I will be providing online training on March 1, 2023, at 10:00 a.m. CDT for Middle Alabama Area Agency on Aging’s Take a Stand For Caregivers initiative. There is no cost for attending, and while some professionals can receive continuing education credit, registration is available for anyone who can benefit from the information. Hope to see you there.
I will be speaking on Wills and Trusts at the Shelby County Senior Health and Wellness Exhibition in Columbiana on 10/13/22 from 10:45 – 11:15. The event will be at the First Baptist Church of Columbiana, 208 N Main St, Columbiana 35051 from 9:30 – 1:00. After the presentation I will make available my slide presentation covering the pros and cons of wills vs. trusts on this web site, Facebook and our Slideshare Account.
I will be providing training on Alabama Medicaid Estate Recovery on Tuesday, 09/20/22, at 10:00 a.m. Central time. If you feel like you could benefit from information on this topic be sure to register with the Middle Alabama Area Agency on Aging. Free CEUs are being offered for social workers, nursing home administrators, occupational therapists and physical therapists.
We will be examining how estate recovery works in Alabama, and who is at risk for losing property to repay benefits Medicaid pays on their behalf.
A will has no legal effect if not filed with the court and accepted as a legitimate document meeting the testamentary requirements (which is known as probate). Many people do not know this, and they do not know that a will must be probated within five years of death.
If the will is not filed within five years of death, then the law of intestacy determines where property passes, and it may result in very unfortunate consequences for the intended beneficiaries.
The best way to explain this is an example:
Mrs. Smith’s husband died last year, and she decided to update her will. They owned multiple pieces of property, most of which they owned as joint tenants with right of survivorship (meaning that when the first owner dies, the other will automatically own all of the property). But the one piece of property on which their home is located was owned by her husband without right of survivorship. Since most people don’t sit around reading deeds after the death of a spouse, Mrs. Smith did not know this until the deeds were produced to rewrite her will. Her husband’s will left everything to her, so if his will is probated, no problem. But if his will is not probated within five years, she will own her home property jointly with his children by a previous marriage. Not only will she be unable direct all of the property to pass to the children of this marriage at her death, if she wants to downsize she will not be able to sell the property without the agreement of her husband’s children by a previous marriage. And if those children agree to sell, she will only get half of the proceeds from the sale. This could have been a serious problem for Mrs. Smith if she had not found this need to probate her husband’s will within five years of his death.
The best practice is to always check to see if a will needs to be probated rather than assuming it does not. With that said, not all wills need to be probated. For instance, there may be nothing in the probate estate to pass because all assets were jointly titled in bank accounts, and the home was owned by the spouses as joint tenants with right of survivorship. But if there is property that does not automatically pass to others, take action sooner, rather than later, to determine what you need to do.
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.
You may have read a widely circulated post on Facebook that would make you think you should prepare a Transfer on Death Deed (TODD) to pass your property when you die without the need for probate. And you can download and prepare such a document at various online locations. See https://www.templateroller.com/template/2142576/transfer-on-death-deed-form-alabama.html. The only problem is Alabama does not have a TODD statute, so any such deed would have no validity.
As of January 14, 2022, twenty-nine states, along with the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands, have some form of TODD. Alabama is not one of them, and neither is Georgia or Florida. Mississippi, bordering Alabama, does have a TODD statute, and, as of January 14, 2022, a TODD statute was pending in Tennessee.
There are other ways to pass property while avoiding probate, but be aware of the fact that the TODD is not available in Alabama.
A life estate deed can be a great tool for passing property after death. A couple might give the property to their children and reserve a life estate for themselves until the last of the two dies. The couple retains their homestead exemption status for life, and at death the property will automatically belong to the children without the need to probate anyone’s will. Also the child will have a stepped up tax basis in the property which is the fair market value on the date of death of the last life tenant. An additional benefit is the fact that Medicaid will not count the life estate as a resource if the life estate deed was executed five years prior to Medicaid application, and the property would not be subject to Medicaid Estate Recovery since it will never be probate property. That all sounds like a win, win situation, right?
It is, except for one thing. If the couple decides to sell the property they will need the children to sign off on the sale because the children are now joint owners with the parents. The parents own use of the property NOW, and the children, as remaindermen, own the FUTURE use of the property.
