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By proceeding, I agree that I understand the following disclosures:
I. How We Work in Washington. Based on your preferences, we provide you with information about one or more of our contracted senior living providers ("Participating Communities") and provide your Senior Living Care Information to Participating Communities. The Participating Communities may contact you directly regarding their services. APFM does not endorse or recommend any provider. It is your sole responsibility to select the appropriate care for yourself or your loved one. We work with both you and the Participating Communities in your search. We do not permit our Advisors to have an ownership interest in Participating Communities.
II. How We Are Paid. We do not charge you any fee – we are paid by the Participating Communities. Some Participating Communities pay us a percentage of the first month's standard rate for the rent and care services you select. We invoice these fees after the senior moves in.
III. When We Tour. APFM tours certain Participating Communities in Washington (typically more in metropolitan areas than in rural areas.) During the 12 month period prior to December 31, 2017, we toured 86.2% of Participating Communities with capacity for 20 or more residents.
IV. No Obligation or Commitment. You have no obligation to use or to continue to use our services. Because you pay no fee to us, you will never need to ask for a refund.
V. Complaints. Please contact our Family Feedback Line at (866) 584-7340 or ConsumerFeedback@aplaceformom.com to report any complaint. Consumers have many avenues to address a dispute with any referral service company, including the right to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office at: Consumer Protection Division, 800 5th Avenue, Ste. 2000, Seattle, 98104 or 800-551-4636.
VI. No Waiver of Your Rights. APFM does not (and may not) require or even ask consumers seeking senior housing or care services in Washington State to sign waivers of liability for losses of personal property or injury or to sign waivers of any rights established under law.I agree that: A.I authorize A Place For Mom ("APFM") to collect certain personal and contact detail information, as well as relevant health care information about me or from me about the senior family member or relative I am assisting ("Senior Living Care Information"). B.APFM may provide information to me electronically. My electronic signature on agreements and documents has the same effect as if I signed them in ink. C.APFM may send all communications to me electronically via e-mail or by access to an APFM web site. D.If I want a paper copy, I can print a copy of the Disclosures or download the Disclosures for my records. E.This E-Sign Acknowledgement and Authorization applies to these Disclosures and all future Disclosures related to APFM's services, unless I revoke my authorization. You may revoke this authorization in writing at any time (except where we have already disclosed information before receiving your revocation.) This authorization will expire after one year. F.You consent to APFM's reaching out to you using a phone system than can auto-dial numbers (we miss rotary phones, too!), but this consent is not required to use our service.
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If someone on Medicaid qmb receives a settlement from a car accident for $28, 000 and spends the money on necessary repairs to their home is this legal?
Can I pay my sister a sitter fee to sit with our mom while she is at the nursing home? This will allow me to spend down below the $2,000.00. I intend to pay her $1,000.00 for the past 4 months which is $250.00 per month. My sister spends at least 20 hours per week with my mom so it would be very little if based on hourly wage. My mom has dementia and we help in feeding and taking care of her.
In Louisiana my mom is on skilled care in nursing home for the time being. She owns a home and 120 acres farmland and when we apply for Medicaid for her, she will have only $2000 in her account. But her farm land earned $1013/ mo rent. The nursing home will take her $700+ /mo social security. Will she be able to keep the monthly income to pay for upkeep on the homestead?
My Grandmother has 3 insurance policies with a cash value over the medicaid limit. What can we do to be able to get her below that limit ? What is legal and what can we do since my mother has power of attorney. Please advise
Usually the NH takes all insurance policies and the money received belongs to them when the elder person dies-it is best to go to an elder lawyer or have the social worker at the facility do thepaper work for Medicaid they know the rules.
I live in Louisiana, if my mom has a insurance with the cash value of 4000 will this be used against her when trying to get Medicaid assistance? She meets the income requirements but now I am worried about this cash value insurance policy/ WORRIED
Paperman - "spend down" funds are to be used towards the care of; the needs of; &/or the property of the person applying for Medicaid.
A fully pre-paid funeral & burial policy is a great way to do a spend down of several thousand dollars. You must be sure that the policy is NO CASH VALUE (NCV) - this is mucho importante of a term for anything you for Medicaid planning. Almost all funeral homes know exactly how to do this so that it is not an issue for Medicaid review in your state. Medicaid is a joint federal & state program with each state managing the program under an overall federal guideline. So you need to find out what the limit is for funeral / burial for your state. Some states have it set at 10K whie other states are lower. The FH will know although they will try to up-sale…..
