Yes, any gifts would need to be returned. The 14K is just when gift taxes start kicking in, but any amount, according to my lawyer, would be collected by the state, not just what is considered “excessive.” I had a patient who died after a couple of years in a nursing home. The family tried to get Medicaid to pay for it and wanted me to sign a letter prepared by a lawyer that her assets, for some reason (I cannot remember exactly how it read), were already spen for her benefit and could not be collected. I refused to sign.
For the 5 year look back, the state just won’t approve the elder for Medicaid coverage in a nursing home until the elder/family has paid nursing home bills equal to the amount of the gifts. So it’s not that they take the money back, they just won’t let you in the home in the first place unless you pay out of pocket. Imagine the fun that can be if the money was given to 3 or 4 siblings, and one or more of them refuses to pay their share of the early nursing home costs.
If the elder goes into a nursing home and still has a spouse living in the family home, then Medicaid will generally have a lien on the house so that when the house is sold Medicaid gets repaid.
@zeebamom, I think a lot of elders want the money to go to their families, they have spent years enjoying the thought that they will leave a generous inheritance. If they were thinking clearly, they would understand that they have to pay their own bills before they give gifts, but they aren’t always thinking clearly.
I think most of us agree that both taking in an elder relative and trying to hide assets are both perilous. This thing about “loving” them too much to “dump them” in a facility forgets that good care is trained, both in day to day oversight and what needs attention or is an emergency. (Just look at how hard it is for some posters here to know what to do, even with a relative in AL or NH.) It also forgets that we can still be active in visiting and caring. I know not all facilities are great and not everyone can afford much, if anything. And that some people really can take care of their elders in a fine way.
I’m reading there’s no “minimum amount” of a gift that is safe, but some sources state that “Medicaid typically looks at any transaction larger than $1,000” or a pattern of small gifts that starts to add up. Also, depending on the state- or even county- that number may be larger.
There’s a formula to the lookback, what was given, what the average monthly cost of care is, etc. But you have to know how your state does this.
I am not trying to make my dad look “destitute”, but to be honest, it is just like college where the only goal is to bankrupt the middle class - rich and poor do a lot better. EFC for college is looked at as a guideline and colleges feel completely fine meeting only 80% of need, like 20% is going to spring out of the ground.
And right now, my spouse and I have paid my dad tens of thousands of dollars in the last few years, so can’t we have him pay us back without anyone freaking about it? We have proof. It wouldn’t be hiding my dad’s assets as much as him paying us back what he owes us, and darn straight you can bet if he did have to go into a home, that fact would not be considered (but the reverse would be if he gave us money?).
But it will be moot as I am second-generation American and we were raised to take care of our parents directly, so the chance of him actually going to a home is slim to none, short of rehab. And doesn’t rehab have different rules, as long as a doctor deems it medically necessary?
What I am frightened of is if something happens and I have to pay out of my own money because my brother who will have POA won’t cash out my dad’s stocks. Is that something where I’d have to wait until my dad passes, and meanwhile I might have to take my kid out of his college of choice in the mean time?
And an interesting point - if my brother has POA and complete control of my dad’s assets, but my dad has very little cash (hence me and my spouse giving him money over the past few years), does my brother get in trouble for not paying or does my dad get thrown out of the hospital or rehab?
Rehab stays are up to Medicare. The max is 100 days and there has to be measurable progress. If the therapists in the facility believe (and document) that the patient is stable and unlikely to get any better, Medicare cuts them off. You can appeal - we did and it was approved.
We are still arguing over who is paying for the days between mom’s fall and the confirmation of the hip fracture.
We are documenting any payments from mom to any of us with receipts.
The chunk of the colleges’ FA generosity comes from donors. Medicaid monies come from the general tax-paying population. Most people have choice in college expenses- go off to cc, if that’s all you want to pay. Or earn the best merit money.
You can try to claim he’s simply reimbursing you, but you still risk some test of his cognitive ability to agree. Your payments may be seen as voluntary gifts. Your payback timing may be seen as opportunistic. The time to plan for asset transfers is well before the 5-year period.
Take care of him as you see best. For background on Medicare/Medicaid payments for skilled nursing or rehab, you need to be googling the rules and regs and how your state applies them.
If your father needs a high level of care, outside your home, and brother won’t release funds, the same rules apply. I don’t know that you can pay for something, whether a facility or, say, surgery, and later make a claim against the estate.
POA doesn’t change the rules. If those are your father’s assets, they are for his needs. Not for something else anyone else has in mind.
I didn’t link this before but maybe it helps http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/09318.pdf It may be a little older, but it’s one resource. It may not be directly relevant to RH’s questions, but shows the thinking. There are no simple answers and we really have to do the googling, maybe consult an attorney.
