We live in WV. My mom has been in a nursing home for over a year using Medicaid. She is allowed $50 per month for personal care. Plus ...enough monthly to pay for her extra health insurance premium. She has a house. Her husband, my dad, has been deceased since 1988, and no one lives in her house. I, her son, am on her checking account so I can write checks for her qualified expenses. She has about $1,400 each month at this time in the account above her amount for the nursing home cost and allowed expenses per month. I wrote from her account a check for her real estate taxes for this year. Should I ask the state DHHR for that amount to be refunded to her? Also, I received recently a statement from her home insurance carrier for the premium due on that insurance. I know her house will be sold once she passes, and that entire amount will be taken as part of her estate since her medicaid expenses, while she's been in the nursing home, will be more than her entire estate is worth. My question is, is she required to keep home owners insurance on her house? If so, is that premium amount a qualified expense that I should ask DHHR to reimburse her for? Of course that amount is for several hundred dollars and would take most of the extra money she has left in her checking account.
But I can understand you wanting to keep the family home and not sell it. It all depends on the final cost that Medicaid would want. Right now no one knows what that will be. If the final bill is less than what the house is worth, then your Mom would have money to pass on to the family. On the other hand if the final cost for Medicaid is more than what the house is worth, all that caring for the house, winterizing it, property taxes, time used checking on the house, chasing out the mice that love vacant property, etc. would time you could never reclaim.
Your wife has an excellent idea, talk this over with an Elder Law Attorney to see what would be the best way to deal with the family home. He/She might have other ideas.
Yes, property taxes would have to be paid, otherwise the County or City/Town government would seize the property and sell it at auction. You definitely don't want that to happen.