When you need a legal advocate for incapacity and end-of-life planning, you need an experienced attorney on your side. Our law firm successfully meets any estate planning and elder law needs in the Tampa Bay area including probate and guardianship litigation. You may not realize it but elder law is a complex area of law combining the different elements of estate planning with health care planning. While estate planning often involves the preparation of legal instruments such as wills, trusts, durable powers of attorney and advance directives, health care planning deals with the challenges confronted by older adults with the primary objective of getting quality care and paying for such care without total and complete financial impoverishment.
Within elder law, opportunities for asset protection while qualifying for programs of government assistance such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and Veterans Benefits, are thoroughly analyzed. Our law firm specializes in this area with Attorney Emma Hemness who is Florida Bar Board Certified in Elder Law. Emma’s efforts fighting against the restriction on use of personal care contracts and spousal refusal, and trying to keep seniors from being included in the mandatory enrollment into for-profit, managed care plans to receive necessary Medicaid health insurance for their long term care needs, during the legislative session, was critical in the efforts across the state. She is frequently recognized as a vital advocate for seniors.
Recently, Emma Hemness, partner at Hemness Faller, was recognized on Avvo as a Top-Rated Lawyer in 2022 with a Super Attorney Rating in 2022 by the Legal Community. Avvo, Martindale-Avvo, is the largest network of brands serving over 25 million consumers looking for legal help every month. You can read Emma’s full Avvo profile using this link.
But that’s not all! Emma Hemness has been named to the 2022 Florida Super Lawyer Top 50 Women List. As stated in the Super Lawyers website, “Super Lawyers selects attorneys using a rigorous, multiphase rating process. Peer nominations and evaluations are combined with third party research. Each candidate is evaluated on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement. Selections are made on an annual, state-by-state basis. The objective is to create a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of outstanding attorneys that can be used as a resource for attorneys and consumers searching for legal counsel. Since Super Lawyers is intended to be used as an aid in selecting a lawyer, we limit the lawyer ratings to those who can be hired and retained by the public, i.e., lawyers in private practice and Legal Aid attorneys. The Super Lawyers selection process involves three basic steps: creation of the candidate pool; evaluation of candidates by the research department; and peer evaluation by practice area.”
Emma has volunteered thousands of hours towards protecting the practice of elder law attorneys in the State of Florida and the clients whom they serve. She was in the primary position of leadership for Florida elder law attorneys as the Chair of the Florida Bar’s Elder Law Section in 2007-2008. In addition to these roles, Emma was invited to join a special Task Force of the Elder Law Section and Academy of Florida Elder Law Attorneys whose principle work is to review the policies and processes of the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) to ensure compliance with federal and state rules and regulations. She is currently serving as Co-Chair of this special Task Force. You can learn more about this by clicking this link.
We want you to know we are here to help. We understand your problems and we want to help you and your family. We encourage you not to wait to ask us your elder law questions on this or any important issue facing Florida seniors today. The experienced team of attorneys here at Hemness Faller, The Law Office formerly known as Emma Hemness, P.A., are here for you and your family and we want to be YOUR estate planning and elder law attorneys. After all, we are ordinary people, providing extraordinary guidance backed by years of experience and advocacy for the vulnerable citizens in our community. We encourage you to contact us and schedule a meeting with us.
