| Want to know about the paperwork regarding the five-year lookback? If so, read on…
CLIENT QUESTION:
I am a current client with a Medicaid Trust. My understanding is, in the case of Medicaid paying for a nursing home, there is a five-year lookback for all assets transferred into our trust and for assets transferred to others outside our trust. On several of our banking accounts, we use online banking which includes paperless statements. If either of us had to go into a nursing home would we need to contact the financial institution to provide paper copies of our statements for the previous five years of our start date of going into a nursing home?
In addition, any paper statements for CDs in the trust we receive now are mailed to the trustee, can the mailing address of those statements be our address? Thanks.
MY RESPONSE:
As you know, the five-year lookback is essentially an audit period. When you apply for Medicaid, you must provide five years of records from every account you have had in the last five years, including all accounts held in the trust. If you have adopted the modern methods of online transactions, you will not have five years of paper statements at home, but rather they will all be online…somewhere in the CLOUD no doubt. Unfortunately, Medicaid is still operating in the dark ages and you will have to provide them with five years of monthly PAPER statements. You bring them to us and we present them to Medicaid. We can also assist you if you are having trouble obtaining the paperwork.
As to your second question, the address where the statements are mailed is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that your name has been off the account as OWNER for the last five years.
I hope this helps!
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