Its a Quit Claim Deed.....please sit down with a Certified Elder Care attorney to discuss all this chaos that has transpired. You'll be a lot better off than getting tidbits of info from a forum of internet users. This is important stuff!
Rumbletown has excellent advice below for you. He is correct that a mortgage is a debt, not an asset, so the important thing is the deed. And legally you cannot "take someone off a deed". They however, can make a decision to take themSELVES off a deed. Then, dependent on the value of the house and the equity, this may or may not, I would think, count as a gift.
Because you can't be wrong about legal things like this, and because the difference it makes is so huge, this is something you need now to check with an attorney. Wishing you the best.
One important point of clarification, though: a mortgage is a debt, and so a name on a mortgage is not an asset and it doesn’t matter if you took your mom off the mortgage. Everything is about the names on the deed…that’s the ownership part.
if your mom had an asset within the last five years, and now she doesn’t, I find it likely that Medicaid would count that as a gift, but this is complicated.
She said she did a quit claim deed, so sounds like she took mom's name off property and the financing. Probably a penalty for mom at this point depending on when she needs Medicaid and the look back period...or if she's already on Medicaid.
Find a good legal advisor when it comes to deeding mortgages. No person can be taken off a deed since the debtors owe the bank for the mortgage. The bank has a lien and gets particular who's paying back the loan.
Part 2: how a transfer penalty works is basically like this: your State has a fixed $ amt it pays the facility per day for room&board. Let’s say it’s $245 per day. The house transferred had its last tax assessor value as $510,000. Mom owned half, so 255K. 255K divided by 245 = 1,040. Would be 1,040 days of ineligiblity. As Medicaid will not pay for her nursing home, the nursing home will want someone to do a financial responsibility contract to private pay for her care or you take her back home. They won’t have her stay there indefinitely. If family seems not to be able to take her, will likely end up back in a hospital bed.
Folks often do a QCD because seems easy inexpensive way to transfer title & record it at the courthouse, all DIY. Can be but QCD pose problems imho as not easy to rescind and does not necessarily guarantee ownership…. rather it’s the person is transferring what they think is their ownership. It is not a Warranty Deed. You mentioned a mortgage, if so, you do not yet own property outright. You have equity. Mortgage companies tend to have issues should property they hold lending on get title changes without their approval. & what a mortgage company usually does when they find out is…… they call in the loan…. entire balance of outstanding mortgage due in full within 30/60 days or they foreclose. Beyond serious stuff.
If still a mortgage, please pls pls find mortgage contract and look at the terms. If a mortgage was done with 2 names as borrowers, you can’t on your own go and remove one, which is what that QCD does.
It sounds like you & mom have been co-mingling bank accounts??. Like an account gets some of your work income and some of her SSA or other income paid to her. Is this right? That’s co-mingling. Issue for LTC Medicaid when accounts like these happens, is that Medicaid can look at the bank statements and consider all $ in the account to totally belong to mom. And will be too much $ for Medicaid rules. So ineligible. Bank accounts like these can be unthreaded, but you have to show where all the deposits came from in detail. It’s not simple. Usually get a CPA to do these as they are going to use old tax filings, tax documents to prove the new division of funds that will be needed. Also SSA has issues with commingled funds as they want their SSA payments to only go to a bank account of the payee or payee and their spouse. When SSA uncovers these, what they do is usually is just require the person on SSA to name the other person to become their representative payee. Then you become the rep payee for them and do the annual report to SSA regarding funds use; real straightforward to do.
Did anyone at the NH mention Share of Cost / SOC requirement of LTC Medicaid? Once LTC application is filed, almost all their monthly income becomes a required copay or SoC to the facility less whatever New Hampshire has as its personal needs allowance. Most States have the allowance at $50/$75 a month and that will be it for $ they can use. SOC can become an issue if Household was needing elders income to keep it afloat. If there is a mortgage and you absolutely needed her $ to pay it, you may need to reevaluate housing. I’ve been on this forum quite a while and this issue comes up often as a daughter (usually) moves in with the parent, stops working to caregive, then once their parent gets beyond what can be done at home so goes into a facility, files for LTC Medicaid, pays the SOC so cannot pay household expenses; the daughter has no real income to sustain living in the house still in their parents name. Often they end up with their parent moving back and caregive as best they can. Thank goodness you are working!
You & your mom have issues with lots of moving parts. It imo is so not a DIY to get through this and get her eligible. There will be an elder law atty experienced in Medicaid that can help you both resolve all this. It can be all dealt with.
Yikes. No matter how often we here advise people to see an attorney to ask questions when THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO BE WRONG, it doesn't work, it doesn't help, and they go for advice to late. This is so terribly sad.
Yep, it's a gift because she technically gave you her 1/2 ownership. If she needs Medicaid (like for NH bed, or already on Medicaid) you have created a probable penalty for her.
You can ck with an elder atty in state where you live, but Medicaid rules on giving things away are usually about the same, or close, from state to state.
