Working with estate planning attorneys who are familiar with Medicaid Planning in Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates may be one of the most important parts of your estate plan. There is no one size fits all plan for protecting your assets while also ensuring you can qualify for Medicaid benefits.  However, estate planning attorneys and advisors can assist you in determining which estate planning tools can benefit you most.  Some common examples of estate planning tools that can protect your assets while still allowing you to potentially qualify for Medicaid are Medicaid complaint annuities, third party supplemental needs trusts, special needs trusts, self-settled supplemental needs trusts and even irrevocable Medicaid trusts. 

In Schaumburg Medicaid planning an irrevocable Medicaid Trust, while not quite as common as special needs trusts and long-term care planning financial products, is still a tool that some people can benefit from. An irrevocable Medicaid Trust allows a party to transfer assets into the trust to be administered by a trustee, who is usually not the grantor or the grantor’s spouse, who holds the property pursuant to the trust agreement and as long as the transfer was made more than 5 years before the application for benefits is made those assets may be excluded from consideration by the state, and there is no penalty for transferring assets within the 5 year lookback period. 

 While there are downsides to an irrevocable trust, such as the dangers from transferring assets to a trustee before your death, careful estate planning may alleviate concerns related to these downsides.  The medicaid estate planning attorneys at Kelley, Kelley & Kelley have experience in elder law, medicaid planning, and estate planning and can discuss many options that may be available to you in order to meet your short- and long-term goals.  We work with estate planning clients in Schaumburg, Hoffman Estates, Bartlett, Streamwood, Arlington Heights and Barrington in addition to the Chicagoland area.