Don’t Lose The Family Money to Medicaid

13 Dec 2022 · 1 min

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In this concise video, Jerry Taylor warns that without proper planning, a person’s or their parents’ lifetime earnings can be seized by the government to fund long-term medical care via Medicaid. He explains that qualifying for Medicaid essentially requires becoming impoverished, but outlines four legal strategies to protect assets: (1) placing assets in an asset protection trust and waiting a five‑year look‑back period; (2) converting assets into Medicaid‑compliant annuities or promissory notes; (3) establishing caregiver or personal care agreements with friends or family members that Medicaid does not normally cover; and (4) transferring assets to a surviving spouse, which may still be subject to Medicaid claims but offers better preservation. Taylor stresses that state rules vary and recommends obtaining professional legal assistance to navigate these options.

Chapters

This could seriously change your life. All the money you or your parents earned during your lives could be taken by the government to pay for medical care. I'm going to tell you how you can avoid that. You have to understand that if you or your parents need long-term care, nursing home care down the road, you either have to pay for that out of your pocket with long-term care insurance or with Medicaid benefits. To get Medicaid, you basically have to make yourself poor. Here's how to avoid doing that. Strategy 1 is to put as much of what you have as possible into an asset protection trust. Once it's been in there for 5 years, it's protected from Medicaid. Strategy 2 is to put your assets into an annuity or a promissory note that is Medicaid compliant. Strategy 3 is a caregiver or a personal care agreement where a friend or a family member can provide care to you that Medicaid would not normally provide. Strategy 4, if there's a spouse still living at home, transferring assets to that spouse. Medicaid may still want some of that money in the long run, but there's a better chance of preserving it. It will pay to get professional legal help to find out what your state allows on all of these.