Can I buy home as mom’s POA with some of her money if I am going to buy a home to take her in and take over care?

Curious, I want to tell you that neither of my grandma's that required medicaid nursing home admission were cared for any less then when they were on self pay. I don't think the day to day staff knows or cares how the bill is paid.

We did make sure that the facilities had medicaid certification before placing them on private pay basis, which was a very short time for both.

Your mom is blessed to have you guys advocating for and watching out for her, they truly are the most important things we can do when a loved one is placed in a facility.

ElderCAtty, For CA it’s not quite that simple. Yes the “asset” limits has gone away, so in theory they can continue to own a home worth 2M or gifted that home worth 2M. But CA does a decreased lookback with a Period of Ineligibility based on where the gifting/ transfer was placed in the 30 month review. Yeah POI is a hurdle that can be dealt with but needs to be considered before gifting. Elder keeping their 2M home will be challenging as CA personal needs allowance for NH residents is low, I think it’s $40 a mo, and Estate Recovery still exists.

Also overlooked in the articles on “assets can be gifted in CA” is that CA does means testing & fairly rigorous medically “at need” assessment for eligibility. CA still has an “income limit” and income is means tested. CA goes with 138% of poverty rate and for an individual this is about $20,783 a year / $1,676 MONTHLY INCOME MAXIMUM for eligibility. Huge # of folks make from their SSA retirement income alone well over $1676. Lots make SSA FRA max $3,822 or SSA max of $4873. Even age 62 max of $2710 too much $. Over $1676 = over resourced & ineligible for MediCal to cover SNF costs. So $1,680 a mo, you’re ineligible. That elder in CA unless they were an extraordinarily low wage worker their entire life will have to use their income, their savings and their house sale $ to private pay for care as they will be over resourced due to the means test approach CA does. Maybe they can get whatever CA version of what a Miller Trust is done, but they better have family who will pay for atty fees on all this. That “assets not counted” situation is complicated. There is no chance of LTC Medicaid eligibility in CA without a means tested resource assessment being done. CA does the PARIS match as well. Data gathering wise CA is very sophisticated; stuff surfaces.

For elders and POA & families in CA, they have to be careful….. yeah they can give that 2M house away but if they have any type of decent SSA income they are ineligible. Then what?

On the medically “at need” eligibility, CA has almost all entries to a NH that participate in MediCal come in via a post hospitalization discharge or PACE referral. Other states tend to be more in the 70% range. To me, that shift in Medicare rehab paid coverage to qualified (IRF) facilities for Day 1-Day 60 once the $1632 Part A is met & 61-90 @ $408 per day met, is the driver behind this as it costs the State so much less from its Medicaid budget. Plus easy peasy review by State caseworker into CMS database to ensure truly needing skilled care.

Curious, You should not do any “Self - Dealing” as her POA. So yeah you as POA with full powers can sell her home (get a Realtor who has done these type of seller situations) but if there is to be a new home purchased with that Act of Sale $, the new property needs to be in moms name and her name only. If not, it’s self dealing. There also should be no commingling of her $ and yours ever in any banking & this done not just should LTC Medicaid get filed for but done to clearly define and segregate her living & care costs apart from yours should anyone in your family or even a neighbor should question your choices,

FWIW each State administers all of its various Medicaid programs uniquely but under overall Federal Guidelines. So realistically there needs to be a decision made as to exactly what State works best - both medically and financially- for her to have as her legal permanent residence that makes sense for how their LTC Medicaid program runs,
best support system for her and for you as the living with her caregiver,
the costs of living for the State. And since there is a house involved what options are out there for each State in regards to recovery. Like if I’m not mistaken both FL and MI allows for “Lady Bird Deeds”, if so, that allows you to think about the house way differently as no Estate Recovery if done correctly.
BUT
There could be another way to approach this, where is the house, FL? Or MI? Why is there not the consideration to have her move back into the existing still in her name home? Unless her old house is a hovel, going back into an existing home with furnishings, utilities set up & on, property insurance established (especially important if in FL), etc is way waaaaaay less time, energy and $. If her old house is in FL, just the thought of having to deal with clearing out and getting a house market ready in a State that will be totally under hurricane watch (Hello Helene!) this Thursday and already has a property insurance crisis happening would be super stressful.

