Georgia Legacy Law Group · Alpharetta
Resources for Georgia families,
gathered in one place.
Most of the calls we get start with a question no legal document can answer on its own: who do I call about my mother's care, what happens to my son's benefits, where does the county probate court keep its forms. This is the working directory we use ourselves, and it is the current version of the resource list printed in our books. Everything here is free to contact. Nothing here requires you to become our client.
What is happening right now?
Pick the closest fit and the list below narrows to what tends to matter first.
If this is urgent
These lines are staffed and free. Call before you call us.
Emergency
If someone is in immediate physical danger, is threatening harm, or needs medical help now, call 911.
Report abuse, neglect, or exploitation of an at-risk adult
Georgia Adult Protective Services takes reports about adults 65 and older, and disabled adults 18 to 64, who live outside a licensed facility. Reports can be made online at any hour.
Problem inside a nursing home or personal care home
Georgia's Long-Term Care Ombudsman advocates for residents of nursing homes, assisted living, personal care homes, and community living arrangements. The service is free and confidential to the resident.
Mental health or substance use crisis
The Georgia Crisis and Access Line is answered around the clock by clinicians and can dispatch mobile crisis teams. The national 988 line also routes to Georgia responders, and veterans can press 1.
Aging and elder care in Georgia
Georgia routes almost all publicly funded services for older adults through one door. If you only make one call, make it the first one on this list.
Aging and Disability Resource Connection (ADRC)
The state's single entry point for long-term services and supports, covering all 159 counties. Counselors screen for eligibility, explain what is publicly funded and what is not, and make referrals. They also help people transition out of nursing homes.
Georgia Division of Aging Services
The state agency behind the ADRC, the ombudsman program, Adult Protective Services, and the twelve Area Agencies on Aging. Its site lists every program by name.
Empowerline (metro Atlanta)
The Atlanta Regional Commission's aging and disability service for the ten-county metro area, including Fulton, Forsyth, Cherokee, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb. Searchable provider database plus live options counseling.
Eldercare Locator
Federal referral service run by the Administration for Community Living. Useful when a parent lives in another state and you are trying to find the equivalent of the ADRC there.
Aging Life Care Association
National directory of geriatric care managers, also called aging life care professionals. For someone aging without adult children nearby, this is the professional who fills the role a devoted daughter would otherwise fill: assessment, care coordination, and showing up at the hospital. Their code of ethics bars them from taking referral fees. Build the relationship before you need it, not during a crisis.
GeorgiaCares (State Health Insurance Assistance Program)
Free, unbiased Medicare counseling from trained volunteers. They compare Part D plans, sort out Medigap questions, and screen for the Medicare Savings Programs and Extra Help. Ask for option 4.
BenefitsCheckUp
National Council on Aging screening tool that checks a person against benefit programs covering medication, food, utilities, and health care. Frequently turns up money families did not know was available.
Aging without children or close family
Roughly one in six Americans over fifty-five has no biological or adopted children. The law still assumes someone will step forward. When no one will, the roles have to be filled deliberately and paid for on purpose. These are the places to start.
National Council on Aging
Practical guidance written for solo agers, covering housing, benefits screening, and building a support network that does not depend on adult children. Also runs BenefitsCheckUp.
Professional and corporate fiduciaries
When there is no obvious executor, trustee, or agent, a bank trust department or professional fiduciary can serve. They cost more than a friend and they will outlast one. Georgia banks and trust companies publish minimum account sizes, which usually drive the decision. We help clients compare institutions and draft the trust protector provisions that let a beneficiary replace a corporate trustee that stops performing.
Geriatric care managers
The single most valuable hire for a person aging alone. Engagement can start light, years before intensive care is needed, and grow as needs do. Search by zip code through the Aging Life Care Association directory.
Your care team, written down
Physician, estate planning attorney, financial advisor, accountant, care manager, and the friends named in your documents. The team is only useful if the members can reach each other. That takes a current contact list, HIPAA authorizations that let them share information, and a written crisis protocol saying who calls whom. Our "Who to Call" card has space for all of it.
Medicaid and long-term care
Long-term care Medicaid in Georgia has its own income and asset rules, its own waiver programs, and its own estate recovery consequences. Read these before you spend down anything or transfer any asset.
