Hi, I’m Wes Coulson and this is your elder law minute
One of the questions I’m asked a lot, whether you really need to have a lawyer help you with the Medicaid application, or whether you can just have a social worker or care facility representative help you with it.
You might think, being a lawyer, my quick answer would be you always should hire a lawyer. That’s not always the case, the case is, that it depends. I like to look at it like tax returns. If you’re filing a short form, not claiming any particular exemptions, just standard deductions, you don’t need to hire an accountant to do that. Now, if you’re saving $15,000 – $20,000 on your taxes because of tax tips that came from an accountant, the accountant better do the return. Same here, if you’ve done planning to protect assets, you want the lawyer to file the application for you. By the way, there might be a hint there on what’s the right way to go about this.