My mom has a policies that was done ages ago and just within the past year I reviewed it and there is NO cemetery pre-need done. There is a mausoleum that my parents did & paid for in full back in the early 1980's & which my dad is in. They did the lettering also paid for in full. But the whole opening & closing of the vault etc was not available / could not be done in advance & paid for as per this cemetery policy. The opening /closing is going to run about 1K. Which is outrageous but whatever….my point is that funeral & burial stuff is horrendously expensive so it is good you are doing this now. The costs are lower if you have a place that has the funeral home the same as the cemetery as it can be packaged as 1 policy. But some faiths have their own cemetery or specifics on burial so that can't happen. Ask the elders in your family where & how other family members have been buried. Remember "NCV" is key!
Oh if they were a vet, they can be buried in a veterans cemetery. You have to contact VA on how to do this as to ones are available & the timeframe in.
Sherpa - Medicare is a overall general entitlement for health care services. There is no spend-down required to sign up for Medicare. You have to apply right before you turn 66.
So do you mean MedicAID? That is different. So what is the situation with your mom and what is she applying for & to (NH?).
Karen - OK so mom is in a NH and has applied for Medicaid, correct? But she still has just too much money to qualify and has to do a spend-down, correct? Mom has a house & a car too.
I think you have a couple of different things to consider and maybe why you are hearing different viewpoints... 1. How is the NH getting paid right now? Has she been accepted "Medicaid Pending" OR has she been accepted as private pay till Medicaid is approved? Not quite the same.....Medicaid Pending means that all mom will have to pay is whatever will be the Medicaid required co-pay for mom. So if mom gets $ 800 a month in SS and mom's state has her personal needs allowance at $50 a month, then she has TO DO A CO-PAY to the NH of $ 750.00 each month. But if it's not a "Medicaid Pending" acceptance, then mom may have to do the full private pay rate for each month she is there till Medicaid comes through. This could be several thousand $$ and could be why the NH said what they did. So carefully go over the admission paperwork to see what's what.
2. In general, the spend-down can be spent on anything that is theirs or for their care. If they own a house or a car, they can spend-down on items for the house or car. But realize that when the house or car is sold, ALL THE PROCEEDS from those sales have to be totally used for their care or their needs. The $ mom gets from the sale of the house and the car will be new & totally countable and non-exempt assets. These type of sales are recorded by the county assessor and they & therefore the state will know to the penny how much they sold for. So in many ways, spending on the house or car that is just going to be sold may not be the best use of limited funds. You do realize that the house & car are considered exempt assets and do not have to be sold? Now mom will not have any funds to pay for house & car stuff, but family can keep the house in mom's name and pay for whatever on the house if there is a reason to do so & mom maintains her "right of return" to the house.
Remember mom do can spend-down for a new hearing aids, dental work, a prepaid funeral, etc. You want to try to spend on things that will be the best benefit over time for mom. Many things are not covered by Medicaid and you will have to private pay for dental if needed.
To be quite blunt if any of her debt is credit cards, that is unsecured debt and there is really nothing they can do to make her pay them. SS & many retirements are protected assets and cannot have a judgement or lein on them except for the IRS. Good luck.
Hi Karen61, I am sure one of the people who are more familiar with your state's Medicaid laws will respond. What is your mom's state of residence? Same as the nursing residence? Generally, you can pay your mom's car payment - particularly if she is the only name on the car and the loan. You can pay her personal and household bills - but not anyone else's. Cars are assets that must be accounted for, so if you sell her car, it must be sold for its value and records kept.
I am in the process of "spending down" for my mom who has dementia and is in a home. The residence is telling me that I cannot use any of the spend down funds to pay a car loan which we haven't sold yet or other bills while we are packing up the house and other people have said I could use it for "bills." Does anyone know which is right. If they repossess the car it won't be an asset!
My mother and her husband had a CD that they had been adding to every year when it was time to renew it. A year before her husband died, and well after my mother had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, he took my mother's name off the CD and added his brother's name. The day after her husband died, his brother cashed in the CD totaling $75,000. I was unaware of the CD. My mother is in a nursing home, and I've been "spending" down her money by paying the nursing home, so she will qualify for Medicaid. I finally got her checking account down to nothing, and sold everything and used all of that for the bill, never knowing about the CD that had been cashed out. We just recently started the Medicaid process, to get her approved, and I had to get 5 years of bank statements. I sent those to Medicaid, and get a call wanting me to find $75,000. that was missing! Because the brother took the CD, it makes my mother have a penalty of that much money! We have nothing left to pay the nursing home with. Is there anything at all that we can do. I just want my mother to be approved for Medicaid! He can keep the money if they will just approve us, even though, my mother contributed to that CD over the years, and EVERY time any money was added to it, it was always by check written by my mother. With her having Alzheimer's there is no way she could have ever agreed to such as this being done. I just don't know what we are going to do!
