Protecting Senior Assets
Question: My mother has moderate Alzheimer’s (but is otherwise in good health), moved into a California assisted living facility in August, and I have had to assume all financial responsibility for her affairs via Power of Attorney. She currently has approx. $20,000 in the bank and is operating with a negative cash flow, as her monthly income is $1,800, and her rent and expenses are about $2,800.
Her facility is govt. subsidized, and if she had no assets, her rent would be approx. $1,000 less. Because she is in good health, I am very concerned about making her money last as long as possible. I recently sold her California mobile home for $25,000 and am wondering if there is anything that could be done with this check (made out to her) that would safely obscure its addition to her assets.
Thanks in advance for any and all help.
Answer: That is simply not true. Certain assets are exempt; certain assets belong to the beneficial owner and not the legal owner.
If you don’t like the laws your legislators and judges have implemented, then you are free to write to your Congressperson and state representative. And you can support, if you like, the Bankruptcy Reform Bill, which will abolish bankruptcy relief for many of tomorrow’s victims of adversity: uninsured medical bills, unemployment, divorce, credit card debt at high interest rates.
The law is very specific on what property and what gifts disqualify persons for nursing home assistance. You are not the arbiter of that law. And indeed you don’t seem to know very much about it. You would rather rant ignorantly, blaming the victim.
As it happens, the rich and the well-advised manage to get the state to subsidize them quite well. Ken Lay, even if he is convicted, will still have hundreds of millions of dollars in family trusts that will never be seized. But those who deplete their 401Ks to pay medical bills, those who owe tax on shadow stock options that prove worthless, victims of Ponzi schemes who are taxed, fined, and sometimes imprisoned for nonpayment of tax on nonexistent profit — they get blamed by persons of your ilk for their own victimhood.
To sum up: you are just another of those jerks who don’t have a clue about reality. Until and unless you meet your own misfortune. I leave you with some words of wisdom along those lines:
First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn9t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn9t speak up, because I wasn9t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
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