Tools to Pay for Long-Term Health Care and Protect Your Estate
Buffalo Nursing Home Lawyers
Planning for Nursing Home Care in Buffalo
Everyone knows that nursing home care in Buffalo is expensive, but when family and home health aides are no longer able to provide a loved one with the level of safety and care they require, it becomes necessary to find residential solutions. At Friedman & Ranzenhofer, our Lawyers help seniors and their loved ones in WNY with financial planning options that make nursing home care affordable with help from Medicaid.
Medicaid has strict requirements when it comes to income and assets, but even a well-positioned individual or couple will quickly deplete their resources if forced to pay out of pocket for nursing home care in Buffalo. Rather than burning through your life savings, our attorneys can help you establish financial tools that can preserve your assets and protect you from penalties associated with Medicaid’s five year “look back” period.
Plan Ahead for Medicaid’s “Look Back”
As part of its nursing home care eligibility review, Medicaid examines the last five years of your financial life, and counts transfers of cash or assets made to anyone other than your spouse against you. If you make a large gift to a child or someone else during the look back period and then apply for nursing home care, Medicaid will calculate a no-payment period meant to reflect the amount of the transfer. That value will be divided by the average cost of nursing home care in Buffalo, to determine a period of time in which no benefits will be paid.
The best situation to be in is to make appropriate financial plans while you’re healthy and don’t need nursing home care. By creating financial instruments like trusts, annuities, and other strategies, you can direct money to loved ones while preserving your ability to access important health care resources without penalty periods. If your health is declining and your need for nursing home care is more pressing, the Buffalo Nursing Home Lawyers at Friedman & Ranzenhofer can help structure your assets in a way that protects you during the penalty period, and provide you with the resources to live comfortably when you move into a nursing home.
The Tools To Protect What You Love
Planning for Medicaid eligibility for future nursing home needs is one of the most important steps you can take to protect your life savings and your assets, and retain control of donations and giving. Some of the most significant tools available to you when it comes to Medicaid nursing home planning are trusts, which are legal entities into which you can transfer assets or cash. If you transfer a high-value asset like a home into a trust, you are no longer the legal owner, but trust documents will designate the trustee (often an adult child) and lay out the rules by which they manage the trust.
Another kind of trust, a pooled income trust, is designed to lower your income to eligibility levels, while paying your expenses, preserving your earnings, and keeping your “excess” income available to be passed on to your heirs. There are many ethical, legal ways to protect yourself and all that you’ve worked for when it’s time to think about long term care in a nursing home in Buffalo. It is highly recommended that you contact one of our experienced Buffalo Nursing Home Lawyers for guidance.
Call our Nursing Home Lawyers at Friedman & Ranzenhofer to talk and discuss your medicaid nursing home planning.
