We met with a new client last summer at a nursing home in Stoughton. Our client, Mrs. Perry, had suffered a stroke several months earlier and her Medicare benefits had recently ended. Mrs. Perry’s daughter, Kate, was her power of attorney and health care proxy. Kate contacted Oalican Law Group to assist with a spend down and MassHealth application.
We reviewed Mrs. Perry’s assets and learned that she had executed a life estate deed on her home in 2005 and had approximately $60,000 in assets. We recommended that Mrs. Perry prepay her funeral, open a burial account, pay privately for her care and transfer her remaining assets into a pooled trust for her benefit. Spending her assets in this way allowed Mrs. Perry to benefit from her assets in a more significant way than simply paying privately for her care.
We gave Kate our verification list to begin obtaining the necessary documents for the MassHealth application. Over the next few weeks, our attorneys assisted Kate in organizing the application to be filed. After preparing a cover letter, we filed the application with the local MassHealth Enrollment Center. We continued to work with the MassHealth Enrollment Center over the next few months until the application was approved. In the meantime, we communicated with the nursing home to assure them that the application was making progress.
After we received the approval, Kate called our office to thank us. “I could never have managed dealing with the nursing home and MassHealth Enrollment Center. Working with your firm allowed me to concentrate on my mom’s care completely.”