As tax preparation time begins, many seniors are asking to include Medicaid asset protection as part of their tax planning strategies. For those of you not familiar with the 2005 Tax Reduction Act, some of the provisions address specific transfers by seniors under the new Medicare nursing home provisions. Under the new provisions, before a senior qualifies for Medicare assistance into a nursing home, they must spend-down their assets. These new restriction have a 5 year look-back, used to be 3 years. And used to be that each spouse had a one-half interest in the marital property, it now appears that all the marital assets are to be spent-down. I have not seen specific regulations but it appears that the healthy spouse will be left without any assets if one of them gets sick.
Suggestions by seniors have been to transfer their assets to their children. Although this option is available, Im not sure that its a good option. What if the child decides to use the asset for themselves, what if they get divorced and the judge awards assets originally intended for the parents to the divorcing wifes decree, what if the child gets sued?
There are also tax...
To view and download this full PLR article, you must be logged in. Registration is completely free. Once you create your account, you will be able to browse, search & downlod from our PLR articles database of over "1,57,897+" on 1,000's of niches and 200+ categories without paying a penny. Click here to signup...
