What is Life Care Planning / Medicaid Asset Protection?
What are the Objectives of This Type of Planning?
What is an Asset Protection Plan?
What Assets Can You Protect?
What Should You Bring to Your Initial Meeting?

What is Life Care Planning & Medicaid Asset Protection?

Life Care Planning and Medicaid Asset Protection is the process of protecting assets from having to be spent down in connection with entry into a nursing home, while also helping ensure that you or your loved one gets the best possible care and maintains the highest possible quality of life, whether at home, in an assisted living facility, or in a nursing home. This process is called Life Care Planning because it is an ongoing, life-long process.  Although the initial Asset Protection Planning may take as little as a few weeks or few months, the services that we provide for you or your loved one will continue throughout your lifetime.

What are the Objectives of This Type of Planning?

For a married couple, the most important goal is typically to ensure that the spouse remaining at home is able to live the remaining years of his or her life in utmost dignity and not have to suffer a drastic reduction in his or her standard of living.  If you are a single or widowed client, the most important reason for you to engage in asset protection planning is for you to be able to enjoy the highest quality of life possible in the event you are forced to enter a nursing home.  For instance, money that we protect for you in the process of getting you qualified for Medicaid can be used, once you are receiving Medicaid benefits, to provide you with an enhanced level of care and a better quality of life while you are in a nursing home.  For instance, we will often encourage the families of our clients to use the protected assets to hire a private “sitter” or “helper” – someone to keep you company, help you with meals, etc., somewhat like a “surrogate daughter.”  It is usually important to our clients that they are able to preserve a modest inheritance to pass along to their children.  Money that we protect for you in the process of getting you qualified for Medicaid can also be used to purchase things for you that are not covered by Medicaid – perhaps a large screen television if you have vision problems, trips to the beauty salon, new clothing, etc.  You may also have a desire to leave a modest inheritance for your children, particularly if you have a disabled child or someone who needs special financial help.

At the initial interview, or sometime the second interview, we will typically:

• Assist you in identifying your goals and objectives;
• Review the strategies that are available to help you achieve these goals; and
• Explain how we can help you achieve your goals by preparing a specially-designed Asset Protection Plan tailored to your assets and your objectives
 
After the initial meeting, we enter your information and objectives onto our computer.  The computer crunches the numbers, which enables us to make an analysis and come up with the alternatives that make sense for you. These are then put into an Asset Protection Plan for your review and guidance.

The Asset Protection Plan

The Asset Protection Plan is broken down into a number of sections:

Background:
In this section, we confirm what you’ve told us about your health, income, assets, and expenses. This is important because the entire plan is based on this information. If your information is different, the plan will be different. We want to be sure that we understand your situation completely.

Objectives:
Why do we do asset protection planning? As mentioned above, most of our client are interested in protecting their assets (a) for themselves, to be able to enjoy the highest quality of life possible within the confines of a nursing home; (b) for their spouse, if applicable, who will be remaining in the community, and (c) ultimately for the benefit of their children.  Some people also have specific goals relating to disabled beneficiaries, or related to their home or to federal and state income taxes, or federal and estate gift taxes. Every plan must be customized to achieve your specific goals on the basis of your specific income, assets, expenses, and health conditions.

Applicable Law:
We discuss the Medicaid law, tax law, and, where appropriate, the laws relating to federal and state Veterans’ Administration.

Strategy:
For a single individual there are approximately 30 strategies which can be employed to protect assets. For a married couple there are about 60 strategies available. We walk you through each of these strategies that apply to your situation and discuss them with you to determine which ones appeal to you and would work for you and which ones are inappropriate.  Whenever possible, we compare strategies and give alternatives.

Assumptions:
Our clients are often unable to give us all of the information which we would need to make a perfect plan. For example, many people do not know what day they will enter a nursing home, what nursing home they will enter, how much it will cost, when and how often the nursing home will raise its rates, how much will be covered by Medicare, and how much private pay money is required by the nursing home as a condition of admission. The plan is based on assumptions and is usually very accurate. However, as these variables become known, the plan is revised from time-to-time. In addition, the law changes frequently and the plan may need to be revised periodically to be sure that it complies with current law.