You say you have given (loaned?) your Dad money and you say that he is cash poor. Does he own a home? Why not attach a lien to the house such that you are repaid (and Medicare is ok with it) (and your brother has no choice, or is he supportive of your getting that money back) before the estate is divided?
No, poor do not do a lot better here (nor with college, really, except for tippy-top schools that meet full need and there are a miniscule number of places in there in comparison with the number of kids from poor families). Every negative thing you’ve ever heard about nursing homes? That’s where the poor go; they have no choice.
Yes, we were thinking about that. He is very cash poor in that he sometimes needs money but won’t cash out inherited stocks.
He is not sick now, except low vision and dry macular degeneration. He still drives but not at night. Sometimes I hope his MD will get worse and he will realize he can’t drive at all. He had his car hit in a busy parking lot, while he was in the store, and he wanted to pocket the check to repair the car instead of use it to fix the car. He hit met up for over ten thousand dollars (right around when my son’s first tuition bills were due) so that he could pay off the car and pocket the money and drive around a damaged and possibly dangerous car.
What I would REALLY like is for him to divest this business he has with one of my siblings, because I think that has been a huge drain on his financial resources, and my sibling and their spouse get paid from the profits, my dad gets nothing from it.
It will be very hard to “step up” when and if the time comes due to that one sibling he co-owns a business with and the money that has been dumped into the business (more than 5 years ago, but certainly proveable that my sibling benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment).
There are financial consultants that specialize in the issue of elderly people with assets and the best way to handle them.
Many residences for the elderly will agree to take Medicaid when a resident’s assets are spent down. So they pay for a few years, and then they are covered by Medicaid after that. In general these are better facilities than those that take Medicaid patients without assets to spend down
I had covered some of my mother’s expenses when she had a cash flow problem (waiting for proceeds from stock sale) and she paid me back when she had the funds to do so. When she applied for Medicaid, I had to show my cancelled checks to prove I had covered her expenses and that was why she had written a check to me. I don’t know what the dollar amount is for the state to want such proof, but they do ask for it.
Do you have documentation that this money was a loan and not a gift? If not, you may not be able go get it back with or without Medicaid input. It sounds like your dad has money now, so ask for it back now, from him or your brother. Has your dad been declared incompetent? (I certainly hope not, if he is incompetent to manage his money he should not be driving anywhere at any time of day.) If he has not been declared incompetent, he should be able to pay you back without asking your brother’s permission. POA lets your brother act on your father’s behalf, it does not prevent your father from acting on his own behalf.
Why on earth would you do this? If your brother has you bullied this much, you and your DH both need counseling to stand up to him. Call the state department of senior services if your brother prevents your father from getting the care he needs. I’m sorry to hear you have bullies in the family, but you are an adult and can decide not to let them take advantage of you.
You don’t apply for Medicaid unless you are already destitute. Then they start the look back. If your dad has “stocks”, Medicaid will not even think of paying for his care. His money is his money to pay for his care. You and your siblings are owed nothing, sounds like they don’t understand that, and that your brothers expect you to pay out of your pocket so that they can keep dad’s money. I don’t even begin to understand why you or your DH would agree to that.
And I second, third, and fourth the comments that care in a good nursing home with regular family visits can be infinitely better than care at home from a family member. You need plenty of people, you need people who can take physical and emotional time off from being burned out, you need people who can put up with the crankiness of the old and sick without filtering it through decades of family history. I’ve seen the care given by “martyr” family members, and I wholeheartedly wish it on some of my worst enemies, but not my loved ones.
Amen to that momofjandl. Many elderly really need a big team of people. I know my mom is so needy that truly one person couldn’t do it. And I don’t go for the guilting either. Most are doing the best we can trying to balance their needs with our lives. The facility where my mom lives is so on top of anticipating needs that I could never provide all of that and keep my sanity and marriage intact.
I don’t quite get this. You loaned him $10K to enable him to pocket insurance money and drive around in a damaged car that you think might be unsafe? You couldn’t say no to this? Please, stop “lending” money to your dad. I know he is healthy, but his age would suggest a life expectancy of less than 5 years. I doubt your siblings will make sure you are paid back when you really just gave your dad money when it wasn’t in his best interest.
MIL and FIL deeded their home to their children. I think they did this for several reasons. If one needs NH care, didn’t want home taken away from the other (which isn’t supposed to happen, but maybe felt they put a layer of protection for healthier spouse). The house is essentially their only asset; MIL has two teacher pensions and they have SS. They both live in the home and are declining on health but still can have help come in and afford that care to a certain extent. As with many elderly, they don’t want to spend $$ on themselves unless it passes their idea of real need. For example, they do have ‘meals on wheels’ but can cancel for that day if they call before 9 am - and it saves them the day’s charge for MOW. They have a housekeeper that does deep cleaning. Their home is in a small town, so not appreciating - I know for some locations, it is better to have any property deed over at death due to capital gains. For MIL/FIL, they want to ‘pass’ something on to their children - one had a fair inheritance, while the other did not.
