The other day I met with a lady from Raceland to help her set up a Louisiana Estate Plan that would protect her real estate, investments, and savings from being spent down on the cost of Long-Term Care. We are setting up a trust for the family that will hold ownership of the aforementioned assets, so that those assets won’t count against her eligibility to receive Medicaid to pay for long-term care should she need to enter a nursing home in the future. When Medicaid pays for long-term care, you are not forced to spend your own assets on the high cost of Louisiana Nursing Homes.
If you are single, you will not qualify for Louisiana Medicaid if you have more that $2,000 in cash, investments, and other assets titled in your name. During our meeting the question came up, “How does Medicaid Find Out What You Own?” Well, there are a number of ways for Medicaid to discover assets in your name; they will look at your tax records and returns to see what accounts and properties are producing income or interest for you, they have the ability to check bank records throughout the state for any accounts carrying your name or social security number, and they can look up the parish property records to locate any real estate that you own. And they can go back up to 5 years to find information about your assets.
With this broad searching power, it is hard to hide assets from Medicaid. So the key is to transfer assets out of your name legally at least five years prior to needing Medicaid to pay for long-term care. When you transfer assets to a special type of trust you can retain control over the assets, while still getting those assets protected from long-term care spend down.
To learn more about how easy it is to protect your life savings from Nursing Poverty using a Louisiana Trust call (504) 274-1980 in the Metairie and New Orleans Area or call (985) 246-3020 in Mandeville, Covington, Slidell, Houma, Thibodaux, and surrounding areas.