Shooudlet, YES! It is gifting. You need a NH elder law attorney as there are a multitude of issues going on. Im going to guess that admissions at the Nh gave you the paperwork to fill out and you dutifully just did it without knowing the lookback that Medicaid does or giving any thought to that your & mom commingling bank accounts would be such an issue. Imo you cannot even think of trying to DIY this as there are too many issues. But I’m going to try to explain what’s going on and why what you & your mom did now have unintended repercussions and pose very real immediate consequences.
Hang with me on this as it’s not straightforward, will be 2 posts: Medicaid is a huge # of programs that each State administers but under Federal guidelines. So because of this what the exact regulations are for your State of NH can be somewhat different than in mine (LA). And why when things go wrong, as it has, you pretty much need to work with an elder law atty in your State to “shepherd” & hopefully reset the situation to get your mom eligible for the Medicaid program she needs.
For those going into a NH with no $ to pay, they end up being on 3 programs: Medicare as primary health insurance, Medicaid as their secondary health insurance and the Long Term Care Medicaid program as it’s only this Medicaid program that pays for custodial care costs (room & board) for someone to reside in a facility. NH LTC Medicaid pays the NH a fixed day rate per resident; however the resident does a copay or Share of Cost that is almost all of their monthly income (like SSA).
LTC Medicaid has very narrow eligibility both medically and financially. Medically it’s that they need skilled nursing care. Financially for most States they basically have to be impoverished with usually 2K max in assets (savings, investments) and $2742 max in income (like SSA, pensions) BUT their home and a (1) car can remain an exempt asset for their lifetime. So mom could have continued to own her % share of the home that it sounds like was in both of your names. Now the “camp” imo that would probably be an issue if it’s a separate property, as it’s going to be viewed as a second/ vacation home so would make her over resourced in assets. Normally a second home, it has to be sold. But your situation is complicated as it sounds like it too is co-owned. Ideally it would have been attorney work to figure this out ahead of ever filing for LTC Medicaid. It’s attorney work to do this, not a DIY.
I bring this up because even if you had not done the QCD, mom owning a camp would still have been an issue for her eligibility imo. LTC Medicaid has as a basic rule: a (1) property can be an exempt asset for their lifetime if it was their primary residence. Some States require it to have a homestead exemption.
LTC Medicaid does for most States a 5 yr lookback on all assets (home, land, car, savings) to make sure nothing has been gifted or transferred to others. Why?… it’s bc those should have been used by them or sold with the $ used for them and then only when their resources are gone and they get to impoverishment do they then file for LTC Medicaid.
By y’all doing a QCD, it got recorded at the courthouse and what it does is move moms % of house ownership to you. And that is flat out gifting. It’s there; it’s on file at the courthouse. And the value can be easily based on whatever the property value was for the latest tax assessor bill. That will become details that Medicaid will use to determine the “transfer penalty” and it makes mom ineligible till the penalty period has passed.
So has the NH found out about the gifting from a Notice of Ineligiblity from a letter from the State??? OR Is it that the NH has reviewed the paperwork yiu did and they did some sort of cross reference and they realized there is a gifting issue? So the LTC application has NOT yet gone to the caseworker? The problems are still there but to me, it’s a different degree of problems. So which is it??
He is correct that a mortgage is a debt, not an asset, so the important thing is the deed.
And legally you cannot "take someone off a deed". They however, can make a decision to take themSELVES off a deed. Then, dependent on the value of the house and the equity, this may or may not, I would think, count as a gift.
Because you can't be wrong about legal things like this, and because the difference it makes is so huge, this is something you need now to check with an attorney.
Wishing you the best.
https://www.agingcare.com/articles/amp/166116
One important point of clarification, though: a mortgage is a debt, and so a name on a mortgage is not an asset and it doesn’t matter if you took your mom off the mortgage. Everything is about the names on the deed…that’s the ownership part.
if your mom had an asset within the last five years, and now she doesn’t, I find it likely that Medicaid would count that as a gift, but this is complicated.
The bank has a lien and gets particular who's paying back the loan.
Regardless of responses here.
You need accurate information for your specific situation.
Folks often do a QCD because seems easy inexpensive way to transfer title & record it at the courthouse, all DIY. Can be but QCD pose problems imho as not easy to rescind and does not necessarily guarantee ownership…. rather it’s the person is transferring what they think is their ownership. It is not a Warranty Deed. You mentioned a mortgage, if so, you do not yet own property outright. You have equity. Mortgage companies tend to have issues should property they hold lending on get title changes without their approval. & what a mortgage company usually does when they find out is…… they call in the loan…. entire balance of outstanding mortgage due in full within 30/60 days or they foreclose. Beyond serious stuff.
If still a mortgage, please pls pls find mortgage contract and look at the terms. If a mortgage was done with 2 names as borrowers, you can’t on your own go and remove one, which is what that QCD does.
