How can I keep Medicaid look back from considering money my mother owes me for bills I paid and work I did or had done to her home to get it sold. She intends on paying me back with the proceeds from her home sale.
Did you and your mom work out a contract, and have it notarized or witnessed and signed in some legal way? If this was a verbal contract, you are going to have difficulties getting Medicaid to recognize it as anything other than gifting.
You are likely going to find doing this sucessfully if medicaid is involved to be very VERY challenging. Ideally mom & you would have a promissory note or memo of understanding done, witnessed & notarized AND before any costs paid by you so that a lien or judgement can be placed on property. OR all work done by a legit business owned & registered (as need be by city / county / state) by you so that workmans lein placed on the property. Either would put a "cloud" on the title & cloud would need to be lifted at the act of sale by paying off the exact amount of lein / judgement that's the cloud. Cloud $ deducted as a line item just like title company fees or prorated taxes are. So $ is never included in the proceeds of the sale paid to mom. Comprende? Otherwise medicaid will view the $ paid from her to you as gifting.
I bought this ? up with my moms caseworker as she kept her home. His pretty blunt take on it was that unless very precise legal was done way way in advance, that Medicaid would deny eligibility. The gist was that it was simpler to have them just continue to own the home & deal with claims in probate. Now realize the NH gets the denial letter from Medicaid too. So NH will more than not send you as DPOA a "30 day notice" that either mom moves out within 30 days or family signs off a financial responsibility contract in order for her to stay. Now you could appeal the denial. But my guess is that the NH will turn pretty proactive in doing those 30 day notices regularly to mom & the DPOA during the appeal process. Appeals in my experience have tight timeframes & if you miss it, she's toast on the appeal. We had a car gifting issue & life insurance issue with my moms application & the turnaround window to get items back to caseworker was tiny. I'm remembering like 21 days & 7 days. So unless you are super OCD on documentation for years & somewhat proactive personality, well imo it's going to be quite challenging.
Id suggest that IF mom hasn't applied yet to medicaid, please pull all costs together and get an excell going with cancelled checks or other receipts to document to the penny what you paid for AND meet with an atty ASAP to see what perhaps can be drawn up at this stage. Good luck.
I bought this ? up with my moms caseworker as she kept her home. His pretty blunt take on it was that unless very precise legal was done way way in advance, that Medicaid would deny eligibility. The gist was that it was simpler to have them just continue to own the home & deal with claims in probate. Now realize the NH gets the denial letter from Medicaid too. So NH will more than not send you as DPOA a "30 day notice" that either mom moves out within 30 days or family signs off a financial responsibility contract in order for her to stay. Now you could appeal the denial. But my guess is that the NH will turn pretty proactive in doing those 30 day notices regularly to mom & the DPOA during the appeal process. Appeals in my experience have tight timeframes & if you miss it, she's toast on the appeal. We had a car gifting issue & life insurance issue with my moms application & the turnaround window to get items back to caseworker was tiny. I'm remembering like 21 days & 7 days. So unless you are super OCD on documentation for years & somewhat proactive personality, well imo it's going to be quite challenging.
Id suggest that IF mom hasn't applied yet to medicaid, please pull all costs together and get an excell going with cancelled checks or other receipts to document to the penny what you paid for AND meet with an atty ASAP to see what perhaps can be drawn up at this stage. Good luck.