About the Firm
Pete Halloran has spent twenty-seven years sitting at kitchen tables across Virginia, listening to adult children describe the same fear: a parent is slowing down, the house is paid for, and nobody is sure what comes next. He built Pete the Elder Law to answer that fear with plain talk and steady hands.
Since 1998 · Richmond, Virginia
The Founding Story
Pete Halloran founded Pete the Elder Law, PLLC, in 1998 in Richmond, Virginia. He had worked in a general practice and watched too many families arrive in crisis — a parent had fallen, the hospital was calling about discharge, the house was unprotected — because nobody had walked them through elder law when there was still time to plan.
He opened the firm with a single promise: every case would be handled by a licensed attorney, every client would be told the truth about Medicaid, and no family would be sold a service they did not need. Twenty-seven years later, the firm has grown to nine attorneys, four paralegals, and three in-house Medicaid specialists, and has served more than 11,400 families across Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
The work has not changed. Only the paperwork has.
Our Philosophy
There is no intake specialist. There is no script. There is no salesperson counting the minutes until you book. The free thirty-minute strategy call is answered by a lawyer on our team — usually Pete himself, sometimes a senior associate — because the first conversation you have about your parents should not be filtered through a closer.
We do not promise outcomes. We do not run countdown timers. We do not pretend that Medicaid qualification is a single magic form. What we promise is this: we will listen, we will tell you what the law actually allows in Virginia and Maryland, and we will not begin work until we both understand what we are trying to protect.
Plainspoken advice, written down, signed by an attorney — that is what every Halloran family has received since 1998.
What Families Bring to Us
Most adult children arrive at our door with one of four questions. Each is a lane Pete has practiced for decades.
The most common call. A parent is leaving the hospital, or a spouse has passed, and the family needs to protect the house, the savings, and the surviving parent's income before a nursing home bill arrives. Pete's team writes the plan that keeps the family in the driver's seat.
Read about long-term care planning →Our in-house Medicaid specialists pre-qualify 92% of applicants before any paperwork is filed. We handle the application, the spend-down, and the asset protection so a family never learns the rules from a county caseworker at the worst possible moment.
Wills, trusts, powers of attorney, beneficiary designations, and the quiet paperwork that decides whether a family ends up in probate or skips it cleanly. Pete is the author of Keep the House, Keep the Family, the client guide our families have relied on since 2007.
When siblings disagree, when a spouse is doing too much, when a parent refuses help — the legal tools exist to untangle each situation. We draft caregiver agreements, family decision frameworks, and the documents that keep a family on the same side.
The Receipts
CELA
Fewer than one percent of U.S. attorneys hold this credential, issued by the National Elder Law Foundation after a day-long examination and continuing-education requirement. Pete has held it without lapse for twenty years.
11,400+
Since the firm opened its doors in 1998, the team has represented more than eleven thousand four hundred families across the Mid-Atlantic — a body of work that lives in our client files, not in our pitch deck.
$312M
The figure is conservative. It is the audited total of family assets — homes, retirement accounts, rental property — preserved through Medicaid qualification, spousal impoverishment planning, and irrevocable trust work since we began tracking it in 2014.
A+BBB
An A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, held continuously since 2002, and a 4.9-star average across 612 verified Google reviews. We also appeared in The Washington Post, USA Today, and Kiplinger's Personal Finance.
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My grandparents built that house with their hands. My job is to make sure it ends up in the hands of the people they loved — not in the hands of a billing department.
Pete Halloran, Esq., CELA
Founder, Pete the Elder Law, PLLC · Richmond, Virginia
When You're Ready
The average wait time for a first call is four business days. You will leave the conversation with a written summary and a clear next step — whether or not you hire us.
1802 Bayberry Court, Suite 410, Richmond, VA 23226