Hi, I’m Christopher Lavin, an attorney with the Lavin Law Group. We are an elder law firm here in Lebanon, Ohio.
In elder law, unfortunately, a big portion of that is crisis planning or long term care planning. And a lot of folks will ask me, mama is in a nursing home, how do we protect the house? Well, there’s options if we have spouses because there’s called the Community Spouse allowance. They can’t impoverish the healthy spouse because his or her loved one has the wrong illness. They have to allow the healthy spouse something for quality of life.
And one of the biggest assets they allow the healthy spouse to keep is the home. But if it’s a widow or widower, an individual situation, Ohio, Kentucky, they are a little more aggressive on the options with the home. So they would like you to sell the home and spend the entire value down before they chip in for any long term care expenses.
And that can be heartbreaking because the home is sentimental and it’s often one of the larger portions of our estate. So the first thing we need to look at is “pre-planning”. So if you’re in good health, please get to your advisor, Sit with your elder law attorney and know give you options whether certain deeds you hear of certain life, estate, deeds, other type of deeds are available, or is it trust planning?
Trust planning is more common with the home than deeds are. It gives you more flexibility, but you have ways to protect the house. Now, the reason you want to talk to your your advisors about the deeds or trusts are the best ways to protect the house in health is it takes time to protect the house. So that’s where you hear that five years, you can’t put the house into trust on Monday and tell Ohio, hey, please help me with these expenses on Tuesday.
It’s just not that easy. There’s got to be a little consequence or pain and suffering and forth. And unfortunately, that pain and suffering is five years. So we’re trying to get that ball rolling while we’re healthy. We are that second generation, but unfortunately, a lot of our clients come to us in the crisis had not done any pre-planning or get caught unexpected.
Their options are shrunk down. So the first thing I do is I look to the family for what I call deductions. So if you have minor children, dependents, dependent children, children with disabilities, please bring that to the attention of your advisors. Those are all ways to protect assets without penalty, especially the House.
And if you have this a child who live with you and provided care for you for about two years before you go to the nursing home and we can brag on that child’s care and show Ohio. Had they not provided that care, you would have gone to the facility sooner. But for this care, you stayed in a facility in the community longer. That’s an exemption. The state will grant that house to that child caregiver. It’s called the child caregiver exemption. So I’m always chipping away and asking a lot of questions about the family. I’m looking for my coupons, my deductions, and see and if I have a way to protect assets without penalty.
But you know what? Even if you don’t have those deductions, don’t give up on us because even in the worst case scenario, we can protect about half the value of whatever is exposed. It gets complicated. That’s where the five years in these other penalty periods come in. That’s why you want to sit with one of your advisors and discuss any options you have. And the worst case scenario. But you don’t have to spend it all down before Medicaid will provide.