As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
This is a caveat in this is not a financial planner or advice on what to do, but goes to a person I saw online grousing about the nursing home seizing his old man's VA benefits.
I want to warn people who have elderly people or who are past prime that a nursing home is not a free ride. Costs run around 130 dollars a day or 3900 dollars a month. If insurance does not pay or runs out, then the reality is the nursing home has legal power to seize your assets.
They come for the cash first and then the benefits like Social Security and VA.
I am not up completely on VA, but for Veterans who are poor, they can apply and qualify and I think they have to pay 40% cost or just 40% of their assets are required to pay for that care.
This is though about people who think they can dump their geezers into nursing homes and the state will pay for things. That is not how it works and not how it should ever work, because the "state" is each of us working people and it is our taxes paying for things, and no one should be required to pay for some person's free ride if they have money or assets to pay their own way.
What I suspect the complainer was upset about, was that he thought he could dump his old man on the state, and then spend the old man's VA benefits as the accumulated in the bank account. That is what too many people think and then get a rude awakening over institutions will be paid.
Do not trust Medicaid as that covers only rehab type care. If you need custodial or nursing home care, that is not covered.
Now for the none financial advice. I know my greedy Aunt made certain all of her mother's bank certificates were in her name and her mother's. That would mean the nursing home can not seize those assets.
It is the lesson small family farmers learned in the 1970's when the nursing homes were seizing their property and throwing families off the farms as Grampa or Gramma only had their names on deeds. For the simple reality of the problems it causes when people die in things going through court, lawyers and taxes, it is advisable for most people to set up a trust to protect their assets (this is making a shortage of rural property now) or have right of survivorship placed on homes or farms. That way the nursing home can not seize the property and that way when the elderly dies, it just transfers to the survivor, which in most cases is a trusted child.
Trusted children are hard as hell to find, but those are the realities, unless you put the plough in the ground and just deal with your geezer parents living with you which is the best financial route, unless they are in comatose state.
In that though even, there are county nurses who I believe will visit homes to help with medical situations, so in home is the alternative to most people's situations. It is wearying but as I noted in the geezer homes around here, the geezers lived as long as the insurance was paying for things, but the minute the insurance ran out the aides were coughing on the geeezers who got pneumonia and died. That and Herbert McMaster's old man w as such a bastard they threw him in a chair and left him to die. Sometimes money will not even buy goodwill.
This post is more for each of you to get things worked out. I know numbers of you have shit parents or have shit siblings or shit children who would sell you out in a second. For the reasonable people though, the answer is some type of estate planning. No I do not believe that these rich people who will not donate to this blog should be hiding assets so I end up paying for their geezer parent as they go to Florida on vacation spending the money. I do though believe that people's homes, or farms should not be allowed to be confiscated, in as much if someone has some CD's or stocks from a lifetime of work, that should stay in family to help a deserving family or college kid get a start in a home purchase.
All of us have to face this reality, and if you are one of those people who thought you could just dump your parent on the state while your spent their retirement, it does not work that way. So for the people who deserve it, they need to speak to their parents or speak to their children, and get things locked up so their assets are protected like the rich people do. Locked up means also so you or your kid do not get tempted to start thinking that money and property is yours for stealing as there is enough time for that after the sod is laid.
It is best to get it done as after my old man died, my sibs descended and said I did not deserve a place to live and when the mother in hospital the sisters were conspiring to dump her in the geezer home, and then the one tried to get this place signed over to her children, cutting me out of the loop.
In both cases these are people who have more than enough assets and yet like all greedy bastards and bitches were looking to rob the poor.
People are no different than nursing homes. Get money involved and they come for it tooth and nail.
The best time to do things was 5 to 7 years ago, as in most cases a joint name on property has be in place that long or the property sold, and I would wager for the clever types who think you can have your parental sell you their home for a dollar or below market value, the nursing home lawyers will be hauling your ass to court and putting it up on the public auction block. I suppose someone might suggest that a home be sold to a child for assessed value, that money put into a trust for that childish owner, who would then use the money to make the payments on the house, as maybe a legal way to get by in a pinch........but as I am not a lawyer the legalities of that would have to be worked out legally.
The point is get things accomplished today or the state will take everything tomorrow.
Nuff Said
agtG
