My neighbor wants to sell her home. If she goes into a nursing home within the year, will she get in trouble for selling it?

Yankeetalker, if your neighbor sells the house, where does she plan to live in the mean time? Hopefully there will be enough equity in the house so she can go, let's say to Independent Living where she can leave behind all the worry about maintaining a house. When my Dad sold, he was soooo relieved, and enjoyed living in IL.

Do you know if your neighbor is applying for Medicaid [different from Medicare], as Medicaid will follow the paper trail. As long as the neighbor spends the equity on herself and doesn't hand out "gifts" of money to others, she should be ok.

Your neighbor can sell the house "as is". That's what I did with my Dad's house, as in my area "flippers" were buying up fixer-uppers. But first I had a licensed Appraiser give me a price on the house, so when I listed the house I had a ballpark figure. It sold quickly, the buyer was happy my Dad accepted the price, and Dad was happy with what he got, so it was a win-win situation.

One suggestion, the house should be as clean as possible... it could look 1950's inside but if it is super clean and as bright as possible [taking down heavy drapes] does make a difference.

Oh, how is your neighbor's memory? Is she still very sharp or forgetful? Does anyone have a Power of Attorney for her to help her with this sale?

As her POA you should have had access to her bank accounts, so why were you paying for her needs instead of using your authority to spend her money? And banking on being repaid "some day" after she passes never seems to end well, either there will be relatives crawling out of the woodwork demanding their share or there will be little to nothing left to distribute, even 1 year in a nursing home can easily gobble up a modest inheritance.

Yankee - the situation is a disaster waiting to happen imo. She's already been fleeced by others…..and has dementia…. she is doing sundowning… theres going to be an incident. The POA is it that you realistically don't know how to do things using the POA or are unsure what a POA should do OR is the POA one of those pulled off the web so probably not up to legal standards for your state. Really for your own sake, schedule an elder law atty appointment for her and take her to it to see what can be done to establish a caregiving agreement for you and do your best to find and copy info on her as to her assets & income to budget & pay for her needs. I'd try to do an excel sheet on your costs paid for her for the last year or 6 mos and take that to the atty appointment as well as the last tax assessor bill on her home (as it will have the supposed value of the property).

It may be that if she is really not competent or cognitive to do things legally, then you will have to seek guardianship or conservatorship of her if you decide you want to stay involved. This site has a whole section on Guardainships. Make a pot of coffee or adult beverage and read through the many many Q&A's on G/C's. I'd be concerned about the "not having any family". Like CWillie wrote, family will crawl out if there's $.

? for you, the 2 incidents of her being fleeced for 10K & 17K, do you know with certainty that this happened? Absolutely sure it happened? I'd be concerned that your neighbor has made this up or exaggerated the event. If so, I shudder to think what stories she has said about what you have done. Dementia means living with false beliefs and they can appear totally believable. Really meet with an atty if not for her then to do whatever to protect yourself just in case she tells false beliefs about you.

If she uses the money for her care, no problem. She cannot give it away. If she has money when she goes into a home, she may have to private pay then file for Medicaid when her money runs out.

Yankee - a ? for you..... Are you interested in buying your neighbors house & are concerned if there could be after the sale issues?

If so, the sale price & where the $ from the sale went to will definitely be an issue if the neighbor should need to apply for medicaid at any point from the date of the sale to 5 full years future.

Property value is easily found by looking at tax assessor public records.
Say its 100k assessor value but sold to you for 60k. Not a listed on market, MLS sale with a Realtor. But a private sale to you. It would NOT be considered an "arms length" sale. Unless there is an independent appraisal done by the seller before the sale that has the property coming in at 60k, Medicaid could look upon the 60k sale of a 100k house as doing a 40k "gifting" which causes a 40k transfer penalty & will make her ineligible for Medicaid till resolved. Now she will have 60k to use as a spend down to pay the NH. But with NH running 5k - 15k a month, that 60k will be spent within a year or less. So when she eventually applies for medicaid, the property sale will surface. Remember Medicaid does a minimum 5 yr look back on finances starting the date of the medicaid application.

Transfer penalty medicaid inquiry will happen. And someone within her family will need a way to resolve the gifting penalty so she can qualify. They aren't likely to want to private pay the NH to get past the penalty but will look to find someone other than their elderly mom to be at fault in this mess. And the easiest way would be to have APS &/or police charge you with some sort of action against a vulnerable or disabled adult. If this is alot of $, could be a felony. It will not be pretty. The police report is needed to show $ was stolen (by you), so it is not "gifting".

If you buy it, it must be bought at FMV. If elderly neighbor then goes and squanders the $, it's not your problem. But if you buy it undervalue, it more than likely will come back to haunt you.

So where is her family or DPOA in all this? They need to be in the loop on all this with the sale being all aboveboard, transparent & FMV imho.

You neighbor should definitely be paying her own pay! I can't imagine why you are using your funds for co-pays, etc.

Find out what the services you provide would cost if she were to pay an agency to send someone to do them. Then sit down with her, show her the results of your research. Offer to do these things for that amount or offer her a "friend discount" if you are so inclined. But make it clear that these services cost money. If you are to continue as her paid caregiver, have a written agreement spelling out what you do and what she pays. This will protect her from it looking like she has been giving you gifts if she needs to apply for Medicaid in the future.

By all means, she needs to pay her own way! To you or to an agency. But she can't go on assuming all these services just materialize when she needs them, with no cost to her.

Having a written and signed contract will help you remind her of her agreement to pay you.

Stop sharing your extras. If she has plenty of money and you don't it is silly to provide her eggs and toilet paper. Add these things to a list and shop with her or shop for her ... but with her money.

Something we tell people on here is that POA is not an obligation to become a hands on caregiver, it is only an agreement to help manage her finances (and coordinate her health care if you also have medical POA). It sounds to me as though this woman is fast approaching a point where she is not safe to be living on her own, she may in fact have already passed that point. You mention selling her home, hopefully this is her plan? She won't be ready for a nursing home but may do very well in an assisted living/memory care home where she can have the supervision she needs, the sooner the better.

Yankee - So how did it go with the atty? Let us know, as we all can learn from each other.

Hi igloo572, she had told me that a doctors wife had borrowed 25,000 but still owed her 17,500. I found the checks that this woman wrote out to her totaling 17,500 and each check was made out for one thousand and she had signed them but never dated them and told her not to deposit any of them until she told her to. We have since found out that she has closed out her account so I really don't know what can be done about it unless we do hire an attorney. It seems to me that she could get charged with fraud and felony or grand larceny. As for her family, all that she has is one brother and we have tried numerous times to contact him but to no avail. They asked us to be her POA and then everything got signed and notarized and copies went to all doctors and the bank. We are all on her checking account because she is not able to do her own bills anymore. As for the 10,000. She gave to another woman, I confronted her and told her that she needs to tear the check up because I would make sure that there was never that much in her account and also if she tries to cash it then I would have her arrested for taking money from a person with dementia.