My best friend and I are roommates. We are male/female but not related and not romantically involved. Last year she had breast cancer and went thru treatment. Her cancer is now in remission. We have two bank accounts. One is my account with her name on it. And she has her account with my name on it. The bank said if one of us was to pass away the other person on the account would get the entire amount. We set it up this way. My question is, if either of us has to go into assisted living, would Medicaid be able to take any of the money in either account since both of our names are on both accounts?
It is cleaner to set up yours/mine/ours accounts. Your income is direct deposited into your individual account and you transfer your share of household bills as needed, with a month or so worth of extra left in the account if desired.
Likewise, try to keep credit accounts organized as to which are joint, and which are individual, possibly with an authorized user. Joint are fine for rent, groceries and autopay utilities, individual for personal/medical, authorized user for the other person’s personal/medical.
If you still want to be each other’s heirs, you can use POD beneficiary designations. Estate planning advice may be useful if either has a lot of assets; consider whether POAs for finance or medical would be suitable.