Labor Law Talk

COPD is short for Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. This disease is difficult for a sufferer to manage. Sufferers often find they are unable to remain employed because of this medical condition. The Social Security Disability system (SSI and SSDI) are in place to help those that become disabled manage to have a source of income and medical treatment. The challenge for a COPD disability case is proving you are disabled under the strict regulations of Social Security Disability.

Before a person with Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease seeks Social Security assistance, it is important that this person has worked with a doctor to properly treat and document this condition. Your health comes first, ensuring you are seeking medical attention on a regular and recommended basis is critical to a Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease sufferer. While at your doctor’s office there are some things you can do to help better present a SSI Disability or SSDI benefits case.

Documenting a Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Disability Impairment:

Too often when a person is not awarded Social Security Disability benefits it is not because the person is not disabled. Too often a legitimate disabled people are not awarded SSI Disability or SSDI benefits because they were unable to present the Social Security Administration (SSA) with sufficient evidence and documentation to prove their disability. Presenting the SSA with proper disability documentation starts with having the right medical evidence. Getting the right medical evidence starts with having good doctor’s notes.

Doctor’s Notes and Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Documentation:

As previously mentioned, the most important thing for a COPD suffer to do is visit a doctor regularly. As an extension of this advice, it is also important that at these doctor visits to ensure you doctor is properly documenting your condition. For the doctor’s notes to be of use to help your COPD disability case they need to be in a form that is legible to a person at the Social Security Administration that would be reviewing the notes as evidence. It might seem basic, but if the handwriting cannot be read, then the notes as evidence may be of little use. Your COPD disability attorney may recommend having these notes transcribed if needed.

A good set of legible doctor’s notes does not provide a lot of value to the SSA if the content of the notes does not help document your condition. It is important you are very detailed and specific with your doctor when describing your symptoms. Make sure your doctor is writing down your symptoms in your file. For example, if you are suffering from shortness of breath you want to describe it to your doctor. Tell your doctor where you are when it happens and what you are doing when it happens. Some examples are:

- Walking across a room

- Carrying a bag of groceries

- Standing for long periods of time (how long until you experience shortness of breathe?)

Do you have chest pain? If you do, make sure you are telling your doctor and that he is recording it. How long to you need to rest to recover from the pain? This will help your doctor provide a treatment provide for your condition and will also help strengthen your disability benefits case.

Documenting your symptoms is so critical. Saying to the Social Security Administration that you have “shortness of breath” is not as significant as presenting records from your doctor that you have shortness of breath when you stand for over 15 minutes at a time and shortness of breathe can be triggered by walking across a room.

COPD Disability Lawyer and Your Social Security Disability Benefits Claim:

A Social Security Disability lawyer can be a great resource with your Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease benefits claim. Experienced Social Security lawyers can help with Cardiac Obstructive Pulmonary Disease sufferers. A COPD disability lawyer will work with you to ensure your disability benefits claim provides the right documentation of your medical condition. These lawyers can help a person that needs to apply for disability and has had a case rejected and need to appeal for benefits.

When you go to open a bank account or take title to real estate, people often suggest joint tenancy as a simple solution which avoids probate.

What is joint tenancy?

Joint tenancy is the co-ownership of property during the lives of two or more joint tenants. Upon the death of one of the joint tenants, the remaining joint tenant(s) immediately succeed to the ownership of the property. If there is only one surviving joint tenant, he or she becomes the sole owner, thus avoiding the probate process.

What is tenancy-in-common?

Tenancy-in-common is also the co-ownership of property. However, unlike joint tenancy, upon the death of a one of the tenants in common, the other tenants in common do not succeed to the deceased tenant’s interest.

What are the risks of joint tenancy?

Simply adding someone to title as a joint tenant in realty is a gift that could trigger a gift tax. More importantly, the creditors of the joint tenants can go after the property. Let’s look at an example for illustration:
Mom adds son as a joint tenant on their vacation home. She trusts her son completely. However, her son has an accident which causes injuries. The injured party is able to collect against the son’s half of the home. Mom who was home watching TV when the accident occurred has lost half her home’s value.

The addition of a joint tenant may have other unintended consequences. When Mom added son to the title, she made a gift which may make her ineligible for Medicaid to pay for her nursing home care for a substantial period of time.

A parent will often add one of his or her children as joint tenant to a bank accounts in order to give the child access to the account in the event of the parent’s disability. By adding the child as joint tenant there is danger that a child will make unauthorized withdrawals from the account. Furthermore, title to the bank account will vest with the joint tenant child after the death of the parent, which may be contrary to how the parent wishes his or her estate to be divided at death.

Rather than face these and other unintended consequences, it is often best to avoid joint tenancy and form a revocable trust to avoid probate. A revocable trust is a simple vehicle which holds title to assets for you. A revocable trust designates how the assets are to be distributed at death and provides emergency access to funds in the event of disability, but it protects the assets from the creditors of beneficiaries and prevents unauthorized withdrawals during lifetime. At your death, the revocable trust continues on. Thus, there is no need for a probate court to be involved to re-title the assets which are owned by the revocable trust.

A revocable trust is a simple, straight-forward method of avoiding probate and the risks of joint ownership. Before titling anything in joint tenancy, consult a qualified estate planning attorney who knows the risks of joint tenancy and the advantages of revocable trusts.