Elder Law Trifecta: Guardianship Medicaid/Asset Protection/Special Needs Planning

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OUTCOME: In all we were able to obtain many thousands of dollars of benefits and services, obtain the services this family needed, and most importantly, keep them together.

W contacts our firm due to H’s placement in nursing home and concern for being able to pay for his care ($13,000.00 per month in nursing home) and survive. H and W had a home worth $450,000.00, joint ... accounts and various IRAs worth $400,000.00 and a son who lived with them who was 54 years old and developmentally delayed since birth. W was also concerned about what would happen to her son as she was getting on in years and did not have a care plan created for her son. She knew that her niece would be willing to allow her son to move in with her but nothing had been put in writing or formalized. It was a stressful mess. Due to the spousal protections allowed in the Medicaid law (but not widely understood) we were able to protect almost all of the families $800,000.00 in assets and obtain Medicaid funding for H’s nursing home needs. We were also able to prepare and set up two Supplemental Needs Trusts for the benefit of H and W’s disabled son which both protected H’s Medicaid benefits and allowed the son to be eligible for Medicaid. H and W did not know that their son was eligible for Medicaid Waiver benefits to take some of the burden off W so we applied for those benefits in addition to apply for nursing home Medicaid benefits for H. By doing what we did we created a means of getting care and support for the son, keeping him living in the community longer and reducing the burden on W who was caregiver for H and her son. Since it was likely that son would need to move at some point in the not too distant future we had W appointed as legal guardian for her son so that a successor guardian (her niece) could be easily appointed after her death or if she could no longer care for her son. With the Supplemental Trusts in the will and the other trust we created there was a funding source for son’s special and supplemental needs that was protected from Medicaid estate recovery.