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You can read all about it by entering K. Gabriel Heiser in the search icon above.
He is an attorney and author who writes about your topic extensively.
By property, do you mean a house, land, and/or personal property like jewelry, appliances, furniture?
Please read about the five year look back also.
Search icon is the magnifying glass.
And if she sells you the property she will have funds to pay for her care.
The State has no interest in "owning" her property. What would happen is a lien would be placed on the property and any money owed would be due when the property is sold.
If you have questions about asset protection, which basically to my mind reads give-the-money-to-the-kids-and-let-the-taxpayer-worry-about-the-rest-of-it to me, then go to an attorney. Tell him you are there to discuss asset protection. Take all your Mom's asset information with you. He will give you your options.
Not going to happen.
Some feel that the "greedy nursing homes" should be frozen out and the assets the seniors "worked all their lives for" should go "where they want them to go (the darling kids, of course)."
I fall into the camp that it is the "greedy kids" who want the money their parents saved often ALL THEIR LIVES to have a decent outcome in their old age. And those kids could care less what kind of minimal Medicaid care the parents get, just so they don't get the money. Meanwhile the nursing homes, stuck with Medicaid payments struggle to keep minimally paid staff and the doors open with all the rules and regs. The parents suffer. And on we go.
Somewhere between those two camps of thought lies the truth, I suspect.
But I have two things on AC that will get me every single time. One is Siblings at War. The other is Asset Protection. In the one case the parent is torn between two ugly siblings. In the other the siblings are out to get the money before the Nursing Home Business can. There was a nun who became a Saint (Catherine of Sienna) who wasn't quite dead yet when those enamored of her began to collect their relics off her--so goes the gruesome (hopefully mythical) tale. I am put in mind of her. Should perhaps be the Saint of all Seniors.
Medicaid allows the home she lived in to be exempt. They require that all other property be sold and the proceeds used to pay for her care before applying for Medicaid. So if the property ur talking about is not where she lives, it will have to be sold for her care.
The problem with not selling the home is someone has to pay the taxes, utilities and upkeep because Moms SS and any pension will need to be used towards her care once she is on Medicaid. Even though the house is exempt Medicaid has a lot to say who can live in it. Medicaid will put a lien on the house only when Mom passes if house has not been sold at that time. Medicaid has no idea what is owed till then. To satisfy the lien, the house will probably need to be sold.
Medicaid has a 5 yr look back in most States. Within that time there should be no gift giving or selling a home/property under Market Value. Within the 5yr look back, there is no protecting of property or assets. Mom pays until her assets are diminished and then applies for Medicaid.
I’m going to approach this from entirely different angle, based - I’m guessing- on house being vacant? is in MS? & N of Bogue Chitto? This is a really isolated area of the State as most Choctaw land. Folks aren’t moving in, buying, doing flips or renovations. It’s not Laurel. It’s not Oxford, the Pass, Starkvegas, Bay St Louis. It’s not even Quitman…
It’s kinda like the Delta in the other part MS… very much lower tax assessor property in an area that has no real development or economy in the poorest State. Value overall is low. If this sounds what it’s like, it could be to your benefit. Anyways all this poses problems for State Medicaid estate recovery to be done as a lot of homes there’s little interest for anyone to buy them at all. It’s properties that need work and cannot qualify for a mortgage. Not easily sellable. It can take the State 2-4 years to go thru legal to get paperwork done to seize a property if heirs / family have no incentive to deal with the place.
So it's my understanding to deal with this issue is that MS has a 75K tax assessor value benchmark for attempted estate recovery aka MERP. Under 75k no recovery attempted. MS NPR “In Legal Terms” did a couple of shows on this over the years. You can Google some of their podcasts. You could contact the attorneys on the shows to get solid info on this. It seems what this translates to is that should the elder hang onto their ownership of the property- even though they are on LTC Medicaid in a NH with this Medicaid program paying for it - the State will do a hard pass on recovery after death if the property is under 75K assessor value. As these are properties that can’t really sell or sell for very much after the elder dies AND the costs and time to go thru recovery, Notices, legal filings etc not worth it. It’s negative benefits to the costs involved.
So what I’m going to suggest that you might want to think about if this is what the place is like, is having elder continue to keep their ownership and it’s allowed as their homestead is an exempt asset for LTC Medicaid during their lifetime. You let it sit there vacant and do only whatever to keep it secure. Then after they die, you get a probate attorney to enter their will to probate court that reads you are to inherit the property and if the State doesn’t do anything, after a period of time it transfers to you. HOWEVER and imo is important, you or someone in the family should pay property taxes this entire time otherwise it will go onto the required by State government annual tax sale for tax delinquency.
I don’t know if your MS county uses GovEase to do their tax sale but if they do there always is someone somewhere in the US who thinks they can be a Real Estate investor via tax deed and will go online and bid on parcel sight unseen with no idea what the area is like. & They do not do it the required # of sequential years to be able to file for redemption, so it ends up being a waste of time and $. It goes back into the county delinquency tax rolls again, so it’s Rinse & Repeat. GovEase does delinquent tax auctions on a national scale, online & do most counties in MS. Your paying the property taxes imo just keeps stuff simpler with no new non-family involved.