Why not do this?…. Like she stays in her current MC while you do whatever to make her old place safe and secure for her to living in it and for you as well AND using her $ to do this as it’s all for a home that is 100% in her name. Then once that’s done you move her out of her MC and you are living there full time to caregive and have a room done to allow for InHome care providers to have a room to stay in when you mom gets to the point that she needs 24/7 oversight. She uses her income and her savings to pay all property costs and she could do a Caregiver Agreement with you to pay you a smallish sum. Everything drawn up by elder law atty, no DIY. You have no other job for at least 2 years and should her care get beyond what you and paid InHome can do, then after 2+ yrs only then she moves into a NH/SNF

These questions ultimately need to be answered by a lawyer, preferably from where your POA was established.

However, some advice…
First, consider TN for excellent memory care facilities at more affordable rates. The Autumn Care Karns near Knoxville is beautiful and staffed by the kindest and most professional of people. The rooms are very nice and the region is friendly and gorgeous. Flights to Knoxville are very affordable from the east coast of a 7.5 hr drive from Maryland.

Conversely, you want to be absolutely sure your siblings and any other surviving members of the family are in board(in writing) with your plan to buy a home for her care. It could be seen as an abuse for your benefit if challenged by relatives. Further, I sincerely doubt you will be saving any money on her care given my own experience. You will need to provide around the clock care for her between yourself and home health aides. It’s a lot more expensive than the initial conversations with home health care companies would lead you to believe. Beyond that you will have transportation costs to regular medical appointments and hospital stays when they inevitably fall or get ill.

You aren’t protecting her wealth/inheritance with buying another home as it will be considered her wealth when she needs to move back into memory care/hospice at some point. Memory decline is RAPID and scary. You don’t want to be doing that on your own long term.

Her assets will be used up in her care and then medicare will pickup the tab at the end. Without a trust in place dating before your became POA, I don’t think you have many options. If she had a will signed by a notary before the POA that assigned specific value disbursements to you and your family, you may be able to send those amounts to yourself and sister(get clearance with a lawyer and possibly courts first). That will allow you to set that money aside to help provide for her when her money runs out.

It’s going to be expensive for you too when her money runs out. That’s the sad reality of caring for a parent. I wish you well and hope her memory doesn’t get worse and she stays healthy for many years in comfort. That hasn’t been the case for my own family or the others I have observed but you never know.

Good luck and make sure to protect your own health, physical and mental.

Yes, if your POA is active and it gives you control over your mother's finances and assets then yes, you can buy (or sell) property in her name. You also have the legal authority to take her out of the memory care facility and get her necessary care provided privately and in a private home.

If your POA was legally done by a lawyer in the state of Florida, it is legal in every state. You should still consult a lawyer in the state of Maryland though just for peace of mind.

You do know that if you become her caregiver, you can pay yourself out of her funds. You can also get paid (out of her money) for your POA services.

If you want to buy a property with her money in Maryland with the purpose of moving her in and taking care of her, do it. If your sister is agreeable to this plan and there's no other family who will give you a hard time on it, then go ahead and do it. You were not appointed POA by the court so you will not have to answer to them. Since your mother's memory care bill is still being paid in cash, she's not on Medicaid. So you won't owe the state or the memory care facility any explanations where the money is being spent.

If there's no one to contest this plan, don't worry about it. Go ahead and do it. Just don't involve social workers or nurses or anyone affiliated to any kind of care facility or social services in the state your mother is in. They will fight you tooth and nail to keep her in the memory care and in turn keep her money flowing in that direction.

A word of advice though. If your mother has been in memory care for two years already she needs round-the-clock care. Do you have a careplan in place for moving her into a private residence? Please for her sake as well as your own, don't assume that you can take care of her 24/7 because you can't. I was a caregiver for 25 years and am telling you from experience. A family member may have the best of intentions and God bless them for it, but they burn out fast and then there's a Situation.

There will have to be reliable homecare in place. There will also have to be a plan in place should you need to place her again. This happens too. Families take a LO out of care and they end up having to put them back in.

Make all these plans first before you even consider moving her. There also has to be a plan in place if something happens (God forbid) to you. Your mother will still need care 24/7-365. You and your sister have some serious planning to do.

So to clarify, what is the MAIN aim?

To ensure enough FUNDS for Mom's care in MC? Or get Mom OUT of MC?

Mom isn't living in her old home, it's just racking up bills. So makes sense to sell.

Or, could it be rented out for income? (Maybe you don't want the hassle of tennents, maintence etc?)

"buy another home with safe setting.."

IF this is within the legalities of your POA + IF your sister is in agreement + IF your Mom wanted to leave her current home (probably has a social network built in) + IF Mom's care needs are doable at home + IF care agencies have plentiful staff in the chosen new home area..

That's 5 big IFs to equal a maybe..

Legal + sister + Mom + able + aides = a chance at a workable plan. But will it be a SUSTAINABLE plan? For how long?

