BOOKS AND VIDEOS AVAILABLE

• The Book: The Five Minute Lawyer's Guide to Estate Planning -- Price $4.50
  Be an educated consumer of legal services. It's penny wise by dollar foolish to do estate planning based only on a book. You need legal advice. What you don't need, however, is to pay your lawyer to teach you the law. This Guide to Estate Planning does this for you. It clearly explains your options in planning your estate.

  Guide to Estate Planning is not a how-to book. Estate planning is too complicated to reduce to a few forms you fill out yourself. This book is more like a cram course in those issues involved in estate planning -- a subject that can be confusing and complicated but also very important to you and your family. Legal Counsel for the Elderly receives many calls about estate planning. In response to the widespread need to have accurate information about this important subject, LCE is distributing Guide to Estate Planning. We reviewed a number of books and believe this is one of the best. This jargon free book was written by attorney Michael Allan Cane and published by Dell Publishing.

• The Book: Organizing Your Future: A Guide to Decisionmaking in Your Later Years -- Price is $12.95
  If you become incapacitated, who would handle your money? Who will decide what type of medical treatment you will or will not have? With proper planning, the answer should be YOU! Organizing Your Future tells you how.

  This book, clearly describes in Q&A format the legal tools available to you to exercise control over major life decisions should you become incapacitated. Topics include joint ownership, powers of attorney, trusts, wills, advance directives, elder abuse, represenative payees, guardianships, conservatorships, and financing long-term care under Medicare, Medicaid and long-term care insurance. Explains how to find a qualified elderlaw attorney and includes sample forms.

• The Book: Planning for Incapacity -- Price $5.00
  These step-by-step guides to advance directives contain all you need to make sure your health care wishes are known. Each guide contains 1) living will and health care power of attorney forms that comply with your state's laws and practices; 2) easy to follow instruction on preparing and individualizing the forms; 3) sensitive discussion of commonly expressed concerns about advance directives.

  Advance directives are important tools in making certain your health care wishes are carried out. Sample wording to insert in the advance directive forms, how to talk to your doctor and family about your medical wishes, a glossary of medical and legal terms, local and national resources and much more makePlannning for Incapacity a useful and complete guide to your medical decisionmaking. The kit also includes a wallet card for you to carry so medical personnel will know that you have an advance directive and how to get in touch with your health care agent.

• The Book: Finding Legal Help: An Older Person's Guide -- Price $2.00
  This new booklet illuminates the way through the maze of knowing when you need a lawyer, and how to find a good one. It also spells out alternatives to hiring a lawyer, including the options of representating yourself or locating free or low-cost legal representation.

  Finding Legal Help covers how to select the right lawyer for your problem, how to negotiate a fee, and what to expect after you have hired your lawyer. With advice useful to legal consumers of all ages, the book also explains what is "elderlaw" and how to find an attorney who specializes in the legal issues of concern of older persons.

• The Video: It's Your Right: Legal Tips for Home Repair Fraud -- Price $15.00
  This 16-minute video alerts consumers to the warning signs of a home repair scam and provides a checklist to guard against fraudulent contractors.

  The video vividly protrays a home repair scam artist in action. It opens on a glib-talking salesman approaching an older woman who lives alone. He leads her down the scam path by creating and then building on her fear that her home is unsafe, that it needs immediate repairs that he can provide if she signs a contract right now. As the homeowner and the salesman talk, a narrator periodically explains how consumers can recognize what is happening and how to avoid it. The straightforward, easy-to-follow video draws a picture for the viewer on what to do and what not to do with warning signs, checklists, and legal tips.

• The Video: Self-Help for Public Benefits -- Price is $15.00
  Do you know about Supplemental Security Income? Do you know how to apply for federal disability benefits? What should you do if you get an overpayment notice from the Social Security Administration? What is a Qualified Medicare Beneficiary? This 22-minute video helps to let people know about their eligibility for public benefits.

  Legal Counsel for the Elderly has produced this video to help people understand what public benefits they may be eligible to receive. This informative video begins by offering general tips for record-keeping in preparation for applying for benefits. Following this introduction, four vignettes describe the eligibility requirements and procedures for dealing with Supplemental Security Income, Qualified Medicare Beneficiary and disability benefits, as well as Social Security overpayments.

• The Video: What Do I Do Now? Tips for Guardians --- Price is $15.00
  Legal Counsel for the Elderly has produced this short video to acquaint newly appointed guardians to some of their responsibilities.

  Being appointed the legal guardian for a person the courts have found to be incapacitated is serious responsibility. This video protrays a new guardian working with a mentor, the bank, the area agency on aging, a doctor and other service providers while learning how to take care of her ward.

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