Dual Eligibility: How Qualifying for Both Medicare and Medicaid Can Help With Costs
Qualifying for Medicare hardly means free health care — there are still premiums and deductibles. However, people who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid (called “dual eligibility”) receive help paying their out-of-pocket costs. Medicare is a federal program available to anyone 65 or older. It consists of four major parts,…
Using Estate Planning to Prepare for Medicaid
Long-term care involves not only a loss of personal autonomy; it also comes at a tremendous financial price. Proper planning can help your family prepare for the financial toll and protect assets for future generations. Long-term care can be very expensive, especially around-the-clock nursing home care. Most people end up…
Just In Time
Wow, what a morning. It started with one of our staff expressing her desperate measures to keep birds from coming into her house. Everything is sealed up; the windows are closed, the attic is shut, yet every now and then a new bird pops in and launches yet another quest…
Thousands of Elderly and Disabled SSI Recipients Accused of Owning Property That Isn’t Theirs
In December 2018, the Social Security Administration (SSA) had a nasty surprise for Laura Marshall (not her real name), a 74-year-old woman just scraping by in senior citizen housing in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood: The agency demanded that she repay more than $10,000 in benefits, claiming that she owned…
Medicaid’s Home Care Waivers Can Help You Avoid a Nursing Home, But the Line May Be Long
Medicaid long-term care benefits traditionally pay mainly for nursing home care, but the federal government can grant “waivers” to states allowing them to expand Medicaid to include home and community-based services. The downside is that receiving care in a nursing home is an entitlement, while getting care at home is…
Trust Me, You’re Gonna Like This – The See-Through Trust as a Beneficiary
August 12th, 2019 Jim Blankenship – https://blankenshipfinancial.com/ One area that often gets short shrift in discussions of IRAs and beneficiary designation is the use of a trust as the beneficiary. Part of the reason behind this may be the perceived complexity of trusts in general; at any rate, it’s not…
Court Cannot Reform Medicaid Recipient’s Deed Because It Would Affect Medicaid Agency’s Right to Estate Recovery
A Massachusetts land court rules that a Medicaid recipient’s estate may not reform a deed to treat the recipient’s property as though it was transferred before she died because the reformation would unfairly prejudice the right of the Medicaid agency to recover from her estate. Casey v. Papamechail (Mass. Land Ct., No….
Revocable Trusts Are Not Always Treated the Same as an Individual
June 1, 2021 by Steve Hartnett A revocable trust is usually treated the same as the individual who created the trust. For federal income tax purposes, a revocable trust is a “grantor trust” under section 676 of the Code. Therefore, all items of income and expense of the trust flow through to…
How to Start a Funeral Planning Conversation
May 27, 2021 by Gail Rubin Estate planning attorneys see it all the time. Most clients avoid the funeral planning conversation, even though advance planning can reduce stress at a time of grief, save money and head off family conflict. We have ample evidence that humans have a 100% mortality rate. It’s…
How You Can End Up in Medicare’s Donut Hole, and How You Get Out
Medicare prescription drug (Part D) plans can have a coverage gap—called the “donut hole”–which limits how much Medicare will pay for your drugs until you pay a certain amount out of pocket. Although the gap has gotten much smaller since Medicare Part D was introduced in 2006, there still may be…
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