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Medicaid: Paying For Nursing Home Care.

January 31, 2020/in Asset Preservation, Estate Planning, Medicaid/by KT Williams

Medicaid pays the nursing home costs for people who qualify. To qualify, we must satisfy personal criteria and financial criteria. For the personal criteria, we must be over age 65, blind, or disabled. For the financial criteria, our income must be below the Medicaid income limit and our assets must be below the Medicaid asset limit.

So, it may seem that qualifying for Medicaid is a simple and straightforward process. For a few, it might be. But for most, it is not.

The rules and regulations governing Medicaid eligibility are lengthy and challenging to understand and apply. Those of us who help individuals navigate the Medicaid-qualification process see it regularly. We know the difficulty and roadblocks that people can face if they don’t have the background or motivation to make the system work the way it should. We know how to overcome the difficulty, and we know how to work around the roadblocks.

What If The Nursing Home Says You Won’t Qualify For Medicaid?

Just as you wouldn’t rely on a lawyer to provide health care advice, it may not be wise to rely on a health care professional for legal advice. Perhaps you’ve visited a nursing home to ask about its costs and about Medicaid. And maybe the nursing home told you that you wouldn’t qualify for Medicaid. What do you do now? If the nursing home said you won’t qualify, then there is no use in doing anything more, right? Wrong! You shouldn’t stop there. Talk to a lawyer who is trained to know Medicaid’s rules and regulations and knows what it takes to qualify.

I meet with families regularly who have visited a nursing home and have been told they won’t qualify for Medicaid. That advice is usually wrong. We use a detailed and in-depth evaluation process to determine if someone can qualify for Medicaid. And we typically find that they can qualify after taking some important, well-defined steps based on carefully applying Medicaid’s rules and regulations.

Should You Use A Nursing Home To Apply For Medicaid?

Nursing homes and their staff don’t intend to misdirect people about Medicaid. But working through the Medicaid rules and regulations to help someone qualify is not their training and focus. Instead, they are trained and paid to provide important medical services to our loved ones. Their expertise is in operating a nursing home and providing care, not the law.

What Should You Do When A Loved One Needs Nursing Home Care?

If a loved one needs nursing home care or may need nursing home care in the near future, you should take a few important steps. Meet with an Estate Planning/Elder Law attorney who knows Medicaid’s rules and regulations. Also, visit nursing homes to find the one that will be a good fit. As your attorney, I will work with you to qualify for Medicaid, and the nursing home will help you figure out if their nursing home is a good fit for your loved one. Contact us with questions and for help.

 

https://ktwilliamslaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/83984594_1375073102670623_239609894662045696_o.jpg 508 800 KT Williams https://ktwilliamslaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/williams-law-logo-rgb-640px.png KT Williams2020-01-31 10:54:412020-01-31 11:28:01Medicaid: Paying For Nursing Home Care.

POD Accounts: Are You Using Them Correctly?

January 17, 2020/in Estate Planning/by KT Williams

Should You Use POD or TOD Beneficiary Designations?

Many of your accounts, such as life insurance and retirement accounts, automatically include beneficiary designations that you complete. On the beneficiary designation, you identify who will receive the retirement account or life insurance proceeds after your death. Perhaps, you name certain people as your designated beneficiaries. But you can also name a Trust as the designated beneficiary, and in some instances, naming a Trust makes the most sense.

Naming beneficiaries for certain accounts is common. For other accounts, it’s not common, but an available alternative if you know to ask for it. I want you to know your options and how to use them.

What Is a POD or TOD Account?

While retirement accounts and life insurance policies automatically include the option for you to name beneficiaries, other accounts do not. Your traditional checking and savings accounts and your investment and brokerage accounts rarely include beneficiary designation options unless you request it. When you request it, the designation will be called a POD (Pay On Death) or TOD (Transfer On Death) designation.

The terms POD and TOD can be used interchangeably. Through a POD or TOD designation, you name beneficiaries to the account. And each designated beneficiary automatically receives their share of the account at your death.

This means the designated beneficiary isn’t required to open an estate, have an executor appointed, or go through the probate process to get their share of the account. As you can see, using a POD or TOD designation can be a convenient way to make sure your accounts pass to the recipients you want to receive them. But care should be taken when using POD or TOD designations.

Should Your POD or TOD Designations Match Your Other Estate Planning?

Your beneficiary designations are part of your estate planning. The designation works to get the asset or account to the beneficiary you want. So in that respect, the designation is similar to instructions that you might include in your Last Will and Testament or your Trust.

But it’s important to remember that your Will or Trust doesn’t control who receives an account if the account contains a beneficiary designation. As you might imagine, trouble for your beneficiaries and family lurks around the corner if your Will or Trust doesn’t share the same beneficiaries as your POD or TOD designations.

Your POD or TOD designations should name the same beneficiaries you name in your Will or Trust. If they don’t match, you should clearly explain the difference in your Will or Trust. If there isn’t an explanation, you leave room for speculation about why there is a difference. Was the POD or TOD designation a mistake? Did the deceased understand their Will or Trust wouldn’t control the account? Did the beneficiary influence the deceased to make the POD or TOD beneficiary different than in the Will or Trust?

What Should You Do If You Use POD or TOD Designations?

If you use POD or TOD designations for any of your traditional banking or brokerage accounts, consider if the beneficiaries on those accounts are different than you show in your Will or Trust. You don’t need to do anything special in your Will or Trust if the beneficiaries are the same. But if they are different, you can save the beneficiaries in your Will or Trust and the beneficiaries on the POD or TOD designation from quite a bit of trouble and stress by including a short explanation in your Will or Trust. Your beneficiaries will then understand that you purposefully selected the beneficiaries for a reason.

You don’t want to leave room for anyone to think you didn’t mean to do what you did. One simple way to be confident that your Will or Trust and your beneficiary designations are properly expressed in your estate planning is for your estate planning (elder law) attorney and your financial representative to work together with you on your estate planning. I’ve consistently seen that when we work together, the old saying, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” holds true.

We’re ready and happy to work with you and your financial representative on your estate planning and elder law needs. Contact us to get started.

https://ktwilliamslaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/82306928_1364110857100181_1240587181597130752_o.jpg 520 800 KT Williams https://ktwilliamslaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/williams-law-logo-rgb-640px.png KT Williams2020-01-17 13:48:172020-01-17 14:12:38POD Accounts: Are You Using Them Correctly?

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