The gift tax annual exclusion is the maximum amount which a taxpayer can gift each year to any beneficiary without being required to use his or her $1 million lifetime gift exemption amount. If gifts are limited each year to the annual exclusion amount established in the year of the gift, the person making the.. read more →

[I received the following email from the National Senior Citizens Law Center and affiliated groups concerning a survey being conducted in order to “raise awareness of the issues facing older adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (“LGBT”) and live in nursing homes, assisted living facilities and other long-term care facilities.” Because I believe.. read more →

In a matter involving personal service agreements, five petitioners brought a court action challenging determinations by the Oneida County and Herkimer County Department of Social Services (DSS) which denied Medicaid benefits to applicants who had executed personal service agreements while residing in a nursing home.  In each case, DSS found there had been a transfer.. read more →

Special needs trusts (also known as “supplemental needs” trusts) allow a disabled beneficiary to receive gifts, lawsuit settlements, or other funds and yet not lose his or her eligibility for certain government programs. Such trusts are drafted so that the funds will not be considered to belong to the beneficiary in determining eligibility for public.. read more →

An Opinion and Order was entered on October 20, 2009 by Administrative Law Judge Joseph A. Paone, in the consolidated matter of the Estate of F.L. v. Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services and the Union County Board of Social Services, OAL Docket No. HMA 13756-08.  The ruling in the Estate of F.L. case.. read more →

Sable v. Velez, Civ. No. 09-2813 (D.N.J., October 16, 2009), involved five applicants for nursing home Medicaid benefits. The applications filed by four of the five applicants were denied and one application was pending at the time of the court decision. Each denial was premised upon excess resources based upon the State’s decision to include certain.. read more →

In order to qualify for Medicaid benefits, applicants cannot possess assets which exceed the financial limits established in the program. In order to prevent applicants from wrongly achieving Medicaid eligibility by transferring their excess resources to others, Congress has established rules which impose a “transfer penalty”, or period of ineligibility for Medicaid benefits, whenever an.. read more →

Funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been late in getting approved by Congress in 20 of the last 23 years, which has affected the planning of veterans’ health care programs. This month, the President signed into law H.R. 1016, an act entitled The Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of.. read more →

Gov. Jon Corzine recently signed into law new legislation that requires fiduciaries of estates for developmentally disabled individuals to post bonds in Superior Court as a safeguard against theft and other improper conduct. The bill, S-550 , sponsored by Sen. Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, goes into effect in 60 days. S-550 requires that the amount of.. read more →

In A.P. v. Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court reversed a decision by the Bergen County Board of Social Services (BCBSS) that was affirmed by the Director of the state Medicaid agency, holding that the transfer of a family home to the sibling of two.. read more →

In June 2009, plaintiff, Daisy Jeanne Prall, applied for nursing home Medicaid benefits with the Ocean County Board of Social Services. To be eligible for Medicaid, plaintiff and her spouse, Christopher Prall, cannot own resources which exceed $111,560; $109,560 is the community spouse resource allowance and $2,000 is the institutionalized spouse resource allowance. Although the.. read more →

In these Monthly Roundups, I like to highlight my most popular blog posts from the preceding month.  The following hyperlinked titles identify the top 10 most accessed articles on this blog in September 2009, along with the original post date. The listed posts attracted the most traffic in the past month.  I also provide a short summary of.. read more →

Parkinson’s Disease, B Cell Leukemias and Ischemic Heart Disease Recognized WASHINGTON, October 13, 2009 – Relying on an independent study by the Institute of Medicine, Eric K. Shinseki, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),  established a presumption of service-connection for Vietnam Veterans suffering from three specific illnesses based on the latest evidence of.. read more →

In a case which resolved a conflict between two sections of the New Jersey Cemetery Act of 2003, the New Jersey Supreme Court recently ruled that a widow who claimed she was duped or misled into believing her husband wanted to be buried in his lineal family’s plot cannot move his remains, since New Jersey.. read more →

The House has voted to give the disabled, as well as gays and lesbians, federal protection from hate crimes. The new legislation also makes it a new federal crime to attack U.S. service members because of their sexual orientation. With passage by the Senate expected, federal prosecutors will, for the first time, be able to.. read more →

Yesterday, the New Jersey Supreme Court announced that it will require mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) for all lawyers admitted to practice law in New Jersey starting next year. Under the plan, attorneys licensed in New Jersey, including judges, law school professors and in-house counsel, will have to take 24 hours of continuing legal education.. read more →

Here is a unique idea from attorney/VA benefits estate planner Dale M. Krause on how a war-time veteran can reduce his or her net worth in order to attain eligibility for Veterans Improved Pension with either the Housebound or Aid and Attendance benefit supplement through the purchase of a Single-Premium Immediate Annuity, or SPIA: For.. read more →

Each of us who have been forced to admit a loved one into a nursing home or care facility due to chronic long-term illness hopes and expects that he or she will receive good care there. But what does good long-term care look like? Would we recognize good care if we saw it? An interesting.. read more →

Recently, The Wall Street Journal and Carolyn Elefant at MyShingle.com reported on a landmark study by the Gallup Poll of 100,826 working adults which examined how occupation affects happiness. In the study, business owners outranked 10 other occupational groups on a composite measure of six criteria of contentment, including emotional and physical health, job satisfaction,.. read more →

Limited public funds available for the disabled in New Jersey has forced government agencies to prioritize recipient needs, resulting in rules which impose severe restrictions on expenditures, like the “one computer per recipient lifetime” regulation highlighted in the following case. In Pichardo v. N.J. Department of Human Services (App. Div., October 1, 2009), Julia Pichardo.. read more →

Recent cases illustrate two important legal principals involving the right to resolve family disputes in New Jersey by voluntary, alternative dispute resolution procedures, such as arbitration and mediation, rather than trial. Our courts have held that parents have a fundamental and constitutionally protected liberty interest in raising their children, which includes the right to submit.. read more →