Long Island Power of Attorney and Health Care Directives Lawyer 

An experienced elder law attorney will ensure that the power of attorney includes authority to allow the agent to assist with any planning that may be needed to qualify and maintain long-term care Medicaid eligibility, including the preservation of your assets and the uninterrupted financial care of your family members. You do not want to be in a situation where you are left unprepared.

The individual you name is your Agent, and you are the Principal. Your agent can be granted the authority to handle legal and financial affairs on your behalf, including but not limited to:

• Writing checks to pay your bills, including your mortgage, rent, insurance payments, utilities, college tuition, etc.
• Dealing with your insurance company on your behalf
• Obtaining and managing benefits from government programs
• Managing health care billing and payment matters
• Ensuring that your taxes are paid and dealing with all tax matters
• Managing your retirement benefits
• Protecting your assets from the high cost of long-term care in the event of incapacity

If you experienced a sudden illness or an unexpected accident that left you unable to make your own decisions, and you did not have a Power of Attorney, your loved ones would be very limited in their legal or financial ability to help you. Further, any of your loved ones who were relying on you for financial support could suffer as well.

It is awful when a family is confronted with not only the torment of their loved one’s incapacity and emotional, physical, and psychological issues that come with it but further suffers the stress of not having the right documents to take care of legal and financial matters on behalf of their loved one.

Your chosen Agent must be at least 18 years old, and able to fully understand what the Power of Attorney entails. You can appoint more than one Agent to handle your affairs and can specify whether the Agents must work jointly or may act independently of each other.

You may also name a “successor” Agent to act in the event the first agent becomes incapacitated, declines to serve, resigns, dies, or is not qualified to serve. The Agent you name is supposed to act according to your instructions, or, in the absence of instructions, in your best interests. As long as you have the capacity to do so, a Power of Attorney can be revoked at any time. Your Power of Attorney ends upon your death—your Agent is only authorized to act on your behalf while you are alive.

In the event there is no power of attorney, an incapacitated person’s loved ones may petition the court for guardianship. This process can be costly, lengthy, and emotionally taxing. Further, the proceeding could be contested, which means the person who you would have wanted to be appointed guardian, may not be the one the court ultimately decides to appoint. Having a power of attorney in place is protection for you and your family.

Is There a Difference Between a Power of Attorney and a Durable Power of Attorney?

The word “durable” before power of attorney means that the authority granted in a power of attorney will continue even if and when the principal no longer has mental capacity. With the nondurable power of attorney, authority ceases if the principal becomes incapacitated.

A power of attorney is a legal document that allows one person (known as the “principal”) to appoint another person (known as the “agent”) to act on his or her behalf for financial and legal matters. New York State has a statutory form that governs the format and requirements of a power of attorney form, which includes a list of actions that the agent can take on behalf of the principal, such as finance, business, tax, insurance, and real estate matters.

A nondurable power of attorney may be beneficial for business transactions, or for convenience purposes, but when it comes to your estate planning, it is almost always the goal to have a “durable” power of attorney. A power of attorney that is done in the context of estate planning is usually done to protect the principal and ensure that if the principal became incapacitated, someone that the principal trusts would be legally able to step into his or her shoes (figuratively) and manage the principal’s legal and financial affairs.

Do I Need a Lawyer to Create a Power of Attorney in NY?

If you want to make sure that your agent will have the legal authority to fully assist you with your legal and financial matters in the event you lose mental capacity, due to illness, accident, or old age, it is strongly recommended to seek the assistance of an elder law attorney to prepare your power of attorney. When someone becomes incapacitated, in addition to day-to-day transactions, there are often many long-term care issues that surface, which may involve where the principal should reside, how he or she should be cared for, and how payment should be arranged.

An elder law attorney is familiar with these types of issues and the planning necessary, so he or she will include the authority necessary for the agent to handle these types of transactions. While the statutory power of attorney that you can download online or purchase from a legal stationery store may be sufficient for regular transactions, it will not include many types of authority that may become necessary to protect the principal’s assets or handle Medicaid planning on the principal’s behalf. Further, the form can be confusing and, if not initialed, signed, notarized, and witnessed in the right manner, can invalidate the form.

These are not issues you would want to find out when you are ready to use it, which will be too late at that point to fix (because the principal will be incapacitated and won’t be able to sign a new power of attorney).

Is the power of attorney that I downloaded from the Internet good?

First, let’s assume you downloaded the current statutory form for New York State, initialed it in all the right places, and had your signature properly notarized and witnessed.

A properly executed statutory power of attorney would allow the agent you designate to perform transactions on your behalf, including paying your bills, dealing with your insurance, or even selling your real estate. But the only way your agent can set up a trust on your behalf to protect your assets in the event Medicaid planning is needed, is for the power of attorney to grant additional specific authority. While a basic statutory power of attorney can be helpful if someone is on vacation and needs an agent to step in to help with a single transaction or even pay bills in the event of illness, the most important time that a power of attorney is needed is in the event of incapacity.

Therefore, it is so important that a power of attorney grants authority that would allow for long term care planning, which goes hand in hand with someone that becomes incapacitated. It is highly recommended to have an elder law attorney prepare your power of attorney to include broad and extensive provisions that relate to all possible needs that may arise in the context of long term care and especially Medicaid.

Case Study: Lisa properly signed a New York State Statutory Durable Power of Attorney designating her son David as the agent. Several years later, in April 2025, Lisa needed Medicaid home care services. Her monthly income, which includes her social security income and pension, is $4,300, which she uses to cover her monthly expenses.In 2025, Medicaid in New York State permits a home care applicant to retain $1,799.75 of income per month, (plus certain insurance premiums and medical expenses). According to the New York State Medicaid rules, the surplus must be paid to Medicaid as a “co-pay” UNLESS the applicant joins a pooled income trust and deposits the surplus amount to the pooled income trust. Depositing the surplus into a pooled income trust will allow the applicant to preserve her income and have it available to pay her expenses.

The problem is that Lisa lacks mental capacity, and her power of attorney does not grant authority to David, to join a pooled income trust. The result is that David can apply for Medicaid on Lisa’s behalf, but must pay Medicaid the surplus “co-pay.” Unfortunately, David cannot preserve Lisa’s surplus income for her own use because he lacks the authority to join the pooled income trust on her behalf. Lisa will lose thousands of dollars each month that she could have preserved had she had a power of attorney prepared by an elder law attorney. (*Note: David can bring a guardianship proceeding and ask the court’s permission to join a pooled income trust, but that will take months and significant financial expense.)