Medicaid Asset Protection in PA, NJ, DE, MD

Medicaid Asset protection for Seniors

Don't Go Broke Paying for Nursing Care

One of the greatest fears of older Americans is that they may end up in a nursing home. This not only means a great loss of personal freedom, but also a tremendous financial cost. Regardless of what you've heard, it's never too late to protect your assets.

Nursing Homes Cost More Than $100,000 per Year

What's the Answer?
Medicaid Planning

What is Medicaid Planning?
Medicaid planning is the process of protecting your hard earned assets from the growing cost of Long Term Care. 70% of Americans over the age of 65 will need Long Term Care Services. Many nursing home residents end up exhausting their savings and assets on long-term care costs leaving their family with nothing but a huge bill for the nursing care that was provided. Medicaid Planning will avoid losing your hard earned savings and assets.

With Proper Planning Techniques, We Can Show You:

How you can qualify for Medicaid benefits even if you have savings, a home and other assets.
What you'll need to know if family members are providing care for a loved one.
How a married couple can keep all of their savings and their home if one spouse must enter a nursing home.
How the spouse in the nursing home can pass their income to their wife or husband.
How a single individual can protect their assets and their home [many people believe that asset protection is for married couples only, we'll show you how that's not true].

There are generally 2 categories of Medicaid Planning, "Pre-Planning" and "Crisis Planning".

Pre-Planning:
Medicaid has what is known as a "look back period". What that means is, they will audit an applicants financial history for the previous 60 month period from the date of the Medicaid application. If there are any financial transactions that have taken place [outside of the allowable guidelines] they will impose a "penalty" [a period of ineligibility]. Pre Planning takes place when an individual comes to us 60 months or more prior to needing nursing home care. Pre Planning allows for a greater number of options in strategies to be used in order to preserve the maximum amount of savings and assets. Pre planning will also make applying for Medicaid much easier because upon the need to nursing home care you will already know that meeting the guidelines will not be difficult and will not result in a loss of savings or assets.

"Crisis" Planning:
Crisis Planning occurs when an individual is either in or about to enter a nursing home. This is a critical moment, it's absolutely imperative that you contact us as soon as possible to preserve the greatest amount of your assets as possible. While "crisis" planning does limit the number of strategies available for asset preservation, there are still strategies known to us that will generally allow us to preserve 100% of a couples assets.

What We Can Do for You:

Protect your Home; Medicaid applicants do not have to sell their homes in order to qualify for Medicaid, however, it is, however, subject to what is known as "Medicaid Estate Recovery" [Medicaid will attempt to recover the amount paid to the nursing home for your care, subject to certain restrictions] properly protecting your home will avoid the estate recovery and also avoid capitol gains taxes should you or your spouse transfer the home to your children before selling it.
Protect your Retirement accounts [IRA's, 401k, 403b, etc.]; Some states differ but generally, the retirement accounts that you and your spouse have will be considered a "countable resource" when applying for Medicaid. and therefore, will have to be liquidated or turned into a source of income.
Protect your Investment accounts; if left unprotected, these accounts for both you and your spouse will considered a "countable" resource and must be liquidated and go through the "spend down process" in order to meet the resource allowance limit. properly protecting these accounts will allow you to preserve them for your family.
Protect your life Insurance; if you and/or your souse has life insurance, if left unprotected, you may be required to liquidate the policy and possibly use the proceeds from the cash value in the "spend down process". Medicaid only allows a cash value to $1,500 or less in a whole life policy, term policies are exempt because they do not build cash value. Properly protecting your policies will allow you retain your death benefit for your family.
Protect your income; The income of the healthy spouse at home [known as the"community spouse"] will continue undisturbed; he or she will not have to use his or her income to support the spouse receiving Medicaid benefits. If most of the couple’s income is in the name of the spouse in the nursing home and the community spouse’s income is not enough to live on the community spouse may be entitled to some or all of the income of the institutionalized spouse. If the income of the applicant is above the Medicaid limits we can protect your income with a Pooled Income Trust. Read more about a Pooled Income Trust by clicking below

pooled_income_trust.pdf
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Don't Sell Your Home, Give Away or "Spend Down" Your Assets Before Calling Us