On October 1, 2020 applicants for Community Medicaid will be subject to a new look-back period of 30 months. This means that if you apply and are eligible for Community Medicaid on or after October 1, and you made non-exempt asset transfers within 30 months of your application date, you will be subject to a penalty period. The penalty period is the length of time you will be ineligible to receive Community Medicaid to pay for home care, private duty nursing, personal care, or the assisted living program (ALP).
At this point, you might be wondering how Medicaid could possibly know, for example, that you gave your grandson $1,000 when he graduated from college last year. Well, if you apply for Community Medicaid after the new law goes into effect, you will have to provide Medicaid with all of your financial information for the previous 30 months. Medicaid will be able to see, quite easily, that you made a withdrawal from your bank of $1,000. They won’t know why, but if the transfer was non-exempt, they’ll know it happened and they could penalize you for it.
Any non-exempt transfer of $500 or more will raise a red flag and could lead to a period of ineligibility for Community Medicaid.
If you apply and are eligible for Community Medicaid before October 1, 2020, however, you won’t have to provide financial information for the last 30 months and you won’t be subject to a penalty for giving your grandson that graduation gift.
Here’s the bottom line: If you need home care, private duty nursing, personal care, or assisted living now, or you will need it soon, contact us immediately. We can use a variety of legal tools and strategies to preserve your assets and protect your eligibility for Community Medicaid. Plus, we are offering you a FREE consultation until August 31, 2020.
To schedule your free consultation, call us at (718) 514-2066. You can also go to https://aljlaw.com/protect-your-life-savings/ or email us at [email protected].
We look forward to speaking with you soon.