According to a study conducted by Caring.com, the percentage of people aged fifty-five and older who have created a will has fallen from 60 percent to 44 percent since 2019.[1] Although creating or updating your estate planning may seem like a daunting task, a proper estate plan can help address the concerns you may face…
When your aging parent, or elderly loved one, is having difficulty paying their bills, or needs medical care they can’t afford, you probably want to pitch in and help. Doing so with your own pocketbook will mean less money available to pay your bills and save for your own retirement. You attempting to solve your…
We often are asked if a parent sells assets to have funds to pay for a nursing home, or assisted living facility, will there be a penalty or waiting period before the parent can qualify for Medicaid benefits. The simple answer to that question is no. There is no transfer penalty or waiting period when…
What are advance directives and why should everyone have them? Advance directives allow you to plan for the possibility that you may one day be unable to make your own medical and financial decisions. In doing so, there can be confusion about the differences between the various advance directives. Among the most important…
A durable power of attorney is one of the most important estate planning documents you can create, but it is also one that can be misused. While it isn’t possible to entirely prevent the possibility of abuse, there are steps you can take in drafting the document to greatly reduce the chances. A power of…
Immediate annuities can be a useful tool to protect the spouse of a nursing home resident who applies for Medicaid. These types of annuities allow the nursing home resident to spend down assets and give the spouse a guaranteed income. But while immediate annuities for Medicaid planning work in Florida, they may not work in…
Is Medicaid planning complex? Sometimes, Medicaid planning can be easy. An example might be when there is a need for a Qualified Income Trust, for a nursing home resident who has spent down their assets to practically zero, and whose income is above the Medicaid limit of $2,313 for 2019. You just fill out the…
The following message was released on November 30, 2018, by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, announced actions that will bolster nursing home oversight and improve transparency in order to ensure that facilities are staffed adequately to provide high-quality long term care. These…
You may be afraid of losing your house to the nursing home, the State, or otherwise, if you must enter a nursing home and apply for Medicaid benefits to pay for the nursing home. While this fear may be well-founded in the vast majority of states, transferring the home to your children is usually not…
Often our clients seeking Medicaid benefits to help pay for nursing home care, or other long term care, are concerned about financial protections available to the stay at home spouse. They want to know how many assets or how much income the healthy spouse will be allowed to keep to ensure the financial well-being of…
