Does anyone have any experience qualifying a real estate purchase as a home in order to qualify for medicaid?
A friends mom has a $100,000 CD and needs to go into assisted living. The thought is that she could by an interest in my friend’s residence which she would move into if she was able to leave the facility.
This will not be a complete and definitive answer, and is based only on my experience and on conversations with a friend who works in Medicaid. You cannot hide your money from Medicaid. They will find it. They will look at your bank records for the last 2 years, and look for any major purchases or giveaways. Her assets in this property will be used to pay back to Medicaid, eventually. The only exception would be property owned jointly with a spouse.
This is not quite true. We’ve gone through a similar situation with my grandmother, who would rather not give all her cash to a nursing home if/when she needs to enter one.
Go talk to an Elder Care Lawyer. Many of them work for very reasonable rates, and they can talk you through the legal options to protecting assets from Medicare. I don’t know the exacts, but I know my grandmother was legally able to give a lot of her cash to her children, who keep it in escrow for her.
Thanks for the inputs.
They aren’t really trying to hide assets. Just trying to take advantage of the exemption for a residence that may exist (I say may because they don’t know for sure).