This week, we had the pleasure of speaking to Donna Furey, of Donna Furey Law Offices. Founded 9 years ago, the law offices of Donna Furey deal with elder law, wills, trusts, estate and Medicaid planning. Donna is currently the Queens County Women’s Bar Association and Second Vice President of the Catholic Lawyers Guild of Queens and was the past President of both the Flushing Lawyers Club and Kiwanis Club of Astoria/LIC. In addition, she is the former council to the Queens County Clerk, Hon. Audrey I. Pheffer. Basically, she’s super involved in both law and Astoria. And she’s pretty cool.

Talking to Donna felt like talking to an old friend, something that is undoubtedly an asset in her practice. She answered all our questions happily and unhesitatingly, and her passion for what she does truly showed. When talking about how she makes a different, Donna absolutely lit up.  Donna says the best part of running her practice is helping people, and specifically helping the elderly. It is a daily reward knowing that you’ve helped someone with extremely important matters.

What Donna does is make sure that her elderly clients have proper documents. This means everything from making sure they have medicaid– or if they don’t, helping them get it– and preserving their assets so that the right people, such as family, can get them.

A huge aim of the Donna Furey Law Offices is to embrace community. Donna tells us that whenever she can, she calls in locals to help out her clients, such as if an elderly client needs help ordering groceries or with cleaning. We think this is great! You know how much we love supporting Astoria.

In terms of memorable cases, Donna says each and every case is special in it’s own way. She gets loads of calls from clients from the most random, wacky things, but says she takes them in stride, and tries her best to be there for all her clients.

So, Give Me Astoria readers, is there an elderly person in your life? Parents, grandparents, great-uncles? Donna’s got one MAJOR tip for you– if you learn anything from this article, make sure it’s this: EVERYBODY NEEDS TO HAVE THE RIGHT PAPERWORK. There’s three main documents that every elderly person should absolutely have: Power of attorney, healthcare proxy and a will. If you don’t have these three documents in order, your wishes won’t be fulfilled. So, make sure you have them! Or else the courts get involved, and that’s messy, and no one likes messy. Seriously.