Mom cashed a check then misplaced the money. How will that lost cash affect her Medicaid eligibility?

Large, Okaaay, how large? 8K quite different than 80K.

I think you need to be more proactive in all this and meet with an elder law attorney AND file a police report. To get beyond this, there needs to be a police report as to what happened and its timeline. It’s just too squishy otherwise. In going thru this post, the story keeps on evolving. Ya gotta take charge which is what filing a police report even at this late date does. If you are your moms POA, you have a required, REQUIRED, fiduciary duty, a responsibility to deal with her finances appropriately. And it wasn’t done. And apparently more than one time. The filing of the police report at least shows you realize this was serious and important.

LTC Medicaid runs a tight eligibility system. I don’t think a caseworker is going to say “oh thousands are missing this month & oh this month too, well that’s just awful, no worries”. Not gonna happen. Possible scenario is they view the whole thing as missing documents, give you 14 days as a final f..I..n..a..l timeframe to find and then place a transfer penalty on the whole $ amount that is missing.
Transfer penalty is a division problem: each State LTC Medicaid has $ amount it pays a Nh for its room& board day rate. Let’s say it’s $276 a day and it’s a total of $87,654 missing & unaccounted for transfers from moms banking over past 5 years. Mom files LTC Medicaid application on June 1. She is in NH as a Medicaid Pending resident as of June 1 & dutifully paying SS income to the NH every month since then. Between July - Sept you & Medicaid go back & forth on missing items, but no resolution. Letter from LTC Medicaid comes down end of Sept as to their determination of a transfer penalty of 317 days starting date of moms NH application filing June 1, 2023.

87,654 divided by 276 = 317 days or 10 & 1/2 months of ineligibility

Heres the bigger issue, your mom is in the NH. She is impoverished. All her income already goes to the NH. She has - checks notes - 4 months in this NH that LTC Medicaid will now NOT be paying and October 1st is right around the corner. NH is CC’d ineligibility notice & transfer penalty notice. For your mom to continue to stay there, you will have to sign off a financial agreement and come to some terms as to past due bill of June - Sept. If they like you & mom, they may be ok 100% billing at LTC Medicaid rates but NH can fully charge private pay $$$$ rates. This is where a good attorney comes in to negotiate. If you move mom out, and you take care of her in your home, that bill for June - Sept still exists. NH will turn it over to collections, again this is where the atty comes in. No other NH will take her either. She is toast on another LTC Medicaid filing. Mom is private pay till mid April 2024 / 10.5 months. This is seriously scary stuff.

If a police report is filed, that provides for a way to have a rationale for Medicaid to possibly and probably waive the missing items at best or possibly negotiate the period of time of the days of penalty.

Did the neighbor steal it? My bet is no, they sound like a happy hands thief, like jewelry, a bracelet, a vase, flatware. But others in the complex or area where you mom lived probably have been taking stuff from her for a while. And someone got incredibly lucky with that one brown bag of $$$. If the police have a safety office for the area, they can pull records to see petty theft type of activity to bolster your mom being victim of petty crime on a regular basis for the police report. It sadly does happen a lot.

Ask the neighbor what she observed at the bank.

Maybe the neighbor took the money.

Sure will. Are 100% sure she cashed the CD in? Or perhaps opened a new account deposited in that account or one that she already had.

I believe that yes, it most certainly will. The banks report to the IRS any amounts of cash that are taken out that are large. If they don't see that cash re-deposited or re invested on the lookback they will ask what happened to it, and it is very unlikely that they will believe that a large amount will have been "lost in this manner." IF, at that time you reported this loss somewhere (and why in the WORLD would she take cash) and at ONCE became her POA and handled all her finances it would be a better case. It is my opinion that they will not believe this, because usually when this happens it means that there is hiding of cash.

I think this is a serious serious problem and would see an attorney before application to medicaid.

I think I would proceed with the help of a certified elder attorney who understands Medicaid rules for your moms state. She needs to be placed. You need to start now. You need a professional who knows how to handle this.

Your mom has the right to take her money out of the bank and spend it. It’s just that she isn’t allowed to gift it is how I understand it. She had diagnosed dementia when she took the money out. I’m sure things like this have happened before.

When did you first learn of this? Before yesterday right? Who told you the neighbor took her? Get your facts (not suppositions) down so the attorney can easily understand what has happened and the best way to present it.

How much money are you talking about?

I got a phone call once from my DH aunts bank. They wanted me to know she was there wanting to take out $5000. Her reasoning was that she had to ask others to take her to the bank so she needed to keep more money on hand. We convinced her not to take it.

Another time a nephew had taken her and he called me telling me she got $500 out. When I went to her house she didn’t know what she had done with all of it. It was gone. We could account for some. Finally I called one of the tellers and she said aunt didn’t get $500, she only got $200. Aunt couldn’t truly remember even going to the bank.

The nephew said he was not taking her again. I thanked him.

Another time she bought an expensive vacuum cleaner from a door to door salesman. Paid for it with a check and she didn’t have the vacuum cleaner yet. I told her I wished she wouldn’t do things like this. She said me to. She said I don’t think I should have my check book and she gave it to me. That was the last time we had a problem with her and money.

Regardless of what happened to the money, you have to start where you are today and go forward. Mom needs care. You can’t provide it.

Let the attorney advise you.

Are you sure she took the cash? She didn’t open an account at the bank?

Oh, yeah, the neighbor likely stole it. That seems pretty obvious.

I know for a fact that in New Jersey they expect to get an account of where the money went. In NJ also, just like NC, they have a 5-year look back. My daughter works for New Jersey Medicaid program and she told me that things like this will send up a red flag to them and they will want an answer as to where money went. My daughter told me that they also even check trust funds of people just to make sure that people are not hiding money in those funds. We need to understand that Medicaid is funded by the Federal and State government, which comes down to taxpayers’ dollars helping to fund these social programs.

You might have a problem with the missing money, so you should definitely seek the advice of an elder law attorney.

My Dad does this loses money he hides just say “ she lost the money or it was stolen “ Nothing you can do about it