Caring for a spouse who suffers from physical and/or mental decline can be an overwhelming task. The healthy spouse often spends the majority of his or her time ensuring that the care needs of their spouse are met. Faced with this daily struggle, it is all too easy for the couple to put off the crucial task of reviewing and updating their estate plan. Below is a list of some of the important estate planning documents that should be reviewed and possibly updated under such circumstances.
1. Wills.
Spouses often have wills that leave all of their property to each other upon the first of their deaths. While such planning makes sense when both spouses are healthy, it may not be the most appropriate planning if one spouse would likely enter a long-term care facility if his or her spouse dies and is no longer able to care for him or her at home. Given the high cost of such care, many individuals often turn to Wisconsin’s Medicaid program to help pay for such care. However, this program has strict financial eligibility requirements that limit the amount of assets an individual can have and qualify for benefits. The program allows a married couple to keep additional assets when one of the spouses lives at home (a “community spouse”), but such protections are lost if the community spouse predeceases the spouse who resides in a long-term care facility. Without further planning, those additional assets would then need to be spent down on the spouse’s long-term care. One way to avoid this outcome is for the community spouse to update his or her will to leave such assets to a testamentary supplemental needs trust for the benefit of their spouse, rather than to their spouse outright. Current Medicaid law provides that assets held in such a trust are exempt and that funding such a trust is not considered a disqualifying divestment. This can also avoid a “divestment by death” since Medicaid law now considers it to be a divestment if a community spouse transfers assets for less than fair market value in the five years after (rather than just the five years before) his or her spouse becomes eligible for Medicaid. The assets in the trust are then available for the spouse’s benefit and any assets that remain at his or her death can be distributed to the couple’s children or other beneficiaries.
2. Marital Property Agreement.
Wisconsin is a marital property state and spouses can sign a marital property agreement classifying their assets as either marital property or the individual property of one spouse. While marital property agreements are disregarded for Medicaid eligibility purposes, they can be useful tools in protecting assets from estate recovery. Federal law requires every state to have an estate recovery program allowing for recovery of amounts paid on behalf of recipients for certain Medicaid benefits, including long-term care services. Due to a recent change in estate recovery law, estate recovery claims may now extend to marital property in a surviving spouse’s estate. Spouses may reduce the likelihood of a successful estate recovery claim by signing a marital property agreement classifying their assets as the individual property of the healthy spouse.
3. Durable General Power of Attorney.
A durable general power of attorney is used to appoint an agent to make financial decisions on your behalf. Generic durable general power of attorney forms are often missing important provisions that would allow the healthy spouse to engage in Medicaid planning as agent on behalf of the disabled spouse. Without these specific provisions, the agent is often prevented by law from engaging in such planning. The authority to make gifts is perhaps the most important power that should be included in a power of attorney for Medicaid planning purposes. Restrictions may be placed on this authority, such as the requirement that certain individuals in addition to the agent must consent to the gift, but if gifting authority is not otherwise included, or is limited by amount, the agent may not be able to implement necessary Medicaid qualification planning. Also, since marital property agreements can be important Medicaid planning tools as discussed above, allowing the agent authority to enter into or amend such agreements can be helpful and provide added flexibility for your spouse. It is also important to authorize the agent to create and fund certain types of trusts on a spouse’s behalf that may assist him or her in qualifying for Medicaid, such as special needs trusts and other irrevocable trusts. Finally, it can be beneficial if the agent has a limited ability to update beneficiary designations in case such designations need to be changed in response to such Medicaid planning.
4. Health Care Power of Attorney.
It is crucial that the spouse experiencing physical and/or mental decline has a health care power of attorney in place that authorizes his or her spouse (or another individual) as agent to make health care decisions on their behalf if they become incapacitated. Additionally, if the healthy spouse has the disabled spouse named as primary agent, he or she should consider whether to update his or her power of attorney to name a different primary agent who is in a better position to make such decisions, such as a responsible adult child or family friend.
The potential long-term care costs that accompany a spouse’s physical and/or mental decline make advance estate planning all that more important. In particular, if your spouse is diagnosed with dementia or the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, he or she may eventually lose their capacity to prepare or update estate planning documents. Accordingly, it is important that such estate planning documents be prepared and/or reviewed as soon as possible.
