Med­ic­aid Planning

There are two kinds of Med­ic­aid Plan­ning that fam­i­lies face:  Cri­sis Plan­ning and Pre-Crisis Plan­ning.

Cri­sis Planning.

Cri­sis Plan­ning deals with an indi­vid­ual who has either been admit­ted to a nurs­ing home or is about to be placed in a nurs­ing home and they have been told, or sus­pect, that they have too much money or too many assets to qual­ify for Med­ic­aid.  This can be a sin­gle indi­vid­ual or one half of a mar­ried couple.

If this is you, your fam­ily is fac­ing nurs­ing home costs that will be at least $6,000 per month, and per­haps more.  Usu­ally, the only source of money to pay these costs come from the life sav­ings of the indi­vid­ual or mar­ried cou­ple.  Given the high burn rate of over $70,000 it’s not long before you go broke or lose your home (or both).  It’s only when you’ve met the finan­cial test for Med­ic­aid that the gov­ern­ment will step in and cover your nurs­ing home stay.

At the same time, folks receive flat-out incor­rect advice about how to qual­ify for Med­ic­aid, often from well-intentioned fam­ily and friends.  Fol­low­ing that advice can often have unin­tended neg­a­tive con­se­quences.  For instance, if you give every­thing away to your kids, you might actu­ally delay the time before you qual­ify for Med­ic­aid, not speed it up.

Unless you work in this field, you’re prob­a­bly not aware of the dozens of ways to legally pre­serve the max­i­mum amount of assets and income and still qual­ify for Med­ic­aid ben­e­fits in the short­est amount of time, whether you’re an indi­vid­ual or mar­ried cou­ple.  Even in a crisis.

These are your sav­ings, your hard-earned assets, saved over a life­time — you owe it to your­self to help pro­tect them and meet with qual­i­fied pro­fes­sion­als in the field who can help you make it happen.

You don’t have to go broke or lose your home to qual­ify for Medicaid.

Call us to sched­ule a con­fi­den­tial, no-cost con­sul­ta­tion to dis­cuss your issues.  We’ll be able to tell you in the first meet­ing if we can help and what we’ll be able to help pro­tect and save for you and your family.

It’s never too late to call us.

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Pre-Crisis Plan­ning.

Pre-Crisis Plan­ning helps indi­vid­u­als or mar­ried cou­ples who are cur­rently healthy and want to put together a plan in case the real pos­si­bil­ity that some­day one or both will become inca­pac­i­tated and require long-term care won’t deplete their sav­ings or the assets they want to leave for their loved ones.

The truth is that, although you’re healthy now, there is a real pos­si­bil­ity that one or both of you will require assisted liv­ing or cus­to­dial care.  Recent stud­ies sug­gest that over half of the pop­u­la­tion cur­rently over 65 today will find them­selves with that need…and cost.

Unfor­tu­nately, that kind of care is expen­sive.  At cur­rent rates, nurs­ing home costs are over $6,000 per month or more.  One year of care can exceed $70,000, which will likely deplete your hard-earned savings…money that you prob­a­bly need, and counted on, for the healthy spouse, or which, if prop­erly pro­tected, can be left to fam­ily and loved ones, rather than spent down in your care.

We can help by work­ing with you to develop a com­pre­hen­sive estate plan that con­tains the right pro­tec­tions in case you become dis­abled and are unable to make your own deci­sions.  We can help you put a plan in place today that con­tem­plates a long-term nurs­ing home stay and gets you qual­i­fied for Med­ic­aid as soon as pos­si­ble, while pro­tect­ing as much of the assets as possible…legally.

In addi­tion, the estate plan­ning doc­u­ments that non-elder care attor­neys will draft tend to focus on after-death dis­tri­b­u­tions and sophis­ti­cated tax plan­ning, with lit­tle or no thought paid to how your affairs should be man­aged in case of dis­abil­ity.  We work to help you cre­ate a holis­tic plan that details how you will be cared for dur­ing any peri­ods of incapacity.

The most impor­tant thing in Pre-Crisis Plan­ning is giv­ing you peace of mind.  We know the law, and we will work with you to learn about your fam­ily and your per­sonal goals.  Together, we develop a plan that will work when you need it.  Our goal is to help you sleep soundly at night after you know that you have a plan in place that will pro­tect your assets when the unthink­able happens.

To learn more about how we can help you with Pre-Crisis Med­ic­aid plan­ning, call our office and sched­ule a no-cost, con­fi­den­tial meet­ing to dis­cuss your spe­cific situation.

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