When there is a family business that gets ‘taken over’ by one or more, it does become messy if things have not been done with clear communication, and there can be many negative feelings from some that believe assets were taken from them.
My brother took a piece of jewelry that was to go to me; he took it for his DD and told me to take it up with her. Brother now lives out of the country and cannot return to US. I have to approach this at an appropriate time with my niece.
It does sometimes help to be a little dispassionate about some of this. I do mean that in a positive way, not ignoring needs. Yes, it is customary for some to take in a relative- but how this works and whether it does depends on a lot more than initial willingness. In some cases, there’s a big family, all in agreement to share responsibilities as they can, spell each other, somehow. In some cases, the family home is set up to make things safe and easy for the elder, maybe there’s a nice first floor bedroom, local ride services, they love to garden or interact with the grandchildren, the primary caregiver is home more than out. In other cases, not.
My MIL thrived in AL, where she made friends. Life was a party while it could be. My ornery mother called me the other day, just to say how she still likes her IL.
Btw, put me (and my brother) in the camp that told my mother not to worry about any inheritance to us.
It sounds like #1 we need to document. For example, my dad loaned me money six years ago, that I paid back within 2 weeks (emergency that we got a loan for, but couldn’t get the loan approved in time). It was substantial, and my brother thought I never paid it back and wanted us to pay it “ASAP”. So we went back to emails and confirmed what happened, and we know the banks have records of us receiving money and paying back money within two weeks.
We need to document what we have done so far. I hate to think about it, but I don’t want to screw my kids over by tolerating my siblings’ dealings.
It is a bit acrimonious, like my brother who is in on the business with my dad doesn’t appreciate that my dad put 200K into the business around 15 years ago, and my brother is half-owner yet he didn’t put in a dime. Then my brother wants the siblings to “share costs” when there is such a financial imbalance. Not ONE of my siblings has a child in college right now, so I don’t think they get our current situation compared to theirs. Only one had put one child through college, no other nieces or nephews completed college, and most never started.
This kind of thing happened when my aunt passed. She had given us 2K at one point, more than three years before she passed, and the executor called us and insisted we have it taken off the money she left us. I basically said “I can get you receipts from the many times that I bought groceries for her and did not get paid back”. After a bit of give and take, the executor agreed that either it was a gift or quid pro quo.
I would like to sit down with my dad over his finances. Honestly I’d rather know now if he wants to leave his money all to his son who he co-owns the business with, then I don’t have to care about anything other than the money I just gave this year (if he passes in three years).
As for dementia, he is off and on a bit unrealistic and confused. I would say, if he ends up living with us, I would quit my job and take care of him if he needed care. I could probably take a semester off if I needed to, or even work only at night so my spouse could help my dad as needed. But I think I would want him to move in sooner than later, while he is healthy, so that it is not traumatic for him to “come home” to someone else’s house.
I know it is not everyone’s choice, but I really doubt that based on my family background that my dad would be not living at one of his kids’ homes. I and one of my siblings have enough medical and health knowledge to take care of basic issues, and yes, changing diapers and taking care of ostomies and so on would not be beyond the pale for us, neither would be taking care of an IV or bedsores.
Sorry - also, I did check out his car, and can’t believe the amount of money they are asking for it to be repaired. I believe the car is safe (no, I’m not a mechanic though).
My concern is less about the ethics of what he did and the safety of his car, than the concern that he has money in stocks yet won’t take some out to buy a car, he’d rather take out a loan. Something seems odd about that. Or even from his HELOC. Our HELOC rates are similar, but I think he is in the thrall of my brother enough that if he took money out of his HELOC, my brother would know and yell at him and me.
Thank you all for your advice, I am meeting with my husband to get all money exchanges completely documented, and then I will meet with my dad to talk about his plans.
Is it wrong to bring up “what is your two-year and five-year plan?” to an 88 year old?
RH, if your dad has 200k tied up with an uncooperative brother, and you’re providing an allowance, talking about substantial money you already spent, anticipating more difficulties with sibljngs, Dad is “off and on a bit unrealistic and confused,” the issue needs an elder law attorney for the state where this is. IMO, that’s the best we can say.
Well… I don’t know that I’d put it quite that way. But yes, I think it’s appropriate to ask what they want to be happening, or what they’d like to see happening in the future. But, from what I’ve read on this thread, when a parent is in thrall to a child, it probably won’t make much difference, unfortunately.
This concerns me more than the condition of the car:
This is a hot button for me. Impaired drivers shouldn’t be on the road.