My mother passed away in July after being in the NH for about ten months. No ne ever told us about MERP. Now we have received papers from MERP saying we owe like $28,000 for Medicaid. They wanted to know about my mother's house and vehicle. I told them we had already sold them and they asked for how much. I told them and I am now waiting on a call from the case manager. What should I do? I have one sibling that lives on disability and there is no way they can pay back their portion of the estate. Like others of us have used that money to pay for personnel reasons. There is an will but we never had it probated because we thought there was no reason to do so. What should we do? Is MERP going to sue us or what. We sold the house before the papers ever got to us. We sold the house for less than the county has it valued because it was not worth $13,550 like the county said it was. So we sold for $10,000 and the vehicle for $1500. What do you think they MERP do to us if some of us can't give the money back?
Freqflyer - your right suing NH is worthless action. NH forwarded mail to whomever was on file as DPOA or family contact. That is all they are responsible to do.
LS - Within TX Medicaid application is a blocked in " achnowkedgemnt of participation" statement & agreement that refers to MERP. Whomever in the family who did the application or was the DPOA & was the contact person for TXDHHS for your mom -(if the application was done after march, 2006) - had this within the application which someone signed off on. Also TX does an annual renewal that has it as well. The "we didn't realize" excuse doesnt work as the acknowledgement is there. The ? then becomes who in the family was moms point person or DPOA for Medicaid, that is the person who should be taking the lead in all this. If it was you, then find the paperwork for moms admission into the NH to review all this.
So just exactly When was the house & car sold? Was this done when she was alive & signed off by the DPOA? Or was it after she died? I've reread your posts & it's not clear what the timeline is on all this.... If this was done after grannie died, I just don't see the sale of the house being a valid sale as you have to go thorough some sort of legal process (probate, muniment, affavavit, lineal heirship) to get a release to do this. Your lucky that this is a super low value property so the amount you all can be sued for by the son of a friend who bought it is low. The buyer is going to be really not happy as this property that they in good faith bought has clouds on the title so no clear title available to them to get a HELOC or other equity lending on the house.
Or was the house & car sale done before death? And family split $? And Medicaid was not told of the sale?
Which path was done (sold before death or sold after death) will make a huge difference on your options in this hot mess in my not-an-atty opinion.
I hope the atty has experience in both probate, real estate & MERP.
Who is given as the executor of the will that was not probated? Whose name was on the title of the house? I am surprised that the title could be transferred without probating the will if your mother was the owner.
So you were the one who got the"letter of intent" from HMS right?
Have you gotten the one with the questionnaire & filled that one out with the sale details, her banking & insurance details and mailed this one to HMS as well?
Ok couple of ?'s:
You say you did not open probate, so did you do a small estate affidavit or a muniment of title instead?
How did you "sell" the house & to whom?
Was this a FSBO or with a Realtor & MLS listing? Or sold to one of those " we buy ugly houses" outfits or to family or a neighbor?
What was the last tax assessor total value on the property. Like the one mailed out last October for the taxes due January of this year?
Who were the heirs and are any besides your brother federal low income or disabled. Like do you work & get an income?
Yiur answers will make a difference in what could happen.