Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance Can Be Crucial

Figuring out how to successfully file a Medicaid long term care application can be overwhelming and difficult.  Thankfully Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance can help.  There are a number of factors that can affect a Medicaid application, but with an Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance, you can make sense of these rules.

At a high level, an individual’s Medicaid eligibility will be determined by his or her monthly income and countable assets.  While the scenarios do get more complex, for the sake of simplicity we will discuss the eligibility criteria for an individual applicant. Again, an Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance will help you understand this, as well as the criteria for married applicants filing individually, as well as married applicants filing jointly.

An individual applicant may receive $2,829 in monthly income and have $2,000 in countable assets.  Let’s look at what an Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance can do if an applicant’s monthly income is above $2,829.  In the event that it is, an Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance will likely employ what is known as a Qualified Income Trust, or QIT.  This artificially lowers the applicant’s monthly income and is in total compliance with The Department of Children and Families’ (The agency that processes Medicaid applications) rules.  Any monthly income over the $2,829 limit, plus a recommended buffer of a few hundred dollars is put into the QIT.  The funds in the QIT can still be accessed and used for the applicant’s care.  The reason Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance does not recommend putting all of an applicant’s monthly income into a QIT is because at the applicant’s death, any funds remaining in the QIT are payable to the state up to the amount that Medicaid expended on the applicant’s care.

Now let’s look at assets.  As mentioned, an individual applicant can have up to $2,000 in countable assets.  Generally speaking, countable assets include funds in an applicant’s checking account, savings account, investment accounts, excess cash value of life insurance policies, certain automobiles other than their primary vehicle, property other than a homestead that is not either for sale, rented, or for rent at fair market value, etc.  Investment accounts that are providing distributions are not countable, however.  An Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance can help navigate the nuances of these different assets, as well as how to shift them from the countable category to the non-countable category so that the applicant can protect their assets and still qualify for Medicaid!

Contact Platinum benefit Services today to learn how we, in conjunction with an Elder Law Attorneys’ Medicaid Planning Assistance can help you, in addition to the over 14,000 applicants we have already helped, qualify for Medicaid while preserving your hard-earned money!