It sounds like you & mom have been co-mingling bank accounts??. Like an account gets some of your work income and some of her SSA or other income paid to her. Is this right? That’s co-mingling. Issue for LTC Medicaid when accounts like these happens, is that Medicaid can look at the bank statements and consider all $ in the account to totally belong to mom. And will be too much $ for Medicaid rules. So ineligible. Bank accounts like these can be unthreaded, but you have to show where all the deposits came from in detail. It’s not simple. Usually get a CPA to do these as they are going to use old tax filings, tax documents to prove the new division of funds that will be needed. Also SSA has issues with commingled funds as they want their SSA payments to only go to a bank account of the payee or payee and their spouse. When SSA uncovers these, what they do is usually is just require the person on SSA to name the other person to become their representative payee. Then you become the rep payee for them and do the annual report to SSA regarding funds use; real straightforward to do.
Did anyone at the NH mention Share of Cost / SOC requirement of LTC Medicaid? Once LTC application is filed, almost all their monthly income becomes a required copay or SoC to the facility less whatever New Hampshire has as its personal needs allowance. Most States have the allowance at $50/$75 a month and that will be it for $ they can use. SOC can become an issue if Household was needing elders income to keep it afloat. If there is a mortgage and you absolutely needed her $ to pay it, you may need to reevaluate housing. I’ve been on this forum quite a while and this issue comes up often as a daughter (usually) moves in with the parent, stops working to caregive, then once their parent gets beyond what can be done at home so goes into a facility, files for LTC Medicaid, pays the SOC so cannot pay household expenses; the daughter has no real income to sustain living in the house still in their parents name. Often they end up with their parent moving back and caregive as best they can. Thank goodness you are working!
You & your mom have issues with lots of moving parts. It imo is so not a DIY to get through this and get her eligible. There will be an elder law atty experienced in Medicaid that can help you both resolve all this. It can be all dealt with.
You can ck with an elder atty in state where you live, but Medicaid rules on giving things away are usually about the same, or close, from state to state.
You need a NH elder law attorney as there are a multitude of issues going on. Im going to guess that admissions at the Nh gave you the paperwork to fill out and you dutifully just did it without knowing the lookback that Medicaid does or giving any thought to that your & mom commingling bank accounts would be such an issue. Imo you cannot even think of trying to DIY this as there are too many issues. But I’m going to try to explain what’s going on and why what you & your mom did now have unintended repercussions and pose very real immediate consequences.
Hang with me on this as it’s not straightforward, will be 2 posts:
Medicaid is a huge # of programs that each State administers but under Federal guidelines. So because of this what the exact regulations are for your State of NH can be somewhat different than in mine (LA). And why when things go wrong, as it has, you pretty much need to work with an elder law atty in your State to “shepherd” & hopefully reset the situation to get your mom eligible for the Medicaid program she needs.
For those going into a NH with no $ to pay, they end up being on 3 programs: Medicare as primary health insurance, Medicaid as their secondary health insurance and the Long Term Care Medicaid program as it’s only this Medicaid program that pays for custodial care costs (room & board) for someone to reside in a facility. NH LTC Medicaid pays the NH a fixed day rate per resident; however the resident does a copay or Share of Cost that is almost all of their monthly income (like SSA).
LTC Medicaid has very narrow eligibility both medically and financially. Medically it’s that they need skilled nursing care. Financially for most States they basically have to be impoverished with usually 2K max in assets (savings, investments) and $2742 max in income (like SSA, pensions) BUT their home and a (1) car can remain an exempt asset for their lifetime. So mom could have continued to own her % share of the home that it sounds like was in both of your names. Now the “camp” imo that would probably be an issue if it’s a separate property, as it’s going to be viewed as a second/ vacation home so would make her over resourced in assets. Normally a second home, it has to be sold. But your situation is complicated as it sounds like it too is co-owned. Ideally it would have been attorney work to figure this out ahead of ever filing for LTC Medicaid. It’s attorney work to do this, not a DIY.
I bring this up because even if you had not done the QCD, mom owning a camp would still have been an issue for her eligibility imo. LTC Medicaid has as a basic rule: a (1) property can be an exempt asset for their lifetime if it was their primary residence. Some States require it to have a homestead exemption.
LTC Medicaid does for most States a 5 yr lookback on all assets (home, land, car, savings) to make sure nothing has been gifted or transferred to others. Why?… it’s bc those should have been used by them or sold with the $ used for them and then only when their resources are gone and they get to impoverishment do they then file for LTC Medicaid.
By y’all doing a QCD, it got recorded at the courthouse and what it does is move moms % of house ownership to you. And that is flat out gifting.
It’s there; it’s on file at the courthouse. And the value can be easily based on whatever the property value was for the latest tax assessor bill. That will become details that Medicaid will use to determine the “transfer penalty” and it makes mom ineligible till the penalty period has passed.
So has the NH found out about the gifting from a Notice of Ineligiblity from a letter from the State???
OR
Is it that the NH has reviewed the paperwork yiu did and they did some sort of cross reference and they realized there is a gifting issue? So the LTC application has NOT yet gone to the caseworker? The problems are still there but to me, it’s a different degree of problems. So which is it??
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