The nursing home took her SSI, bank accounts and savings that were in 3 kid's names, went through all the Medicaid documents as they wanted and she was still denied in the end of her life. Now the nursing home wants her daughter to pay them her amount due. No POA assigned, just daughter helping her with care. Is the daughter accountable for her bills?
Now if the now deceased mom was the only person who signed off on all the paperwork then whatever bills would now be a debt of her estate and unfortunately her estate has no assets so too bad, so sad for those debt collectors. Although they will seek out to try to affix the debt onto family members if they can.
Medicaid does not take funds belonging to non-applicants. That just does NOT happen; in my experience Medicaid is really good at reviewing income & assets. If Medicaid did take from “in 3 kids names”, my guess is that these bank accounts funds were commingled so ownership gets viewed as being able to be considered available to all on the account….. so mom was over resourced for LTC Medicaid income & asset limits. She got denied.
By commingled, it would be like if a Sister had her paycheck going into an account that mom was a co-owner on so all that $ could be viewed as moms resource unless you are able to clearly show Sissys work / tax details to pull the $ out. Not really a DIY for most of us to deal with. It’s needs LTC savvy Medicaid elder law atty to shepherd the application. or a State n & his mom shared a savings account with both their social security numbers attached to it as co-owners, not as she only as a signatory on it.
If she signed nothing, other than being the contact person, she nor any of her siblings owe anything. If there is no money left, there is no estate. If she had a home, thats an asset and needs to be sold to pay the NH.
It does not matter if bank accounts have joint owners (other than spouse) or a Will, when a person is asking the government to pay for nursing care their assets need to be spent before the government will step in. Wills are just in case u die before u spend ur money. If Mom wanted her bank access set up so certain people got them, then they should have been done as beneficiaries.
If she had no money left at her death, then return bills "Deceased; left no estate". No one else has to pay her bills.
Her money went to pay for her care, which is what we save our money for, to pay the bills for our care at the end of our life.
If there is no estate beyond a certain amount probate doesn't even have to be filed. So check the laws of your own state.
So very sorry for your loss and am wishing you the best.