Planning for the Cost of Long-Term Care
Medicaid planning is intended to engage in appropriate and permissible strategies to best meet your goals and priorities, while still allowing you to qualify for Medicaid. Medicaid planning may allow you to preserve for your spouse, a disabled child, or with advance planning other family members, at least some of the assets that may otherwise be used to pay for nursing home or long-term medical care costs. There are many ways to carry out Medicaid planning, but the closer you are to a crisis such as admission to a nursing home, the more limited your options may become. Maintaining financial security and control for you and your spouse during uncertain times is often a high priority for clients.
At the Gemma Law Office in Braintree, Massachusetts, we provide comprehensive Medicaid planning services to families in the South Shore area of Massachusetts. Our goal is to be your long-term, trusted legal professional, helping you plan for the future and face any future crisis.
What Is Medicaid Planning?
No one would want the health problems of one spouse to use up all of the family's assets to the exclusion of the other spouse's needs or the needs of dependent family members. Medicaid will pay nursing home and long-term care expenses for eligible individuals. However, before Medicaid will pay for those expenses, personal savings must be below a certain financial limit. Medicaid planning is intended to engage in appropriate and permissible strategies to best meet your goals and priorities, while still allowing you to qualify for Medicaid.
One long range planning strategy for preserving assets involves the use of trusts. For example, when assets are placed in a qualifying irrevocable income-only trust (IIOT), those assets are no longer owned by the person who created the trust and therefore will not prevent that person from qualifying for Medicaid. The transfer of assets into this type of trust must take place at least five years before you apply for Medicaid long term care benefits.
We strongly recommend that no one should attempt Medicaid planning without the guidance of an experienced lawyer. For example:
- Your wish for asset protection must be weighed against your need to control your assets. For example, by transferring too many assets out of your control, you may create a circumstance in which the only way to obtain appropriate care is to enter a nursing home, because you no longer have enough money to provide for your own care at home.
- Medicaid has strict rules about when and how assets can be transferred. For example, any asset transfers done in the five years before admission to a nursing home may cause you to be ineligible for benefits.
Medicaid planning poses unique challenges to every family. Many people end up striking a balance between preserving some assets and having control over other assets.
Schedule a Free Consultation With a Lawyer
Make today the day you start planning wisely for the future. Contact us by telephone or e-mail to schedule a free initial consultation with attorney Anthony Gemma. Our Braintree office is easily accessible from Boston, as well as Metrowest and South Shore communities, and has free parking and disability access.
