Living Trust and Medicaid: What To Know - Davies Law Firm

From Davies Law Firm - Living Trust and Medicaid: What To Know explores how living trusts affect Medicaid eligibility in New York and why the difference between a revocable trust and an irrevocable trust can determine whether your home, savings, and other assets remain available for your family. This episode explains why Medicaid treats assets in a revocable living trust as countable, how a properly drafted irrevocable trust may help preserve assets, and why New York’s five-year look-back period is central to long-term care planning.

The discussion breaks down important Medicaid planning rules for Syracuse families, including New York Estates, Powers and Trusts Law EPTL § 7-1.16, New York Social Services Law § 366, 42 U.S.C. § 1396p, and how the New York State Department of Health calculates penalty periods using regional nursing home rates. Listeners will learn how transfers to a spouse, a blind or disabled child, a caregiver child, a sibling with an equity interest, or a trust for the sole benefit of a disabled individual under age 65 may be treated under Medicaid rules.

Davies Law Firm also explains how Medicaid estate recovery works through the Local Department of Social Services and why assets passing through probate may be exposed to recovery claims. The episode highlights how a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, or MAPT, can help families in Syracuse, Onondaga County, Central New York, Cayuga County, and Madison County retain a family home, protect savings, preserve eligibility options, and potentially maintain benefits such as the STAR exemption when the trust is drafted and funded correctly.

Attorneys Frederick P. Davies and William P. Davies bring decades of estate planning, elder law, Medicaid, tax, military, and academic experience to this conversation. With backgrounds connected to the University of Vermont, Syracuse University College of Law, the United States Navy JAG Corps, the New York Air National Guard, the United States Air Force Reserve, Albany Law School, the University of Miami Law School, and Davies Law Firm’s office at 210 E Fayette St in Syracuse, this episode offers families a clear overview of how early trust planning can protect what they have worked a lifetime to build.

Davies Law Firm

210 E Fayette St, Syracuse, NY 13202, United States

(315) 472-6511

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