My husband and I are getting our legal papers in order. We are putting our house and some assets into a MAPT (Medicaid Asset Protection Trust). After 5 years anything in the trust is free from Medicaid Clawback. During the meeting the lawyer mentioned that if one spouse needed nursing home care before the 5 years were up there were other ways around the clawback for assets not in the MAPT. One she mentioned was Spouse Refusal to pay and another was removing assets from the ill spouse and bankrupting them putting the assets into the name of the well spouse so they would be eligible for nursing home care. Does anyone know anything about these options and how does it all work?
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So it's the laws that are the real problem, just in my humble opinion.
Seems for every law there's a way around it if you are smart enough and/or rich enough.
I do understand those who are trained and schooled to provide a defense before the law, and if I were unjustly accused, I would want the best defense in my corner.
I also understand those times when there is a need. Current laws will allow a spouse, unless I am mistaken, to preserve about 100,000 for our own care if our spouse needs in facility care. That isn't going to be enough to support US for long, should we need care ourselves later. I had a CPA whose wife spent the last years of her life comatose after an accident. He was left with two small children. He did one of those divorce things so as to not have ALL HIS ASSETS going to his care. He could not have even provided himself with child care without this. No friends really were informed and he was faithful to her until her death. It was a sad and horrible necessity.
There are circumstances, and I myself have a hard time keeping my feelings out of it.
Lord knows the joke sites about Lawyers are full to the brim, hee hee.
States do differ. I would ask your lawyer for more detail.
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Do think, when you are speaking of bankrupting a spouse in need of care, that you are assigning that spouse to Medicaid accepting facilities. While I am not trying to denigrate them--they do as well as they can with their limitations--their care is not so good as care in which the recipient of said care is able to pay.
Or as my dear old dad might mutter: "You get what you pay for".
So I will leave this "work" to you and your lawyers, and I will wish you both the very best of luck going forward.
Spousal refusal was mentioned by our NY elder law attorney. I've also been told that in general, assets can be moved between spouses without violating Medicaid look-back regs.