A lawyer I know is assisting a client seeking Medical Assistance to pay for his mother’s nursing home care. Mother has less than $2,500.
Prior to entering the nursing home, the client, as agent under mother’s power of attorney, assisted his mother by paying in-home care givers using mother’s funds. Such payments totaled $200,000 over a several year period. While doing so enabled mother to continue to reside at home giving her a better quality of life, at the insistence of the caregivers, such payments were made “under the table”. In other words, no employment taxes were paid for these care costs, and the payments were not reported to the IRS.
Client applied for Medicaid, which was denied because the caseworker improperly treated the $200,000 payments as gifts causing Medicaid ineligibility. In fact, such payments were payments for services. The client, on his mother’s behalf, contested the denial and the matter was set for a hearing before an administrative law judge.
Now the client is fearful that providing a sworn statement as to the reason for the payments will expose the client or his mother to potential civil or criminal liability relating to their failure to report the care giver payments to the IRS.
So, instead of running that risk, the client will withdraw his challenge to the denial of Medicaid benefits. That is unfortunate because the payments to the care givers clearly were not gifts.
This cautionary tale is but one example of the complex matters frequently addressed by elder law attorneys as they seek to guide their clients through the maze of public benefits law.