She left her home to permanently live in a nursing home in January 2017. The house is reverse mortgaged. She recieved a lump sum and the money is gone. We need to sell her house to pay back the reverse mortgage loan.
Either mom or whomever is her DPOA should contact the RM to see what the pay-off for RM and its interest, fees, etc will be. Lump sum will have had the bigger cost than a line of credit RM. Could possibly be that there will NOT be any $ left or it's so small that mom could do a spend down without impacting Medicaid.
? For you? mom is already on medicaid, right? So your worry is that if she gets even just a wee bit more $ it makes her ineligible for Medicaid, that's it, right? If so, here's my suggestion: let's say that after house sold there actually will be $ left, say 22k. What you ideally want is to have the closing / act of sale happen right at the very beginning of the month. Then mom does a massive spend down of 20k within 4 weeks so that she ends the month with under 2k in assets. So she starts the month ok for Medicaid and then ends it ok for medicaid.
22k: 2k into assets (allowed by medicaid); fully paid funeral burial preneed 8k; dental work 10k; update wardrobe to clothing that works for NH heavy duty laundry system 1k; couple pairs new eyeglassses & a new hearing aid 1k. 22k spent legitimately on things and easily.
Really try to find out what the #'s are likely to be before you let yourself go into overdrive with worry.
If its a lot of $$$, post and update as lots of us on this site have done bigger spend downs and folks will have suggestions. Personally I'm a big fan of spending down on dental work as its really not covered by Medicare & Medicaid.
If there is a good bit of money left over, it will probably disqualify her for Medicaid. You could apply the money from the house to her care, then reapply for Medicaid if she should run out. It is a bit of a pain, but it is something that goes with selling an asset while someone is on Medicaid.
? For you? mom is already on medicaid, right? So your worry is that if she gets even just a wee bit more $ it makes her ineligible for Medicaid, that's it, right? If so, here's my suggestion: let's say that after house sold there actually will be $ left, say 22k. What you ideally want is to have the closing / act of sale happen right at the very beginning of the month. Then mom does a massive spend down of 20k within 4 weeks so that she ends the month with under 2k in assets. So she starts the month ok for Medicaid and then ends it ok for medicaid.
22k: 2k into assets (allowed by medicaid); fully paid funeral burial preneed 8k; dental work 10k; update wardrobe to clothing that works for NH heavy duty laundry system 1k; couple pairs new eyeglassses & a new hearing aid 1k. 22k spent legitimately on things and easily.
Really try to find out what the #'s are likely to be before you let yourself go into overdrive with worry.
If its a lot of $$$, post and update as lots of us on this site have done bigger spend downs and folks will have suggestions. Personally I'm a big fan of spending down on dental work as its really not covered by Medicare & Medicaid.
What about a trust for proceeds? She needs dental work but not $75 worth.