Hello, I’m Christopher Lavin, an attorney with the Lavin Law Group. We are an elder law firm here in Lebanon, Ohio. Elder law is both traditional planning—good old-fashioned estate planning—but also long-term care planning. And long-term care planning is qualifying someone for the expense of a nursing home. That’s done through Medicaid.
It’s a valuable program that our citizens rely on to help cover the cost because long-term care can be extremely expensive, especially in a full skilled care facility, especially with memory care. Most of our clients with long-term care needs are spending $8,000 to $12,000 to $14,000 a month depending on their needs. So, we do rely on Medicaid as a valuable program to assist with that.
But basically, when the state helps us through the Medicaid program, they essentially consider any moneys paid on our behalf a loan. So, when we pass away, they would like to recover that money as best they can. It’s called the Ohio Estate Recovery Program. One of the biggest ways they do this is a lien on the house. They put a Medicaid mechanics lien on the property and hope to recover it when it’s sold. Now, they are unable to recover on that property during the lifetime of the person—the resident in the nursing home—or the lifetime of their spouse. But when the couple both pass away, they will try and recover it, step in front of the children.
The family has options; there are estate planning strategies to limit that or eliminate that recovery. Again, our thing is we cannot forget about the healthy spouse. We have to plan as much for the person in the community as we do with the person in the nursing home. We need to update her deeds, update her wills, update her power of attorneys, her beneficiaries, her trusts, so that when she passes away we can demonstrate to the state there’s no probate, there’s no estate, and probably no recovery. You just have to be on equal footing and know the rules as well as they do to protect yourselves.