Help! We’re trying to get mother approved for Medicaid Chronic care. With the 5 year look back I have loads of transfers between our bank.

Lee, have you applied for her yet with the state? Usually you can do it online. I did in CT for my father who lived with me and a state worker got back to me the next day. I had the same concerns but the state worker calmed me down, we were able to get Dad approved very quickly. You need to talk to a state social worker, not the nursing home. Keep us posted.

I do not know the ins and outs of applying for Medicaid, as a Canadian, but I am familiar with going back through bank records (10 years of transactions).

Through your online banking you should be able to download the account statements into Excel. Now you may not have access to the 5 years you need, but it is a starting point. You can fill in missing years, via paper statements or request the information from the bank.

Once you have downloaded the data, month by month you need to itemize all the transactions. Which were for Mum, which are joint expenses etc. You will need to balance.

If payments were made from Mum's account to your credit card, you will need to download the credit card statements too and do a similar accounting of the transactions. If you made purchases for Mum on your cc you need to do this too.

It is an onerous process. I estimate it took me 100 hours to do 10 years of transactions, relating to multiple bank accounts and credit cards. Some were impossible to itemize, but I was able to account for about 80% of the transactions.

I had to do this for tax purposes.

I would expect that you may have to produce your personal budget, showing your and Mum's expenses, this will help to fill in any gaps in the information you have access to and show an ongoing use of funds.

I always paid Moms bills out of Moms account. Her monthly statement was my proof where the money went. Her small pension I used for her personal needs and kept every receipt.

But, you have to work from now. Do u live with Mom or you with her. Living with her may not be too bad. She had to pay her bills. You just need to prove what the transfers were for. Like having bills to back it up.

Now if she lives with u that maybe harder to prove but it makes sense that Mom should pay her part.

Is the person ur talking to really versed in Medicaid or just a SW who gets things rolling. Maybe a visit to ur local Medicaid office is warranted. Sit down with a caseworker and show how u do things. If u get nowhere with them, then go to a lawyer who is versed in Medicaid.

An elder care attorney can help, see if you can find one who gives free consults to get an initial opinion of what needs to be done. A word of caution...they are very expensive after the initial consult! But paying them is much cheaper than footing the nursing home bill yourself.

I wouldn’t trust the Medicaid coordinator blindly. Yes a lawyer can help you through this process. Did you keep records? Do you have receipts? There shouldn’t be any issues if you can show that the transfers covered her expenses. Generally it is better to avoid transferring money and commingling funds but.....if you do either of those things, Medicaid approval is still entirely possible. Good luck!