Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Beneficiary Designations: Simple but Not Always Effective

Excerpt from: Estate Planning (click for full article)

 

Many people use beneficiary designations, and for good reason. Some significant assets, including life insurance policies, IRAs, retirement plans and even bank accounts, allow you to name a beneficiary. When you die, these assets are designed to be paid directly to the individuals you have named as beneficiary.

But that is not always what happens. For example:

• If your beneficiary is incapacitated when you die, the court will probably have to take control of the funds. That’s because most life insurance companies and other financial institutions will not knowingly pay to an incompetent person; they may insist on court supervision.
• If you name a minor as a beneficiary, you are probably setting up a court guardianship for the child. Life insurance companies and other financial institutions will not knowingly pay these funds directly to a minor, nor will they pay to another person for the child, not even to a parent. They do not want the potential liability and will usually require proof of a court-supervised guardianship.

Consumer Organizations Petition the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to Take Action on Adult Portable Bed Rails

Excerpt from: Consumer Federation of America (click for full article)

 

Consumer Federation of America (CFA), the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care (Consumer Voice), bed rail activist Gloria Black, and 60 other organizationsi filed a petition with the U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) requesting a ban of adult portable bed rails or mandatory standards if a ban is not accepted. The groups are also asking CPSC to recall dangerous bed rails and refund consumers. For the purpose of the petition, portable bed rails are considered to be those that are sold and marketed directly to the public, and intended to be used with a home-style bed. This would include those marketed on the Internet, in department stores and other retail outlets, directly by manufacturers, and also in medical supply stores.

CPSC has been aware of deaths and injuries involving bed rails since 1985. In an October 11, 2012 report from CPSC, “Adult Portable Bed Rail-Related Deaths, Injuries, and Potential Injuries: January 2003 to September 2012,” CPSC documented that in that nine year period there were an estimated 36,900 visits to hospital emergency wards due to incidents related to both portable and non-portable bed rails. CPSC also reported 155 portable bed rail deaths for that same time period. These statistics represent only a fraction of the actual number of alleged bed rail related deaths. According to CPSC’s 2012 report, these deaths and injuries most commonly occur when the victim is “caught, stuck, wedged, or trapped between the mattress/bed and the bed rail, between bed rail bars, between a commode and rail, between the floor and rail, or between the headboard and rail.”

NDY President Diane Coleman Submits Comments on Futile Care Policies to National Council on Disability

Excerpt from: Not Dead Yet (click for full article)

 

The National Council on Disability (NCD) “is an independent federal agency charged with advising the President, Congress, and other federal agencies regarding policies, programs, practices, and procedures that affect people with disabilities. NCD is comprised of a team of fifteen Presidential appointees , an Executive Director appointed by the Chairman, and eleven, full-time professional staff.” (Read more about NCD at http://www.ncd.gov/about)

Not Dead Yet has worked with NCD in the past, most notably on their position paper and update on assisted suicide.

Periodically, NCD has “comment opportunities” for stakeholders in the disability community.  You can attend and comment in person or by phone.  There is a list of meeting and events here.

Sprinting Toward the End

Excerpt from: New York Times (click for full article)

 

One begins to wonder: Has it become obligatory for people with terminal illnesses to work like dogs during their final months or years? Is this how we define a “good death” now? Is one a slacker to perform otherwise? Is this kind of determination healthy for sick people? Is it healthy for anyone?

Among the projects Ms. Ephron was working on at the time of her death was “Lucky Guy,” a play that’s now on Broadway in a production starring Tom Hanks. It’s about the life of the former Daily News columnist Mike McAlary, who won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking the biggest story of his career — the 1997 Abner Louima police-brutality scandal — while sick with cancer. Ms. Ephron’s message: Go out doing what you love.

“It’s easy to be dismissive about this kind of Type A overdrive, but it’s a mistake, I think, to criticize it,” says Shelly Kagan, the author of “Death” and a professor of philosophy at Yale. “We should consider ourselves fortunate if we find our work so satisfying and meaningful, and if we can make a contribution until the end.”

Audrie Pott suicide: Grim picture of Saratoga teen's final online cries of despair

Excerpt from: The Oakland Press (click for full article)

Patti's comment:This is so very heartbreaking. Girls be careful out there!

 

A few days after Audrie Pott killed herself, while her baffled parents were grieving and students across the Saratoga High School campus wore her favorite color, teal, in her memory, a couple of the 15-year-old girl's closest friends came to Audrie's mother and delivered a shocking message: "There is more to this than you know."

Sheila Pott rushed to check her daughter's cellphone, emails, texts and Facebook page. And then she found the haunting words of her beautiful, once-bubbly daughter: "These guys did (expletive) to me while I was sleeping," read one message. "This is the worst day of my life," read another.