Georgia Medicaid (Department of Community Health)
Program rules, covered services, provider directories, and the current eligibility manuals. This is the authoritative source when an advisor tells you something about the rules.
Georgia Gateway
Where Medicaid, SNAP, and TANF applications are filed and where you check case status and upload verification documents.
Elderly and Disabled Waiver Program: CCSP and SOURCE
Georgia's two home and community-based care models for older adults and adults with disabilities who would otherwise need nursing facility care. Both are accessed through your Area Agency on Aging or the ADRC, not through a hospital discharge planner.
Independent Care Waiver Program (ICWP)
Funds in-home care for adults roughly 21 to 64 with severe physical disabilities or traumatic brain injury, so they can live at home rather than in a facility. Separate application track from the elderly waivers.
Medicare Care Compare
Star ratings, staffing levels, and inspection histories for every certified nursing home, home health agency, and hospice in Georgia. Compare the staffing numbers, not just the overall star.
Georgia Healthcare Facility Regulation Division
Licenses and inspects nursing homes, personal care homes, and assisted living communities in Georgia, and publishes survey results. This is also where you file a complaint about a licensed facility.
Disability and special needs
Two things drive most special needs planning in Georgia: keeping a person under the resource limits that protect SSI and Medicaid, and getting into the waiver programs early, because the planning list is long. Families routinely apply for several of these at once.
Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD)
Administers the NOW and COMP waivers, which fund community supports for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Intake runs through the regional field offices. The planning list runs years, so ask about intake as soon as a diagnosis is established, and ask specifically about crisis prioritization if a caregiver is failing.
Katie Beckett (TEFRA) Medicaid
Lets a child with a significant disability qualify for Medicaid on the child's own income rather than the parents'. For many middle-income families this is the fastest route to Medicaid, and it is a separate application from the waivers. Georgia runs it through a centralized team.
Georgia STABLE (ABLE accounts)
A tax-advantaged account that lets a person with a disability save well beyond the $2,000 SSI resource limit without losing benefits. As of January 1, 2026, eligibility extends to people whose disability began before age 46, which brings in a large group who were previously locked out. These work alongside a special needs trust, not instead of one.
Parent to Parent of Georgia
Georgia's parent training and information center. Matches families with a parent who has been through the same diagnosis, and maintains a searchable statewide database of providers, therapists, and programs.
Georgia Advocacy Office
Georgia's federally mandated protection and advocacy agency for people labeled disabled or mentally ill. Free help with benefit denials, special education disputes, restraint and seclusion, and rights violations. Call them on any denial before you give up on it.
Georgia Council on Developmental Disabilities
State planning council focused on policy, funding, and systems change. Its published guides on waivers, employment, and supported decision-making are among the clearest plain-English explanations available in Georgia.
Babies Can't Wait
Georgia's early intervention system for children from birth to age three, run through the Department of Public Health. No diagnosis is required to be evaluated, and evaluation is free. Call the day you have a concern rather than waiting for a pediatrician to raise it.
Georgia Vocational Rehabilitation Agency
Employment services, assistive technology, and transition support for students with disabilities moving from school into work. Worth engaging during high school, not after graduation.
Friends of Disabled Adults and Children (FODAC)
Refurbishes and provides home medical equipment, wheelchairs, ramps, and hospital beds to adults and children with disabilities, at little or no cost. Based in Stone Mountain, serving Georgia.
Tools for Life
Georgia's assistive technology program at Georgia Tech. Device demonstrations, short-term loans, and a reuse program, so a family can try equipment before paying for it.
Health care decisions
Georgia consolidated the old living will and durable power of attorney for health care into a single statutory form in 2007. Documents signed before then generally remain valid, but most families are better served by signing the current form.
Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care
The statutory form has four parts: naming a health care agent, stating treatment preferences for terminal conditions and permanent unconsciousness, nominating a guardian, and the signature page. Part four must be completed and witnessed by two adults for any of it to take effect. We prepare this as part of every plan, and we are glad to look at one you signed elsewhere.
Georgia POLST
A physician's order, not a planning document, for people with serious advanced illness. It travels with the patient and tells emergency responders what to do. It supplements an advance directive rather than replacing it.
The Conversation Project
Free starter kits for the conversation itself, which is usually harder than the paperwork. Useful to send to a parent or an adult child ahead of a family meeting.
