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My mother entered a NH in TX on December 9, 2013. We did a lady bird deed on her home in May of 2008, to prepare for asset protection from Medicaid. In my calculations, this is out of the 60 month look back period. Am I correct?

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There was someone on this site recently who just went through dealing with a LBD property with thier deceased parent who was on medicaid in a NH on TX. You -or whomever is the DPOA or contact person for your elder with medicaid- will still need to deal with HMS (the outside contractor for MERP for TX). As the property is still in their name it comes up on states database. HMS will send a letter "intent to file claim" aka a NOI to the DPOA. It will go out about 4 -10 weeks after death. The cover letter will not be warm & fuzzy but state that $$$ is owed to the State and there is not reason not to place claim & it is cost effective unless they hear differently with documentation from family.

DPOA or familys atty must fill out the form and include a copy of the LBD as a out of probate transfer exemption to any claim by the state and send this back to HMS within the short time frame indicated in the NOI with a request of release of the claim. Usually the elder law atty who did LBD does all this & their fees to do were included in initial paperwork fees.

There is a 1page form "MERP authorization and certification" that you get back that is essentially a release of the claim by the state. You need to hold onto that as it provides for documentation that it happened just in case there is anything that crops up when the house is sold. What can happen is the the claim is a subterranean claim that appears when the title company is doing their search on property for mortgage comany. You just give title co a copy of the release & all ok.
There is a great article on the MERP claim & title co issues in Stargazer a couple of years ago. Google Stargazer MERP Texas and it will come up & explains all this better than I can.

The release is just for the property by HMS, it will state that the state retains the ability to seek recovery from any other sources. What this is about IMHO is to be able to recover any proceeds from a life insurance policy or special needs trust that has funds paid to the estate. Back in the 50's& 60's men often had their life insurance policy have their estate as the beneficiary rather than their wife as the little woman didn't understand finance......lol! My dad had this....

Btw the posters LBD was done less than 5 yrs before date of medicaid application (2 years) and was totally legal for asset protection.
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