How do families pay for aging parents?

[Anonymous]

Get a elder care/estate planning attorney asap. They can help immensely with the medicaid process and walk you through the steps. An elder care consultant may be helpful too as you're researching placement options. Be aware that even with medicaid approval, it may take quite some time to get a bed and the quality of care at different facilities varies greatly. Because of the labor shortages currently in nursing home facilities, even if there are beds available, they're not taking additional patients because they don't have the staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

You have a problem.

It sounds macabre to pay for a cemetery plot and headstone for a baby.

[Anonymous]

Get him into a nursing home that accepts Medicaid. He will have to spend down that 100,000 to about $2000 (depends on the state). When he has spent down (maybe 8-9 months or less), then he will be Medicaid pending while the nursing home helps him apply for Medicaid. Make sure you have 5 years worth of his bank statements, 5 years of tax returns and all his records. Get a POA medical and financial. It’s not your responsibility to pay anything. $100,000 is enough to get him into a place private pay and he can transition to Medicaid. The place my loved one is in is over $12k per month. They started out with only $30k in assets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

[Anonymous]

You private pay for a nursing home that will accept long term medicaid and after the spend down, medicaid will kick in. You can prepay things like a funeral to spend down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

How comforting for those babies. Do the parents take out large life insurance policies on them - just in case?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get him into a nursing home that accepts Medicaid. He will have to spend down that 100,000 to about $2000 (depends on the state). When he has spent down (maybe 8-9 months or less), then he will be Medicaid pending while the nursing home helps him apply for Medicaid. Make sure you have 5 years worth of his bank statements, 5 years of tax returns and all his records. Get a POA medical and financial. It’s not your responsibility to pay anything. $100,000 is enough to get him into a place private pay and he can transition to Medicaid. The place my loved one is in is over $12k per month. They started out with only $30k in assets.

This is Excellent advice! I’ll add that you should be very careful with the paperwork so that you are not committing to any financial responsibilities for yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

How comforting for those babies. Do the parents take out large life insurance policies on them - just in case?

Well the babies don’t know. I think I was around 11 before I asked about myself and got told.

[Anonymous]

^^^adding that they can get Medicaid even if they have SS and pension. The nursing home just has to cost more than they get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

Try reading the OP not just the headline.

[Anonymous]

OP, aside from the petty poster, there's lots of good info in this thread. The key points again are finding a nursing home where patients can transfer from private pay to Medicaid (ask if they handle the application, etc) and do not sign ANY papers committing you/DH to be responsible for expenses. FWIW, I recommend hiring a lawyer with PROVEN experience on applying for clients for Medicaid. Often they have relations with the agency staff handling the applications and may be more likely to trust them (I speak from experience - both times I had success was when I worked with a lawyer, not a nonprofit rep or the nursing home staff).

If your FiL resides somewhere with more than one appropriate nursing home in the area, it is worth visiting in person as well as researching how they are rated by CMS.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In our family, people save for this eventuality and hope it doesn't happen. If it does, they have the money for it, and if it doesn't then that money goes to their kids. Same with deaths - my cemetery plot and headstone were paid for when I was a baby. My nephew and niece are 7 and 3 and theirs' are too.

You are petty, petty, petty. People can work hard their whole lives and still not have enough money for "this eventuality," especially if they live long lives.

Fortunately, OP has plenty of people here to support her and not engage in your shaming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Get him into a nursing home that accepts Medicaid. He will have to spend down that 100,000 to about $2000 (depends on the state). When he has spent down (maybe 8-9 months or less), then he will be Medicaid pending while the nursing home helps him apply for Medicaid. Make sure you have 5 years worth of his bank statements, 5 years of tax returns and all his records. Get a POA medical and financial. It’s not your responsibility to pay anything. $100,000 is enough to get him into a place private pay and he can transition to Medicaid. The place my loved one is in is over $12k per month. They started out with only $30k in assets.

This is Excellent advice! I’ll add that you should be very careful with the paperwork so that you are not committing to any financial responsibilities for yourself.

Agree. Nursing home asked us to take financial responsibility in one form. I refused to sign it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, aside from the petty poster, there's lots of good info in this thread. The key points again are finding a nursing home where patients can transfer from private pay to Medicaid (ask if they handle the application, etc) and do not sign ANY papers committing you/DH to be responsible for expenses. FWIW, I recommend hiring a lawyer with PROVEN experience on applying for clients for Medicaid. Often they have relations with the agency staff handling the applications and may be more likely to trust them (I speak from experience - both times I had success was when I worked with a lawyer, not a nonprofit rep or the nursing home staff).

If your FiL resides somewhere with more than one appropriate nursing home in the area, it is worth visiting in person as well as researching how they are rated by CMS.

Good luck!

No need to hire sn attorney.

[Anonymous]

My MIL is in a nursing home paid for by Medicaid. The requirements for Medicaid vary by state and I am not sure how they would determine residency for your dad, but they may go by the state of the nursing home he is in, since he would be living in the nursing home.

In Virginia, where my MIL is, the eligibility criteria are a maximum income that is 300% of the SSI amount for an individual (which would equal about $2700/month in 2023) and no more than $2000 in assets. So if your dad’s pension + social security puts him above $2700/month, I am not sure if Medicaid becomes an option.

In my MIL’s case, she met the income requirement (only social security, no pension) and had about $20k in assets when she had a hospital stay that led to nursing home care. We put some of that into a funeral trust, which is an allowable way to spend down assets, and then paid for the nursing home privately out of her funds until she was below the $2000 line. In the month we applied, we paid the nursing home less than the monthly cost until she was below $2000 and they were able to get the rest from Medicaid. So when your parent’s assets are high, that is what you do—you private pay until they qualify for Medicaid, and possibly talk to a lawyer about how to protect some of their assets if there are a lot. We did not talk to a lawyer because my MIL did not have much, and the funeral trust took care of nearly all of it.