Protect Your Assets With Medicaid Planning
The federal government offers a program for elders and the disabled called Medicaid, which will pay for in-home, assisted living or nursing home care that Medicare and Medicare Supplement Plans don’t cover. However, there are preconditions. To qualify for Medicaid, you have to spend all of your own assets first. When you have less than $2,000 left, the government will pay for nursing home costs. The Medicaid resource and income limits will reduce the quality of your life unless you have a plan to supplement/avoid this impoverishment legally. You must also be clinically eligible.
That is the bad news. The good news is that with Medicaid planning, you can potentially shelter 50 percent or more of your assets. For 25 years of its 45 years of practice, Macri & Associates, LLC in East Hanover, New Jersey, has been providing help and guidance to elders and their families on how best to pay for long-term care at home or in an assisted living facility or a nursing home without impoverishment to $2000.
The Benefits Of Early Medicaid Planning
Planning in advance is key to protecting the highest percentage of your assets and is therefore important for elders, the disabled and everyone else, regardless of age. The government has a five-year look-back and penalty on resource transfers/gifts. You should never try to do Medicaid planning yourself. Seek the advice of a qualified certified elder law attorney (CELA) or the government could undo your transfers and you will end up losing the assets you tried to protect. Attorneys’ fees are a minimal percentage of what they can legally protect.
Vince Macri, partner at Macri & Associates, LLC, is one of only 450 attorneys nationwide who are certified in elder law by the National Elder Law Foundation.
Under our approach to Medicaid planning, we will help determine your fair share to be spent down on care costs before eligibility for Medicaid and then protect the balance from medical spend-down. The government defines your fair share as everything you have accumulated over your lifetime. If you wait until you need long-term care, our lawyers can still protect some of your estate; however, if you start planning earlier, you can legally protect far more. It is not a question of if you can preserve assets but rather how much.
Our lawyers offer free seminars to explain long-term care and asset preservation planning or we can speak to your civic group on this subject.
Learn more about the top 10 Medicaid mistakes/myths.
No. 1 Planning Goal: Protecting your home is the No. 1 goal of Medicaid planning. For 45 years, we have practiced real estate law. This real estate background is an important strength our lawyers bring to Medicaid planning.
Free Lawyer Consultation
For a free initial consultation with one of our CELA partners to discuss how to legally preserve your assets, call 973-577-6010 or fill out the fee-free contact form on this website.