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Alice Reiter Feld, Esq.

Senior of the Month

Ryan Mahanna

ELDER LAW and

SENIOR OF THE MONTH

A meeting of contrasts - a humorous, self-deprecating high school senior contrasted with the seriousness of planning for old age.

And John Congemi - no further comment needed.

John started the meeting discussing the state of the school - the 36 room addition is going along well, Douglas won the "Pig Bowl" and budget cuts.  He then introduced Senior of the month Ryan Mahanna.

Ryan started out telling how he was pulled out of class and told to go to the Assistant Principal's Office.  "What did I do wrong" was his first thought.  He got to John Congemi's office and was asked "Do you know why you are here?"  He had no clue.  "You are Senior of the Month" he was told.  His first reaction, and the first reaction of all of his friends, was "Why?"  By his admission he is not at the upper echelon of his class, but his grades are not shabby at all.  But he did enough to get the attention of the faculty at Douglas, being and officer of the Drama club, working on all the school productions, working with special needs kids and being a peer counselor.  He will be attending Salem State College in Massachusetts, a school attended by other family members in the future.

The main program was Alice Reiter Feld, a Florida Board Certified Elder Law Attorney.  She started out by explaining that elder law is not the same as estate planning.  The former deals with life before death, the latter deals with after death issues.  She described many of the tools available to ease or minimize elder issues, such as Medicaid benefits planning, Veteran's Benefits planning,  Health Care Surrogate and Living Will documents and Durable Power of Attorney forms.    She also stressed the need to plan early and plan for long term care and incapacity.