Rural Living and Disabilities

Living in rural areas, or states, such as Montana or Wyoming, boast many benefits, such as outdoor activities, like hiking, skiing, fishing and camping. The landscapes are incredible and breathtaking. Most of the time, the positive aspects outweigh the negative. This can change in the blink of an eye. If you or a household member suffers from a serious disabling illness or injury, then your beautiful, quiet peaceful hometown becomes a hurdle and an obstacle to overcome. Quality health care is available in every state, but it may not be close by. This is particularly daunting in the case of injury, such as a traumatic brain injury (TBI), stroke or other situation when time is a major factor. When you live

Out of the five friends I have who had premature babies, all but one could not get appropriate care in our state. Those families had to relocate to major metropolitan cities for six to twelve months. In the scariest moments of their lives, they were away from home, away from friends, family, their jobs, and even their personal possessions. The miracle of modern medicine, quick helicopter flights, and talented doctors saved all five of those little miracles.

When you live in rural areas, the mind set, is often, “it won’t happen to me or my family”, but there are no guarantees. After the initial trauma has passed, the long-term complications arise. What do you do if you are unable to drive a car and your town is too small to have public transportation? What if you need a group home for TBI so your adult child can gain independence, but the only facility only accepts physically disabled adults? Or maybe there are no respite care providers and a caregiver is becoming overwhelmed caring for a disabled person 24/7? Find an advocate if you are in this situation, there is someone who can help, if you look hard and long enough.

Filed Under: Disability Acts

Disabled Parents Tax Relief

Parents with disabled children have to deal with a lot of pain and hardships to raise a disabled child. No matter what kind of disability the child is born with or develops there after, the parent have to suffer a lot mentally, physically and economically to raise the child.

To reduce the economic burden, the families with disabled children can enjoy tax breaks. The tax benefits available to a family with a disabled child are quite huge and upto thousands of dollars can be saved. There are a few tax breaks that can be benefited even after the child has reached adulthood. The two of the tax benefits that a parent can enjoy are the Child and Dependent-Care Credit and Earned Income Credit. The earned Income credit that can be to refunded families with a disabled child whose income is about $26,000. And if there are above two children then about $30,000 can be refunded. For this the child has to be under the age of 19 or 24 if the child is going to college. The Child and Dependent-Care Credit is a nonrefundable tax where about 30% of the expenses of the child are under tax exception. About $700 can be availed for one child and a double that if there are two disabled children. The child needs to be below the age of 13 and both the parent must be employed to benefit fro this tax exception. The child should be living with the family and can be a biological, grandchild, adopted, step child or a foster child. The proof should be submitted that the expenses of the disabled child are being incurred by the family. A good tax attorney will be useful to obtain all these tax benefits and other such loopholes that can save thousands of dollars.

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Filed Under: Disability Acts Tagged With: , ,

Disabled Children and Education

The law says every child is entitled to a public education. In theory, the idea is great, in practice, it is challenging, for all the parties involved, including the school. Teachers want their students to succeed, and they want to be able to give specific, individualized instruction to each child based on his or her learning style and needs, but realistically that is not possible. As the parent of a disabled student, you want a good education, one-on-one, assessment of your child’s needs and someone to teach directly to your child, based on their individual needs. What loving, supportive, caring parent wouldn’t want that for their child? In a theoretical or perfect world, that is exactly what would happen. In reality, there are budgets, and staffing, and space concerns. There is no way to teach every child individually, therefore, the teachers must teach to the majority.

Filed Under: Disability Acts

Are the new Bankruptcy Laws Fair to the Disabled?

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Due mostly to pressure from the credit industry, the bankruptcy laws experienced a major overhaul a few years ago. The net result of the reform is that it is much harder for anyone, including the disabled, to file for bankruptcy protection. The idea behind the reform was supposed to prevent people who didn’t really need to file from using the Federal laws to avoid paying their debts. The reality of the reform is that the people who most need help can barely afford to pay the cost of bankruptcy.

If you review the current bankruptcy information in Arizona, you will see that everyone now needs to attend credit counseling before they can file any version of this form of debt relief, as well as sees an Arizona bankruptcy attorney. Lawyers are also impacted. They are now required to actually verify much of the debtor’s claims instead of taking their word for their financial hardship. Because this is much more work for the bankruptcy attorney, their fees have more than doubled since the reformed laws were passed. Instead of preventing people who can afford to pay their bills from filing bankruptcy, this change has practically guaranteed that those are the only ones who can file.

What does this mean for the disabled person specifically? Disabled people are more likely to have low or fixed incomes, and they’re more likely to have higher medical costs than non-handicapped people. The court may waive some of the fees and other costs, but there aren’t too many bankruptcy attorneys that will provide their legal services for free. Transportation and sitting through long classroom sessions can also be a problem for the disabled. While the Americans with Disabilities Act means that they may be able to demand physical accommodations to be able to attend credit counseling sessions more easily, no one can waive the requirement, and there’s no formal process to request transportation assistance.

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Filed Under: Disability Acts Tagged With: , ,

Driving Disability Laws

Having a disability does not mean that you will have to ask other to drive you for the rest of the life or take taxis. Or even go for the inconvenient public transportation which will make even the smallest route a nightmare for a person with a disability. Almost 50 million people drive with some or the other kind of disability in America. About 60 percent of these people on the roads are with severe disability. People with a disability can easily get a driver’s license. There are a few laws that need to be taken care of before one goes ahead and applies for a license.

Think about parking before driving. It is not how you drive, it is where you park. Hence you need to get the suitable parking permits to be able to park on spots marked for disabled people. This is one advantage that disabled people can easily use.

A physician’s certificate is necessary to prove that you are disabled but still able to drive. The license plate needs to have disabled sign on it. The physician has the right to give you the rights of special parking privileges. Some of the diseases that are allowed in this are heart disease, impaired vision and epilepsy. The employees of the place where the disabled person lives, the neighborhood, medical personnel, etc all need to accept the disability of the person in question. It is illegal for ay state to deny any person with any kind of disability with a driver’s license unless the disability is so bad that the person is unwantedly going to cause harm to other drivers on the road. As for the vehicle it needs to be suitably modified to suit the needs of the disabled person. This vehicle also needs to get a permit along with the driver.

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Filed Under: Disability Acts Tagged With: , ,

Disable Senior Citizens

Living with a disability is difficult in the first place, but living with a disability and getting old is even tougher. People with disabilities keep fighting and struggle to even get small things get done when they are young, but these small struggle with every day life becomes much tougher later on in life and people tend to get tired more easily than before. Keeping this in mind the government has laid out certain benefits for senior citizens with disabilities. These programs provide various kings of support the old age people with disabilities.

People over the age of 65 with some kind of disability can receive social security benefits from the government. Many people who have paid taxes their entire lives can avail these social benefits. Even those people who face disability after becoming old can also benefit from these programs. The people who are disabled their entire lives and avail the Social Security Disability Insurance which will provide a steady inflow of money after retirement of the person. As for a person who faced a disability after retirement, he can avail the Supplemental Security Income which will support her after retirement. These insurance schemes are not just for the disabled person but also cover the family that she has been supporting after retirement. Getting old means bigger medical bills. It is directly proportional to the age of a person, hence a Medicare insurance is necessary to fill the needs of medicine. People under the Supplemental Security Income and the the Social Security Disability Insurance can also avail these medical insurances. Normal medical insurances do not cover old age people who are more susceptible to diseases, hence these schemes will be a worthy substitute. Also a state program named Medicaid will provide free medical care for disabled old people who are under the low income group.

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Filed Under: Disability Acts Tagged With: , ,
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