Medicaid planning is a mystery to most people and unfortunately, by the time many of them come to us and ask about Medicaid or Title 19, it’s too late to even get involved with it. This is because Medicaid rules now say that to obtain Medicaid or Title 19 benefits, you have to be impoverished, or in other words, you have to have nothing in your own name. Now, many people say “Well, I’ll just give everything away and then I’ll have nothing on my own name.” Well, the government understands that people may be tempted to do that and therefore, they have enacted laws to prevent that from happening. Specifically, the government will look back 5 years from the day you’ve applied from Medicaid benefits and if they see any transfers during that 5 year period for less than or other than fair consideration i.e. gifts or other questionable transactions, they will disallow Medicaid benefits up to and equal to the amount of the unapproved transfer. So what that means is that for anyone who figures they’ll just give away assets, transfer assets, or put themselves into poverty, what they’re really doing is frustrating their own desires to qualify for public benefits and may in the long-run have done themselves a disservice. The best thing to do is when you’re well-enough and young enough and able to deal with this issues, come in, speak with us and let us see if we can help guide you along this difficult process of Title 19 Medicaid.

This informational blog post was brought to you by Marc N. Needelman, an experienced Hartford, Connecticut estate planning attorney. If you have any questions, contact the law office to set up a free initial consultation.