I know this approach irks others as it might could be sold FMV then elder spends down till impoverished to be LTC Medicaid eligible. But sometimes a property can’t do that….. may have decades of delayed maintenance so can’t qualify for VA or FHA….. cannot get approved for conventional loan.. may not be up to code… or too rural for buyers. It’s supposed FMV not realistic if no buyers at all interested. The 75K benchmark helps get rid of a whole slew of homes that would be problematic.
Great information Igloo.
Hire an elder care attorney and see what your legal options are. It is money well spent.
She can't sell that home for below market value (say to friends/family) or it will be considered "gifting" and it will disqualify her for medicaid. And any sale to any family member will be looked at very very carefully, meaning that they will want to see that the assets from the sale are in Mom's name, and that market value was paid for the home.
Best thing Mom can do, if her home is her only asset, is to keep it, and apply for medicaid. They will do recovery when mom passes, which is as it should be. These governmental programs are to help the indigent, not to protect assets to be inherited by the children. Whatever your assets are they stand to provide for you in age.
Asset protection does have some tricks to apply and if mom and family are interested in hearing about them and the options and limitations legally involved it's time to see an elder law attorney. Best out to you.
You may have to pay market value for it though.
If the answer for this question was simple, everyone would have done it. Medicaid rules are very confusing and complicated. It’s not a DIY plan.
Ultimately it is ‘only a matter of time’, for a very wealthy nursing home resident ‘who lives long enough to outlive their ability to private-pay for a nursing home’, to ‘ALSO qualify for Medicaid-provided nursing home payment the same as an one who is indigent’.
So whether one chooses to protect assets to have Medicaid-provided nursing home payment ‘sooner’ by way of Medicaid not being able to ;touch; one’s assets because Medicaid can’t see them’ in an irrevocable trust; or to ‘not to protect assets, watch them deplete and then ‘still need Medicaid’, the Medicaid law providing needed NH care is the same: without means to pay, nursing homes will be paid by Medicaid and seek payment later from existing assets.
The ‘difference’ is: for ‘those who have decided to seek and pay for services of a certified elder law lawyer to write such a trust’, their wealth can be ‘protected with an asset -protecting irrevocable trust’ by which all monetary and property assets placed into that trust are ‘untouchable by Medicaid’. Either way, ‘Unprotected’ or ‘protected’, once monies run out to private-pay a NH, Medicaid kicks in for payment from ‘one’s unprotected assets and properties’. Whether one chooses to pay a certified elder law lawyer to ‘correctly write an asset-protecting trust’ or ‘pay out to a nursing home to the point of exhausting of one’s private-pay ability’ is a matter of ’choice’ and not necessarily a matter of ‘ethics’.
If the house is in her name, the work of angling to keep it from providing for her welfare just doesn’t seem worth it to me.
I’ve never regretted my decision for one minute.
Mom’s assets are for her care, end of discussion.
However if you really want the house because you love it and want to live there yourself, it’s a different matter. You will have to pay a fair price, (or Medicaid will challenge it as part-gift), but it’s not unfair to price it as-is. You don’t need to do all the work that an owner would normally do to get the highest price. Read the information here, and get more than one valuation. Make it clear that it’s as-is, and make sure that you get a justification for the valuation being lower than other local properties that have been fully prepared for sale.
Only an IRREVOCABLE Trust leaves the money to the children, and that better be done at least 5 years prior to anyone needing to apply for Medicaid.
As I said, I think it is horrible to have a parent on Medicaid, when they have assets and funds of their own saved for their care. To have the taxpayers pay costs while the children inherit money is to my mind quite shameful. But that's just my opinion.
There are many legal pitfalls to protecting assets when planning for Medicaid. For example, if title to your mother's home is transferred to you improperly, the state can come after you for any funds paid for your mom's care even after she is dead. I suggest you consult with an elder law attorney. Elder law attorneys specialize in asset protection in the context of medicaid planning. They are well versed in the "lookback period." The lookback period is the time the state will lookback at transfers your mother made before applying for long term care financial assistance. Generally, it is 60 months with some caveats. Often, an eldercare attorney will draft a trust. All of your mom's assets would be placed in the trust. Elder law attorneys are well versed in asset protection so I suggest you start there.
Cali is the one state that limits the MA LTC lookback period to 2.5 yrs, a deviation from the 5 yr lookback of all other states.
If you've lived with and cared for your mom for a period exceeding 2 yrs, you qualify for having her transfer the home to you; an Elder Law atty could assist with all of this.
Otherwise, as previously stated, the fair market value applies and the sale proceeds will go to pay for her care until spent down and she qualifies for MA LTC. It's unavoidable and quite sad imo that one's parents work their entire lives to build equity only to have it all go for aged care.
I'm speaking as one who is now in provess of MA application for my Mom, fater the private pay used their entire estate for the NH care she's required. It's a complex process so pls don't make any missteps along the way.
I hope that you can find a way to keep your family home, but the state will get it's due, no matter what.