I am my 94 year old father's power of attorney and executor. Apart from an irrevocable trust that we set up over five years ago, dad still has liquid assets totaling about $70,000 that I realize will have to be used for nursing home care before he qualifies for Medicaid in New York State. Over the past five years, he has helped various children and grandchildren with cash to pay for various things such as vehicles and down payments on their homes. There is no way these family members can give back such "gifts", so what does that mean as far as dad's eligibility for Medicaid is concerned. To add to my confusion, what if he had decided to withdraw a vast sum of money three years ago and lost it all at a casino. Would the state expect the casino to return the money, since the loss would have occurred within the look-back period?
I became disabled 13 years ago and after 3 years I was finaly awarded a samall monthly amount of money(less than 500.00 per month) and this qualified me for medicaid. Then or now 10 years later the government said they made a mistake and I should have been getting divorced widows benefits so they raised my disability check to 857.00-then a month later sent me a check for 54.000.00 for back money. Now I no longer qualify for In home care. But here is what is odd. They are keeping me on Medicai and Medicare and tell me not to worry about it. I am leery about this. I feel like the bottom is about to fall out. I have no other assets-I lost everything because of the low income for 10 years. What should I do? I live in Texas by the way. Something just doesn't smell right. Thank you
my mom and I have a joint cd account and a joint checking account. Both were established over 15 years ago. Am I entitled to keep my share if my Mom is applying for Medicaid and needs to spend down?
I am power of attorney for a patient in a nursing home on medicaid. The nursing home alerted me that my person is getting close to being over the money limit in his account so I needed to withdraw 400.00 . Now do I have to spend all of this immediately on him or can I spend it down as he needs things and then turn in all receipts when the entire 400.00 is gone ? I only use the money on him. please answer soon thank you.
As long as she spends down her money on her care that will make it easier to get medicaide-it is when you gift large amounts of money to others so as to get on medicaide is when there is a problem. When her assests are at or under what she is allowed to keep she can apply for medicaide and after the forms are filled out there will be a meeting with social service and will find out if she is accepted and then home care or placement will be paid for-using her money for her care is what is suppose to happen not as most people want to do which is leave large sums of money for their children-people need to get their head around that are savings are to be used for our care as we age.
My Mom has community home care and is spending down her IRA for home care to pay for aids at home. In spending down her IRA will that make her not eligible for medicaid?
Generally by paying for care but make sure you keep records and it may be you have to use an agency I would check with an elder lawyer and they are not all expensive mine had me pay a retainer and some office of ageing have free services in which a lawyer donates him time and the client does not pay but that would be one way to spend down also going into a nursing home as private pay until you reach the limit also be aware there is a look-back period where they check any large withdrawals usually it is 5 years.
By proceeding, I agree that I understand the following disclosures:
I. How We Work in Washington.
Based on your preferences, we provide you with information about one or more of our contracted senior living providers ("Participating Communities") and provide your Senior Living Care Information to Participating Communities. The Participating Communities may contact you directly regarding their services.
APFM does not endorse or recommend any provider. It is your sole responsibility to select the appropriate care for yourself or your loved one. We work with both you and the Participating Communities in your search. We do not permit our Advisors to have an ownership interest in Participating Communities.
II. How We Are Paid.
We do not charge you any fee – we are paid by the Participating Communities. Some Participating Communities pay us a percentage of the first month's standard rate for the rent and care services you select. We invoice these fees after the senior moves in.
III. When We Tour.
APFM tours certain Participating Communities in Washington (typically more in metropolitan areas than in rural areas.) During the 12 month period prior to December 31, 2017, we toured 86.2% of Participating Communities with capacity for 20 or more residents.
IV. No Obligation or Commitment.
You have no obligation to use or to continue to use our services. Because you pay no fee to us, you will never need to ask for a refund.
V. Complaints.
Please contact our Family Feedback Line at (866) 584-7340 or ConsumerFeedback@aplaceformom.com to report any complaint. Consumers have many avenues to address a dispute with any referral service company, including the right to file a complaint with the Attorney General's office at: Consumer Protection Division, 800 5th Avenue, Ste. 2000, Seattle, 98104 or 800-551-4636.
