October is a busy month in our world.  My husband calls it Spooky Season – when he watches scary movies and my dad fills his front yard with so many scary animatronics that trick or treaters won’t come up to the door. 

October is also Disability History Month, Special Needs Law Month, National Estate Planning Awareness Month and the 2nd Saturday in October is World Hospice and Palliative Care Day.

Out of all of this, I want to talk about October 11 – Bring a Piñata to Work day.

I think Angela and I would argue that we have piñatas at work every day – the two of us.  If you’ve gone through our website to schedule an appointment recently, you’ll notice that we aren’t booking new appointments until December – except in case of emergency. 

Thanks to many of you, our cup runneth over with work.  In October, I’m also speaking at three conferences in three separate states.  So, we’ve made the decision to cut back a bit in order to stop feeling like piñatas, being knocked from all sides and swinging back and forth between files.

Medicaid applications will generally always be an emergency.  Mostly we are deferring estate planning cases.  I’ve included an article in this issue on end of year planning so you can decide whether you or your clients need to get in for an appointment before the end of the year.  If so, I urge you to book an appointment quickly.  

A note about communicating with our office – 

According to stats from our phone system, we are receiving between 25 and 50 calls per day.  While those don’t seem like huge numbers, with an average call length of 3 minutes and only 2 of us in the office, it adds up quickly.  To allow us to meet with clients and get work done, we use a receptionist service.  We have a group of individuals specifically assigned to our firm who will answer your calls.  They can take a message, schedule an appointment or route you to one of us.  If we aren’t available, you can leave us a voice mail or schedule a time for a phone call, when you know you will have our undivided attention.  While our receptionists have a great understanding of our firm and what we do, they can’t answer specific questions about your case.  They can, however, pass those questions along to us.

We hope that you will find this setup easy to use.  As always, email is available, along with text messaging for existing clients.

Also – check out the new website! We’re constantly updating with new information!

Cheers,

Check out our Instagram page for updates of elder and special needs law issues, information on what’s going on around the firm and where I am speaking, visiting or publishing.

https://www.instagram.com/vanderveenelderlaw/

If you have an issue or a question you’d like to see us cover in our monthly missive, please drop us an email at Contact@VanderVeenElderLaw.com!