Since 1998 · Richmond, Virginia
For 27 years, Pete Halloran and the attorneys at Pete the Elder have helped more than 11,000 American families navigate long-term care, Medicaid qualification, estate planning, and the quiet conflicts that surface when a parent begins to need help. If you are the adult child who suddenly became the decision-maker, this is the conversation you came here to have.
The 30-minute call is answered by a licensed attorney — not a salesperson.
The trigger moment
It almost always begins the same way. A parent falls. A diagnosis arrives — Parkinson's, dementia, a stroke, a slow slide into frailty that no one wanted to name out loud. The phone rings and you realize, somewhere between the second ring and the third, that you are now the one who has to figure out the house, the money, the long-term care, the brothers and sisters who cannot agree on a single thing, and the parent who is losing the ability to speak up for themselves.
You did not go to law school. You are not a Medicaid specialist. You are an adult child, often between 42 and 65, holding a job and a family of your own, trying to make a small number of irreversible decisions about a parent you love. You do not need a financial product. You need an elder law attorney who has stood next to families in this exact situation ten thousand times before, and who can sit down with you — calmly, plainly — and walk you through what to do next.
That is the work Pete the Elder has done since 1998, and the work we still do, one family at a time, from a quiet office on Bayberry Court in Richmond.
Practice areas
Elder law is not a single problem. It is a constellation of problems that arrive together. Choose the door that sounds most like the door you are standing in front of.
01
Nursing-home costs in Virginia now average more than $9,000 a month. Our in-house Medicaid specialist team pre-qualifies 92% of applicants before a single form is filed — so the house, the savings, and the dignity of the spouse who still lives at home are protected in the right order, at the right time.
Read the long-term-care overview →02
Wills, revocable living trusts, powers of attorney, and healthcare directives — drafted in plain English, signed by every family member who needs to understand them.
03
When a parent passes, we settle the estate — without the year of court filings, sibling arguments, and unnecessary fees that an unprepared estate usually leaves behind.
04
First-party and third-party special needs trusts that protect a disabled child's benefits for a lifetime — without disqualifying them from Medicaid or SSI.
05
For veterans and surviving spouses, the Aid & Attendance pension can fund in-home care, assisted living, or a nursing home — often worth more than $27,000 a year, per spouse.
06
When siblings disagree about a parent's care, finances, or a second marriage, we mediate as attorneys — not as therapists — so the family survives the decision intact.
By the numbers
11,400+
Families served across Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia since 1998.
$312M
In client family wealth preserved from long-term-care costs since 2014.
4.9 ★
Average across 612 verified Google reviews — and a BBB A+ rating held continuously since 2002.
92%
Of Medicaid applicants pre-qualified by our in-house specialist team before filing.
Pete's signature work
Pete wrote the book he wished a client had handed him on his first day of practice in 1998. Four editions and 84,000 copies later, Keep the House, Keep the Family is still the most direct guide an American family can read before walking into a nursing-home admissions office, a Medicaid caseworker, or a sibling meeting that nobody wants to be in.
It is also the book Pete gives every new client at the first strategy call — because the families who understand the legal landscape make better decisions, faster, and they sleep better at night.
“
My mother had three years of care, the house stayed in the family, and my sister and I are still speaking to each other. That is what Pete actually did for us.
— A daughter, Henrico County, Virginia
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