"A rare legal guide that reads like a letter from a patient uncle. Halloran translates Medicaid, probate, and long-term-care rules into decisions a daughter can make on a Tuesday afternoon."
The Washington Post Personal Finance Section, 2023
The Book · Fourth Edition, 2024
Keep the House, Keep the Family.
For twenty-seven years, Pete Halloran has sat at kitchen tables across Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia and said the same quiet thing: plan now, while you still can. That advice — plain, specific, written for the family, not the lawyer — is what this book is. Four editions. Eighty-four thousand copies on nightstands and in glove boxes. The same guidance Pete has given to more than 11,000 families, bound between two covers.
Since 1998 · Richmond, Virginia
From the Editorial Pages
"If your parents are aging and you have not yet read a book on elder law, start with this one. It is the clearest 300 pages you will spend on the subject."
USA Today Money & Family Column, 2022
"Practical, unsentimental, and almost entirely free of jargon. Halloran writes the way good advisors talk — specific numbers, named documents, real deadlines."
Kiplinger's Personal Finance Retirement Planning Review, 2024
A Walk Through the Book
What you will find between the covers.
The free first chapter arrives as a printable PDF. The full book is organized so a family can read it front-to-back in one long weekend, or jump straight to the chapter that matches the decision on their desk this week.
-
I.
The Tuesday Conversation
How to start the planning talk with a parent who does not want to have it. Scripts, common objections, and the one question that almost always gets a real answer.
Free first chapter — download below.
-
II.
Keep the House
The five-year look-back, the deed transfer that does and does not work, and the Medicaid-friendly trusts Pete has drafted for more than eleven thousand Virginia and Maryland homes.
-
III.
Keep the Family
Why the second marriage, the out-of-state sibling, and the family business break most estate plans — and the specific documents that hold them together.
-
IV.
The Long Goodbye
Long-term care options, when to spend down and when not to, the difference between a nursing-home level of care and assisted living, and the 90-day Medicaid filing calendar.
A Reader's Letter
"My mother had been in assisted living for six months and my brother and I had not signed anything. We were afraid we would take the house away from her. Pete's book — a copy a friend slid under my door — walked us through it on a Saturday. By Monday morning we had a plan. By the following spring we had saved the house. I have since bought eleven copies for other people."
Margaret D. Charlottesville, Virginia
Letter received by the firm, March 2024. Used with permission; name abbreviated.
Publishing Milestones
Four editions. One consistent voice.
- 84,000+Copies sold across four editions
- 4Editions since the original 2002 printing
- 3National outlets that have reviewed the book
- 312Pages in the current edition
Free First Chapter · No Cost, No Catch
Read Chapter One tonight.
Enter your name and email and the first chapter — The Tuesday Conversation — arrives in your inbox as a printable PDF. We will not call you, add you to a list, or share your address. If you decide to keep reading, the full book is available from any bookseller.
or
If you would rather talk it through with a licensed attorney — thirty minutes, no charge, no salesperson — Pete reads the calendar himself.
Book My Free Strategy Call