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Janet Chaplan Pew
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13 Aug, 2018 by Andrea
My sister and I hired Janet Chaplan Pew in January of 2018 when my father had a heart attack and we needed someone to help apply for his Medicaid application. We had spoken to a few Medicaid specialists who seemed competent, but decided to hire a lawyer in case there were any difficulties with our dad's case and we needed someone to advocate on our behalf. We hired Janet, who talked a good game, but after we hired her, we realized she had only applied for one other Medicaid application before, and that was with the help of her Paralegal-- and what was a big red flag for me, was that when I would ask her questions and mention to her what the other Medicaid agencies were doing, she would ask me in-depth questions about their procedures, as if she wanted to know what SHE should be doing, and in one case I had a hand-out of another agency's list of procedures they followed to get Medicaid, and she asked me for a copy, (I gave it to her). By this time, it was too late to hire another Medicaid specialist, and I was filled with grief over the fear that my father would die, busy making medical decisions for him, taking the train back and forth from Boston to NJ to take care of my dad, it was exhausting, and Janet took advantage of that. The final injury, was that she finally managed to get $10,000 of our dad's money-- in the beginning she promised it would never be more than the $5,000 another agency was charging, even though she charged by the hour. She assured me her fee would never go as high as these other agencies. But she kept asking for more money and we gave it to her. I realize Medicaid is a complicated application, but it's still only an application that simply requires accurate and complete information, and my dad was a perfect candidate for Medicaid. I don't know why she kept asking for more money, we gave her all the information she needed--I assume it just simply took her longer to do the application since she had little experience and didn't understand the ins and outs. (and maybe she figured she might as well ask for more money since we had to run down our dad's money anyway). In May, we gave Janet an additional $3,000 in case we needed her to help us with any difficulties after the application went through. But my dad died on June 3rd and the application never went through, and so that $3,000 was never spent by her/she did no work for that money. When I spoke with her about a month later, she refused to return the unused money. Her reason for not returning the money was this: "Oh, there are lots of reasons I can't return the money." I was astonished. She then sent us a lawyerly letter explaining how she had used/or would use the money in the future. It was incomprehensible. I spoke and called her again, she didn't return my calls, but finally agreed to return $2,700 of the money (I don't know why she didn't return the full $3,000). She wrote a check out to the estate of my father. I will say, she seemed nice in the beginning, she always responded to my calls, even if she did tend to go off on strange tangents during our conversations and wouldn't let me get a work in edge wise, and she seemed eager to do a good job in the beginning. I think ultimately she was in over her head. The most disappointing and hurtful thing was her greed with our dying dad's money. I realize that there are people who go into elder care because they really care about the elderly, and people who go into elder care because they see it as a quick way to fill out an application and make some good money. It hurts, and I never want another family to go through what we did. We needed help, and instead we found someone who took advantage of our fears and sadness to make a buck. I hope this review helps.
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