A property was sold three years ago and now Medicaid through the state of Minnesota is calling and asking about the sale.
The sale was not reported and it was placed in an account that had not been previously reported to medical assistance. I'm curious as to what the effects of this might be or if anybody has ran into this as the money has all been spent and I want to make sure that my parent is not going to be cut off medical assistance because they have no one then coming into the house to help them.
I strongly recommend consulting an elder law attorney so that you can have the best shot at minimizing the ramifications.
I understand how easy it is to think that you can use money from the sale of property for something other than your parent's medical/health care when the parent is very healthy. Sometimes we don't think of our parents' future and the fact that their health will decline and that they will need some type of health/medical care in the future. We often think that the future is 5 or 10 years away and that today's decision to sell some property and use it for something other than our parents' health/medical expenses is "NO BIG DEAL". Unfortunately, our parents' future health is a "BIG DEAL" and we (and our parents) need to plan for the "what ifs" that can occur as a person ages & gets elderly.
I had a friend whose father gave her $10,000 and then 2 years later he went into a nursing home. She had to pay the $10,000 back to her father so that he could use it to pay his nursing home bills. Since my friend had used some of the money already, she had to cash in a CD and get a loan from her life insurance policy to pay her father back.
I hope that this does not happen to you. But if you did not use the money from the sale of the property for your parent's medical/health expenses, then unfortunately, you (and your parent) are going to have to face the consequences of not reporting the property sale and not using the money to take care of your parent.
I guess someone was not aware that the proceeds of the house needs to be used before Medicaid will continue with service. What was the money used for? Hopefully for Mom.
It sounds like someone was hiding money. No matter what kind of Medicaid Mom used, there is a yearly report done that the income from the house should have been mentioned. The new acct statement should have been included in the report.