As we kick off the new year it is a good time to take a look back at 2007.

I am proud of what this site accomplished in 2007. Starting with no visitors as all sites do and moving up to 600 visitors a month is great, and exceeded my expectations. I appreciate everyone that stops by and takes the time to get educated about Connecticut estate planning and elder law issues. I hope you find the information here valuable and will visit again.

The most popular posts of 2007 were:

1. Estate Planning for Title 19;
2. 9 Questions to Ask BEFORE Entering a Nursing Home;
3. Revocable Trusts and Connecticut Medicaid;
4. Title 19 Penalties and Gifts;
5. Myths and Realities of Living Trusts in Connecticut.

Five is enough. I won’t bore you with a top ten.

I’m already working on making 2008 a great follow-up to what we accomplished in 2007. Stay tuned for details. Have a happy and healthy new year.

Apparently there is a lot of bad asset protection planning for Connecticut Medicaid Title 19 benefits going on out there. Asset protection can be very tricky. The wrong word in the wrong place can wreak havoc with a client’s goals and leave you with no protection. The right word (or omission) in the right place can conversely protect hundreds of thousands of dollars. Another case that went to judgment in Connecticut Superior Court highlights a common oversight when it comes to estate planning – flawed language leading to inadequate asset protection.

Rome v. Wilson-Coker (Ct. Super. Ct., No. HHBCV064012367S, Oct. 24, 2007).

Marjorie Rome is bipolar with a history of institutionalizations. She needs help and a certain level of benefits to receive treatment for her condition. Presumably with good intentions and a desire to help Marjorie, her father created a trust for Marjorie in his will. The trust was based on the model of a discretionary trust which vested discretion in the trustee to make or refuse distributions for Marjorie’s benefit.

Unfortunately, for some reason which I fail to comprehend, the trust language directed the trustee to make distributions as necessary for Marjorie’s “interest and general welfare, even to the extent of exhausting the entire Trust estate.” This is a big blunder if you want to include asset protection in your estate plan or trust and it cost the Rome family.

So eventually Marjorie entered a nursing home and applied for Medicaid. The Department of Social Services denied her application based on their determination that her father’s trust was available to Marjorie as an asset. The Trustee thought it was a good idea to deny distributions to Marjorie for nursing home costs, mistakenly believing that he actually had real discretion to do so.

Marjorie Rome later pleads her case to the Superior Court claiming that the trust is not available because the Trustee is refusing to make distributions to her. The court recognizes that the flawed language in her father’s trust gives Marjorie a right to compel distributions from the trust even if the Trustee refuses.

Her father made a mistake in his estate plan, and Marjorie had to pay for it. If you are looking for asset protection, do everything you can to make sure it works.

Just how good is Connecticut’s Title 19 Medicaid program? The answer depends on what criteria you are looking at. According to a study by a nationally known, independent public interest group, Public Citizen, Connecticut ranked 19th out of our 50 states when you consider all the criteria they used.

The study, titled “Unsettling Scores: A Ranking of State Medicaid Programs“, provides a useful measuring stick to compare Connecticut’s Medicaid program with the programs run by other states throughout the country. Most disturbing in the study is that Connecticut ranked 36th in terms of quality of care. Interestingly, Connecticut ranked 10th in terms of fee reimbursement to health care service providers.

Hmmm, it seems many providers may be providing sub-standard quality of care to Medicaid recipients but the State of Connecticut is good at making sure they get paid fast. Maybe someone in the legislature will read this study and a light bulb will go off that some of their energy and resources should be directed to quality of care issues.

Estate planning documents can be confusing, hard to follow in some cases.  There are a lot of moving parts and important decisions contained in the language of each document.  Where do you begin to make sure your old estate plan reflects your current goals and needs?

I mentioned in this post that I was going to do something to help you decipher and understand your estate plan.  I’ve designated September as “Know Your Estate Plan” month here on the Connecticut Medicaid & Estate Planning Blog.  Each week in September I will feature an article on a basic core element of every estate plan.  Hopefully by the end of the month you will have a clearer understanding of your estate plan and can be confident it accomplishes your goals.  If you are concerned about your estate plan after reading this series, I will be offering one estate plan review free of charge to a selected reader, a $350.00 value.

This series will bring us up to my Medicaid Protection workshop in October which will discuss strategies to protect assets from nursing home costs after the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and subsequent changes to Title 19 Medicaid protection laws here in Connecticut.