Elder Law Report
Elder Law Report
Protecting Your Spouse from Nursing Home Costs
Protecting your loved ones from the devastating financial impact of long-term care costs is one of the most powerful gifts you can give them. In this eye-opening episode, attorneys Greg McIntyre and Haley Matson reveal crucial strategies to shield your home, retirement savings, and other assets if nursing home care becomes necessary in your future.
The conversation begins with a fundamental truth many families face: you've worked hard for your home, built a retirement fund over decades, and want to ensure these assets remain intact for your spouse and children. Without proper planning, the staggering costs of long-term care can rapidly deplete everything you've built. Thankfully, there are legal solutions available when you work with knowledgeable professionals.
Matson walks listeners through several powerful protection strategies, with special attention to the Lady Bird deed - a remarkable legal tool available in North Carolina that allows homeowners to maintain 100% ownership during their lifetime while ensuring the property transfers directly to beneficiaries upon death, bypassing probate and potential Medicaid recovery claims. The attorneys also discuss trust planning, last-minute crisis strategies for those who haven't planned ahead, and how careful asset restructuring can help qualify for benefits while preserving resources. As Matson aptly puts it, "Planning ahead is always better than cramming the night before the test," but solutions exist regardless of your current situation.
Ready to protect what matters most? Schedule a free consultation by calling 1-888-999-6600 or visiting mcelderlawcom/scheduling to speak directly with an attorney who can help safeguard your family's financial future.
how to protect your spouse if you might need nursing home care in the future. I love my wife. She's my best friend. She's my bestie. I love my retirement if I'm ever able to retire. I love my house. I've worked very hard for it. I'm probably paying the bank back three times as much as I paid for it to enjoy it, and it's where we're raising our children. So if I need some type of assisted living, in-home or nursing home care in the future, I want to make sure it doesn't spin down all our retirement. I want to make sure it doesn't force me to sell my house or lose my house, and that I'm able to take care of her if I need care, take care of the kids if I pass on. So how do I protect it? I'm here with attorney Haley Matson and she's going to tell us a step-by-step approach of how to protect your assets, how to protect your spouse if you need long-term care. What's the first thing? Haley on the list?
Haley Matson:The first thing on the list is to go see an estate planning attorney and they're going to take a peek at your family, your assets and the health of your spouse to see if there's any way that we can preemptively move stuff from one place to the other to keep it safe. We can also speak about, maybe, a ladybird deed for the home.
Greg McIntyre:Or a trust or a trust. I love to get in early and do trust planning. Planning ahead is always better than cramming the night before the test. We can do both. But I like to create a nice safe for the house and the other assets so that you can keep that door open and control them and then shut that safe door if somebody needs long-term care, if either spouse needs long-term care. Combine that with foundational estate planning and you've really got a recipe for success. That way you have your agents appointed to conduct business for you legal, financial healthcare. You've avoided guardianships. That's a beautiful thing and that's planning ahead. But, madsen, you mentioned the Lady Bird deed, which is a sweet deal in North Carolina and it's a riff or an evolution of a traditional life estate deed, called an enhanced life estate deed, nicknamed the Lady Bird deed, probably because Lady Bird Johnson was Lyndon B Johnson's beautiful wife and he protected his spouse and he implemented the Medicare and Medicaid system. Haley, what is a Lady Bird deed and how can it best protect your house?
Haley Matson:So a Lady Bird deed is a transfer on death deed for your house. So you and or your spouse can still own the house 100%. So you know, whichever one of you does pass away first, the other one will still own the house. No probate, no nothing. Once both of you on the deed do end up passing away, then it's going to move to the beneficiary or beneficiaries that you have listed. The reason this keeps your house safe from forcing a sale because of Medicaid claims or something like that is because it doesn't go through probate. It's just a direct transfer to your beneficiaries once both you and or your spouse passes away.
Greg McIntyre:That's a great explanation of a ladybird deed. Keep your house, stay in control of it, not lose it to the high cost of long-term care. Pass it on to the kids. What could be better than that? And it's easy, right, super easy. So you have the trust. You know, haley, I don't know about your clients, but a lot of my clients. Some of them want to do the trust for the money and a ladybird deal in the house. So they'll separate those things. Ladybird deed, you can do it at any point in time. But again, better to plan ahead. Let's say someone has failed to plan ahead. If they failed to plan ahead, gosh. One of the spouses has a healthcare situation a fall, a stroke, illness, injury and needs extensive long-term care. What solutions can we offer clients at that point?
Haley Matson:If they're looking at the possibility of needing long-term care and maybe they haven't planned ahead properly. What we can do is we can do some sort of benefits planning for them, where we'll sit down and look at a total of all of the assets kind of where we're at with health, what a healthy spouse has and the way things are distributed currently and we can move those things around under the Medicaid rules so that we can make sure that you are eligible for a benefit if you need one later on. This can also protect your spouse or you from any sort of claims coming back and taking that from you.
Greg McIntyre:So really, we can offer a full coverage solution to help protect your money, your real estate, your retirement From a plan ahead perspective, to even those procrastinators and crammers who wait until the last second. Until the last second, we're very good and our goal is always to save as close to 100% of the assets as possible while qualifying the person that needs care for the much-needed benefit. Thank you, haley, for discussing this with me and thank you, guys, for watching today. This is the Elder Law Report, where we strive and aim to bring you great information to help you in your life regarding estate planning and elder law asset protection to help you save your hard-earned money and property. I would offer a free consultation to anyone out there who would like to sit down and make sure they have their affairs in order and protect themselves and their spouses. You can access that free console. Give us a call 1-888-999-6600, or you can schedule directly on our website with an attorney at mcelderlawcom. Slash scheduling. Thanks and have a great day.