The necessity to begin your Estate Planning in your mid-fifties is now more important than ever! You do not want to wait until your loved one, or you, becomes ill, landing in a nursing home, or worse may become incapacitated with Alzheimer’s or Dementia!
Elder Care Advisors of Long Island, LLC has been providing their clients for over a decade with Powers of Attorney, Health Care Proxies, Wills, Medicaid Qualifying Trusts and Pooled Trusts which enable you to shelter your assets and income in addition to enabling you to qualify for Medicaid benefits when the time arrives.
Medicaid Qualifying Trusts (aka MQTs) can be a valuable planning strategy to meet Medicaid’s asset limit when an applicant has excess assets. Simply stated, these trusts protect a Medicaid applicant’s assets from being counted for eligibility purposes. This type of trust enables someone who would otherwise be ineligible for Medicaid to become Medicaid eligible and receive the care they require be at home or in a nursing home. Assets in this type of trust are no longer considered owned by the Medicaid applicant. MQTs also protect assets for one’s children and other relatives, which is a win-win for Medicaid applicants and their families.
It is important to understand that there are many different types of trusts and not all of them are Medicaid compliant. For instance, family trusts, commonly called Revocable Living Trusts, are different from MQTs. Generally, family trusts are not adequate in protecting money and assets from Medicaid because the language of the trust makes it revocable (meaning the trust can be canceled or altered) or allows for money in the trust to be used for the Medicaid applicant’s long-term care costs. Therefore, assets in this type of trust would have to be “spent down” to meet Medicaid’s asset limit in order for one to qualify for Medicaid.
Irrevocable funeral trusts, also known as burial trusts, are used to protect small amounts of assets specifically for funeral and burial costs.
Elder Care Advisors of Long Island, LLC have been assisting their clients and family members to establish Irrevocable Funeral Trusts also known as Pre-Need Funeral Trusts, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about these planning services.