My father is in a nursing home and has been approved for Medicaid in Texas. Our eldercare attorney mentioned that we should take Dad off my off the joint checking account after he was approved for Medicaid. Does anyone know the purpose in doing this?
It makes sense Dad will need his own acct for the spend down. No co- mingling of monies. So that means Mom would have her own for the money she is allowed. But I would ask Medicaid. Having two accts would be logical.
Medicaid needs to see each has their own income & assets. And not commingling. So Each of them should have their own account so that his income - like his direct deposit from SSA - clearly is separate from moms.
if he is having a resource allowance taken from his SSA each mo to go to your mom, as she’s the community spouse, that gets transferred to her each month from his account.
TX has MMNA (monthly maintenance needs allowance) for type of resource allowance so IF mom say is kinda $567.89 short each month to reasonably cover her costs to live in the community, then $567.89 paid as the MMNA to her from dads monthly income. So instead of his NH getting all his monthly income less $60 personal needs allowance, it’s the $60 PNA he can keep AND mom gets $567.89 from him to her, so NH gets whatever is left over as the required by Medicaid copay. Ask the attorney if mom needing MMNA was looked at (TX has pretty high MMNA max, almost 3k). If atty says no, ask how / why they decided that. Seems often the CS forgets about their drug costs or a set aside for property maintenance on their home. Or atty fails to delve deep enough into the community spouses costs to live.
also TX has an annual renewal for LTC Medicaid. The letter - if it’s like my moms was - will come abt a mo before the initial eligibility happened the year before. State will want some of the very same info submitted the first time. Like his life insurance info, funeral preneed, plus last 3-4 months of last bank account statements and last tax assessor bill on house & car (as those are joint exempt assets), anything in his name that ended up producing 1099. And his award letter from SSA - this item is mucho importante. Renewal has a multi page questionnaire and ran about 25-28 pages of items needed for submission each year. So get a binder going to keep stuff in. I did not know that renewal was done & had put all my moms paperwork up in storage. (I DIY’d my moms Medicaid application) .State has like 14-21 day turnaround requirement on submission too. Fun weekend!
I don’t know what state will want from your mom as the community spouse. My TX Medicaid experience was for individual LTC NH Medicaid. But state is gonna want financials from her as well. Ask the atty for a copy of the 2019 questionnaires so you are all organized ahead of the curve. Good luck.