Often a life estate deed is given with the goal of keeping property in the family, but that is not always the case. Sometimes the life tenants want to sell the property to obtain funds for any number of purposes. With this in mind, before signing a life estate deed it is important to make sure the remaindermen would be willing to relinquish their interest and sign off on any sale of the property.
If a person dies without a will, or if the will is not probated within five years of death, then property in his or her probate estate will be distributed by rules determined by the legislature, known as the law of intestacy.
The law of intestacy in Alabama requires that the estate of a person having children by a previous marriage be divided one-half to the current spouse and one-half to the child or children by a previous marriage. This can create some totally unforeseen consequences for a couple in a second marriage with children by that marriage. The children of that union will take nothing under the law of intestacy while a child from a previous marriage will take one-half.
It is important to evaluate your individual situation to determine what is at risk if you die without a will and how you can structure your assets to assure your property passes in the manner you prefer.
You don’t really have to spend down all your resources to qualify for nursing home Medicaid. There are multiple ways to preserve funds. One of those ways is through the use of what I call the Medicaid Spend Down Special Needs Trust.
Usually persons who need nursing home care end up needing Medicaid to pay for that care. Why? Because it is so expensive. Nursing home care can cost between $6000 and $8000 depending on the specific market area in Alabama. At $7000 per month, the average nursing home resident will spend $84,000 in a year. Under these circumstances, most persons will exhaust their resources at a rapid rate rendering them unable to pay for the care they need without the assistance of Medicaid.
There are some funds a married couple can preserve for the spouse who remains at home, but there is still an amount that has to be spent down if a couple has countable assets over $25,000. A single person has to spend all of his or her resources down to $2000 before he or she can qualify for Medicaid. Using up the assets a person saved over a lifetime is known as the dreaded Medicaid “spend down.”
But what many people do not know is that there is a way to qualify for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care in Alabama without the resident having to go through a complete “spend down.” That is through the use of a pooled Special Needs Trust.
There are many types of Special Needs Trusts (SNTs), including trusts for disabled younger persons, disabled children whose parents and grandparents want to provide for their future needs, persons on public benefits who recover money from personal injury lawsuits or who inherit money when a relative dies. Each type of SNT has highly specific requirements. But what they all have in common is the goal of protecting funds for a disabled person without those funds resulting in the loss of public benefits.
With the Medicaid Spend Down SNT, instead of spending down the money required to be spent by Medicaid on nursing home care before eligibility can be established, the money is paid into a SNT and can then be used to pay for special needs not otherwise paid for by Medicaid for the disabled person once he or she becomes eligible. Medicaid eligibility can be immediately established while these funds remain available to pay for special needs for the nursing home resident.
The drawback to this type of trust is the requirement that, on the death of the person for whom the trust was established, Medicaid must be reimbursed from funds remaining in the trust up to the amount Medicaid has paid for the nursing home resident’s care. Still, creating a pool of money to meet the special needs of the nursing home resident after being awarded Medicaid is far better than simply spending down those funds before qualifying for Medicaid and leaving the resident with no resources to pay for special needs. Since Medicaid allows a nursing home resident to keep only $30 of his or her income each month to pay for personal needs, you can see how that is not enough to have needs met without families pitching in to help pay for necessary items.
An example of what the SNT funds can pay for is a private room in a nursing home since Medicaid will only cover a semi-private room. Other special needs might be items and services that can improve the quality of life for the nursing home resident such as hair salon charges, manicures, telephone, newspaper subscriptions, audiobooks, movies, recreation, medical and dental expenses not otherwise covered, special equipment like wheelchairs or specially-equipped vans; therapy or rehabilitation services; training and education, travel, electronic equipment including computers and mobile devices.
With a little planning the quality of life for a nursing home resident can be improved, and the burden for a family’s out of pocket expenses decreased.
Do not be confused with an internet search. The rules are different from state to state. Most states allow a person 65 and older to create a pooled SNT but still penalize transfers into that trust. That is not the case in Alabama.
Contact us for more information about establishing a Medicaid Spend Down SNT.
Some benefits paid by Medicaid, including expenses for long-term care after age 55, can be recouped from the recipient’s estate upon death. The federal government makes estate recovery mandatory, and each state has enacted its own rules to comply with that requirement. A new publication is available to help you understand how Alabama Medicaid Estate Recovery works and what property is at risk for being lost upon death and repayment to Medicaid. This document can be read online or downloaded and printed. It will remain available in the Publications at this web site.
Jan Neal Law Firm, LLC 