Donate Life Georgia
The state donor registry. Registering here is independent of what your advance directive says, and both should agree.
Probate, guardianship, and conservatorship
Georgia probate is county by county. Each of the 159 probate courts has its own clerk, its own filing fees, and its own local practice, but they all work from the same set of standard forms.
Georgia Probate Court Standard Forms (GPCSF)
The complete set of standard petitions, from probating a will in common or solemn form to year's support, guardianship, and conservatorship. Courts strongly prefer the approved forms, and a retyped version has to carry a certificate under Uniform Probate Court Rule 5.9.
Council of Probate Court Judges of Georgia
Directory of all 159 probate courts with addresses and phone numbers, plus general background on what these courts do. Start here to find the right county.
Official Code of Georgia Annotated
Title 53 governs wills, trusts, and administration of estates. Title 29 governs guardianship and conservatorship. Title 31, Chapter 32 governs advance directives.
Fulton County Probate Court
Atlanta. Forms, filing fees, and hearing calendars.
Forsyth County Probate Court
Cumming. Serves much of our immediate area north of Alpharetta.
Cherokee, Cobb, Gwinnett, and DeKalb Probate Courts
The other metro courts we appear in most often. Each publishes its own filing checklist, and the local requirements do differ, particularly on conservatorship accountings.
Charitable giving and legacy
For many clients without children, charity is not an afterthought in the plan. It is the plan. A community foundation can hold a donor-advised fund during life and become the residuary beneficiary at death, which is usually simpler than creating a private foundation.
Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta
The largest community foundation in the region. Donor-advised funds, designated funds, and planned giving support, including gifts structured to take effect at death.
North Georgia Community Foundation
Serves Hall County and the broader north Georgia region, including communities north of the metro area.
Atlanta Jewish Foundation
Donor-advised funds, endowments, and legacy giving within the Atlanta Jewish community.
Catholic Foundation of North Georgia
Endowment and planned giving for parishes, schools, and Catholic ministries across north Georgia.
Check a charity before you name it
Candid and Charity Navigator publish Form 990 filings, finances, and governance for U.S. nonprofits. Worth ten minutes before a charity becomes a residuary beneficiary, since the organization has to still exist and still do what you thought it did when the gift finally arrives.
Pets
Georgia's pet trust statute, O.C.G.A. section 53-12-28, lets you fund a trust for the care of named animals. Two practical rules: name a caregiver and a trustee who are different people, so someone is watching the money, and name backups for both.
Atlanta Humane Society
Adoption, surrender, veterinary services, and pet support programs across metro Atlanta.
LifeLine Animal Project
Operates the Fulton and DeKalb county animal services shelters plus low-cost veterinary clinics. A realistic placement resource if no named caregiver can serve.
Lifetime care and pet retirement programs
Several veterinary colleges and rescue organizations accept an animal for life in exchange for an endowment. Quality varies considerably, and all of them require enrollment and funding arranged in advance rather than at death. Research the specific program and document the arrangement in your plan.
Veterans and surviving spouses
Aid and Attendance is the benefit most families miss. It is a needs-based pension supplement for wartime veterans and surviving spouses who require help with daily activities, and it has its own asset and look-back rules that interact badly with unplanned gifting.
Georgia Department of Veterans Service
State veterans service officers file claims at no charge and know the local VA offices. There are field offices across Georgia, including in the metro area.
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs
Pension and Aid and Attendance eligibility, health care enrollment, and the eBenefits portal. The general benefits line is staffed on weekdays.
Veterans Crisis Line
Confidential support at any hour for veterans and their families, whether or not enrolled in VA health care. Dial 988 and press 1.
Georgia Veterans Memorial Cemeteries
Burial eligibility and pre-registration for eligible veterans and dependents at the state cemeteries in Milledgeville and Glennville.
Social Security, Medicare, and taxes
The federal programs that sit underneath nearly every plan we draft.
Social Security Administration
Retirement, disability, SSI, and survivor benefits, plus the representative payee program. Create a my Social Security account before you need it, because verifying identity in a crisis is slow.
Medicare
Enrollment windows, plan comparison, and coverage rules. Note that Medicare pays for very little long-term custodial care, which is the single most common misunderstanding we correct.
