Due to the 60-month lookback period, many seniors desire to plan ahead for long-term care as part of their estate planning, looking far into the future.
This is what we call “Pre-Planning.”
If the seniors are healthy enough, we strongly encourage them to purchase long-term care insurance to provide a large amount of flexibility in their options for future living. Even if seniors are not eligible to purchase long-term care insurance at a price that they feel is affordable, the attorneys at the Life Planning Law Firm, P.A. often assist seniors in implementing plans that can go a long way toward protecting assets in case of future need for assisted living or nursing home care. Done early enough and if there are honest, reliable family members or others involved, such “pre-planning” can save a large fraction of the seniors’ assets.
Part of what distinguishes the Life Planning Law Firm, P.A. from other law firms is our ability to assist seniors and their families with Crisis Planning.
This ability is based on in-depth knowledge of the Florida eligibility rules, intensive study and experience with client cases in this field, and astute attention to the needs of seniors and their families in these urgent situations.
Crisis Medicaid Planning typically occurs when the senior has received an extremely serious medical diagnosis, most commonly when hospital or rehabilitation facility medical personnel have determined that he or she cannot return home after rehab. At this point, the senior and family are facing extended nursing home time without Medicare coverage, starting at around $8,000 per month and certain to increase in the future. Every month that will pass will consume a substantial portion of the senior’s or couple’s life savings.
It is easy to see a life savings of one or a few hundred thousand dollars being consumed in a matter of a few months or years. Even allowing the Community Spouse to retain the Community Spouse Resource Allowance will destroy the rest of the savings that the Community Spouse may need in order to live for years or decades into the future.
Crisis Planning is essential to protect what can be saved under these drastic, adverse circumstances, where the costs of waiting even one month are very high.