Donald and Shirley engaged Hickman & Lowder to draft their estate plan with special needs considerations in the early 1990s. At that time, their daughter, Angela, who has a developmental disability, was living with them and receiving minimal benefits from the government. Donald and Shirley put a trust in place to provide for Angela after they both were gone. When…
Medicaid Planning
Certain Gifts Not Penalized for Medicaid Eligibility
It’s almost common knowledge that Medicaid imposes a “five-year lookback” to identify gifts made by a Medicaid applicant. In most circumstances, if an individual who is applying for Medicaid has given away their assets within the last five years, Medicaid will penalize that individual, even if they are currently out of funds, by not paying the nursing home for a…
Cost of Living Increase Impacts Medicaid Income Eligibility
On January 1, 2019, the Social Security Administration adjusted benefits upward by 2.8 percent. The 2.8 percent cost-of-living adjustment will begin with benefits payable to more than 62 million Social Security beneficiaries. Increased payments to more than 8 million Supplemental Security Income (SSI) beneficiaries brings the maximum monthly benefit from $750 per month in 2018 to $771 per month in…
Preserving Assets While Applying for Medicaid
There is a misconception that one should plan on applying for Medicaid only after all the money has been spent on care. Most nursing facilities aren’t going to go out of their way to tell you all of the ways you can actively plan to preserve assets while applying for Medicaid. But there are a number of planning techniques to…
Medicaid Applications: Pitfalls to Avoid
For many families, placing a loved one in a nursing home is a traumatic and unwelcomed event. In so many cases, the adult children of elderly parents are signing admission agreements to nursing homes that have a personal guarantee of payment – that if the nursing home doesn’t get paid, the adult child will be personally responsible. But these individuals…
The Knowns and Unknowns of Medicaid Application
“…[A]s we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” – Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld One of the…
Take Simple Steps Early to Protect Your Most Important Asset: The Family Home
On August 1, 2016, Ohio changed its Medicaid regulations regarding the treatment of the home. Federal and State Medicaid laws recognize that the family home is often times the largest asset of an individual, and Medicaid rules account for the reality that the family home is critical to the well-being of a spouse, a child, or other family members. Still,…
New Rules and Bad Decisions Make Medicaid Planning a Necessity
If you or a loved one are elderly and might need long term care in the near future, 2015 was a year to forget. The Ohio Supreme Court decided two cases that set back long term care planning for Ohio’s middle class elderly population and presented new obstacles to protecting one’s retirement and/or home. These two cases were Atkinson and…