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fburn9575 Asked February 2010

I applied for Medicaid on my father's behalf. He decided to live in a nursing home. Am I responsible for his medicaid bill if he can't pay it?

195Austin Feb 2010
From what I understand you are not responsible for the bills of your parents if Medicaide determine he has too much in assests he will have to spend down which is to use his money for his care until he meets the level of what he can keep there is a 5 yr. look back peroid and they check to see if he gave money to anyone to keep medicaide from getting I think they check of any withdrawls of large amounts in my state it is amounts of $2000.00 that you have to tell them why you withdrew those amounts. They take things like life insurance social security etc. but you can use money to prepay for funeral expenses. Most people find you need to have an elder lawyer who would be informed of the new rules-the social worker at the nursing home should be able to do the application if he owns his home when he dies unless it is in a trust and has been for 5 yrs.-that will be sold upon his death just remember the social worker might not be up on all the rules-one social worker told me she does these applications all the time but when it came to her helping she said she had not done one is some time-you have to give them information if you can obtain it-my MIL threw out all her important papers I think she thought it she did not have the informatiom she would not be placed and would live with us the NH has ways to get the information and since he is medicaide pending you can be sure they will do what they have to to start getting their money. I had started all this just before my husband died I did have to pay a bed hold while he was in the hospital which I could have fought because we knew the first day he was in the hospital he was not going back-but I had too much on my plate at the time and did pay it-the day the docs told me he was not going to make it the nursing home left me a message that I owed them money-I left a sizzling message for that lady. Hope this helps some.

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