Law Office of Donald D. Vanarelli Blog

God Bless You and Your Family. God Bless Our Troops. God Bless America. May You Have a Joyous New Year.

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1. Claims for Social Security Disability (SSD) benefits, or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) claims based on disability, usually take a long time to process. The decision on an initial claim will usually take months. If you get denied on your initial claim, and you usually will, the next step in the appeals process, called a [...]

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About one in five U.S. residents – 19% – reported some level of disability, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released recently.  Among those disabled Amercians, 35 million, or 12% of the population, were classified as having a severe disability. Some of the important findings in the U.S. Census Bureau report follow: A wide [...]

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More senior citizens and disabled homeowners now are eligible to  receive property tax rebates, thanks to a bill signed by Governor Jon S. Corzine on December 18th.  The bill (A-3460), which was signed at the Bergen County borough’s activity center, increased the income eligibility limit for senior and disabled homeowners. Under the bill, income eligibility [...]

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In a recent study, “Three Phases of Retirement and Planning for the Unexpected,” the Society Of Actuaries (SOA) identified three stages of retirement and offered advice on how to prepare for each stage of retirement. The SOA said that retirement is often depicted as life on the golf course, holidays with the grandchildren, and traveling [...]

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Recently, some of the blogs I read regularly have begun listing blogging goals for 2009. For example, see this post on Daily Blog Tips. For some blogs, the listing of blogging goals seems to have become an annual event. In fact, several bloggers, after listing their goals for the upcoming year, have looked back to [...]

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The next time you must defend the decision either 1) to provide help to families by accelerating eligibility for public benefits based on need, like nursing home Medicaid, or 2) to engage in estate planning to protect yourself and your family from the catastrophic costs of nursing home care, I suggest that you confront the [...]

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Below is compilation of Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other figures for 2009 that are of interest to the elderly, the disabled and their families. Source: ElderLawAnswers.com Medicaid Spousal Impoverishment Figures for 2009 – effective January 1, 2009 In 2009, the spouse of a Medicaid recipient living in a nursing home (called the “community spouse”) [...]

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To each of you and to your families, I wish you a rejuvenating, fulfilling, awe-inspiring, enlightening, and fun-filled holiday, with plenty of good eatin’ too, whether that holiday is Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanza, Festivus (The Holiday for the Rest of Us) or any other winter holiday that you celebrate! מּוּלּשׁ (peace)   ☼ (joy)    ♥ (love) ♫♪  ♫♪♫♪ [...]

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On December 16, 2008, I spoke at the 2008 “Elder Law College”, held at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, NJ. I was the “Professor”, for one day, of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income Law. This is how the NJ Institute of Continuing Legal Education described the seminar: 2008 ELDER LAW COLLEGE: [...]

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