My 93 year old mother has now been a nursing home for about 60 days. Medicare pays for 20 days. She has some money in her checking account (currently $20,000 with NO nursing home bill yet) but it's going fast for pre-paid funeral expenses, utilities, home insurance, real estate taxes and some of the doctor bills. Her house has been in my name for about 15 yrs with mom having a life lease. She only gets 967.00 month SS and has 3 parcels she rents out (land only) and gets $180.00 Month each. Has 3 policies that pay her dividends (One is $48.00 quarterly and one is $78.00 quarterly) two have me listed POD. All three are small ones with the highest being 10,000.00. No car. Is she eligible for Medicaid?
Neither the NH nor Medicaid take her assets per se. Rather she’ll need to private pay for her care till she is Medicaid eligible. & that is likely to mean selling her non exempt assets. Those 3 parcels have a value that’s pretty easy to determine by looking at the last tax assessor value on each. Even though it’s raw land, still has a value. They are going to need to be sold as close to FMV as possible for her to be eligible. My experience is that Medicaid allows them to be “Medicaid Pending” if nonexempt assets have MLS type of Realtor listing agreements and she / her atty file waivers for this. It’s totally going to depend on how your state does it’s me eligibility rules. But whatever it is, mom’s going to need to be a very motivated seller.
The 3 dividend paying investments, what are these? Insurance? Annuity? Something else? What they exactly are will make a difference as to what needs to happen with them.
It sounds like the house is in a Life Estate done 15 years ago. Is that it? So it’s not actually all yours till after she dies? If it’s in an LE, she retains rights to control property and gets whatever homestead exemption and senior discounts available. It technically is still hers. Like the tax bill reads her name with an LE attached. If so when she meets with the atty, clearly find out what her / your state Medicaid MERP views LEs to be for Estate Recovery. Some states have LEs to be outside of any estate recovery but other states now place a lien or claim on LE property. Would you & other heirs have exemptions to MERP? But whichever happens after death, once she’s Medicaid all her monthly income must be paid to the NH as the required copay or SOC (share of cost). This is really important to understand and often comes as a surprise to the dpoa and family.
Once Medicaid Pending or on Medicaid, mom must have all her monthly income be paid to the facility. All she will have is whatever her state has as the personal needs allowance. PNA avg is $60 a mo. It will fall to you to pay all property costs on the LE house as well as on the raw land till sold. Being reimbursed from any sale will not be simple as it will be likely considered gifting by Medicaid. How to possibly deal with this is something to clearly discuss with the atty before you start fronting costs if at all possible. This is kinda why mom needs to be a motivated seller.
Its a lot to take in, a lot of decisions to be made. She has a couple of months of $$ to private pay the NH. Find out from the NH business office exactly what her status is for Medicare and how they go about the Medicaid Pending application.
Medicaid is a joint state/federal program. Each state has it's own qualifications, but generally under 2000$ in assets and under 2k in monthly income.
Have you talked to the sw and business manager at the NH she's in?