Blog: News & Insights

When a person applies for Medicaid to pay for nursing home care (or assisted living or in-home care), they have to be mindful of whether transfers of assets will result in a denial of benefits. This denial is called the “transfer penalty,” and the 5-year Look-Back rules  capture most transfers that occurred within the 5 years preceding the application. There are a handful of...

Previously in this space I told you that the federal government had enacted the ABLE Act and we were waiting for New Jersey to enact its own version of the ABLE program.  The law is known as Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) (S-313, HR-647) and was signed into law by the President Obama on December 14, 2015. The States have to adopt their own implementing programs, though. New...

People often think of “estate planning” as just making a Last Will and Testament that directs who should inherit what. But a fundamental and necessary tenet of “estate planning” is to know just what you have, so that you can protect your heirs appropriately. Are any of your  accounts jointly owned? Depending on the circumstances, that might defeat the plan in your...

A common estate plan structure for larger estates is that a married person will include a “disclaimer credit shelter trust” in his or her Last Will and Testament, for the benefit of the surviving spouse. The concept behind this kind of trust is that the surviving spouse will have their own assets, as well as certain assets such as tax-deferred accounts that were owned by the late...

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In A.T. v. Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (unpublished non-precedential decision, Appellate Division of Superior Court, 2015, WL 7421647), a Medicaid application was denied for failure to provide requested verifications of assets.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...