What happens to your home if you go into a nursing home?

Attorney Tom Olsen: My guest is Attorney Robert Hidock, and he does helping people to protect their life savings from nursing homes. Robert, most people that come to see us, even for estate planning, most people own their own homes, the home that they live in, their homestead. When they come to see you, are most people already aware that for the most part that when you to qualify for Medicaid, have the government pay for your nursing home, that you're allowed to keep your home here in the state of Florida?

Attorney Robert Hidock: Most people actually don't know that and then when we tell them that, they are very relieved.

Attorney Tom Olsen: By the way, Medicaid is a combination of both state and federal law, so what's true here in Florida is not necessarily true in other states, but here in the state of Florida, you can qualify for Medicaid, have the government pay for your nursing home, and you're allowed to keep your home.

Attorney Robert Hidock: You can keep your home. As a matter of fact, you can keep your qualified retirement count as well, as long as you're taking your required minimum distribution.

Attorney Tom Olsen: All right. Let's talk about that situation where Mom's going into a nursing home. Let's say Dad is deceased, Mom's going into a nursing home, she's going to qualify for Medicaid, how will the kids pay for taxes, maintenance, and insurance on Mom's home? She's not living there anymore. What do they do to cover the carrying costs on it?

Attorney Robert Hidock: Typically, if they are the recipient of a personal services contract, they can use that money for the upkeep of the house. If they haven't done that, they have a choice of paying out of pocket, or they can actually rent the house out and let the rental income pay for all the expenses, but then they risk having the remaining part of that income go to their mother to pay for the nursing home.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Okay. Well, that's not such a bad deal. Let's just say that rent is $2,000 a month and the carrying costs and the home is only $1,500 a month. You're saying that that extra $500, they've got to kick it in to help pay for Mom's nursing home. That seems only fair.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Yes. Every situation we can work out with the house. I just love every case that we have, everyone's a little bit different, and we find a solution for them. With the house, Tom, the biggest part that they need to realize is that they need to have a Lady Bird deed on the back end of that because Medicaid can come after an estate for reimbursement, but once the house has a Lady Bird Act deed on it, there will be no estate and Medicaid can't come after it for reimbursement.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Let's make that clear to our listeners out there. Here at the Olsen Law Group, we're all about helping people to avoid probate. This is a separate but related issue for people. We help people avoid probate, we help people qualify for Medicaid. Whenever we do a probate, which we're trying to avoid, but sometimes people don't come to see us in times when we have to do a probate, whenever we do a probate in Florida, the law requires that we give Medicaid notice. If Medicaid is paid for mom and dad's nursing home, Medicaid is going to file a claim in that probate. As you might imagine, in a probate situation where there's a legitimate claim, that claim must be paid in full before whatever probate assets go to the kids.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Absolutely.

Attorney Tom Olsen: To the degree that we can avoid probate, and we're usually talking about avoiding probate for the purpose of avoiding attorneys fees because it's expensive, but the other benefit of avoiding probate is that there's no opportunity for anybody to file claims in a probate estate. That could include Medicaid, it could probably include hospitals.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Absolutely. It's one of the key factors that I hit on in one of our workshops when we talk about pre-planning. I joke with our clients that these are my BOGO specials, our financial power of attorney and our Lady Bird deed. You need both of them for your state planning and for pre-planning for Medicaid.