How a Serious Illness Could Hurt Your Legacy
By Barry Zimmer on November 9th, 2017 in Uncategorized
Cincinnati Medicaid attorneys provide you with help preparing in case you fall in. A serious illness can have a profound impact on your life, and could affect your legacy in adverse ways. You don’t want to lose the chance to pass on the assets you have worked so hard for to the people you love just because you get sick.
You should work with Zimmer Law Firm to ensure you have appropriate plans in place to protect your money and family in case something happens to you. There are a few key ways that a serious illness could hurt your legacy, including the following different sources of loss caused by an illness that Zimmer Law Firm can help you to avoid.
A Serious Illness Could Mean You Cannot Manage Your Assets
If you become very sick, you may be unable to continue to manage your money and property. If there is no one put in charge to manage your assets, losses could occur due to neglect. You can use a power of attorney or other legal tools to name someone to manage your money and other property. One option is to create a power of attorney to name a trusted agent who will have a fiduciary duty to manage your assets in accordance with your best interests.
If you haven’t made some type of plan to make sure your assets are appropriately managed by a trusted person, your loved ones may need to go to court to pursue guardianship proceedings. This could also lead to loss, as guardianship proceedings cost money. The court could also appoint someone to manage your assets who you don’t think will be very good at it, and this could also undermine your ability to leave a legacy if losses occur as a result of the mismanagement of the appointed guardian. Zimmer Law Firm will help you to identify the right legal tools to keep wealth secure even if you’re too ill to manage it on your own.
A Serious Illness Could Mean You Need Costly Care
One of the biggest ways a serious illness could hurt your legacy is if the illness necessitates that you get long term care at home or that you move into a nursing care facility. Both long term care at home and nursing home care are not covered by insurance you’re likely to have, such as Medicare or private health insurance coverage or even Medicare supplementary plans. Unless you need skilled medical care in a special skilled nursing facility, Medicare will not pay anything at all for custodial care that you’re likely to need if an illness makes you unable to care for yourself.
This means if you require an aide to come to your home or if you need to move to a nursing home because you cannot take care of yourself any longer, you’ll have no coverage for bills that could total thousands of dollars monthly. You could spend your entire life savings and even end up selling some of the assets that should be a part of your legacy.
The best way for most people to avoid this is to get Medicaid to cover their nursing home care or long term care when such care becomes necessary. Medicaid will pay for the care you need in a nursing home or at home even if it is just routine care because you cannot handle activities of daily living any longer. However, you can only get Medicaid to cover you if you have few assets. This means you’d either need to impoverish yourself before getting covered – losing the chance to leave your legacy – or you would need to work with an attorney to make an asset protection plan so you can get covered and still keep your wealth safe.
Getting Help from Cincinnati Medicaid Attorneys
Cincinnati Medicaid attorneys at Zimmer Law Firm will work closely with you to ensure you have a plan in place to protect your wealth and get Medicaid to pay for your nursing home care as soon as care becomes required. We can also assist you with taking other asset protection steps so an illness does not affect your legacy, such as the creation of a trust so a trustee can begin to manage your assets when you get sick.
To find out all of the different ways our legal team can help you to protect your legacy, join us for a free seminar. You can also give us a call at 513.721.1513 if you are ready for personalized advice about the asset protection process or about making your Medicaid plan.