Hello, my name is Christopher Lavin. I’m an attorney with the Lavin Law Group. We are an elder law firm here in Lebanon, Ohio.
A lot of our clients are in need of long-term care or in what we call a medical emergency. It’s crisis planning and unfortunately they’re head-spinning because they’re given a lot of information from a lot of different sources and the biggest thing they’re told is that they are going to lose everything. They hear the number $2,000 meaning you have to spend everything down to $2,000 before you’re eligible and there is some truth to that unfortunately and also you have to do it five years ago.
Five years is not a punishment period. It’s a very important number as well but five years is not a punishment period. It’s simply called the look-back period and all that does is give Ohio the ability to look back for five years and ask questions.
Where’s the house? Where’s the car? Where’s the money? Why does Ohio have responsibility to assist with these costs? What you’re misled about is the myth is that you have to do something five years ago to gain eligibility. There are still planning techniques that can occur within the five years. There can be gifting strategies.
There can be creation of income. There can be permissible spend down for the person in the facility or the healthy spouse and there’s an allowance that the healthy spouse can keep and that’s why you get so many different answers from all these different sources is it does depend. That’s my good old-fashioned attorney answer.
It depends on multiple factors and you have to be aware of all those factors to navigate the waters.