The costs of long-term care are the biggest threat to financial security for many seniors. Medicaid can help you pay for this care, but you cannot qualify for Medicaid if your income and assets are above the eligibility requirements. A Medicaid planning lawyer can help you take steps to protect your assets while ensuring that you can still qualify for Medicaid.
Long-Term Care and Medicaid in Washington
According to the Washington State Office of the Insurance Commissioner, Medicaid is often the best option for covering long-term care if you can’t afford to pay for it yourself and you don’t have long-term care insurance. However, Medicaid has financial eligibility limits. If you don’t want to lose your assets to qualify for Medicaid, a Medicaid planning attorney can help.
How Can a Medicaid Planning Attorney Help?
A Medicaid planning attorney from ELG Estate Planning can help you preserve your assets using our Medicaid Asset Preservation Strategies®. MAPS® is our process for preserving your assets while protecting your eligibility for Medicaid. MAPS® will make it possible for you to:
• Protect your financial assets
• Obtain the long-term care you need
• Avoid any lien on your assets
Essential to the MAPS® process, is having the right estate planning documents in place.
Medicaid Trusts
How can you protect your assets while still qualifying for Medicaid? A Medicaid trust is one option. According to the Washington State Health Care Authority, the assets in certain trusts do not affect Medicaid eligibility—provided they are transferred more than five years prior to application for Medicaid, per Washington’s look-back window rules.
If you transfer your assets into a properly drafted Medicaid irrevocable trust, Medicaid will not consider these assets as part of your estate, so they won’t count when calculating eligibility. Assets you can transfer into a Medicaid trust include:
• Savings
• Real estate
• Vehicles
• Stocks and bonds
• Mutual funds
• Certificates of deposit
You don’t need to transfer all your assets into a Medicaid trust. Your primary residence, vehicle, and personal belongings won’t count against your financial eligibility for Medicaid, so you can retain possession of these. However, any assets not transferred into the Medicaid trust will be subject to estate recovery by the state. Your Medicaid trust can help you preserve many other assets while protecting your eligibility for benefits.
A Medicaid irrevocable trust can even be used at the time of need, not just five years in advance of a Medicaid application. However, unless a transfer exemption exists, such transfer will cause a period of ineligibility for benefits in most cases.
The Medicaid Asset Preservation Strategy® Process
There are several steps in our Medicaid Asset Preservation Strategy® process, including:
• You will meet us for a consultation, during which we will discuss possible Medicaid planning options so you can make a decision if MAPS® is right for you. Once retained-
• ELG Estate Planning will analyze your estate planning documents to ensure these documents are adequate for Medicaid planning.
• ELG Estate Planning will provide you your Medicaid plan roadmap.
• ELG Estate Planning will submit your Medicaid application so that the state may process it.
• The state will either award Medicaid benefits or impose a period of ineligibility, depending on the roadmap plan.
• We will work with you every step of the way to complete the process.
Contact a Spokane, Washington, Medicaid Planning Lawyer Today
ELG Estate Planning is an estate planning and Medicaid asset protection law firm serving Spokane, Washington. Attorney Andrea Maroney can help you create an irrevocable trust to protect your assets while still qualifying for Medicaid. Contact a Spokane, Washington, Medicaid planning lawyer at ELG Estate Planning immediately.