How do elderly people or their families pay for nursing home care?

How can older people preserve their assets when they move into a nursing home?

The answers to those questions are different for everybody in those situations and can be found in the “Elder Law: If I Had Only Known” lifelong learning class offered by Butler County Community College.

Laurel Hartshorn, an attorney with an office in Saxonburg who has been teaching the class for many years, will provide the answers.

“Each situation is different. I stress that in my class,” Hartshorn said.

The next session of the two-day, two-hour class is Oct. 17 and 24 at the main campus in Butler Township.

BC3 hosts the popular class twice a year and 15 to 30 people enroll for each session.

The class revolves around three subjects — wills, living wills and powers of attorney — but Hartshorn said she encourages questions, which allows her to delve deeper into issues facing the people in the class.

“It’s never the same class twice. I appreciate people taking time to learn something,” she said.

Elderly people and the adult children caring for their parents attend the classes.

“It covers whole families. We see people in their 40s who are caring for their aging parents. We also see older people,” Hartshorn said.

The first day of class focuses on elderly people’s assets and taxation of those assets after death, she said.

A major concern of people taking the class is that paying for nursing home care will create financial hardship.

“Married couple are afraid that if one of them gets sick they’re going to lose everything. How do they pay for that nursing home coverage and how do they preserve assets?” Hartshorn said. “We can preserve pretty much everything for them.”

The average cost of a skilled care nursing home in Pennsylvania is more than $10,000 a month and $7,500 to $8,000 a month in Butler County, she said.

Older people often want to know if they should give their homes to their adult children.

“I almost never recommend married couples giving their house to the kids. Giving away assets is the most common question,” Hartshorn said.

Questions about government and veteran benefits also are frequent.

Special needs trusts, she said, can be created to preserve government benefits to caring for disabled people.

She said many people have to address legal issues related to aging, but each person’s situation is different.

The situation Karen Martin of Harmony finds herself in is not know what to do when her parents can no longer stay in their home

“I have elderly parents and I want to get an idea of what options I have, what resources are out there, when the time comes when they can no longer stay in their home,” Martin said. “We really don’t know what direction to go. We don’t know where to start.”

She said she and her sister are taking the elder law class at BC3 in hopes of finding some answers and resources.

Their father is a military veteran and Martin wants to know what government benefits he is eligible to receive.

Another question she has is: Can her mother and father be placed in the same nursing home if they require different levels of care.

“What if one needs more care than the other? Can we place them in a home without loosing everything? We’re trying to alleviate some fears we have with having to place them some place,” Martin said.

“I think it’s going to be a good learning lesson.”