When a loved one enters a nursing home or assisted-living facility, families are under pressure. Between medical assessments, insurance questions, and emotional strain, the admission packet can seem like paperwork you “just have to sign.” But this bundle of paper (or TLDR .pdf) is much more than a formality. It can determine whether your rights — and the resident’s rights — remain protected, or whether you’ve effectively given them away.
One form in particular demands extra attention: the arbitration agreement.
What You’re Signing (and Why It Matters)
The admission packet is not just a “check-in” form. It often includes:
- The residency contract, which outlines the facility’s obligations and the resident’s responsibilities.
- Financial and payment agreements, sometimes obligating the resident or their family for costs of care, insurance shortfalls, or alternative care.
- Consent forms for medical treatment, disclosures of risks, and releases of liability.
- The arbitration agreement — buried or highlighted — requiring that any future dispute be resolved not in court, but in private arbitration.
When you sign this packet, you are not only committing to the care arrangement, but potentially waiving fundamental rights: the right to a jury trial, broad discovery of evidence, and public accountability.
Why the Arbitration Clause Should Raise Red Flags
An arbitration clause is favorable to the facility. It limits your ability to:
- Use the full tools of civil litigation (depositions under oath, document demands, public hearings).
- Proceed to a jury of peers if there’s negligence, abuse, or wrongful death.
- Generate public precedent or visibility for systemic problems like understaffing or resident neglect.
By contrast, if you decline arbitration, you preserve your right to full court access, transparent proceedings, and potentially broader relief.
What Families Often Don’t Realize
- You are not required to sign the arbitration clause to secure placement! Check the box for “Decline” or “No” or just don’t sign it at all and let the nursing home rep deal with it.
- Many families sign under duress — in an emergency, with little time, anxious about logistics. That environment is exactly what these places bank on.
- Someone signing as a power of attorney or health-care agent may be unaware that the packet affects far more than treatment and payment — it affects legal rights.
- If someone signing does not have power of attorney, that person should not be signing anything anyway!
Three Practical Steps to Protect Your Loved One
- Ask to take the packet home. You are entitled to read it carefully. If you’re under time pressure, that’s okay — take a photo, review it, consult Hollingsworth PLLC.
- Locate the arbitration agreement and consider declining it. Most forms present it as “optional.” But simply adding a line like “I decline the arbitration provision” (before signing the rest) is not good enough!
- Have a trusted advisor or attorney review your authority if you’re signing on behalf of the resident. Make sure you are authorized to bind a resident in ways that waive rights.
- Document any push-back. If the facility implies “No signature = no placement,” that’s a red flag. Ask for written confirmation that declining arbitration will not affect admission.
Final Thought
Families entrust nursing-home facilities with vulnerable loved ones. The law places extra weight on transparency, accountability, and fairness in these contexts. To preserve those protections, don’t treat the admission packet as routine paperwork. Read it. Understand it. And if you see an arbitration clause, treat it like a gateway—and decide whether you want your rights locked away before you’ve even moved in.
If you find yourself facing questions about what the packet means or how to negotiate with the facility, it’s wise to consult legal counsel experienced in nursing-home and elder-care matters.