Katya Sverdlov Blog

There are plenty of free services available to seniors who want to remain living at home. 

Read this Guide from Harvard Medical School to find out if any of these resources can be helpful to you or your loved ones.
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I just published a Guide to “Medical Marijuana for Seniors in New York”.

Please feel free to download this guide and forward it to anyone who you think may benefit.

There are a lot of misconceptions about permitted use and actual benefits of Medical Marijuana.
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Most people want to pass down their assets in accordance with their wishes, with minimal costs, minimal delays, and minimal strife amongst the heirs. Yet there are several problems with using traditional Wills to accomplish these goals. These problems include: not having one’s wishes honored because of losing one’s Will; or having your the Will challenged by heirs; not addressing the distribution of all the of your assets because the Will was written years before death and new assets have been acquired; and high costs of lawyers, h costs needed to pay to lawyers, courts, and executors to finalize the Will.

CryptoWills, which use blockchain, may address some of these problems. First, if the data is stored on blockchain, it cannot be lost.
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Once you stop to think about it, you might will realize you have more digital assets than physical ones. These include online banking and brokerage accounts (banking and brokerage), photo storage sites, social media accounts, and cryptocurrency. If you were to die tomorrow, does anyone have the right to possess these accounts? Will they know the necessary steps to access them?

Online providers handle the accounts of deceased users differently. Some, (like Facebook,) have created a legacy contract, which enables one to designate a person to manage one’s account after death. Others do not have such a clear policy, and there are federal laws (such as The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and The Stored Communications Act) that severely limits provider’s’ ability to share personal account information with others.
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Read the article here

Every individual of adult years and sound mind has a right to choose what shall be done with his own body and to control the course of his medical treatment. Patient autonomy and self-determination are a firmly ensconced principle in New York State Law.

But what happens with patients who have lost decision making capacity? A Health Care Proxy is a powerful tool. Patients may choose a health care agent who will make all health care decisions for them in the future. These decisions include both life-sustaining treatment and on-going medications.

If you spend some time in New York and some time in Florida, you may wish to consult your accountant about determining your domicile (as, depending on the answer, you will owe very different taxes). You may also think about consulting with two different local attorneys regarding your estate planning, as both New York and Florida have real differences in Will execution formalities, asset and homestead protection, Health Care and Power of Attorney languages, Medicaid eligibility rules and estate taxes. Consider this non-exclusive list of differences:

When you buy goods on the internet and the seller is located in another state, should you pay tax? As a consumer, you’d like to say no. But the Supreme Court tackled this question in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc.

The Court had to decide if the dormant Commerce Clause prohibits states from requiring sellers with no physical presence in the state to collect and remit sales tax for goods sold within the state. In the past, in the 1992 Quill Corp. v. North Dakota, the Court ruled that states could not impose tax on businesses with no physical presence in the state.

Can the government force private organization to express messages they disagree with?

The issue of compelled speech and viewpoint discrimination was reviewed by the Supreme Court in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) v. Becerra. The Court ruled that the government cannot force private organizations to express messages that they disagree with.

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) is a religious, pro-life organization that provides pregnancy related services in the State of California. Per California Reproductive Freedom statue, certain clinics that provide family planning services to pregnant women must notify them of free or low-cost abortion services.

Masterpiece Cakeshop Ltd. V. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was one of the most awaited decisions of the year. The Supreme Court had to balance the interests of freedom of religious expression vs. anti-gay discrimination.

In Carpenter v. United States, the Court had to grapple with modern technology and expectations of privacy in a world of shared data. Some called this decision “the most consequential privacy decision of the digital age”.