My mother has a couple of apartments – one that she rents out and one that she lives in. She also has a small retirement nest egg. She’s getting on in years and may need to move into an assisted living place in the next few years.
She has a long term care policy that would cover the first few years and her assets could cover a bit more. Let’s assume she could go at least 5 years, probably more, without running out of money.
Is there a way to move the real estate assets into some trust that Medicaid can’t get at? Most assisted living places will accept Medicaid after you’ve been there for a few years, but my understanding is that Medicaid doesn’t come in until you’ve been bled dry.
I don’t mind her using the income from her apartments (she would likely rent both out if she moved into a place) to help pay for assisted living, but wouldn’t want her to be forced to sell the apartments and then use up all of those assets, etc.
Also, who is the right professional to talk to about this to get answers? Estate attorney? Investment advisor?
Yeah, that’s why we want to get started nowish. She’s relatively healthy, and between her long term care insurance and liquid assets, she can afford at least five years of assisted living.
Look for Medicaid attorneys in your area. I’m going through this right now with my mother, have received some good advice and information in this thread that I started. Have an initial consultation appointment on Wednesday. Mother needs the care now, the good news is that they can apply the spend-down amount to their mortgage, and it’s not subject to the 5-year look-back period.
ETA: Check AVVO - they will find you attorneys in your area, complete with their ratings for said attorneys.
Also note that since she has LTCI, she should check to see if the state she lives in has a Long-Term Care Insurance Partnership Program. As I understand it, these programs allow someone to keep an amount of assets equal to the value of the LTCI policy, that is, money the state would have paid if the person did not have the LTCI. But not all states do this, as far as I know.
In our forays into looking at LTCI, most of it is not worth the paper it’s printed on. So many of the outfits exclude everything they can as “pre-existing conditions”. I was talking with my wife about this the other day, she saw no benefit to us, as she is a long-term back patient, and I am a liver patient - we’d spend the premiums, and still not be covered in the end.
She gets extra income from the one she rents, and will get more if she rents her current place. I guess I don’t see how getting less income would be the best thing for her.
Anyway, to everyone else, thanks so much! There’s some great advice in there.