1. If you have received a "Notice of Medicare Provider Non-Coverage," and been told that you or a loved one is being discharged from a facility after a qualifying hospital stay because they have "plateaued" or because they are "not responding to therapy" or that they have "returned to baseline" or are "maintenance only," this is nonsense.

2. Do not sign or let anyone on your behalf sign discharge papers that indicate that you have only been under observation if you have been hospitalized for three days and are a Medicare Beneficiary. If you get discharged to a rehabilitation facility, you will get a bill and Medicare will not pay.

3. Do not give away your assets to qualify for Medi-Cal or put someone on as a joint tenant. This has tax consequences and may in the end render you ineligible for critical benefits. Now that the Veterans Administration is changing its policies that means that you might be ineligible for those benefits as well.

4. If your spouse dies, you must do some estate work. If your trust is an A/B trust, you must go to an attorney and fund that trust. If you are both still alive and see that provision in your trust, you should seriously consider amending it to take that out. This provision can and does have a serious impact on the survivor. With the large estate tax exemption, that provision only serves a limited purpose that most often relates to blended families.

5. Make sure that your home is a trust asset. Often, people refinance, take it out of the trust and never put it back in. If this happens, your estate will go through a mini probate.

6. Make sure that you have a health care directive and power of attorney, the easiest ways to avoid a conservatorship.

7. If you want to be surrounded by love when you die, make sure that you blanket your loved ones with love and respect when you are alive.