Elder Law question and real estate
Investor · Longwood, FL · Member since 2015 · 221 posts · 130 votes
A friend has a mother that has gone to assisted living. She has retirement income of $3000.00 a month. Medicare is paying now but eventually may need Medicaid to pay.
He has a home valued at 200k and her husband passed a few years ago.
My friend has consulted attorneys and received conflicting answers.
If he rents her house does all money (approx 1500.00 month)have to go into a trust to protect it so she can still qualify for Medicaid?
Can he sell the house and put money into a trust to protect it from the five year look back for Medicaid?
Has anyone had experience with this?
What would you suggest (your personal opinion)
Or an attorney who may know.
Hello and welcome to this site with your question for an opinion answer Scott! I am not an Attorney and this is my thinking. Can she not rent out the home and "pay" your friend a large "manager fee but is saving some or all of it so Medicaid will not see and he quietly pays her back all or some of those "management fees" after Medicaide people check her capability to get help from them? One thing that I have found out that because I live in a community state (Texas) I was turned down on getting any financial aid from the SSA because in their opinion that my wife made too much money and so they turned me down even though I have been paying them taxes for years I was 54 then and had been working since I was 14. I was never told in grade school or college that it could be a problem. Good luck to you!
Hello and welcome to this site with your question for an opinion answer Scott! I am not an Attorney and this is my thinking. Can she not rent out the home and "pay" your friend a large "manager fee but is saving some or all of it so Medicaid will not see and he quietly pays her back all or some of those "management fees" after Medicaide people check her capability to get help from them? One thing that I have found out that because I live in a community state (Texas) I was turned down on getting any financial aid from the SSA because in their opinion that my wife made too much money and so they turned me down even though I have been paying them taxes for years I was 54 then and had been working since I was 14. I was never told in grade school or college that it could be a problem. Good luck to you!
A friend has a mother that has gone to assisted living. She has retirement income of $3000.00 a month. Medicare is paying now but eventually may need Medicaid to pay.
He has a home valued at 200k and her husband passed a few years ago.
My friend has consulted attorneys and received conflicting answers.
If he rents her house does all money (approx 1500.00 month)have to go into a trust to protect it so she can still qualify for Medicaid?
Can he sell the house and put money into a trust to protect it from the five year look back for Medicaid?
Has anyone had experience with this?
What would you suggest (your personal opinion)
Or an attorney who may know.
This is definitely more of an estate planning issue than REI.
You'll want to discuss with an attorney of your choice.
Has your friends mother went to Assisted Living or a nursing (skilled nursing) home?
If she went to Assisted Living - I can help you but it's only KS Specific - each state is different but I'm guessing some of the guidelines carry across states in regards to how she will pay for the ALF and eligibility for Medicaid and Home and Community Based Services (which is a medicaid program that would help pay for ALF)
Anyways in KS - in for someone to qualify for HCBS/Medicaid to help pay for their care either in the home or assisted living - you need to have less than $2k in assets - and consistently less than $2k in the bank - there is also something called a 5 year lookback period - I do not 100% understand how the lookback period works but will soon enough.
So - as far as the assets are concerned - if your friends mother has the house and any savings there is no way the govt will be paying for most of her stay in ALF - and I also think it would be difficult to house her in an ALF facility for $3k per month - can be done but tough -
Due to no estate planning the family needs to decide on what they are going to do - they will either need to sell the house now and just pay her money down at the private pay rate in a facility until she "runs out of money" then apply for Medicaid and go from there or see if the strategy of renting the house with her present income will be enough to cover the facility she's staying at.
Individually the systems are simple however there are so many moving parts to Medicaid HCBS I've discovered in my time as owner of a facility I can 100% understand the families frustrations. It's not an easy system to navigate. We are hoping to have our facility in KS become experts in this area. I think we have a leg up on a lot of places already.
Hope that helps a bit - I dont even know if many elder law attorneys will understand the medicaid system very well - they may, but wouldnt hurt to talk to one and if the facility his mother is at has decent staff and the facility takes HCBS residents the executive director there should be able to help a lot as well.
He has a home valued at 200k and her husband passed a few years ago.
My friend has consulted attorneys and received conflicting answers.
********THEY PROBABLY ARE NOT VERSED IN THIS AREA AT ALL **************
If he rents her house does all money (approx 1500.00 month)have to go into a trust to protect it so she can still qualify for Medicaid?
***** DEPENDS ON HOW THE HOUSE IS TITLED - If It's in her name I'm 99% confident the answer is no *****
Can he sell the house and put money into a trust to protect it from the five year look back for Medicaid?
*****I DONT THINK SO - MEDICAID Is going to ask where the house went - maybe they dont catch it right away but they will - *** family didnt appear to do any estate planning - they will need to spend that money on her care
The way I can put it if the family is wanting to get out of paying - and they think spending $3-6k or whatever amount is needed for her care is too much then they need to factor in 24/7 care at $12/hr + 15% for taxes, food, utilities, rent, insurance, outside upkeep, maintenance etc and add that up for a month and they will see what a bargain ALF can be