A lot of folks will come to us with what’s called a community or healthy spouse. And unfortunately, that means one parent or loved ones in a facility, the other person or a loved one is able to stay at home in a community.
One of the best deductions we have is the protection of the House for the benefit of that healthy spouse. So the state of Ohio agrees that that person needs a place to live so the house can be exempt for their benefit, but that can be temporary. The biggest mistake we can make as practitioners is everybody forgets about the healthy spouse.
The fires in the kitchen. We’re rushing to the applications, as are very timely and time sensitive. But once the dust settles with the Medicaid application, I’ve got to get mom or dad to help the spouse back in the office. And we’ve got to update their wills, update their power of attorneys, update their beneficiaries, and talk about ways to protect them from if they get sick down the road.
Because in that situation, the state doesn’t think the spouse needs a house any longer or what happens when they pass away. Does Ohio gets to bite at the Apple first bite application. They’re going to take what we let them second bite more and more is becoming when we pass away. Known as the estate recovery process. So there are ways to minimize or eliminate estate recovery, but we’ve got to do some additional planning for the healthy spouse to do it.