A New Jersey appeals court held earlier this month that a Medicaid applicant’s transfer of assets occurred when the checks she wrote were cashed, not when they were written, so the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) applies to the transfer and the penalty period begins when the applicant would have been otherwise eligible for benefits if not for the transfer.
M.M. wrote several checks to her family before and after she entered a nursing home in January 2006. Because there were not sufficient funds in M.M’s checking account, she asked her family not to cash the checks until her CDs could be liquidated and deposited into the account. The CDs were deposited on February 13, 2006 and the checks were cashed soon after. In the interim, Congress passed the DRA, which made several changes to Medicaid law.
M.M. applied for Medicaid on November 1, 2007. Because M.M. had made an unauthorized transfer of assets within the look-back period, the state applied post-DRA law and determined she was ineligible for benefits until September 30, 2008. Under prior Medicaid law, the penalty period for an unauthorized transfer began on the first day of the month in which a Medicaid applicant transferred the assets. However, under the DRA, the penalty period begins on either the date of the transfer or the date on which the applicant would otherwise become eligible for Medicaid benefits but for the transfer, whichever is later. M.M. appealed to court, arguing that because she wrote the checks before the DRA passed, pre-DRA law should apply.
The New Jersey Superior Court, Appellate Division, affirmed the denial of Medicaid benefits, holding that the transfer of assets occurred when the checks were cashed, not when they were written, so the DRA applies. The court noted that any time before the checks were actually cashed, M.M. could have changed her mind and not deposited money into her account.
The M.M. v. Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services case is annexed here – mm-v-dmahs
Categories
- Affordable Care Act
- Alzheimer's Disease
- Arbitration
- Attorney Ethics
- Attorneys Fees
- Beneficiary Designations
- Blog Roundup and Highlights
- Blogs and Blogging
- Care Facilities
- Caregivers
- Cemetery
- Collaborative Family Law
- Conservatorships
- Consumer Fraud
- Contempt
- Contracts
- Defamation
- Developmental Disabilities
- Discovery
- Discrimination Laws
- Doctrine of Probable Intent
- Domestic Violence
- Elder Abuse
- Elder Law
- Elective Share
- End-of-Life Decisions
- Estate Administration
- Estate Litigation
- Estate Planning
- Events
- Family Law
- Fiduciary
- Financial Exploitation of the Elderly
- Funeral
- Future of the Legal Profession
- Geriatric Care Managers
- Governmental or Public Benefit Programs
- Guardianship
- Health Issues
- Housing for the Elderly and Disabled
- In Remembrance
- Insolvent Estates
- Institutional Liens
- Insurance
- Interesting New Cases
- Intestacy
- Law Firm News
- Law Firm Videos
- Law Practice Management / Development
- Lawyers and Lawyering
- Legal Capacity or Competancy
- Legal Malpractice
- Legal Rights of the Disabled
- Liens
- Litigation
- Mediation
- Medicaid Appeals
- Medicaid Applications
- Medicaid Planning
- Annuities
- Care Contracts
- Divorce
- Estate Recovery
- Family Part Non-Dissolution Support Orders
- Gifts
- Life Estates
- Loan repayments
- MMMNA
- Promissory Notes
- Qualified Income Trusts
- Spousal Refusal
- Transfers For Reasons Other Than To Qualify For Medicaid
- Transfers to "Caregiver" Child(ren)
- Transfers to Disabled Adult Children
- Trusts
- Undue Hardship Provision
- Multiple-Party Deposit Account Act
- New Cases
- New Laws
- News Briefs
- Newsletters
- Non-Probate Assets
- Nursing Facility Litigation
- Personal Achievements and Awards
- Personal Injury Lawsuits
- Probate
- Punitive Damages
- Reconsideration
- Retirement Benefits
- Reverse Mortgages
- Section 8 Housing
- Settlement of Litigation
- Social Media
- Special Education
- Special Needs Planning
- Surrogate Decision-Making
- Taxation
- Technology
- Texting
- Top Ten
- Trials
- Trustees
- Uncategorized
- Veterans Benefits
- Web Sites and the Internet
- Webinar
- Writing Intended To Be A Will
Vanarelli & Li, LLC on Social Media