Can the Wealthy Plan for Medicaid?
00:00:00.000 | What are the Medicaid planning opportunities for the wealthy?
00:00:03.500 | Should we put a Medicaid asset protection trust into play?
00:00:07.240 | What I always tell people when it comes to whether an asset protection trust for Medicaid makes sense is it just depends on the person's goals.
00:00:16.000 | I've helped clients who have less than a million dollars do an asset protection trust to protect what they have against long-term care costs.
00:00:26.180 | I have people that have multiple millions of dollars that have done this kind of trust.
00:00:31.060 | I try not to anchor to like what value of an estate this makes sense.
00:00:38.560 | What I go to is there's the three different ways to pay for long-term care.
00:00:43.480 | Now we need to talk about if you're okay with self-funding and private pay, then this becomes a relatively non-issue, right?
00:00:54.120 | But if people are like, well, I'm interested, tell me more what options are out there.
00:00:59.420 | Really what ends up happening with an asset protection trust for Medicaid, it's an irrevocable, not revocable, irrevocable trust that assets go into.
00:01:11.260 | Every state has what's called a look-back period.
00:01:13.920 | Most states are five years if that thing is set up, five years in advance.
00:01:18.620 | And assets are in it five years in advance of any kind of Medicaid need.
00:01:22.640 | Then if you go into a long-term care community, then Medicaid is footing the bill, not you, private paying.
00:01:31.680 | So I know that's a little bit of a long-winded answer in terms of like what kind of makes sense from like an estate value standpoint.
00:01:39.100 | But to me, it doesn't matter the value of the estate.
00:01:43.120 | It matters whether you care about self-funding and private paying or not.
00:01:48.720 | Because I have clients that fall on both sides.
00:01:51.340 | And then I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on there are some people that feel that this kind of strategy of using an asset protection trust to protect assets against Medicaid long-term care is, quote, unethical or, quote, immoral.
00:02:09.020 | What I always tell people is they are perfectly legal, allowable options on the table.
00:02:16.120 | And so that's why I really hesitate giving like a number because I have clients that fall all over the board.
00:02:21.200 | And from there, it just really depends on whether they care about possibly in the future if long-term care becomes an issue, whether you spend a lot of your money on long-term care.
00:02:31.640 | That's the big, big thing is that.
00:02:34.380 | Thank you.