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June 19, 2008
SMALL VICTORY FOR SENIORS
For the past few years, seniors facing long term care at a nursing home have faced more and more restrictions on what they can do with their assets. The most devastating news was on February 8, 2006 when the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA) was passed. Has the deficit really gone down since this law was passed?
In plain English, the DRA said that if you end up in a nursing home, MassHealth will look at the last 5 years of your bank statements and look for gifts that you have made. If they find any, they will require that they be returned, and paid over to the nursing home. They want 5 years of bank statements! How many of you have copies of all of your checks that you have written over the past 5 years, as well as the bank statements for each and every bank account that you have?
Computers and online banking can allow you to print out old bank statements that you have lost, but that benefit is limited. My online banking will only retrieve statements for the past year. Not much help when MassHealth is asking for the last 5 years of statements. So what do you do?
The answer is that you can go down to the bank and ask them for copies of the bank statements and copies of each check. Now, getting older bank statements is not that bad, or should I say not that expensive. The costs start to add up when you ask for copies of all of your checks. The bank employee has to find each check, and the front and back gets printed out on a piece of 8 x 11 paper. This is very time consuming, and since you are paying the bank on an hourly basis to have this research done, it can become very expensive depending on the number of checks that you wrote. And since you are in the nursing home and don’t have any money left, where is the money going to come from to pay this expense? Usually the family foots the bill to provide this information so that you can become eligible for MassHealth. What happens when you don’t have any family nearby?
On June 4, 2008, Section 23A, Chapter 118E of the Massachusetts General Laws was changed to require banks to provide copies of bank statements and checks to MassHealth AT NO COST. The request must be signed by a representative of MassHealth and the Treasurer of any bank who refuses to honor this request will be fined $50. Finally, a small victory for seniors.
This article gives general information and not specific advice on individual matters. Persons wanting individualized advice on matters discussed should contact an advisor experienced in those matters. To the extent this article provides information on legal matters, it is based on law in effect in Massachusetts on the date of posting (laws in effect in other states are often quite different).
Ronald H. Surabian is a CPA and attorney who works at the Elder Law Center in Saugus, Massachusetts. He also holds Masters in accounting and a Masters in tax law. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. If you have any questions please call me at the Elder Law Center, One Essex Street, Saugus, MA 01906 (781)233-4444. To view this or any prior article, please visit our web site at www.elderlawcenter.org