Maybe explain more about Mom's care level needs.

What I imagine is this..
.. Imagine selling her home, buying a new one, setting up a team of aides & services then a short time later realising it is all too hard. Then having to place Mom back in a MC & sell her home AGAIN. Only this time you will need housing too 🫨

Why not do a TRIAL first. Really ensure you KNOW what the care needs are. Eg take Mom home for a weekend & then have a good think.

I am a big believer in making care plans and adjusting to a new plan if circumstances change. However, the plan you have come up with sounds nice - but I sincerely doubt it is legal, ethical, or that it will even work. You don’t say if you and your sister are prepared to be her full-time caretakers along with the part time help you mention. You don’t say if either of you is working or married. Regardless, she is in the best setting now. The house sale will help pay for more care. Then apply for Medicaid. I think you will regret trying to take on this care yourselves unless you have a very large support network. I also don’t see how you can use her money to buy a house you will be living in or why you would want to.

Selling a home to provide for her care is fine. Buying a place to "take her in" seems a little bit of an overreach - since you are implying it will be your place and not hers. Please consult with local lawyer and talk to a lawyer wherever you plan to move to.

Taking her home would be the biggest mistake of both of your lives.

Besides the many good points that others have made, here is another option to check with a local lawyer. Perhaps you could buy a house in your name, but with a mortgage to M for the total she puts into the purchase. That becomes her asset, may meet Medicaid requirements, and probably can be ‘spent down’ by her ‘rent and care’ payments to you. If it works, get a witness to M agreeing when you give her a simple explanation, documented in writing and signed. But check it, and the other points, first.

Curiousamypoa: Do not move your mother out of memory care.

1. First, your mother’s Durable Power of Attorney should be reviewed by an elder law attorney to determine if her agent (you) has the explicit authority to give yourself a gift of the size of those sale proceeds. Most DPOAs do NOT authorize self-gifting, and some also do not authorize gifts exceeding the annual gift tax exclusion ($18,000 per year). The proper state would be at least the state(s) where the sale and the gift would occur. This is if you are intending to put those sale proceeds and/or the new home in your name, rather than your mother’s name. If the document does NOT explicitly authorize the unlimited self-gifting by the agent, then you cannot do that as her agent. If she has a Revocable Living Trust that is currently on title to her home, rather than individual ownership, then additional evaluation must be made.
2. Second, depending on what state your mom would be living in at the time that she needs to obtain Medicaid, your mother may well be rendered ineligible for Medicaid for up to 5 years by virtue of any gift(s) of money or real estate. California Medicaid does NOT penalize any such gifts made on or after 1/1/2024. But I do not know any other state that does not penalize such gifts.
3. Further, you could possibly be held liable for financial elder abuse for such gifts in civil court and/or in criminal court, even though you are her financial agent doing what you think is in her best interest.
4. It is very important to see the value of keeping her care in a high quality professional care facility catering to people with dementia. Caring for a person with dementia at home becomes increasingly demanding as her symptoms progress. It becomes an exhausting full-time job that will turn into a 24/7 job. Few family members have the professional skills to handle that care proficiently. And few humans regardless of their professional skills can handle any 24/7 job. Most of my clients who did that full-time care for a family member at home could not go on after a certain point, and they ended up way over their heads and compromising or ruining their own health. Their loved one also received poorer quality care by the loving caregiving family member(s) than the ill family member would have received at a quality facility. For example, in one case, it became impossible for the wife AND the son to keep their loved one clean because the loved one refused basic hygiene to be provided by the caregiving family members, but once the loved one went to a facility, their skilled caregivers were able to work with him to keep him clean.
5. There are so many risks involved in your proposed plan for dealing with your mom’s home. It would be best to contact me up with a long term plan of care under the guidance of an experienced elder law attorney to evaluate your mother’s DPOA and any trust, the options, future Medicaid eligibility, the sale of your mom’s home, capital gains tax consequences, the best way to achieve your goals. You can pay the attorney out of your mother’s funds as her agent.
6. What might be the best thing that only you can give your mom is to visit her on a daily basis in a high quality facility to watch over her care and to give her lots of love. If the facility knows you are coming every day, the caregivers will make sure that your mom is up, fed, cleaned, and dressed. You can and should read her chart, get to know her caregivers, ask them questions, find out how she is doing, and give her lots of daily love, even if and when she no longer recognizes you.
7. So I would say, try to decide where you want to live, and move your mom to a quality facility close to you. And use her money and any sale proceeds to be able to afford quality professional care for her so that you can oversee her care and remain the big provider of unconditional love that only you can give. Best of luck to you. Your heart is in the right place.

