Estate Planning and Elder Law in Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania
Plan for what’s ahead. Protect your home, your life savings, and the people you care about most. Then move forward with peace of mind.
- Practice Areas
Urso Law Group concentrates its practice in estate planning, probate and estate administration, elder law and long-term care planning, and special needs planning for individuals and families across Western Pennsylvania.
Whatever brought you here — a new baby, a child turning 18 or heading off to college, a change in health, a loved one who needs care, or being called upon to serve as executor for a close family member or friend — the work starts the same way: a conversation about what’s important to you, and a plan to get you there.
Estate Planning
An estate plan does two jobs. It says who steps in if you can’t make decisions for yourself, and it says where everything goes when you’re gone. Without one, Pennsylvania law decides both, and the people you love spend time and money working out what you would have wanted.
- Wills and revocable living trusts
- Financial and health care powers of attorney
- Beneficiary designations for retirement accounts and life insurance
- Reducing Pennsylvania inheritance tax and probate costs
Probate & Estate Administration
When someone dies, the work falls to whoever is named executor — usually a spouse or an adult child, usually with no idea what comes next. We handle the filings and the deadlines, and tell you plainly what you’re responsible for and when.
- Probating the will and opening the estate
- Pennsylvania inheritance tax returns (REV-1500)
- Transferring real estate, accounts, and titled property
- Notifying and accounting to beneficiaries
Elder Law & Long-Term Care Planning
Elder law is planning for the years when help is needed: deciding who can act on your behalf, protecting a home and a lifetime of savings from the cost of care, and making decisions before someone else has to make them for you.
- Powers of attorney and advance health care directives
- Guardianship petitions
- In-home care and assisted living arrangements
- Bringing family members into the conversation early
Paying for Care
Nursing home care in Pennsylvania averages $12,811.20 a month — $421.20 a day. Medical Assistance can cover it, but the rules on gifts, transfers, and trusts are unforgiving, and mistakes made in good faith still carry penalties. Planning early gives you the most options. Planning late still gives you some.
- Medical Assistance (Medicaid) applications and appeals
- Asset protection trusts
- Spousal resource assessments
- Reviewing past gifts and transfers before an application is filed
Source: Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, 2026 statewide average.
Special Needs Planning
A well-meaning inheritance can disqualify a person with disabilities from the benefits they depend on. Special needs planning prevents that, so what you leave supplements their care instead of replacing it.
- Third-party special needs trusts
- ABLE accounts
- Coordinating gifts from grandparents and other relatives
- Naming trustees and successor decision-makers
- About Us
Committed to Protecting What Matters Most
Benjamin W. Urso founded Urso Law Group to practice estate and elder law the way he believed it should be practiced: unhurried, in plain language, and with the same care given to a modest estate as a complicated one. He has more than 13 years of experience in estate planning, probate and estate administration, elder law, and special needs planning.
The firm serves clients at every stage of life: parents naming a guardian for a young child, couples facing college tuition and aging parents in the same year, retirees revisiting a plan drafted decades ago, veterans and their spouses looking ahead to long-term care. Some arrive knowing exactly what they want. Most arrive with a question they aren’t sure how to ask.
Ben is admitted to practice in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and before the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree from Washington & Jefferson College and his law degree from Ave Maria School of Law.
Outside the office, Ben and his wife are raising three children in the South Hills, where the family is active in their Catholic parish. The values he was raised with — integrity, patience, and service — are the ones he brings to the people he works with.
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A first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Come with questions.
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Urso Law Group
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Urso Law Group
2581 Washington Rd., Suite 230
Building 200
Upper St. Clair, PA 15241
Building 200
Upper St. Clair, PA 15241
Urso Law Group
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- 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m.
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- 10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
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In the Community
Hosted by Achieva Family Trust
Future Planning Legal Clinic
Tuesday, August 25, 2026 · 9:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Achieva South Side Office, 711 Bingham St, Pittsburgh, PA 15203
Ben is one of several local attorneys offering 30-minute appointments to help families of people with disabilities build a preliminary future planning strategy — wills, guardianship, powers of attorney, representative payee, special needs trusts, and ABLE accounts. The consultation is free of charge. Registration is required and walk-ins cannot be accommodated. Free off-street parking is available at Achieva’s South Side office.