Protect Assets From Medicaid Spend-Down
One of the biggest Medicaid secrets is that asset protection is within your reach with the help of your Elder Law Attorney. It is not something reserved exclusively for people with huge sums of money.
You Can Protect Assets From Nursing Home Medicaid. Even During the Lookback Period. I Can Show You How.
I help families of all kinds protect what they can, from $20,000 all the way up to $1 million. With my proven techniques your parent can achieve three very big goals that other people might not want you to know about. Those goals are:
What Is Nursing Home Medicaid Asset Protection?
Nursing home Medicaid asset protection is the process of using proven and legal strategies to avoid paying more for nursing home care than your parent or spouse legally has to. If your nursing home bill right now is $5,000 but your parent’s income is only $750 your parent’s life savings is going to disappear real quick while the nursing home laughs all the way to the bank.
My asset protection is designed to protect as much as you or your parent legally can and reduce the nursing home bill to what they can afford ($750 in the above case, and possibly $0 in a married case). Sounds like a good idea? Keep reading.
Is It Safe and Legal?
Safe and legal is the only kind of asset protection I recommend clients consider. If I would not tell my own family to do it I am not going to recommend you do it. There are plenty of illegal and unsafe schemes calling themselves “asset protection” but that is not what I do.
Is It Too Late?
In many cases it is still possible to complete valuable asset protection steps even after a parent or spouse enters a nursing home. I encourage you to check with me before giving up because it never hurts to get an opinion from someone who has been doing this for 15 years. There is no obligation and no cost for an informal opinion.
Here’s What People Think About Working With Us
If you are someone that maybe in the process of trying to get a loved one qualified for Medicaid please consider the following. Normally, I do not write public reviews but because of the complexity and experiences I had I believe it's warranted. I highly recommend Mr. Shea. I had been debating for awhile whether or not I could undertake this entire process myself. As I began to review the paperwork and the complexities I discovered very shortly I was not equipped to try to get my mother qualified for Medicaid. I had researched numerous attorneys and found Mr. Shea to be a great fit. He was very responsive. This process can be very time consuming and he was able to walk me through it. The amount of documentation, deadlines, and in my specific case asking for extensions and review of my mother's case could never have had a successful outcome without his expertise. He was on top of all the required filings and again what was most important to me was keeping me in the loop and constant communication. Great experience and well worth the value. Highly recommend.
I am a lawyer who helped my elderly in-laws apply for Medicaid assistance in payinf for their nursing home expenses. We hired Rich Shea's firm to represent us in the process. Rich and his firm provided exceptional services to us in guiding us through the exacting process. Being a lawyer, I may have been able to muddle my in-laws through the process. But I definitely would not have been able to do so as efficiently as Rich and his firm guided us through the process. Highly recommend.
Kind, communicative, efficient, patient, supportive, thorough -- mere words could never fully express the depth of my gratitude for Rich Shea and for what he has done for our family. I fought the system alone for years to get my severely disabled mother the hands-on, round-the-clock, fully staffed care she needed and deserved. I had to leave a 20-year career in a profession I loved to become her full-time caregiver, even when it was painfully obvious that I alone could never provide the level of care she needed. After being led astray many times by people in the medical care industry, Rich Shea picked us up, dusted us off, and with one foot in front of the other showed us the light at the end of the tunnel. Thank you, thank you, thank you to The Shea Law Firm.
Mr. Shea handled our Medicaid claim for my wife in a very professional and expedient manner. I highly recommend him for your attorney needs.
My uncle has no immediate family and due to age and illness, he's not able to care for himself. I was needing to get him qualified for Medicaid. As I began to research qualifying him for Medicaid, I realized I was lost in the bureaucracy and red tape. I found Mr. Shea and was impressed with his professionalism and willingness to help. Mr. Shea answered my questions and assured me that this will all work out. That assurance gave me the peace of mind I was needing and knew he was taking care of my uncle. Thank you Mr. Shea for being a blessing to my family.
Mr. Shea was an answer to so many prayers! I live out of state and was needing legal assistance for my elderly parent located in Houston. I was concerned that navigating this process from afar would be difficult, but Mr. Shea’s communication was timely, thorough, and always reassuring. He was patient in answering my many questions and never made me feel like a burden or irritation. He kept me informed throughout the entire process and never left me wondering what was happening or why. He clearly is an expert in the field and knows from experience exactly how to handle the manipulative tactics of Medicaid. We would have most certainly given up our pursuit (and a significant sum of money we were rightfully entitled to) if we had tried to navigate Medicaid qualification on our own. My only regret is that we didn’t find him sooner. His cost was very fair, and I appreciate that it was all-encompassing with no hidden fees. Overall, Mr. Shea was an absolute dream to work with—a complete 180 from the nightmare experience we had previously with another elder law attorney in Spring. I am already recommending Mr. Shea to friends and give him my strongest endorsement!!
Does It Work?
Yes, definitely yes. Here are some recent examples from my asset protection cases:
- I protected over $99,000 for a woman who was already in a nursing home before her family came to me.
- Developed an asset protection plan for a husband that reduced his wife’s nursing home cost from over $5,600 per month down to less than $2,200 per month. That alone saved him almost $3,500 every month. On top of that I created a strategy to protect over $500,000 in assets for his own use that he would NOT have to spend-down. I did this within the 5 year look back period without interfering with his wife’s Medicaid eligibility. In fact it accelerated her eligibility.
- I created an asset protection plan for an unmarried mother that protected almost $30,000 in existing assets and preserved over $75,000 in gifts she previously made during the 5 year look back period for a total of over $100,000 in asset protection. If this family did not come to me once she entered a nursing home they would have been looking at a Medicaid ineligibility penalty of almost 480 days and they would not have protected the additional $30,000.
- I created a Medicaid eligibility plan for a married couple that reduced the husband’s cost of nursing home care from $4,290 per month down to $914 per month. This created monthly savings of $3,376. In addition to this monthly savings I designed a strategy to protect over $80,000 in assets for the wife’s use that the HHSC would have required her to spend down. This asset protection was completed during the 5 year look back period without interfering with her husband’s Medicaid eligibility.
- I protected over $12,000 that an unmarried Medicaid applicant wanted to set aside for her descendants. I was able to do this during the 5 year lookback period without interfering with her Medicaid eligibility. In addition to that asset protection, I helped the family avoid a 116 day Medicaid ineligibility penalty for a transaction they previously completed before hiring me.
Protect What You Have Left
Whenever you have had enough of those expensive nursing home bills coming every month give me a call and we can get to work on putting an end to those devastating bills.