Additional Considerations:
This section is an attempt to answer the common questions which people have and avoid the ordinary pitfalls.

Action Plan:
This is a summary of the exact steps that need to be taken to implement the plan.

Implementation:

Our office assists you to the extent possible in seeing that this is done. For example:

• If real estate needs to be transferred to a spouse or child, our office will prepare the deed and record it for you.  This will most often be done with a special type of split-interest deed that is used in Medicaid planning.

• If you need to deal with financial institutions or insurance companies, our office will obtain all the necessary forms for your signature.

• If the plan calls for the purchase of an annuity, our office will assist you in dealing with the insurance company to be sure that a policy is furnished that will meet the ever-changing Medicaid requirements.

• Filing the Medicaid Application: The final phase of the process for the Medicaid long-term care assistance. Every item on the application must be documented and explained. We will assist you in preparing and filing the application. We will also be available to answer questions that the Department of Social Services may have about the application.

Our general rule is that if you can do it or we can do it, we will do it for you. We have people who do this every day, and it is easier for them to do it than it is for you to do it. Public benefits’ planning is extremely complex. Even our finest judges are often baffled. One justice referred to Medicaid as unintelligible to the uninitiated. Our job is to guide you through the Medicaid maze so that you can protect the maximum amount of assets with the least amount of effort on your part.

What Assets Can You Protect?

This varies from client-to-client. With respect to Asset Protection, you are able to protect anywhere from Forty Percent (40%) to One-Hundred Percent (100%) of your assets, depending on your situation. As a general rule, the earlier you begin the planning process, the more assets you will be able to protect.  Remember that time works against you!

Many people have heard that you must do Asset Protection planning three or five years prior to entering a nursing home. This is not true. However, there are penalties for certain types of planning done within five years prior to applying for Medicaid. The penalties are periods of ineligibility for Medicaid. We are very careful to comply fully with the law. That is why this is sometimes time sensitive.

I urge you not to delay in this process! The earlier you start, the more assets you will be able to protect. Remember, why are you doing the planning? You are protecting the assets primarily for your own benefit and the benefit of your spouse, if you have one, and, also for the benefit of your children. In those situations where there is a spouse who will be remaining at home, it is often critical that this planning is done in order to enable that spouse to live at their current standard of living.

What to Bring to Your Initial Meeting

At the initial interview, or sometimes the second interview, which usually lasts one to two hours, we will need to review several types of personal information concerning your estate. Please bring the following documents with you to your initial meeting:

• Intake form which we will send you with our initial letter confirming your appointment. Please fill this in as best as you can. If you find it overwhelming, bring us the statements and we will be happy to fill them in with you. The more information you give us, the better the plan we will be able to give you.

• All bank statements, statements from brokerage firms, mutual funds, etc. All of this is important to help us protect those assets for you.

• Current addresses of your children and those persons whom you would want to be your healthcare representatives or be your agent under your Power of Attorney.  Current addresses with ZIP codes are very helpful.

• Copies of your existing documents -- your Wills, Living Trusts, Living Wills, Powers of Attorney, etc. We will review these for you. If they are adequate, we will leave them alone, but there is a good chance they will need to be modified.

• It is important that all the decision makers be present at the initial meeting so that work can be begun immediately. If you would like to bring some family members with you to the appointment, you are welcome to do so, but this is not required.

• As you will learn at that meeting, time is your enemy. The longer you delay in designing and implementing an Asset Protection Plan, the fewer assets you may be able to protect.

Our Goals

Our goal in serving you is to give you not only the best legal advice, but also excellent client service. We try very hard never to keep you waiting. We try to return our phone calls promptly, and work as a team so that there is always someone available to help you when you need it.

We strive very hard to deliver consistently high quality service to you. All of the people who work in our office are committed to this goal. They are all caring people, and they understand the problems you are facing. This is critical to us in the attorney-client relationship.

We can help you achieve your goals. We are able to help almost everyone who comes into our office. Please give us the opportunity to assist you and the information that we need to do a good job.