by Lectroman » Tue Feb 12, 2013 04:04 pm
My mother recently passed away, she was the beneficiary of my Father's IRA/Retirement plan,( he passed away in 2008). We were told not to accept the benefits from the plan since she was on Medicaid and they would confiscate the value of the Plan anyway, so when my mother passed her heirs would have some estate value. What are the Medicaid rules on this? Can the distribution be taken now to her estate, and be passed on to her children, or will it still go to the State?
Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2013 12:23 pm Post Subject:
We were told not to accept the benefits from the plan
You and your now-deceased mother received very bad advice. Who gave you/your mother this advice? A friend? An accountant? An attorney?Medicaid is a federal-state partnership that operates as a "share of cost" program, and a person who has available income and/or assets is expected to share the cost of their care in order to receive Medicaid assistance with their monthly medical/long term care expenses. There are strict tests of income and assets that must be met on a monthly basis.
Hiding assets in order to qualify for Medicaid is a federal offense. Unless lawfully protected (the "rules" governing "Excess Income" are extremely narrow), all available resources are supposed to used to pay for a person medical/long term care expenses on a monthly basis before Medicaid pays $1. There is a $35 monthly "allowance" provided, but beyond that personal income and assets must be consumed to cover one's "share of cost" until only a specific residual amount of assets remains.
Persons over age 55 receiving Medicaid trigger a mechanism known as "asset recovery" and every dollar of medical/long term care expense paid for by Medicaid is recoverable by the State (a requirement of federal law) from the estate of the deceased Medicare recipient. The first place they look is to the value of a home owned by the decedent, followed by retirement plan assets, investments, and other "countable" assets that may have been temporarily "exempt" from the spend-down test during your mother's lifetime.
If there are no assets, not a problem. there is nothing to recover and the State goes on to the next case. But if there are recoverable assets -- even those which may have been exempt while living (such as a home), the State is now entitled, and must attempt, to recover up to 100% of the money it spent on that decedent's health care expenses.
While the Medicaid money seems like "free money", it is not. It should be understood to be a no interest loan payable upon death. There is a price to be paid for extending one's hand in search of federal money to pay for health care expenses.
This situation is made a bit more complex because of the IRA. Following the death of an IRA owner, the assets of an IRA must be distributed within 5 years of that person's death. The Internal Revenue Code permits a spouse beneficiary to adopt the IRA as his/her own and avoid any distributions until their own age 70-1/2. All other beneficiaries are under the 5-year distribution rule.
But if receiving Medicaid, that person must use the IRA assets to pay for their share of the cost of health care expenses. Medicaid dollars are not supposed to be spent on "wealthy" persons who have the resources and can afford to pay for their care.
You may be fortunate when it comes to the five-year distribution rule, since your father's death occurred in 2008. If later than today's date in 2008, you still have a short time remaining to distribute the proceeds. But unless your mother legally disclaimed her role as beneficiary, those IRA assets were supposed to be reported to Medicaid as available "income" and used to meet the monthly "spend-down tests" of assets and income to be eligible for Medicaid.
Can the distribution be taken now to her estate, and be passed on to her children, or will it still go to the State?
If your mother legally disclaimed the IRA, then that asset already belongs to someone else, not her estate, so the heirs are not going to receive it, except by gift from the owner of the IRA, which could result in gift tax liabilities to that new owner. But it does not sound, from your post, like that is what happened.
It sounds like the IRA assets were simply left wherever they are today, all the while hidden from Medicaid despite being in your mother's countable asset column, as the spouse beneficiary of your father's IRA account.
Even though the State may have been unaware of the presence of the asset, it still has a de facto lien against it. And if distributed to the estate now, and subsequently passed on to the heirs, it remains recoverable from the heirs, potentially with penalties. Medicaid has the right to audit its expenditures with regard to undisclosed "Excess Income" and recover money it was not supposed to have spent, even if several years ago, and it may recover that money from persons who "wrongfully" received it.
There is yet another, and even more serious, potential problem involving the IRS lurking in the background. Your post does not indicate what your mother's age was. If your mother was beyond age 70-1/2, then she was required to take money from the IRA every year.
These are "Required Minimum Distributions" (RMDs) that were supposed to be taken beginning not later than April 1 of the year following the year a person turns age 70-1/2. Failure to take RMDs results in a 50% tax penalty for every year the RMD was not taken and remains in the account (failure to take an RMD in two consecutive years = 100% penalty, three years = 150% penalty). There are potentially thousands of dollars now owed to the IRS if there were RMDs not taken.
You have so many potential problems in so many different directions that you need to seek the advice of a certified estate planning attorney. Whatever advice they might have given during your mother's lifetime is not the same advice they will need to give now. The situation has dramatically changed, probably for the worse.
Add your comment