Let Olsen Law Group do a Medicaid assessment for you
Attorney Tom Olsen: I know that we have a tool here at the Olsen Law Group called a Medicaid assessment. It's an exclusive that the Olsen Law Group does. I want to ask you a question about that. First of all, tell us what a Medicaid assessment is?
Attorney Robert Hidock: A Medicaid assessment would be somebody that would come in and they would fill out information form about their income, about their assets, and we'd have a little conversation about it. Then I'm going to customize a plan for them. Let them know if they're over income, if they're going to need to qualify the income trust or they're not. Then we're going to go through every single asset they have. I'm going to tell them if it's countable, if it's not countable and protected. Then I'm going to give them tools to show how the money or assets are going to be protected.
Like if you're a married couple, I'm going to show you one method of protection from spouse to spouse and then I'm going to show you how you're going to protect it from one spouse to their children. If there's a single person, obviously, how I'm going to protect it, but each one's individual. I often call it, Tom, insurance for your estate plan, because my planning tries to mimic the estate plan that you create for them. Their wishes get carried out.
Tom: It's a blueprint for one of the children to put into place if mom or dad have to go into a nursing home, but the child that's going to handle this for mom and dad, again, is going to have to provide financial statements, last three months of bank statements, et cetera. Does anything about the assessment give a list to the clients about what the child will need to show Medicaid when the time comes or the client's keeping that information up to date?
Robert: Yes, there is a form that goes in the back of the assessment of everything that's needed for a Medicaid application. Along that line of thought, though, we always make sure that their loved one has a very, very good financial power of attorney to do the things that we need them to do. If someone comes to us with a loved one that maybe he's in rehab and they show us the power of attorney and it doesn't mention the word Medicaid on it, I'm going to draft a new power of attorney for them so they can do everything that we need them to do and protect their assets.
Tom: Well, that's a good point to do this Medicaid planning for people to help them protect their life savings from nursing homes. There is one qualifier and that qualifier is that they have a good, durable power of attorney for financial affairs in place. Of course, when we do estate planning for people, we always do that for them. If you do a Medicaid assessment for somebody, that's going to be part of the package.
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