[fabsroman]

Skeeter,

What you are talking about is Medicaid planning I believe. The Medicaid look back period used to be 3 years, but it was changed to 5 years to prevent people from gifting too much away before they went into a nursing home. The easiest way around this problem is to purchase long term care insurance at a young age. The statistics state that 50% of Americans will end up staying in a nursing home at some point, so the insurance coverage will take care of everything and you do not have to worry about spending down assets before Medicaid will cover the cost. The other way to deal with this issue is to be filthy rich so that your assets earn enough to pay for your nursing home stay.

As far as I am concerned, I complelety support this law. Why should taxpayer money be used to pay for somebody's nursing home stay if they have their own money. It would be like giving welfare handouts to people that don't need the money.

As far as the trust issue is concerned, you would have to put your assets in an irrevocable trust 5 years before entering a nursing home to get around this issue. Since the trust is irrevocable, you give up all rights to those assets once you put them in the trust. In fact, it is the same thing as gifting the assets to somebody. So, you had better trust whomever you are giving them to, because that person will have to take care of you for 5 years, and maybe more if you don't need nursing home care after 5 years of gifting the assets away.

This is a very touchy subject for a lot of people. My grandmother didn't want to give her money away no how, no way, so we used the money to pay for her nursing home care, and just figured it would be gone and nobody would get anything. She passed away after being in the nursing home for 3 or 4 years and there was some money left over, but I would have preferred it to be the other way around.

A lot of people seek attorneys to help them with this process, and then balk when the attorney tells them he needs $5,000+ as a retainer to help them. People have no idea how much work goes into Medicaid planning, or estate planning for that matter.