The cost of long-term care can be astounding. Our compassionate team of attorneys can help ease the pain. With proper planning, we can help to not only create a plan for your own long-term care needs but to provide a legacy for your family and financial assistance for a loved one with special needs.
Medicare and most health insurance policies are not designed to pay for long-term nursing care, whether such care is provided in the community or in a nursing home facility. A family can easily exhaust a lifetime of savings in a short time when faced with these expenses. Utilizing proper planning methods in many cases can help reduce or even eliminate this financial exposure. In addition, it is important to protect a disabled individual from the depletion of his or her assets, while providing for financial opportunities beyond what may be strictly necessary. A Supplemental Needs Trust allows you to provide disabled loved ones with a comfortable lifestyle without depriving them of government assistance.
Optimally, the process of protecting assets begins many years before nursing home or community based long term care becomes necessary. Through advanced planning, we are able to effectively protect assets towards achieving the following goals:
- Designing a plan to establish eligibility for the payment of uninsured medical or long-term custodial care by Medicaid or other third party sources
- Making sure that sufficient resources remain available to pay for necessary care until an ill or elderly family member becomes Medicaid eligible
- Ensuring that if one’s spouse should require long-term community based or nursing home care, sufficient income and assets will remain available to support the other spouse
- Protecting hard-earned family assets so that there will be a legacy to pass to family members and other beneficiaries
- Maintaining independence and control in the face of declining health and advancing age
Timely planning is important
Timely planning will frequently enable a family to achieve most of these goals. Although many of the techniques for asset preservation planning changed as a result of the recently enacted Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA), effective techniques are still available to design and implement a successful asset preservation plan. However, even if a family is unable to plan years in advance for the possibility that a loved one will require costly long-term uninsured care, we are still frequently able to protect a substantial portion of the family’s assets, when such care becomes necessary.
Medicaid planning
Our commitment to clients does not end with effective planning. Once an individual becomes eligible to have the cost of his or her care paid by Medicaid, we are there to assist the family through the Medicaid application process. Providing the information and documentation required by Medicaid can be a very daunting and stressful process. We are available to help through every step so that the Medicaid applicant is able to receive the care he or she requires without delay.
StepByStep Medicaid Consulting
The process of applying for Medicaid is often time-consuming and complicated. While our attorneys have the experience to create the planning documents, prepare the Medicaid applications, and employ the legal strategies, the CBM&S StepByStep Medicaid Consulting team guides clients through the process.
The StepByStep team is comprised of social workers with over 30 years of experience working with the geriatric population, case management, and Medicaid application submissions.
Under the supervision of partner Stuart Schoenfeld, the team assists clients in Medicaid applications and related matters, including:
- Community and nursing home Medicaid applications
- Medicaid recertifications
- Managed long term care evaluations
- Securing the services of qualified aides from home care agencies
- Geriatric Care Management
- Protecting income through the use of a pooled income trust
The StepByStep Medicaid Consulting team is deeply committed to helping families understand, prepare, and qualify for Medicaid to cover the high costs of home care for a loved one. The team provides service every step of the way, throughout Suffolk, Nassau and the Five Boroughs of New York.