We believe you have worked hard for what you have and who you’ve become. Our law firm has decades of combined legal experience relevant to helping you plan the transfer of your property to your loved ones and protecting these assets from anyone who would like to take them.
Nursing homes can cost thousands of dollars every month. The federal government recognizes that many senior citizens need this care and might not be able to afford treatment. As such, the Medicaid program serves as a way to provide partial or even total payments for nursing home care.
Medicaid is a needs-based program, so all applications for Medicaid benefits involve an evaluation of a person’s financial situation. The Medicaid program examines your ability to make cash payments out of bank accounts and evaluates any assets you might be able to sell to raise funds. When applying for Medicaid, many people end up selling personal assets to qualify, such as:
If the Medicaid program discovers an applicant owns assets exceeding the value of state-mandated eligibility requirements, they may deny access to benefits that could help pay for the costs of long-term care. Families may believe they have to sell real estate or other family heirlooms to receive financial assistance, but this might not be the case. A seasoned attorney could help families in Western PA understand the requirements to qualify for Medicaid nursing home benefits.
The most common way to protect assets while pursuing eligibility for Medicaid is to place those assets into a trust. Trusts allow you to transfer ownership of your assets to another person while you are still alive and provide additional benefits during the probate or post-death administration process. Ideally, assets that are transferred to a trust will not be subject to valuation during a Medicaid application, but an applicant can continue to use them. For example, placing a family home into a trust means it will not be considered part of the applicant’s personal property, but the applicant may continue to live there.
Current law under Section 1917(c)(1)(B)(i) of the Social Security Act creates a five-year lookback period for financial evaluations, meaning that the Medicaid program can evaluate a Western PA resident’s finances for up to five years prior to the date of an application to determine eligibility. As a legal professional could further explain, if you only recently transferred ownership of your assets, you might not be eligible for Medicaid benefits until this five-year period has passed. If you or a loved one might require long-term care in the future, you should contact a legal team to start planning how you will afford nursing home costs as soon as possible.
