My Father, his wife and myself are all on his checking account. The money deposited is from his VA & SS benefits. A few months ago my dad transferred a sum of money into a Trust Account with me as his beneficiary. He is now being told he has less than 6 months to live. His wife whom is not my mother has dementia and she may have to go into a nursing home within a year or so. My question is "are the funds in the Trust Account secure from the state if this should happen"?
You need to take all legal paperwork of theirs and get it reviewed by a NAELA or CELA level of elder law atty & asap.
Does your dads wife have children? If so, what is your relationship with them?
I ask this cause if he completely excluded his wife - who is medically at need -in the trust done just 6 months ago, by creating the trust from their $, and by doing so leaves her without resources to pay for her care so she has to file for Medicaid in the near future expect her family as well as Medicaid to do whatever to secure assets from that trust to pay for her care.
For Revocable Trusts, Medicaid expects them revoked & spent down.
For Irrevocable kinda have 2 paths depending on how they are or are not income producing & either can have a transfer penalty inquiry done by Medicaid which places a period of ineligiblity on the Medicaid applicant but each has a different formula.
Her family can make your life very difficult, whether revocable or irrevocable & whether or not moving dads $$$ was done deliberately or inadvertently by dad/you to exclude her. If she has no family, then she can be made a ward of the state. The state appointed guardian can go after resources moved that they think were done improperly. This can morph into a real problem for you as dads old dpoa and trust beneficiary & will not be at all pretty.
Really get NAELA CELA atty to review.
My point here is to encourage those reading , to think about yourselves. Have you looked at creating a Trust, a DPOA, appointed an agent to oversee that your Medical Directive is carried out and honored? Burial Plans? Done a pour over will for the things you may have forgotten to put in to a Trust. We had one attorney draw up the Trust and all of the other legal work that needed to be done for both my DW and me. Then we brought in an Elder Care Lawyer with another set of eyes to see if we missed anything. The answer was that the attorney setting up the Trust etc handled our affairs perfectly.
Yes, having all this work done is expensive. We spent about Five Grand, covering both attorney's. Yes, it is even more expensive for you to ignore this.
Once this was complete, we insisted our adult children pour over the 250 or so pages and see who had what roles in administering the Trust when my DW couldn't handle things, hopefully a very long time off in the future. We also made sure they understood, what my wishes were for them and my DW and that all of my actions were in fact my wishes and that my DW supported me and respected my End of Life wishes.
Time is running short. Take action for yourselves so your children will be familiar with your wishes and how you plans to distribute your estate, and who the Trustee will be.
Don't forget to encourage your children to look at LTC for themselves, the earlier they can afford to start affording premiums, they will be better off. Fortunately we purchased it for my DW when she was 40, the LTC purchased has no limit to how long they have to pay for treatment, and she can make GPO's every 2 yrs to help keep up with inflation. I was found to be medically disqualified for LTC when undergoing the underwriting process at the age of 43. I hope this is helpful to any that read my remarks.
I was to inherit the house. But if my parents had needed a NH, the NH would have made him sign the house over before accepting him.
You have no legal claim on inheritance while the person is still alive.
Speak with an Elder Attorney but I think I have it right - and Good Luck to you. You can't count on the trust fund being there unless you are paying out of pocket. My GF had to pay for the NH care to save her Trust Fund. It's a lot of money out of pocket when you must pay the NH.
What bothers me about the OP is that the beneficiary of the trust is her, the daughter. And - to me & I could be wrong - her post comes across as she’s afraid Medicaid might require trust $ to actually be used to pay for his wife’s care. Her “are funds secure from the state” part implies that. The $$$ was just moved 6 months ago. I’d bet a case of prosecco that dad & stepmoms health charts show significant health & disease issues of long standing. $$ move can be viewed as a planned attempt to circumvent Medicaid’s asset spend down as Trust beneficiary is the daughter. Not the wife.
jfbctc59, your comments are so right on. You are a HUGE help to myself and I am sure others. (((hugs)))
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