My brother with POA has told my dad & siblings to save receipts for items purchased for Mom & money spent on her home. Mom is a NH resident. My parents are divorced. Does Medicaid reimburse or compensate family members for these expenses?? Examples of these expenses are; home maintenance or repairs, groceries, clothing, legal fees, etc.
Medicaid is going to want FMV rent from your sibling paid to owner, who is your mom. If FMV $1600 then that $ is added to her SS income, & $ combined could take mom over monthly income limit for LTC Medicaid. Income max tends to be $2100 range for most states for single applicant. Rent is reportable income for IRS as well. Plus could be city regulations/ reporting on rentals. All this is being ignored, isn’t it? This is a whole problem into itself.....
Then you get into Dad paying property costs aspects of the in-moms-name house. mortgage, right? So dad is essentially paying mortgage on a property that he does NOT own and may not ever own. And paying all various property costs, like taxes, maintenance, etc as well, right? Is he expecting to be reimbursed or acquire the place? If so, he needs to be made aware of MERP aka estate recovery requirements of Medicaid. All of y’all need to realize that every day mom is in the NH, the state is paying her room and board costs, & the state is required to attempt a recovery on all those costs from your mom’s estate via MERP. That house (actually it’s more its equity as still has a mortgage) becomes an asset of moms after death estate. Unless all moms heirs have exemptions or exclusions to MERP, &/or have other legal entities for the property that can be used to deal with MERP, there's going to be a lien placed on the property by the state for how most states administer Medicaid. Nobody is going to be able to transfer how it’s titled until BOTH mortgage company AND MERP is dealt with in some way. If it’s 150K yr paid by Medicaid to NH & Average NH stay is 2.5 years = 375K lien heirs need to resolve.
If there are 3 heirs as per moms will but only 1 of the 3 have exemption (like you as you would be a disabled heir & maybe caregiver exemption) to MERP, the other 2 would have thier 2/3 share ($250 k) that would need to be worked out with MERP to transfer the property.
If elder flat wants to keep old homestead & go onto LTC Medicaid, it can be done. Medicaid allows it to be lifetime exempt asset. But family needs to have the wallet & sense of humor to deal w house & ok on risk that might not go as planned. & do all this for possibly year$.
Add to this, mortgage still needs to be paid off & have insurance (HO, wind, flood) placed as required by mortgage terms. Personally, I think having a mortgage is a deal breaker for keeping it, too co$tly.
Mortgage co will call in the loan once owner becomes deceased, which means paid off within couple of mos or goes into foreclosure. Mortgage co are not casual on outstanding mortgage. Is your dad ok on paying all this got possibly years and running risk that things may not turn out as planned?
Medicaid ime unfortunately tends to gloss over MERP aspects of Medicaid, just like for copay of monthly income requirements.
What seems to happen is after 6-12 mos, family flat stop doing or Paying stuff.... house ends up getting sold; AND AS it is moms house, all $ is hers after mortgage paid off; and she becomes private pay at NH; family cannot b reimbursed as that would be “gifting” by mom and not allowed by Medicaid. Family is out all $ they paid.
So if u do this, imo, all heirs have to be in this for long run & pay all costs & do whatever legal needed AND be ok on risk.
good luck w your family & don’t let them take advantage of you.
Clothing, toiletries, etc. are things ime that family just buy for their elder out of a sense of family duty without expectations. The personal needs allowance ($60) for my mom really just covered her beauty shoppe visits and some snacks. All clothing, shoes, magazines, etc, we just bought. Nobody expected to ever be repaid for these items.
Out of curiosity, was there a family discussion & defined agreement on dealing with your moms house before she went into the NH & applied for Medicaid? If not, I’d suggest that you have one before it goes into months of property costs and then family / heirs become aware that establishing the exemptions &/or exclusions to estate recovery might be way way more difficult than they ever thought or that it’s just not feasible to front property costs on her home for possibly years & beyond the grave.