What you can and can’t do is detailed in the POA paperwork. Consult with an estate planning attorney - and perhaps the one who helped your mom draw up the paperwork, as s/he will have discussed with Mom regarding her wishes, and may provide some insight.

As for selling the house, purchasing another and moving your mom in to care for her 7x24 - I did this with my dad (not the sell and buy part, but everything else), and did ok while he was doing ok. But then he had a BIG health event, and even though I had 8 hours of respite care a week (1 4-hour respite care worker shift twice a week), I only got 4 hours of sleep per night. It was unsustainable. I am smart, capable, and aware - and at the end of that timeframe (8 months), I could hardly put a sentence together.

I really advise against taking care of your mom on your own - no matter how capable you are. My dad ultimately needed to be closer to medical services and facilities, so we found a wonderful AL where we visited him 3-5 times a week. And staff to care for him - there were at least 4 ppl per shift who replaced the 1 of me.

It has taken me well over 2 years to regroup after this. While I am grateful I got to help my dad, it was diminishing returns for him, and for myself. As I stated above, I was losing the ability to function well and putting my own health at risk, and Dad wasn’t getting the quality of care he needed.

My POA said I could buy and sell. But if you buy, it would need to be in Moms name only. You cannot profit asvher POA.

Everyone is right about the ethical reasons, but the legal reasons are a little different depending on how the POA was written and your actual intent. It is very important to involve an attorney, however. As long as you are truly doing so "in the best financial interest" of your mother AND you purchase the home in HER NAME or in the name of her family trust, if there is one, it is doable. The important thing is that it benefits her and not you. I don't believe it's a good idea given the circumstances, but none of us know the actual circumstances and that is why you MUST consult an attorney and not attempt to wing it.

Taking her out of memory care, using her money to buy house for you? Doesn't sound right. Get attorney.

Curiousamypoa, please do not move your Mom, it will only make her dementia worse. Are you ready to work 168 hours per week? You will quickly find that you will need to hire caregivers to help with your Mom's care because either you or your sister, or both of you, will burn out quickly. And please note that 40% of family caregivers caring for someone with dementia die leaving behind the love one they were caring. Those are not good odds.


Depending on where you live, and you find you need to hire 3-shifts of caregivers, it could cost you $20,000 per month, yes per month. That's the amount my Dad paid when he need around the clock caregivers a few years back. That will bite into your Mom's savings a heck of a lot faster than her $6,700 cost in Memory Care.


Do not touch Mom's money to purchase a house. There is always a chance that your Mom may need to go back to a nursing facility, later under Medicaid. And Medicaid may consider whatever $$ you use to buy a house as "gifting". That means Mom will have to come up with the money to pay the facility as Medicaid will not kick in until the gifted amount is reimbursed. See how complex this can be.

No. You cannot buy a home in her name. She is no longer capable of making a decision to purchase a home, and it could look self serving your buying one as POA.

This is a legal Fiduciary responsibility that is held to highest standards under the law. You have a right to get expert advice about something you are doing for your mother as her POA. So do see an elder law attorney so that you more fully understand your roles as POA and its powers and limitations.

Your mom is where trained professionals are caring for her. Please don’t assume that you can provide a high enough level of care for mom. Home care of a dementia patient is very difficult and the learning curve is steep. It doesn’t take long to burn out and wish you’d never started it, because once you’re in, it’s hard to get out. I’m caregiving for my fourth family dementia patient, and I know. Leave mom where she is!

I have an ex-friend who uses someone’s POA money to buy a home.

Someone in the family reported it, and she went to jail for 5 years.

Be VERY careful. Consult an attorney.

If your mom is now in a memory care facility she is way beyond being able to care for at home, no matter how good your intentions are.
You need to sell her home and use those proceeds to pay for her memory care, and when those funds run out you apply for Medicaid for her, and they will continue to pay if your mom is still alive at that point.
I don't think you realize just how difficult it is to care for someone with dementia 24/7. Right now she has lots of people caring for her, and if she were to come live with you, it will be only you providing that same 24/7 care and you will have no life what so ever.
So no you should not buy any house using your moms money under the guise that it's because you want to now care for her. Medicaid will definitely frown at that, and penalize her if and when she would need them in the future.

You can probably sell her home but I don’t believe you can purchase another home in her name. It depends on the laws of your state and the specifics of the POA, ie: what power does it actually give you. As POA you are responsible for being a steward of her money but it can’t be spent to enrich your life or living circumstances. If you sell you will need to use the money for her care. You should see an attorney before you do anything.