My mother needs Medicaid but is not eligible by $1800 in cash. She is too poor to buy prepaid funeral trust etc but could spend down $1500 by placing money in burial fund. However, I understand that Medicaid will not exclude Paid Upon Death accounts. So if you create a bank account for burial purposes, do you have to omit naming a beneficiary to avoid being a POD or will you be forced to go to probate to get the money for the funeral? Or is this an exception to the POD rule?
The State of NJ allows 2k in a bank account. This is the amount you spend down to. So Mom has 3k, you need to get rid of the 1000. Worried corrected me. Here is what NJ Medicaid will contribute to a recipients funeral if they have no money:
"New Jersey will pay up to $2,246 in funeral costs and $524 in burial costs or crematory expenses for a deceased welfare recipient who is two year of age or older. Families are permitted to supplement these amounts up to $1,570. SSI and Medicaid allow you to set aside money for funeral arrangements in a prepaid trust if you expect you will become eligible for SSI or Medicaid within the next six months. Contact your county Board of Social Services."
I think the best thing you can do is call your County Social Service Dept and ask them how you can put aside the extra money. You have the basic info so it will help you to ask the right questions.
This is set up in a way to avoid probate because my mom has no other assets and it would've been a pain to go through probate for just this.
What we did was talk to the mortuary. They knew how to set up the trust and we could put as much as we wanted into it. We were told that when services were needed, we would lose any funds we didn't use. Maybe there is a minimum and they just didn't mention it to us.
Call a couple funeral homes/crematories and ask if they can set up a small irrevocable funeral trust. It has to be irrevocable to be Medicaid approved. But we were told we could transfer the trust to another funeral home if we want to.
Good luck. And her stimulus check doesn't count as an asset for the next eleven months, so if that's part of the $1800, that should help you.
Not sure if you can put money towards a funeral in a bank account. What I had to do was cash in Moms insurance policies that had cash in value and put it into a funeral trust for Mom thru our Funeral Home director. Unlike Geaton's State, I was allowed to put the 10.4k into the trust. If the funeral had cost less than the 10.4k, the balance would have reverted back to Medicaid. But it was over 11k. Not sure who was set up as beneficiary, Moms paperwork is filed away. The trust paid the Funeral Home directly but I may have signed off for that to happen.
Here in NJ, if the person has no money towards a funeral, Medicaid will give 1500 for a funeral. Is that where you get the 1500 from? The spend down is 2000k. Mom is allowed that amount in her bank account. Anything extra needs to be spent. As Moms medicaid caseworker said "get creative". Check with a Funeral Director and see if he can set up a trust with the overage. I would also wonder if you can add to it. I need to see if I can do this with a nephew who is disabled.
These are things I am still trying to figure out.
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