Do you have a plan in place for you and your loved ones in the event of disability? Are the people named in your plan capable of carrying out their role properly? Are there looming red flags in your financial life? If you do not prepare for success, there may be a day of reckoning.
Stepping Stones to a Day of Reckoning
The Delaware Elder Law Center helps families navigate the challenge of providing care for a disabled loved one. We help them find the needed support, create a fund of money to pay for it through Long-Term Care Medicaid, and protect as many of their loved one’s assets as possible.
Our goal is to have a plan in place while the challenges are still manageable. We know that a disabled client’s level-of-care will increase along with the associated costs – we just don’t know when it will occur, so time is of the essence.
Families must take action to help the Elder Law attorney prepare the plan for asset protection, for only they have access to the financial information that is required. Once work begins, the family must stick with it to avoid a day of reckoning brought on by a failure to commit to the process. Examples of this include failing to keep appointments, failing to gather documentation on schedule, and not following directions as given by legal staff.
The day of reckoning arrives when a disabled person’s level-of-care suddenly changes overnight from in-home care to skilled nursing care at a cost of $15,000 per month – what if there are no funds to pay for it? Then what?
Driving and the Right to Due Process
A difficult family decision is whether to have a parent’s driving privileges revoked. Many different factors raise the issue: multiple accidents, age, dementia, and failing health or eyesight.
When the time comes, please remember what driving means to a person. It represents freedom, independence, and control. We all want and need autonomy.
When a senior feels that their driving privileges were wrongfully terminated, they may be angry about how their family made the decision. No one told them that their driving privileges were under scrutiny. They were not told that the upcoming doctor’s visit was about their ability to drive. They were forced to take a driving test without time to prepare for it. They come home one day to find that their child has taken and sold their car behind their back.
Unfairness in any process is offensive to all of us as Americans. Our very existence as a free people is based on substantive and procedural due process. In the context of taking a person’s driving privileges away, the issue is procedural due process.
All of us are entitled to some level of notice, appropriate support, time to prepare, and a chance to be heard regarding events that may result in the denial of a valuable right. Every family’s situation is different. Affording a senior some semblance of due process about the loss of driving privileges is the only way for the process to feel just and fair.
Each state has its own rules for seniors to keep their driving licenses. You will find the Delaware rules on the DMV website: https://www.dmv.de.gov/DriverServices/senior/index.shtml?dc=family_warningsigns
It Is Now Routine to Find Hidden Assets
Medicaid rules require the applicant, or the applicant’s agent, to self-report the existence of all assets. Knowingly failing to report assets is a crime. Occasionally over the years, we have found financial assets that a client claimed didn’t exist. Clues would appear in a known bank account’s record of credits and debits. Skilled cross-examination would reveal the truth.
Apparently, the thought is, “If I don’t tell anyone about a bank account, how will they ever know?” This is the old philosophic question “Does a tree make a sound when it falls if no one is in the woods to hear it?”
Well, sorry folks, because of artificial intelligence search tools and their algorithms, keeping this little secret is no longer safe. Medicaid uses these tools to verify an applicant’s statement of assets. As our Medicaid paralegal loves to say, “Big Brother really is watching.”
An applicant who intentionally hides assets may be barred for life from qualifying for Long-Term Care Medicaid benefits.
There will be a day of reckoning for failure to disclose assets.
