My father receives stock dividends from a profit sharing plan from his former employer. We failed to do a financial POA, only doing a medical and he now has Alzheimer's/dementia and is in an Alzheimer's facility. His dividends are deposited electronically to his bank account quarterly. I get his mail so I get the1099, but do not have access to the actual certificates(they are no where to be found) or ability to cash them in if we did find them. He does not have the mental capacity to do so either. In calculating current assets for Medicaid, will the value (which I don't know) be used as a resource?
You may just need to do creative math and work this out with the caseworker - although it may be high cotton finance for the initial caseworker. Does the quarterly dividend payment take dad over either his income maximum set by his state allowed monthly OR over the 2K in assets that medicaid allows? if its just a dividend and not actually ownership of a stock, he may just be able to keep getting the dividend without affecting Medicaid.
My mom -who was on NH Medicaid - had a very very old term life insurance policy - but was fully paid up. As such she was paid an annual dividend on it that was placed back into the value of the policy. The policy could not be cashed out as was a paid to beneficiary upon death policy. My mom got about $1800 a mo income which was under the $ 2,064 allowed as mo. income by Medicaid. But the month the dividend was paid, it took her over $ 2,064. So it would need to be amortized for the year for Medicaid reporting - which I did in the annual renewal for moms Medicaid. See if this approach can work! And as they can have up to 2k in assets, you just need to make sure that stays well under 2k every month especially the 4 times he gets paid a dividend.
The dividend problem is a lot like royalties (oil & gas & mineral) in that they get paid $ usually a teeny amount that is often totally variable but cannot sell their interest in as they do not own anything outright. Like there is no actual land or sections owned but what they have is like royalties on 1/32nd of 1/64th of a field operated by an exploration company. Its not Spindeltop! But both have to be reported as income for medicaid. O&G is even harder as often royalty is so low for years that there is no payments as no exploration done so decades can go by before payment are made. o&g is common enough that it's a line item on TX medicaid renewal just like dividends are.
The initial caseworker may have to send it up to a regional caseworker but I'd bet you can get it worked out.
If you do need to surrender them for cashing out, I would contact the HR department of his former employer, ask to speak to someone in the benefits area, and eventually work your way to whoever is handling the profit sharing plan. It would be advisable to get copies of the profit sharing plan and any other data relating to dividends he may still be receiving.
They may need certification of his Alz state as well as documentation affirming you're a relative for cash-out purposes.
I'm thinking though that since this is a company managed profit sharing plan, he probably completed initial forms designating beneficiaries. You may also be referred directly to the investment firm handling the plan, which I suspect will be the cae.
If you're or one of your relatives are named as beneficiary(ies), that would be like finding the legal pot of gold at the end of the profit sharing rainbow.