Protecting the Home – Part 2
A continuation of last week’s topic concerns protecting the home when applying for Medicaid. I explained that John’s daughter, Amy should not have to sell her Dad’s home and spend down the proceeds before qualifying for Medicaid if Amy is living in the home and she intends to bring him
Protecting the Home – Part 1
I received a call last week which again highlights the risk of handling a Medicaid application on your own. As I often say, the application may appear to be easy but you never know when you’ll run into an issue or problem. When that happens it is important to have
A Family Theft – Part 4
In this week’s post I give you the conclusion to Joe’s saga involving his sister Sophie’s Medicaid application. As I explained in last week’s post, things didn’t go according to our expectation. When we filed a civil lawsuit seeking to collect the amounts Mary took from Sophie I expected that
The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Help Out Parents
Families look after each other. They pitch in when a member needs help. As an elder law attorney, I see this quite often. It can be an aging parent helping out an adult child in need due to financial difficulties caused by illness, job loss or divorce.
Getting and Then Keeping Medicaid- Part 3
This week’s post is the last of 3 on the danger of losing Medicaid after having been approved. In both of our cases the Qualified Income Trust was the cause and each time it happened during the annual redetermination process. As I explained last week
Getting Medicaid and then Keeping it (Part 2)
In my post last week, I started to tell you about the dangers of losing Medicaid benefits after qualifying for them. That’s because you cannot put things on “autopilot”. One reason is that getting a Medicaid approval only lasts for one year. The State requires recipients to go through
Gift or Theft? – Part 3
In this week’s post I give you the conclusion to John’s saga with Medicaid. As you will recall, we have applied for Medicaid for John’s sister, Mary. In reviewing the 5 years of records which we must submit to the State, we found that John’s brother, Jerry
Gift or Theft ? (Part 2)
In last week’s post I told you about John’s call about Medicaid for his sister, Mary. During our review of her 5 years of financial records we discovered transfers of funds while their brother, Jerry was handling her finances. Jerry admitted that he took the money without
Gift or Theft (Part 1)
The call from John involved another crisis planning case. His sister, Mary was already in a nursing home and had a minimal amount of assets remaining to be spent down. Before entering the facility she had lived for many years with her other brother, Jerry. Although she was able to
Raising a Grandchild (Part 2)
In last week's post I focused on an increasingly common family arrangement in which -for several different reasons - grandparents who expected to retire and live a more leisurely lifestyle instead find themselves caring for their grandchildren. This often starts as a temporary solution but