Smithtown Medicaid lawyers help you to make sure that you are able to afford nursing home care that you may need when you become too old, too hurt or too injured to live by yourself any longer. Many people do not realize that they need to make a Medicaid plan or they wait too long to create their plans because they think that Medicaid planning is something only older people do. You don’t want to make this mistake, so you should contact Medicaid planning attorneys today. 
Mark S. Eghrari & Associates, PLLC will help you to determine if you need to make a Medicaid plan and, if so, will help you to use the appropriate tools to put a plan in place to protect your assets. You should give us a call as soon as possible because if you wait too long to make a Medicaid plan, you might be left in a situation where you cannot protect all your wealth or where keeping your assets safe is much more difficult.
Why You Can’t Wait to Make a Medicaid Plan
There are many reasons why it is important to make a Medicaid plan. Unfortunately, Medicare will not cover the costs of nursing home care or long-term care at home and neither will most private insurance. Medicare only pays for skilled nursing care and if you must get nursing home care or long-term care at home, chances are good you will need help with activities of daily living. This type of help is called custodial care and there’s no coverage for it through Medicare.
If you want to keep your wealth safe so you can protect your legacy and hand your hard-earned assets down to loved ones, you need a Medicaid plan so you can get means-tested Medicaid to cover the costs of nursing home care. Unfortunately, the problem is, Medicaid won’t cover you if you have too many assets and many older people do. You’d have to impoverish yourself if you didn’t have a Medicaid plan in place and you needed nursing home care. Only after spending a lot of your money on a nursing home would you be able to meet Medicaid’s asset tests.
If you’ve made plans in advance, however, you can shield some or all of your wealth from counting as assets for purposes of Medicaid so you won’t have to spend those assets. If you wait until you are older to try to do this, however, you might run into a problem caused by the five year lookback rule.
The five year lookback rule is a Medicaid rule that disqualifies you from getting Medicaid to cover you if you’ve transferred or given away wealth for less than fair market value in the five years before needing Medicaid to cover your nursing home care.
Because of this rule, if you give away money too close to the time you need nursing home care, you won’t be able to get Medicaid to pay for it. The period of disqualification is temporary and is based on the value of transferred wealth divided by the average cost of a nursing home in your area — but even a few months of having to pay for nursing home care out of pocket could cause you to lose thousands. You don’t want to lose this money, so you shouldn’t wait to make your Medicaid plan until you are older and your chances of needing nursing home care within the next five years are greater.
How Smithtown Medicaid Lawyers Can Help You
Smithtow Medicaid lawyers at Mark S. Eghrari & Associates, PLLC will assist you in determining if now is the right time to make a Medicaid plan. We can help you to evaluate the risks that you’ll lose your wealth if you need nursing home care and can guide you through the process of making a plan to protect as much of your money and property as possible. We are here for you whether you’re planning in advance or engaged in crisis planning, so don’t hesitate to reach out to our compassionate and knowledgeable legal team.
You can find out more about the Medicaid planning process by joining us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at (631) 265-0599 or contact us online to get help creating your personalized plan. Call now to learn more.
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High Nursing Home Care Costs Make Medicaid Planning Essential
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