Author: Linda Ershow-Levenberg

Self-settled special needs trusts must have a payback provision to be considered an exempt trust  under the federal and state Medicaid program. A Medicaid applicant under 65 can transfer his or her excess resources (assets) into a “special needs trust” and avoid the usual transfer penalties, but only if the trust meets all of the requirements of the federal and state law. Also, if...

In A.T. v. Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (unpublished non-precedential decision, Appellate Division of Superior Court, 2015, WL 7421647), a Medicaid application was denied for failure to provide requested verifications of assets. The applicant’s grandson (DT) was her Agent under Power of Attorney (“POA”), and his father ST was the alternate Agent. The...

There is a New Jersey insurance law which allows a person who is 62 years of age or older to designate an authorized third party to receive Policy Lapse Notices and Late Payment notices from the policyholder’s insurance company. This is a regulation at N.J.A.C. 11:2-19. The process is easy. Many companies will provide you with their own form upon request. For others, just send a written...

I have just learned that Morgan Stanley has instituted an optional opportunity that can be used by their aging customers. Maybe some other financial advisors or banks have a similar option.  It provides a form for account holders to designate someone who the Morgan Stanley personnel can contact and share confidential information with, because — as the form says — “situations...

Could this be you? You’re in your thirties or forties, with several active children and a busy social and business life. You’ve got volunteer activities and school programs to keep track of. Your parents are in their seventies or eighties, have their own home, and appear to pay all their bills when due. You have no idea what your parents’ income or assets are because they don’t want to bother...

At the end of the year Congress passed and the President signed  HR-637, the Permanent IRA Charitable Contribution Act of 2015, which makes a permanent amendment to the tax code to allow taxpayers older than 70-1/2 to direct a distribution from their IRA directly to a qualified charitable organization, bypassing the usual realization of income on the distribution. A taxpayer can use this...

The Medicaid program pays for nursing home care for financially eligible people. The program is administered by the State Division of Medical Assistance and Health Care Services (DMAHS), which delegates the application processing to the employees of the county Boards of Social Services (sometimes called county welfare boards). All of these people are government employees. They receive and...

If you are hiring someone to provide personal care services for a frail, aging or disabled person, you are probably comparing the “pros” and “cons” of “on the books” and “off the books” arrangements. State wage and hour laws require a household employer to pay into State unemployment and workers compensation systems for a person who is an...

When an individual resides in a nursing home and receives Medicaid benefits, the facility is paid an all-encompassing per diem rate which is designed to cover all of the costs of medically necessary services that the facility provides to the resident. There are times that a facility declines to provide some specialty service or equipment because of its extra cost, or the facility seeks...

For those of you who who are dealing with legal issues involving documents in foreign languages, whether on behalf of yourself or your clients,  one of my readers from the Language Alliance brought the following to my attention. She said that this on-line article could be of use to you:  Certified Document Translation for Estate Planning and Probate Attorneys, and Finding Intent in a Foreign...