Medicaid Planning

If you should require skilled nursing home care, would you have the resources to pay for it? If you are married, would your spouse be able to afford to live independently at home while you are in the nursing home? Do you have long-term care insurance? For most people, the answer is “NO” to all the above. In that case, you will probably need Medicaid to pay for a portion of your care. There are serious consequences to your assets once Medicaid starts to pay for your care.

 

There are tools and some planning that can be done to preserve your estate, particularly if the planning is done well in advance of the need for long term nursing home care. There are two mistakes that I most commonly see in Medicaid planning. First, is the failure to do any planning until it is too late. Where I see this most often is in the context of a marriage where only one spouse has to go to the nursing home. There is an option for an asset split under the Medicaid rules that preserves property and financial resources to allow the at-home spouse to be able to afford continually living at home. Without a timely asset split, the at-home spouse often ends up without the use of a good portion of property and resources that they could have hung on to for their own care and expenses under Medicaid rules.

The other mistake is making decisions without a proper understanding of the Medicaid rules. This usually involves gifts/transfers of property to loved ones that result in disqualifying a person from receiving the Medicaid they need to pay for their nursing home care.

​

Bad information, or lack of information, causes unnecessary hardship. When it comes to Medicaid, asking permission is always preferable to asking forgiveness. Medicaid forms are difficult to understand. You also need to understand the motivations behind the people giving you the Medicaid information. As you might imagine, these interests may not align with your interests. Contact our office to schedule a consultation to discuss your unique situation.