there at the nursing home. And before I even got sat down, he said, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior? And I said, Yes, sir, I have. And he said, Okay, you can sit down.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

That's a good requirement to have, I think. Yes. I thought that was great.

How To Reach The Office

SPEAKER_01 17:18

Before we wrap things up, uh, you know, for the person that's listening uh now who needs to get their affairs in order or who are worried about a mom or a dad and a dad and isn't quite sure where to start, what's the easiest way for them to reach your office and what should they expect from that first conversation?

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Um, well, the best way to get an appointment is to call the office. Um the number is 765-343-1900. And a sweet gal named Cheyenne will probably be answering the phone. And she'll get you on my calendar. And it might take a couple weeks to get you in here, but we'll get you in here and we'll get your stuff done quickly. We make an appointment for you before you leave to come back and sign your documents or have a follow-up appointment. We don't want you to get lost in the shuffle, so we try to make sure we keep you on the calendar so that you don't you don't feel like you're being ignored or you know your work's not getting accomplished. And we have a website too, um blackmanelderlaw.com, and and you can reach out on there as well. Um, and then um we have emails. Uh, mine's Lisa at Blackman Elderlaw. Um, my paralegal is Mandy at Elder Blackman Elder Law. So you can reach out to us that way as well.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

And I know Cheyenne's a sweet girl. She's called me a couple of times and really enjoyed the quick conversation. She's always nice when you're there.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

She's very kind and and Mandy is too. I don't know if you've got to talk to her yet, but she's my paralegal, and she's they're both very good girls, and um, I'm so blessed to have them.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

I I think I think you are. They're both top notch. I'll tell you that. I've I've been impressed with them.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Good, good.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

You know, so well, I want to tell you, I want to say thank you for the work you do for the families in our community and for sharing time with us today. Sure. Um, this is something that I think is most important and really overlooked a lot by families and people. And it's a lot of it's because I think they're unsure. Right. And uh the other thing is uh such as me, I thought I was invincible till about age 40, and then I realized I wasn't. Right, right. That wasn't good. Sure. But uh, you know, they can reach you at blackman outerlaw.com and your phone number is 765-343-1900. Yes, and you're right down there uh at 369 East Morgan Street, so very close. Uh and you got a great big parking lot now there. So yeah, right next right next to the excellent day.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

So you can get a good meal and then come over and see me.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

That's there you

Final Takeaways And Listener Requests

SPEAKER_01 19:53

go. Well, that's gonna do it for our episode today and Good Neighbors Podcasts. Uh Lisa, thank you for being part of it. You're welcome. My pleasure. Great. And if this is something that you enjoyed, uh, folks, I ask you that you share it uh with your friends and family. And I think this is a good one to to really look into because I think Lisa brings a lot of value to it. And and and you can't, I you know, I you don't know what your health is going to do. Mine took a big turn uh health-wise when I was 39 that never expected. So you just don't know. So I think it's a good idea to get in touch with Lisa and in her office there. So uh until next time, everybody, do me a favor, be a good neighbor, Morgan County, and we'll see you soon. Thank you. Uh-huh. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast. Nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show. Go to gnpmorgancounty.com. That's gmpmorgancounty.com or call 317 743 2050. All right.