Not only had she been sexually assaulted after drinking too much at a house party, her family's lawyers say, but pictures of her naked during the attack were being shared online.

 

VA addressing gravesite issues that haunted national cemetery system

Excerpt from: The Washington Post (click for full article)

 

The National Cemetery Administration is making progress digging its way out of trouble from a 2011 internal investigation that found 15 sets of remains in the wrong spots and scores of mismarked, unmarked and sunken headstones, according to agency watchdogs.

Veterans Affairs Assistant Inspector General Linda A. Halliday testified before a House subcommittee on Wednesday that the NCA revised its review methods and caught onto more than 100 mistakes it had missed during its initial examination of the nationwide cemetery system.

Evidence of system-wide problems surfaced in 2011 after workers tested new maps at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, where investigators found 47 markers offset by one space from their correct spots.The mistakes prompted VA undersecretary Steve L. Muro to apologize to affected families.

A 2012 inspector general’s audit found that VA officials “did not provide adequate time and resources” for certifying gravesite accuracy during a subsequent review and that cemetery directors felt overwhelmed by pressure to meet the agency’s deadline.

Head-to-Toe Risks for Falls

Excerpt from: The Generation Above Me (click for full article)

 

People will mention that a parent or grandparent has starting falling with frequency.  The cause for such falls can be manifold.  The older adult should see a professional for an assessment since the cause might be difficult for the individual or the caregiver to discern. If the person has fallen twice in six months, it's a problem that needs professional intervention.  

The CDC reports multiple statistics about falls, including this: "Among older adults (those 65 or older), falls are the leading cause of injury death. They are also the most common cause of nonfatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma" (emphasis added).  One of the most effective means of fall prevention is activity, including strength-bearing exercises that help the muscles, joints, and bones work properly. However, falls can have causes that cannot be addressed through a fitness regime.

Google Lets Users Plan ‘Digital Afterlife’ By Naming Heirs

Excerpt from: Wall Street Journal (click for full article)

 

Google on Wednesday became one of the first major Internet companies to put control of data after death directly into the hands of its users.

The Internet giant unveiled a dashboard for users of its Gmail, Google+, cloud storage Drive, Picasa albums, YouTube and other services that lets people identify what they’d like to happen to their data after they pass away or become inactive for an extended period of time. You can choose to delete some or all of the data after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity, or pass data from the accounts along to one or more other people.

Call them your Google heirs. Google, for the record, calls the offering its “Inactive Account Manager.”

Merton Simpson: Illiquid Estate, Will Contest Result in Lack of Cash for Burial Costs

Excerpt from: Wealth Strategies Journal 2.0 (click for full article)

 

Artist and art collector Merton Simpson's funeral took place on a Friday, but three days later his body remained above ground because the estate lacked funds to pay for a burial.  Although Simpson's estate contained significant assets, the wealth was overwhelmingly tied up in pieces of art.  The illiquid nature of these assets, combined with a controversy surrounding the will and the management of the estate, has resulted in lack of cash required to cover burial expenses.

For more, see  Patricia Cohen, "Art Worth Millions, Yet No Cash for Burial," New York Times (March 25, 2013).

Amanda Baggs, the Pressure To Die, and the Case Against Assisted Suicide

Excerpt from: Disability and Representation (click for full article)

 

What happens to people who don’t have the support that Amanda has? What happens to people who are sick, and in pain, and alone, and don’t have a fierce advocate? What happens to people who aren’t well known in the disability community? What happens to people who do not realize that they have worth, who do not realize that they have the right the right to live? What happens to people lying in hospital beds, uncared for, feeling that their lives means nothing because of all of the genteel and not-so-genteel ways in which that idea is communicated? How many people feel that they are simply a waste of space because they’re being pressured to choose the alternative of death?

In this kind of environment, no free choice is possible. And I think that the proponents of assisted suicide know that. I really do. In fact, I think that the very reason that people put assisted suicide on the table at all is that they know the kind of treatment in store for them if they become ill or disabled. It’s not really illness or disability they fear, because it’s entirely possible to live a very good life with illness and disability in it. What people fear most is being treated as though they have no dignity, as though they have no worth, as though their lives matter not at all. This is the deepest fear: to not matter. Even pain and death pale in the face of it.

I think that many people feel that they would rather die than to be treated as though they are worthless. And so they put forward legislation that will give them a way out. But they don’t realize that we can fight the idea that it’s better to be dead than ill or disabled — that we can react to it with outrage, and that we can create communities of support so that none of us ends up with our worst fears realized.