HOUSTON, January 17, 2007 - Baby boomers and other persons facing decisions about parents or elderly clients and customers will want to attend the Houston West Chamber of Commerce program on elder care issues at 11:45 a.m., Feb. 1, at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Hospital. The free program is sponsored by the Chamber’s Health and Wellness Committee.

Attorney-CPA Sharon Stodghill, a member of the Houston CPA Society’s ElderCare Committee, will review medical directives and releases required because of patient privacy law, wills versus other asset distributions, planning for incapacity, revocable living trusts and guardianship issues. “The Chamber has recognized that elder care is one of the critical issues facing not only the medical community, but the population in general,” said Naureen Ismail, R.N. ,Memorial Hermann, chairwoman of the Chamber’s Health and Wellness Committee. “We hope this will be the first of a number of programs we will open to the public.”

Stodghill of the Memorial area is an independent attorney CPA who is Board Certified in estate planning and probate law . She practices in the areas of estate administration, guardianships, trusts, estate planning and taxation. In addition to the Houston CPA Society, she is a member of the Houston Bar Association (Trust and Probate Section, Elder Law Committee and Speakers Bureau). She has more than five years’ experience in public accounting and more than ten years’ experience with a national bank in the trust arena. She has been an adjunct professor of income tax in the Certified Financial Planner program at the University of Houston since 2001. She has spoken before many groups on estate planning, incapacity planning, and elder law issues including the Houston CPA Society’s recent Elder Care Symposium.

To register for the symposium, please go to the Chamber website at www.hwcoc.org or contact the Houston West Chamber at 713-785-4922. The Houston West Chamber of Commerce is an organization of 450 active businesses with more than 40,000 employees in west Houston that strives to promote economic development and quality of life in west Houston communities.

About the Houston CPA Society

The Houston CPA Society is the largest chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs and the third largest CPA Chapter in the United States with more than 8,300 CPA members in Houston and 13 surrounding counties. In addition to providing continuing professional education to its members, the 76-year-old Houston CPA Society has donated millions of dollars to charities through its charity events and golf tournaments. The Society delivers toys and books to 6,600 children each year through Santa CPAs and supports education with scholarships for students, grants for schools and a variety of recognition programs and contests. Each spring, the Houston CPAs provide free tax help to disadvantaged citizens, including those with low income, physical impairments, non-English-speaking ability or elderly status. They provide ongoing help to other nonprofit organizations by lending skills to charity auctions, tallying results for KUHT-TV public television drives and providing accounting advice to other nonprofit organizations. For more information about the Houston CPA Society, log on to the web site at www.houstoncpa.org.