Fritzie E. Vammen

When in college, I took an apptitude test from the career center and found out that I had aptitudes for being a lawyer.  It surprised me because I had planned to be a psychologist.  But I realized that I did love logic, justice and helping people.  So the next barrier was how to pay for law school as I already had student loans from undergraduate school.  The Methodist Student Center, the Wesley Foundation, in Fayetteville AR offered housing in exchange for janitorial services. Living at the Wesley Foundation, along with other part-time jobs, more loans and a few grants and scholarships, allowed me to pursue my law degree.  I will always be indebted to the Methodist church for their support.  One of my first jobs out of law school was clerking for a US Magistrate drafting opinions on Social Security Disability appeals. I practiced in a few different areas of law before settling down into solo practice in 1986 emphasizing representation of individuals who were seeking social security disability benefits.  Because I had worked for the federal courts drafing these opinions on appeal, I was well equipted to look at each case "from the top down" and always had my grounds for appeal ready when I went before Social Security Administration Administrative law judges.  If I case was wrongly denied, I would appeal it to the Appeals Council and then to Federal Court.  I had an overall success rate of over 91%.  I enjoyed this area of practice and I taught many lawyers in Arkansas how to successfully represent Social Security Disability claimants through courses I taught for the Arkansas Bar Association and the National Business Institute.  In 2010 I decided to expand my practice to include representation of Veterans in their claims for service connected compensation bemefits.  I figured it would similar to social security disability claims. In many ways it is.  It includes navigating a great buracracy and review of mountains of medical records in order to ascertain what evidence is needed for each case.  But I found that VA cases take many times longer than SSD cases and the appeals process is much more onerous.  Nevertheless, as the daughter of a WWII veteran and POW, I find a great deal of satisfaction in thanking our Veterans for their sacrifices by helping them navigate the system.  In the mean time, I had often helped my clients with their estate planning such as basic Wills and Powers of Attorney and Medical Directives and Beneficiary Deeds.  Everyone needs to make an estate plan.  If you don't, the government will make one for you.  And you won't like it.  So once again I hit the books hard and learned elder law.  Elder law includes estate planning but it is much more than that. Now people not only need to plan for when they die, they must also plan on how to support themselves if they live too long and have to go to a nursing home and have to pay the astronomical costs.  Some people think that Medicare will pay for long term care.  Medicare will only pay for the first 100 days, and only in limited circumstances.  Some people want Medicaid to pay, which they will, but only in limited circumstances.  Elder lawyers are trained to help people determine the best ways to become eligible for Medicaid assistance for long term care costs.  I hope that the Methodist Church is proud of the investment they made in me over thirty years ago.  It has been my honor to use my law degree to help people navigate our nations increasingly complex laws.