North Palm Beach Medicaid Planning Attorney
Elderly and disabled people face expensive healthcare needs that often exceed what is available through Medicare. Since Medicare is intended primarily to cover short-term care needs, people in need of in-home medical assistance, nursing home care, or long-term medical treatment must either purchase expensive private insurance or qualify for Medicaid. I order to qualify for Medicaid a person's assets must first be spent down or they must be impoverished. As a result, people who are uninsured or do not have some kind of trust or healthcare plan in place often have to sell their home or liquidate their assets. However, impoverishment and spending down assets can be avoided if the proper estate and financial planning steps are taken -- even after someone has been fallen ill or moved into a nursing home.
At the law office of Lee A. Rosenthal, I evaluate my clients' financial situation in order to identify sound, creative financial and estate planning strategies that allow people to protect more of their assets while qualifying for Medicaid. I explain how the following planning tools can help you secure Medicaid eligibility for yourself or an elderly parent:
Special needs trust
Testamentary trusts
Reallocation of assets
Transfer of home ownership
Income re-distribution pools
Irrevocable / revocable trusts
In a marriage, it's not uncommon for one spouse to fall ill before the other, requiring nursing home care or long term treatment as a result. In these situations, even after an ailing spouse has entered a nursing home, assets can be transferred from the sick spouse to the healthy one by establishing a trust or other financial planning tool in the other's name. This not only protects the healthy spouse from losing their home and other assets it also allows the sick spouse to qualify for Medicaid. There are, of course, other considerations that must be taken into account. As your attorney, I will thoroughly examine your financial situation and the best financial options available to you.
An immediate annuity involves paying an insurance company a certain amount of money given an estimated life expectancy for you. The insurance company then pays you a monthly allowance which can then be used to pay living expenses. Under current law, an immediate annuity is a useful financial tool for exempting some of your assets from being counted against you for the purposes of qualifying for Medicaid. Since immediate annuities are considered investments, they are not considered assets under Medicaid law.
For example, if a sick spouse is in need of nursing home care, the healthy spouse can purchase an immediate annuity of $50,000 for ten years using funds from their joint savings. Each month for the next ten years, he or she will receive a certain amount of money that can be used to pay for living expenses, the mortgage, or other costs while exempting $50,000 from the other spouse's Medicaid eligibility spend down costs.
There are a number of financial and estate planning strategies that can be employed in order to help people qualify for Medicaid. As an estate planning attorney with years of experience, I can help you determine what works best for you and your family. For more information, contact the law office of Lee A. Rosenthal today.
Lee A. Rosenthal, P.A.
Florida Medicaid Planning Attorney
631 U.S. Highway One • Suite 302
North Palm Beach, FL 33408
Phone: 561.799.5290 • Fax: 561.799.9987
E-Mail: Contact Us
