COSTLY MEDICAID MISTAKES CAN BE AVOIDED (Part II)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) November 25, 2009 -- Recently, Attorney Dennis B. Sullivan of Wellesley attended a national conference of Attorneys specializing in estate planning, elder law and disability planning in Chicago, IL. Medicaid problems were discussed.

This is the second in a series reviewing how Medicaid planning mistakes create severe financial problems for families and nursing homes around the country. The Medicaid planning mistakes often create long penalty periods which end up financially devastating for both families and the nursing homes because there is no money for the family to pay or the nursing home to receive during the penalty period. With costs of nursing home care in Massachusetts approaching $12,000 per month and $144,000 per year, this is a tremendous problem for families and nursing homes!

Each month, the attorneys and staff of The Estate Planning and Asset Protection Law Center of Dennis Sullivan and Associates hold educational workshops to explain how to identify and prevent potential problems. Our workshops are part of our commitment to helping seniors and their families clear up the many misconceptions about MassHealth (Medicaid in Massachusetts). We have seen mistakes cost families dearly, either by causing unnecessary disqualification periods where MassHealth will not cover them, or by causing them to spend their life savings before seeking help with nursing home and medication costs and losing whatever is left to estate recovery after the elder passes away.

Here are some of the common Medicaid misconceptions we see:

"I can only give away $13,000 a year and qualify for benefits /I can give away $13,000 and still qualify for benefits"

We frequently hear from individuals who have lost the opportunity to preserve thousands of dollars because they believed this myth. Just as often, we have met with individuals who created unnecessary disqualification periods for themselves by continuing to gift too late. In fact, the $13,000 figure is an IRS rule regarding when a gift tax return should be filed and has nothing to do with Medicaid law. Making $13,000 gifts may inadvertently cause a disqualification for Medicaid benefits for a period of two months for each gift!

Any gift at all to children, grandchildren, charities or others can trigger a disqualification period—a period during which you will receive no benefits—that will only begin to run when you are in a nursing home and are ALREADY out of money! This is a real problem since there is no money to pay the nursing home during the disqualification period.

There are alternative ways to plan to protect your assets, but this must be done with the assistance of expert legal advice.

Watch for the next part of our series and visit www.EstatePlanandAssetProtection.com for more information (see our consumer guides section under free resources!) or to sign up for a workshop today!