Jerry and Lisa needed help to deal with Jerry’s advancing dementia
and increasing cost of care. They were terrified they would lose everything.
I was able to help them make sure that Jerry (and both of them) would
get the care they needed and still save a ton of money for them.
Jerry and Lisa had done well for themselves. They owned their home, they
had CDs and bank accounts and some investments. They also each had IRAs
and life insurance.
Then things got worse and there came a time when Lisa could no longer take
care of Jerry at home. Jerry’s dementia progressed and he needed to
go to a nursing home. The cost was staggering.
My clients quickly learned that Medicare, that they had always relied on,
would not pay for Jerry to be in the nursing home permanently –
for “long-term care” – but would only pay for short-term,
temporary nursing home care. Then the nursing home began bill them at
the rate of
$320 a day, or almost $10,000 per month.
Elder law to the rescue! Jerry needed Medicaid to pay for his long-term
care in a nursing home, or their life savings and retirement nest egg
would be gone pretty quickly. Medicaid has strict rules on financial eligibility
so we got to work on lawful, allowable asset protection strategies. Otherwise,
Medicaid wouldn’t even begin to pay for Jerry in the nursing home
till after they had spent most of their own money on Jerry’s care.
First, I helped them spend some of their money on things they needed or
could use anyway, like prepaid funerals, upgrading the car that Lisa drove
every day to see her husband, and other transactions that would protect
value for them (but not mess up our plan for Jerry’s Medicaid) under
the rules.
Next, we identified specific assets that Lisa would be allowed to keep,
because she was Jerry’s wife still living at home in the community,
at the time totaling $119,000 – her “Community Spouse Resource
Allowance.”
Finally, I helped them put all their remaining money that wasn’t already
protected – the money that Medicaid told them they had to spend
at the nursing home first – into a very specialized kind of plan,
a “Medicaid Qualified Spousal Immediate Annuity.” All the money
was returned to Lisa in monthly payments over the ensuing months, for
her to keep. I also guided them in removing Jerry as an owner or beneficiary
where appropriate or required.
I was able to save them
virtually everything they owned. They ended up paying the nursing home privately for only a short period
of time. They kept many, many, many times the amount of my fee that without
the right advice, they would have lost.
By the way, they kept their home for Lisa, too.
When Jerry passed, Lisa and the kids were heartbroken, but she was financially
secure. I couldn’t have been more proud of the help that I provided.
