Hi. My mom is starting to experience memory issues and occasional confusion. I am trying to find the best way to finance occasional home help like organizing meds and some personal help. In the future she will probably need more intensive help.
Would starting a revocable trust fund be a good idea to protect her home and assets?
Should I set this up for her now? I understand there is a 5 year wait for the protection to kick in. I would like to get her on Medicaid asap.
Thank you for any help.
Ken
I too had a house that was falling apart to deal with. It was up for sale but did not sell till after Moms death. I got just enough to pay back taxes and Medicaid back. Mom was only on it 3 months. Moms SS and any pension will need to go towards her care, can this friend afford to pay utilities and taxes because that may be a requirement for her to be able to remain in Moms home. Even though the house is an exempt asset, Medicaid has a say how its used.
Does mom remember to take her meds if they aren't handed to her?
The first thing you need, I believe, is a "needs assessment" which can be GG often from her local Area Agency on Aging. Someone familiar with mom's actual abilities should be present at that assessment.
Some AAAs are able to provide case management services. Otherwise, a good Geriatric Care Manager can be a godsend.
Consider the idea that your mom may eventually need to be moved close to where you live in order for her care to be properly overseen.
The needs assessment seems like a great idea. I am long distance and it seems like her local services are hit and miss.
At this point I need to figure out how to make a plan for her care. She has a close friend living in the house who is a great help.
There will still be the five-year lookback period for Medicaid though.
The best bet for protecting assets and making them Medicaid-exempt is to have them transferred out of the senior's name before they become needy and elderly and will require care.
Change over property deeds, investments, insurance policies. Pretty much eliminate the senior's name from any sources of income where possible. Social Security and pensions cannot be rerouted. Those are the income sources that cannot be made Medicaid-exempt.
If you've done this and there comes a time and it may never happen after the next five years, where your mother will need to be placed in a nursing home those assets will be safe. Without assets that can be recapped after her death, Medicaid in most states also pays for homecare hours.
If your mother is unwilling to take assets out of her name, then an Irrevocable Trust is the way to go. Good luck.
My father in law with dementia let some lawyer talk him into drawing up a trust . The lawyer charged him $6,000 . The trust is useless because he will never live 5 more years . He is in assisted living , he chose the most expensive one in our area. He doesn’t understand that if he was on Medicaid he would not get to choose a nice facility .
Medicaid is not an entitlement like social security . Basically if someone goes on Medicaid you are asking for everyone else to help pay to take care of your mother through state funds.
Medicaid is not going to pay for in home care , it’s too expensive . Facility care would be the only option .
She is independent now and I am trying to figure out if the memory loss is due to meds or will get better. It looks like she may need to finance temporary assistance for minor help.
The house is not in sellable condition due to years of undocumented construction. I doubt if she would get any money for it. She has a friend living with her as well.
A trust seems like a bad idea and would not affect her staying in the house.
See a CELA if you want to figure out the best way to pay for her care out of her assets.
We got my mom better care by moving her to a good facility and using her funds to private pay. This was a place that would accept Medicaid after two years of private pay.
I think both the quality of care and better opportunities for many eyes on a patient are reasons that a good facility beats inexpert home care every day.
Trusts can work out pretty good because they eliminate the estate having to be probated and all of those costs which can really add up.
Trusts also eliminate inheritance tax. So if a family wants a property to stay in the family they can hold onto it. Or turn it into a rental. That income is exempt if it's under a certain amount depending on what state you're in.
With much longer life in declining circumstances, this often doesn’t work today. Your parents’ own care will probably consume the value of all their assets. Be glad that they gave us an education, so that we can earn our own living.
If you can get your head around this, it will help you to work out what comes next in their lives and your life too. It’s a real head-shift for you and for them.
Best wishes and sympathy, Margaret
In terms of caregivers, most Indy’s like on care.com are half as much as agencies, and the reason is that they usually are paid cash for that one to one, and that one on one’s chance of exploiting the elder get exponentially greater as their hours grow. See my nightmare thread about them moving in their caregivers whole family. How caregivers can end up with everything.
The first thing I’d do personally is take over the care contract yourself. Be the one the agency or indy answers to, not your mom.
Your homecare nightmare because of a hired independent caregiver is because no one bothered to check her out first.
No one ran a $50 backround check that covers the credit check, housing history, criminal history, and immigration status. No one did this. No one checked on any references of family members she worked for who could recommend her if her clients had all passed away as you told us she said they did.
She was moved into your in-laws house with no investigation at all. Care.com does not do checks on caregivers. Caregivers pay a fee twice a year to use the site. Potential employers are supposed to do these checks.
Sadly, no one did this for your in-laws.
Next time someone is going to hire independently-contracted homecare ask that they bring all of their own backround checks and references with them.
I always did. I always came with a police report (within the last six months that I always paid for), proof of citizenship, proof of residency, a credit report (less than a year old), valid and current driver's license with proof of auto insurance, and I topped it all off with a clean drug test (no older than three months). I also came with sterling references that any potential new client and their family could call upon. I always had to keep these things updated at my expense because that's what proper independent caregivers do. Top dollar though. We don't come cheap. Some illegal with a record does.
This is how you hire independent contractor caregivers.
You don't just take them at their word. If someone does and they get scammed, unfortunate though it is, they had it coming.
I used 99% of my parents assets to pay for excellent private care in Assisted Living and Memory Care Assisted Living for 7 years rather than use Medicaid to place mom in a Skilled Nursing facility with a roommate and a shared toilet, 2 blasting television sets, and all the rest of it. Yes, I forfeited my "inheritance" to make sure their Hard Earned savings were used to their advantage.
People don't seem to understand that this what money should be used for their care not to be hidden so someone else can spend it after they die.
The house should be sold and the money used for the mother, when her money runs out then Medicaid can be attained.
Most of these Medicaid places are substandard at best.
https://www.elderlawanswers.com/medicaid-and-trusts-12004
The idea is to allow her to let her keep her home.
If she needs to spend all the money on care that is fine as long as she can be home. No one wants to inherit anything including her house!
The house is not worth anything.
I thought a trust would help her stay out of a facility until necessary.