FAQ: What Happens if I Die without a Will?
You’ve heard the statistic: 55% of Americans don’t have a will and there are lots of reasons why If you’re one of those no-will Americans,
You’ve heard the statistic: 55% of Americans don’t have a will and there are lots of reasons why If you’re one of those no-will Americans,
Do you need a trust? Well, it depends.
One of the most common questions I hear during our Mutual Interviews is, “Do I need a trust?” And the typical lawyer answer is, “It depends.” In order to answer that question, we need to start by defining what a trust actually is. [Read More]
Medicaid only cares about your finances on a specific date.
Medicaid only cares about your finances on a specific date.
When you first submit a Medicaid application for nursing facility care (and Elderly Waiver, in Iowa), DHS takes a “snapshot” of your financial status as of the date you first moved into the nursing home. This is called the “snapshot date.” [Read More]
Need proof that the Medicaid rules are confusing? Consider: an “asset” and a “resource” are not the same thing.
In the Medicaid world, the term “asset” is used when discussing Medicaid’s transfer penalty rules. As a result, “asset” includes both income and resources. [Read More]
Here’s how the Iowa Medicaid manual describes an attribution: “When one spouse enters a medical institution or applies for a home- and community-based services waiver, […] resources are attributed to the ‘community spouse’ to protect sufficient resources for the community spouse’s maintenance.” What does that mean in normal english? [Read More]
Medicaid is in charge of dividing the pie between you and your spouse.
Institutionalized. Sounds kind of scary, right? Fortunately, when we’re talking about Medicaid, saying someone is the institutionalized spouse really only means that they are the nursing home resident, the person who needs Medicaid coverage. [Read More]
Medicaid applies different rules to the institutionalized spouse. Find out here if that’s you.
When working on your estate plan, there are certain things you probably already have in mind. However, many people completely overlook the fact that the estate itself will have operating costs associated with it, and these need to be planned for as well. [Read More]
Every family has its own approach when it comes to talking about financial and legal information. However, families who are at the estate planning phase should be having at least some superficial conversations about these topics, as there is significant information which needs to be shared just to make the estate plan work smoothly. [Read More]
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