VI. No Waiver of Your Rights.
APFM does not (and may not) require or even ask consumers seeking senior housing or care services in Washington State to sign waivers of liability for losses of personal property or injury or to sign waivers of any rights established under law.
I agree that:
A.
I authorize A Place For Mom ("APFM") to collect certain personal and contact detail information, as well as relevant health care information about me or from me about the senior family member or relative I am assisting ("Senior Living Care Information").
B.
APFM may provide information to me electronically. My electronic signature on agreements and documents has the same effect as if I signed them in ink.
C.
APFM may send all communications to me electronically via e-mail or by access to an APFM web site.
D.
If I want a paper copy, I can print a copy of the Disclosures or download the Disclosures for my records.
E.
This E-Sign Acknowledgement and Authorization applies to these Disclosures and all future Disclosures related to APFM's services, unless I revoke my authorization. You may revoke this authorization in writing at any time (except where we have already disclosed information before receiving your revocation.) This authorization will expire after one year.
F.
You consent to APFM's reaching out to you using a phone system than can auto-dial numbers (we miss rotary phones, too!), but this consent is not required to use our service.
A fully pre-paid funeral & burial policy is a great way to do a spend down of several thousand dollars. You must be sure that the policy is NO CASH VALUE (NCV) - this is mucho importante of a term for anything you for Medicaid planning. Almost all funeral homes know exactly how to do this so that it is not an issue for Medicaid review in your state. Medicaid is a joint federal & state program with each state managing the program under an overall federal guideline. So you need to find out what the limit is for funeral / burial for your state. Some states have it set at 10K whie other states are lower. The FH will know although they will try to up-sale…..
My mom has a policies that was done ages ago and just within the past year I reviewed it and there is NO cemetery pre-need done. There is a mausoleum that my parents did & paid for in full back in the early 1980's & which my dad is in. They did the lettering also paid for in full. But the whole opening & closing of the vault etc was not available / could not be done in advance & paid for as per this cemetery policy. The opening /closing is going to run about 1K. Which is outrageous but whatever….my point is that funeral & burial stuff is horrendously expensive so it is good you are doing this now. The costs are lower if you have a place that has the funeral home the same as the cemetery as it can be packaged as 1 policy. But some faiths have their own cemetery or specifics on burial so that can't happen. Ask the elders in your family where & how other family members have been buried. Remember "NCV" is key!
Oh if they were a vet, they can be buried in a veterans cemetery. You have to contact VA on how to do this as to ones are available & the timeframe in.
So do you mean MedicAID? That is different. So what is the situation with your mom and what is she applying for & to (NH?).
I think you have a couple of different things to consider and maybe why you are hearing different viewpoints...
1. How is the NH getting paid right now? Has she been accepted "Medicaid Pending" OR has she been accepted as private pay till Medicaid is approved? Not quite the same.....Medicaid Pending means that all mom will have to pay is whatever will be the Medicaid required co-pay for mom. So if mom gets $ 800 a month in SS and mom's state has her personal needs allowance at $50 a month, then she has TO DO A CO-PAY to the NH of $ 750.00 each month. But if it's not a "Medicaid Pending" acceptance, then mom may have to do the full private pay rate for each month she is there till Medicaid comes through. This could be several thousand $$ and could be why the NH said what they did. So carefully go over the admission paperwork to see what's what.
2. In general, the spend-down can be spent on anything that is theirs or for their care. If they own a house or a car, they can spend-down on items for the house or car. But realize that when the house or car is sold, ALL THE PROCEEDS from those sales have to be totally used for their care or their needs. The $ mom gets from the sale of the house and the car will be new & totally countable and non-exempt assets. These type of sales are recorded by the county assessor and they & therefore the state will know to the penny how much they sold for. So in many ways, spending on the house or car that is just going to be sold may not be the best use of limited funds. You do realize that the house & car are considered exempt assets and do not have to be sold? Now mom will not have any funds to pay for house & car stuff, but family can keep the house in mom's name and pay for whatever on the house if there is a reason to do so & mom maintains her "right of return" to the house.
Remember mom do can spend-down for a new hearing aids, dental work, a
prepaid funeral, etc. You want to try to spend on things that will be the best benefit over time for mom. Many things are not covered by Medicaid and you will have to private pay for dental if needed.
To be quite blunt if any of her debt is credit cards, that is unsecured debt and there is really nothing they can do to make her pay them. SS & many retirements are protected assets and cannot have a judgement or lein on them except for the IRS.
Good luck.