Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report
Unlocking Asset Protection and Long-Term Care Strategies in North Carolina
Unlock the secrets to protecting your assets and ensuring long-term care in North Carolina with our latest episode of the Elder Law Report. Ever wondered how look-back periods impact your ability to secure essential benefits for assisted living and nursing home care? We uncover the complexities behind these look-back periods and their effect on asset transfers and eligibility, offering you valuable insights on strategic planning. From special assistance programs to long-term care Medicaid, we discuss how understanding these nuances can be the key to safeguarding your future.
Planning is more than just a necessity; it’s a way to secure peace of mind for you and your loved ones. We emphasize the importance of proactive estate planning, providing strategies to protect your home and retirement savings against the financial strain of long-term care. Discover tools like ladybird deeds and Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension Benefits that can help you navigate this complex landscape. I, as your host and an experienced elder law attorney, am here to offer free consultations to address your specific needs. Reach out and let us guide you through the maze of rules and regulations to maximize asset protection and secure the care you need.
Welcome to the Elder Law Report.
Greg McIntyre:Our topic today is long-term care and look-back periods, long-term care benefits and how a look-back period works in relation to the benefit.
Greg McIntyre:So there's some confusion out there about the length of a look-back period and I want to clear that up and how a look-back period works with the transfer of your assets and eligibility for a long-term care benefit. In North Carolina. There are two types of long-term care benefits in North Carolina, which is a totally separate program, is the program in North Carolina that pays for assisted living care or assisted living care with a special unit, like memory care. Special assistance carries with it a three-year look-back period. That means that if we've transferred assets to say, an irrevocable trust for planning ahead, we need to do that three years ahead of time. However, even within the look-back period for special assistance, there are many ways that you can protect assets. Even within a look-back period for assisted living care in North Carolina, for that benefit you can put a ladybird deed on your home. There's other ways to shift assets, especially between spouses under special assistance. So the look back period for blatant transfers or gifts, so to speak, is three years. But in All the benefits rules have allowances within the rules for specialized transfers and legal protections of assets, even within the look-back period. You will hear the term spend-down used during a look-back period to become eligible for a long-term care benefit. I do not like this term because this implies that we are just spending down our money or assets to get qualified for the benefit. I do not like this term because this implies that we are just spending down our money or assets to get qualified for the benefit. There are so many ways to plan ahead and protect your assets or to operate to plan to protect assets and qualify for the benefit short of well, short of spending down your money and just losing your property that you've worked so hard for, and it's important that we seek professional guidance, like attorneys like myself, an estate planning and elder law attorney, to find out what those options are.
Greg McIntyre:The second benefit, long-term care Medicaid, pays for skilled nursing care, which many people and myself refer to as nursing home care, or two in-home care programs in North Carolina, cap and PACE, and those programs within long-term care Medicaid are very different and work differently than the long-term care Medicaid benefit for skilled nursing care, for nursing home care and overall, though generally the qualifications for those three programs are the same under long-term care Medicaid are the same under long-term care Medicaid. Long-term care Medicaid carries with it a five-year look-back period. So from the date of application for special assistance for assisted living care or long-term care Medicaid, for nursing home care, from the date of your application, that's where the look-back starts and it's a look-back, look back, right. So we're not going forward, we're picking that date and we're going back three years for assisted living or five years for the nursing home care benefit, long-term care medicaid, to see how money and assets have been transferred and handled during that time. So it's important that you're aware of the rules because if you make a wrong move in transferring assets or planning during that look-back period, then it could penalize or block the applicant that needs the benefit from receiving that benefit. So we want to know what we're doing and how we're doing it and the impact before we go full steam and gift out assets or transfer assets or put deed protections on assets or transfer things to a trust. So three-year look-back period for the assisted living, five-year for nursing home care, five-year for nursing home care, and our office has an entire benefits department that handles both.
Greg McIntyre:We also handle Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension Benefits, which is a benefit that adds a pension for a veteran or spouse of a deceased veteran at a time where you need additional funds to pay for long-term care. That is a timing-specific benefit, just like special assistance and long-term care Medicaid that when you need it and you're spending out your income on care, that's when you maximize that benefit. Used to not have a look-back period prior to 2018 in Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension Benefits, but in 2018, it was implemented a three-year look-back period for transfer of assets to a vehicle, like a Veterans Asset Protection Trust, which also is long-term care, medicaid and special assistance compliant. So sometimes we're looking at a combination of benefits. Sometimes we're adding Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension and then we might need to roll if that's good enough to pay for in-home care and assisted living care private pay and then we go to long-term care. We go to nursing home care and the cost is so much that maybe the income plus Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension is paying for less than half of the total bill.
Greg McIntyre:Then we have to look at long-term care Medicaid, to activate it, and we want our planning that we did for the Veterans Aid and Attendance Pension benefit to be compliant with long-term care Medicaid rules also. So we will look at the compliance in the places where there are commonalities in planning so that we put a plan in place that would work for multiple layers of benefits and levels of care. So it can seemingly get complex, but I will tell you I really enjoy this world, this type of planning, this strategy, and it's much like a game with rules and I like to play those games and we like to win. So when we take planning case during a look-back period, we call that benefits crisis planning, because we're within the look-back period and we really enjoy helping folks save as much of their hard-earned money and property as close to a hundred percent as possible, while also opening them up for the benefit they need at the time, while also being compliant with other benefit programs should the level of care and the level of need increase over time.
Greg McIntyre:I'm a huge advocate for planning ahead and you will hear me talk and write and preach about planning ahead, about accomplishing the most while using the least amount of effort and resources.
Greg McIntyre:That is planning ahead, that is getting in and doing estate planning ahead of time, contemplating the potential future need for long-term care and healthcare issues, while protecting and staying in control of your assets and thinking about how to open yourself up in the future for benefits.
Greg McIntyre:I'd like to not have to worry about a look back period with a client of ours, because we're really set up for success from day one and early on. I would love to meet with you and discuss your needs in a state plan in contemplation of long-term care issues, saving your home, saving your retirement and really not getting into a crunch and crisis time where we're within a look-back period, where we have an emergency and we need to do a lot of heavy lifting within that look back period and really put a lot of resources toward that. Let's meet and make it easy. It's such peace of mind when you do and I'd like to help you get there. I'd offer a free consult. You can schedule directly on my calendar online on our website at mcelderlawcom scheduling, or you can give us a call and we will put you directly on the calendar. You can call 1-888-999-6600 and I hope everybody out there has a great day and happy planning.