Internal Revenue Service
Estate and gift tax forms and instructions, applying for an EIN for a trust or estate, and the fiduciary income tax return, Form 1041.
Georgia Department of Revenue
Georgia has no state estate tax, but fiduciary income tax returns and property tax exemptions, including homestead and the senior school tax exemptions, still apply.
Caregiving and dementia
Caregiver collapse is the most common reason a good plan stops working. These organizations exist for the caregiver, not only for the patient.
Alzheimer's Association, Georgia Chapter
A helpline staffed by clinicians at any hour, care consultations, support groups across Georgia, and practical guidance on driving, wandering, and placement decisions.
Georgia Memory Net
A state-supported network of memory assessment clinics affiliated with Emory, providing diagnosis and care navigation for dementia. Useful when a family needs a real diagnosis rather than a general impression, which also matters for capacity questions.
Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers
Georgia-based and nationally recognized. Evidence-based caregiver training, respite resources, and support programs, including programs built specifically for family caregivers of people with dementia.
National Family Caregiver Support Program
Respite care, counseling, and supplemental services for family caregivers, including grandparents raising grandchildren. Delivered locally through the Area Agencies on Aging.
Hospice and palliative care
Hospice is a Medicare benefit, not a facility, and it can be provided at home. Families often wait months longer than they should. The Georgia Hospice and Palliative Care Organization lists member providers statewide, and Medicare Care Compare carries the quality ratings.
Elder abuse, fraud, and consumer protection
Financial exploitation of older adults is most often committed by someone the family knows, and frequently by someone holding a power of attorney. Reporting it early preserves options that disappear once assets are gone.
Georgia Adult Protective Services
Investigates abuse, neglect, and exploitation of adults 65 and older, and disabled adults 18 to 64, living outside licensed facilities, under the Disabled Adults and Elder Persons Protection Act. Report even if you cannot prove it and do not have all the details.
Georgia Attorney General, Consumer Protection Division
Complaints about scams, deceptive practices, home repair fraud, and predatory sales aimed at older adults. Also the place to report identity theft in Georgia.
National Elder Fraud Hotline
Department of Justice hotline that helps victims of financial fraud file reports with the right agencies and connects them with follow-up support. Weekday hours.
Senior Medicare Patrol
Part of GeorgiaCares. Trained volunteers help beneficiaries spot and report Medicare billing fraud, which often surfaces first on a statement a family member reviews.
National Foundation for Credit Counseling
Nonprofit credit and debt counseling through accredited member agencies. Useful when debt is complicating a care decision, and a safer starting point than the debt-relief firms that advertise to older adults.
Georgia Watch
Georgia consumer advocacy organization focused on health care billing, utilities, and consumer lending. Publishes plain-English guides on surprise medical bills and predatory lending.
FTC ReportFraud
Federal fraud reporting, plus IdentityTheft.gov for recovery plans after identity theft. Filing here creates a record that banks and credit bureaus will accept.
Free and low-cost legal help
Not every matter needs a private firm, and we would rather point you somewhere useful than take a case that belongs elsewhere.
Georgia Legal Services Program
Free civil legal aid for eligible low-income Georgians in the 154 counties outside the five-county Atlanta area, including a dedicated focus on the legal problems of older adults.
Atlanta Legal Aid Society
Free civil legal help in Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett, with long-established elder law and guardianship practices.
Georgia Senior Legal Aid
Free legal advice, brief service, and referrals for any Georgian aged 60 or over, from anywhere in the state, on almost any civil matter: powers of attorney, probate, Medicaid, consumer problems, landlord and tenant. A joint project of Atlanta Legal Aid and the Division of Aging Services. There is no income test to call.
Elderly Legal Assistance Program
A statewide network delivering free legal help to Georgians 60 and over through local firms, organized by county and funded under the Older Americans Act. No income test, though your situation must put your wellbeing at risk.
Atlanta Bar Association Lawyer Referral Service
Referrals to metro Atlanta attorneys by practice area, typically with a reduced-fee initial consultation.
State Bar of Georgia Lawyer Referral Service
Referrals to Georgia lawyers by practice area, and the place to verify that any lawyer you are considering is in good standing.
National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys
Directory of elder law and special needs attorneys nationwide. Useful when a parent lives out of state and needs someone licensed there.