A CELA or Certified Elder Law Attorney designation is the Gold Standard for Attorneys as it relates to any type of Estate Planning or Elder Law.

CELA and Financial Advisor Chris berry explain what is a Certified Elder Law Attorney in this episode of Daily Wisdom.

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Episode Transcript

Certified Law Attorney Versus Common Estate Planning Attorney

Hi there, Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group. Today, we’re going to talk about why you may want a certified elder law attorney to help you with your estate planning needs. While you might need a CELA to help you with your estate planning needs. And if you like this information, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel and comment down below, and turn on notifications too so you can be notified when we post new videos, which is about daily.

Christopher Berry is a leading a state attorney and advisor in the area of retirement and legacy planning. He has been featured in publications such as Forbes, Kiplinger’s, Crain’s Detroit, and more. He’s the host of the weekly radio show and podcast, The Chris Berry Show. He’s a national thought leader as it relates to retirement and legacy planning, and has authored of the Amazon best selling book, the caregiver’s legal guide.

So what is a certified elder law attorney, versus just your common estate planning attorney? And first we really need to clarify, what is elder law? So most people are familiar with estate planning. Estate planning is planning for what happens when you pass away. Versus elder law, which is planning for what happens if you don’t pass away, you continue to age and you face all the issues that go along with aging. A big part of that is planning for long-term care. So while an estate planning attorney will sit down with you and make sure that your stuff avoids probate and goes outright to the people you’ve named, that’s pretty basic. What’s more complicated is planning for longterm care. Planning for Medicaid, planning for veteran’s benefits, planning for longterm care costs, helping to navigate that long-term care journey, making sure your money lasts as long as you do.

So if estate plan is planning for death, elder law is planning for life. And that’s really, really important because most people, once you pass away, it’s pretty straightforward. As long as you set things up properly, you avoid probate stuff goes where it’s supposed to go. What’s more complicated is making sure all that money that you’ve worked so hard for lasts at least as long as you do. So as an elder law attorney, we’re looking at, “Okay, what is your social security? What is your pension? How are we going to make sure your assets, if we have to draw down your assets, which assets should we draw down first? Should we look at gifting strategies? How do Medicaid rules work with veterans benefits, work with IRS rules?”

Gold Standard

So think of estate planning as this little piece of the puzzle, elder law is a lot bigger. It encompasses estate planning and does a lot more. And also elder law, it’s almost a code name for asset protection. So it’s not like when we’re elder law attorneys, we’re just working with seniors. We’re working with anyone that’s interested in asset protection. So while your typical estate planning attorney put together a will and trust package to avoid probate, very basic, almost anyone can do that. And we can do that too, but as a certified elder law attorney, we’re talking about asset protection, asset protection for your kids, protecting them for their lifetime from divorces, creditors, bankruptcies. Asset protection, even more important for you. Protecting you from creditors lawsuits and the devastating cost of long-term care. So again, if state planning is planning for death, elder law is planning for life.

Now, what is a certified elder law attorney? Well, here’s the thing with understanding how do you judge an attorney? How do you judge legal planning? How do you judge financial planning? Working with a professional or a service provider, it’s different than buying a car. With a car it’s something that’s tangible. You can kick the tires, you can take it for a test drive. How do you know or trust the person that you’re getting legal advice from, financial advice, tax advice? Well, this is where a certified elder law attorney, that designation becomes so very important. With that CELA designation, certified elder law attorney designation, it’s really the gold standard for attorneys as it relates to any type of estate planning or elder law. Because guess what. Anyone could say they focus on or specialize in certain areas. Anyone can put up a website to say that, “I do elder law,” or, “I do estate planning.” I’ve seen websites that say, “I focus on elder law, estate planning, personal injury law, social security, disability, landlord-tenant rights, employee-employer rights, criminal defense, family law, child custody. You can’t specialize in that many areas. It just doesn’t make sense.

So as the elder law attorneys, what we focus on is basically planning for retirement, planning for continuing to age and planning for what happens if you pass away. Incorporating all of the tax rules, the financial rules, the legal rules, gifting rules, Medicaid, long-term care rules to help people really plan for what I call the second half of life. Now, as a certified elder law attorney, I can say I do all that, but the CELA designation is really the gold standard as it relates to estate planning and elder law, where we have to be peer reviewed, meaning other attorneys have to sign off that we know what we’re talking about. That we’ve contributed to that area of law. From there, we have to prove that we have a certain amount of education. And it breaks elder law up into 12 different areas, so if you thought elder law was a niche, understand that elder law is further broken into 12 different niche areas, one of those being estate planning.

CELA Designation

And then we have the opportunity sit down and take a six hour exam. And guess what? As an attorney, as a fiduciary financial advisor, with all the exams I’ve had to pass, I didn’t want to take any more exams. I’m all tested out. I’ve had enough, but I chose to sit down and take that six hour exam, and I passed. And the last statistic I heard, don’t quote me on this, is I think only about 15% of the attorneys that sit down and take the exam, actually pass it. So it’s a hard test. And understand right now, I think in Michigan, there’s maybe 18 of us certified elder law attorneys. And of those, there’s only a handful that also do financial and tax planning. Less than five, I would say. And then across the nation, there’s maybe 500 certified elder law attorneys in the nation. And so you can go to a website, nationalelderlawfoundation.org, nelf.org. And it has a list of certified elder law attorneys.

So understand that that CELA designation, when you see that after an attorney’s name, understand that they’re really experts in this area, where they have to be peer reviewed, have to have a certain amount of education. And then most importantly, sit down and take a six hour exam that as an attorney who has to take a Bar exam, you never want to take another exam ever again in your life. And when people ask me for a referral for someone to help them with their legal planning, I’m always recommending that they look for a certified elder law attorney in their state. And if you need assistance finding one in your state, in a state that we’re not working, just reach out to us and we’d be happy to help you.

So again, if you’re considering putting together a legal structure or legal plan, I do recommend that you work with a certified elder law attorney. Again, any attorney can say they focus on this, but they need to be certified through the American Bar Association, and the National Elder Law Foundation, National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys have all come together to put together the certification that’s been around since 1993. So this isn’t something new, but if you’re working with a CELA you know that they’re focused not just on what happens when you die, but focused on life. Making sure your money lasts as long as you do. And I think that’s important. That’s why I became a certified elder law attorney.

So if you thought this was helpful, please make sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel, comment down below. Thank you so much. This has been Chris Berry with Castle Wealth Group.

Castle Wealth Group has clients across the nation and helps families plan, protect, and preserve what is important, by creating a retirement legacy blueprint.