Speakers: Maritess Bott and Unidentified Off-Camera Speaker
[Music]Off-camera Speaker:
I would love an answer to, what the top three tips for Medicaid planning are?
Maritess:
Absolutely! Hello everyone, my name is Maritess Bott. I will be sharing the top three tips regarding Medicaid planning. This is just tips and this topic is quite in depth so if you have additional questions please, please, please call our office.
Top three tips. We’ll start with one. Number one is super important, is—plan early. Medicaid planning is all about making sure that you can afford to live in a facility in your later years and be able to be qualified for Medicaid. Often people think, well, I’ll just use my money and I’ll just spend it—but at the rate of about $10,000 a month, at $120,000 a year, people are surprised that they are going to run out of money so quickly. And often people come back to me and say, mom needs to go into a nursing home today and it’s too late. Plan early. If this is something that is of concern to you or your family and you want to protect your assets, then call us so we can plan and do the right types of strategies to protect your assets so that your loved one can be approved for Medicaid sooner rather than later.
The phrase that most people remember or hear about is called The Five-Year Look Back. What that means is, when you apply for Medicaid, the state will look for the last five years on your statements—what you’ve given away. If you’re just going to gift away to your kids all this money, you’re not going to get on Medicaid quickly. In fact, you’re going to be penalized. Plan, plan, plan early so that we can get past that five years. Then you can be able to qualify for Medicaid sooner rather than later. There’s no guarantee that you’ll be immediately qualified, but at least you’ll be able to qualify maybe within a year or a year and a half—rather than you have to wait eight years and mom’s already in a situation where she needs the nursing home care.
Tip number two is what I just mentioned—don’t just be giving away your assets because you think that’s the best way. Oftentimes I have prospects and clients call me and say, oh yeah, we just added ourselves on the house and it should be fine. Now we’ll own it and the kids are just thinking that Mom can be qualified for Medicaid immediately. Once again, this five-year look back is a big deal and you’ll have penalties. When you start adding people on accounts—whether it’s savings accounts, checking accounts, investment accounts—that is a gift. When you put somebody, and people create their own quitclaim deed and they think they’ve done the right thing, that is a gift. You will be penalized. Don’t do this. I know it’s a simple, simple solution which you think will get you to where you need to go, but I can’t stress enough how big of a deal this is. You should not just start gifting and assume you’re going to get on Medicaid quickly. Please, please, please come to us and we can talk about what you’re allowed to do, what can we do, what is the most appropriate way to gift—if that’s the right strategy—but also explain the ramifications of that gift.
Number three. The last tip I’m going to share with you is—often you will talk to, maybe you’re looking around for nursing homes. You’re talking to the people at the nursing home and they’re giving you advice. Often they’re giving you the advice of, yeah, you’ll just spend down the money and give me the title to your house. They’re basically—you have—what I want you to remember is the phrase I say: the nursing home is not your advocate.
The nursing home is generally salespeople—sales team—that is trying to get your loved one into their facility so they can start receiving payments. Their goal is to just get you to spend down your assets and then, yeah, we’ll help you qualify for Medicaid when the time comes. Do they ever give you tips on how to save some of this money? Rarely, probably never, because they’re not lawyers and they’re not advocates for you. Trust me, they’re not. They’re there to get your assets to pay for the care and then eventually get Mom on Medicaid. But then, at the end of the day, if there is another parent that’s living outside the nursing home and they need funds to take care of themselves, why should this couple just spend it all down? Now we have money that could have been saved. Even if it’s a single person, not a married couple, if we can save some of the assets for your family, for your favorite charities, for your grandchildren, for your nieces and nephews—why not? Why do we want to give it away to the nursing home at a rate of $10,000 or $15,000 a month? Basically, we work so hard in this country every single day thinking we’re going to be able to either use it or give it away to our next generation, our family. We didn’t just do that to give it to the nursing home, essentially.
Let’s try to plan together. Very important to really just talk to someone. I suggest you give us a call. We’ll have a conversation about what is available for you to protect your assets.
Thanks again for watching our podcast today. If you have questions, please feel free to call us or check out our website. Have a great day!
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