My mom passed away 7 months ago and I have not been contacted yet. My mother was in a nursing home for about 5 years due to dementia on long term care coverage from Medicaid in Louisiana. She passed away in February. I expected Medicaid to contact me by now to look at a possible Estate Recovery. The only asset my mom has is a special needs trust account with less than $5,000 left in it. She also had a small life insurance policy with me and my 2 siblings listed as the beneficiaries. We are hanging on to the trust account and the life insurance money due to a possible estate recovery. My questions is, when should I expect to be contacted by Medicaid for an estate recovery? How will I know if they are not planning on performing an estate recovery? Is there a statute of limitations? i.e. is there a period of time where as if I do not hear from Medicaid then I can assume there will be no estate recovery?
So who was the person on file for mom? Who got her eligibility notices? If mom needed to do a re-eligibility who got the correspondence from the state on this? They would have gotten the letter of intent IF one was even sent.
Did mom own a home? If she didn't, then it could be that she is viewed as having no probatable assets so no letter of intent to be done. Probate is how in theory estate recovery is to be done. The insurance policy payout is outside of probate - the beneficiaries get the $ as per policy and none of this is an asset of the estate unless the estate was named the beneficiary. The trust, well read the trust documents carefully to see what happens and how it defunds. Trusts are their own legal entity so mom died but the trust didn't die now did it?. My guess is it too probably isn't an asset of the estate so not recoverable. I'd ask the attorney who did the trust as to it's status and how to defund.
How was her funeral paid? It could be the 5k trust was viewed as funds dedicated for that.
Also MERP has to meet a cost benefit / cost efficiency analysis to be done. Estates under a certain amount (varies by state) will not meet the requirement to be cost effective so no recovery done.
Go and have a nice brunch and order moms favorite foods & beverage and toast her with the life insurance $! And divide out the rest.
Mom did own a home. When she was no longer able to live alone the house was sold for $90,000. Half of the proceeds went towards the purchase of a bigger home for me to be able to move mom in with me and my family. The other half of the proceeds went into a Special Needs Trust. Medicaid approved both transactions as long as we conveyed the $45,000 interest of my home to my mom which we did.
The funeral was paid out of the SNT account. As mentioned, the only assets are the balance of the SNT and the $45,000 ownership in my home.
It actually made 7 months yesterday that mom passed. So, not sure what not hearing from MERP means. At some point, we are interested in purchasing a new home but I am concerned about doing so with the unknown of MERP as it relates to my mother's ownership in my home.
My biggest concern is having this hang over my head for the rest of my life if MERP never contacts me. That's why I was wondering if there is a statute of limitations.