It is standard advice to avoid co-mingle property of an older relative with your own money because it may be necessary to prove what belongs to each. For instance, if your relative needs to apply for Medicaid it may be difficult to provide a clean trail of his or her assets and expenditures for five years prior to application as is required by Medicaid.
But the ultimate co-mingling is when families live on property owned by the older relative who never partitioned the property to deed individual parcels to the children or grandchildren. It is not unusual to see families who live and operate businesses off the property of an aging mother, father, or grandparent. This can provide a great family support system and work for all parties involved. Until it doesn’t.
If the aging parent becomes sick enough to need nursing home placement and there are not enough liquid resources to pay for that, then the property will need to be liquidated to provide income to pay for nursing home care or to spend down assets before qualifying for Medicaid. This leaves the relatives living on the property in a very precarious position.
If you are in this position, get legal advice now about what you can do to protect yourself and your aging relative before it becomes an emergency.
When a person applies for Medicaid to pay for long-term care, either in a nursing home or through the Home and Community Based Waiver (HCBW), Medicaid examines the applicant’s financial transactions for five years preceding the application to determine if any funds were given away or property sold for less than the value assigned by Medicaid. If so, a penalty is calculated by dividing the value of the amount transferred by $6100 (as of 2018) to determine the number of months of ineligibility.
In nursing home Medicaid cases it was always clear that the penalty started to run when the person resided in a nursing facility and would meet all requirements for Medicaid eligibility but for the existence of the penalty for transferring assets. In that situation a person is approved for Medicaid subject to the applicable penalty. He or she is billed privately during the penalty period, often at the peril of relatives who need to come up with funds to pay the bill. When the number of months of penalty assigned runs out, Medicaid will then pay for the resident’s care.
It has not been so clear about how to get the penalty running in HCBW cases. If the penalty cannot run until the person receives HCBW services, but the person cannot receive HCBW because of the transfer of assets, then you can never get past the penalty period. When the application is not taken upon identifying asset transfers, the penalty becomes permanent ineligibility for HCBW services.
On April 17, 2018, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services provided revised guidance on how to establish the start date for transfer penalties for HCBW applicants. In that directive CMS indicates that the penalty would begin to run at the point at which a state has: determined that the applicant meets the financial and non-financial requirements for Medicaid eligibility and the level-of-care criteria for the waiver; developed for the individual a person-centered service plan; and identified an available waiver slot for the individual’s placement. The penalty period for that applicant begins no later than the date on which a state has confirmed that all of these requirements are met, and transfers that would be subject to a penalty would be those that were made on or after the 60 months preceding this same date.
It would appear that persons who have transferred assets need to request that the application for HCBW still be taken, a care plan developed and proof provided that a waiver slot is available to establish the date all of these requirements have been met. Hopefully Medicaid will develop procedures to document eligibility for HCBW subject to the penalty so that services can begin when the penalty has run.
On October 10, 2016, Jan taught the first of a two part presentation on Elder Law at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at Auburn University entitled Elder Law: Enhancing the Lives of Seniors Through Education, Planning For What Comes Next. The second session will be taught on Monday, October 17, 2016, at 2:30 p.m. at The Clarion in Auburn, Alabama.
Topics covered in this training include: Older Americans Act Legal Assistance; Important Documents Needed for Proper Planning; Authority Issues; Long-term Care Levels of Care and Payment Options; Medicaid for Long-term Care; Special Needs Planning; Probate; Administration of Estates; Planning for Last Remains and Funerals.
A 39 page Keynote presentation covering these topics is provided to course participants.
Anyone interested in this and the many other learning opportunities available through OLLI can learn more by visiting the OLLI website.
On June 9, 2015, Governor Bentley signed ABLE Act legislation into law in Alabama permitting the state to implement a program to permit developmentally disabled persons to have limited tax free savings without losing public benefits. ABLE stands for Achieving a Better Life Experience, and the act was passed on the federal level in December 2014 permitting each state to set up its own program. Though the program in Alabama has not yet become operable, it will be getting underway in the coming months.
The ABLE Act will permit up to $14,000 per year to be placed in one approved bank account set up for a developmentally disabled person living in Alabama (one who became disabled prior to age 26) with those funds exempt from counting as resources for public benefit purposes. This means that the disabled person can have these funds to use for disability-related expenses without losing his or her public benefits such as SSI or Medicaid. Up to $100,000 can be accumulated in an ABLE account without loss of SSI, and $350,000 can be accumulated in such an account in Alabama without loss of Medicaid (note that this is state specific, and some states may permit an accumulation as high as $425,210 or as low as $235,000 before loss of Medicaid). At the death of the disabled person any funds left in the ABLE account will be payable to Medicaid to repay that agency in amounts up to what the agency paid for the disabled person’s health care costs.
Contributions to an ABLE account are not tax deductible, and income earned by an ABLE account is not taxable.
Stay tuned for more information about these accounts in the coming months or go to the Alabama State Treasury’s ABLE website and sign up for an update notification when accounts are available.
Jan is teaching a two part course on Elder Law at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Auburn University (OLLI at Auburn). See page 11 of the OLLI Spring 2016 catalog for the course description. The first session is Wednesday, March 30, 2016, from 10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m., and the second will be on Wednesday, April 6, 2016, from 10:15 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. Topics to be covered include Older Americans Act Legal Assistance, Authority Issues and Advance Directive Options, Long-Term Care Planning, Long-Term Care Payment Options Including Medicaid, Special Needs Planning, Probate, Administration of Estates and Funeral Planning. If you aren’t a member of OLLI, check out all the benefits and learning opportunities here.
Jan Neal Law Firm, LLC 