Category: Financial Strategies

Doing the Right Thing

Published by Joe Mersol

During the early years in my career with New York Life I had a client who placed his spouse in a facility due to not being able to provide the support necessary for her dementia. Unfortunately, he later went into a severe depression and developed a terminal condition himself. When I learned of his condition and the situation I looked over his account and noted that the beneficiary listed was his wife. This was a problem in that these assets, in the event of his passing, would be subject to his spouses spend down. What this means is that all of his assets would have been subject to Medicaid recovery and the kids may have received nothing as a legacy. By changing the beneficiary to the kids, the spouse (their mom), would qualify for Medicaid and the children's inheritance would not be subject to a claw back by Medicaid.

In order to get this all resolved as quickly as possible, I traveled to Maryland from Ohio and updated the beneficiaries of his New York Life assets and worked with transfer agents for individual stock positions protecting these assets from creditors and probate. These actions insured that assets they had worked for all their lives went to the people they loved.

Calculators

Newsletters

  • HOT TOPIC: Rescuing America’s Safety Net

    This article looks at the current fiscal outlook for the Social Security and Medicare programs and presents some potential changes that might help to strengthen them.

Subscribe to our Newsletter