Law Office of Donald D. Vanarelli Blog

A Medicaid applicant who made payments to her daughter for more than four years and claimed those payments were made to cover the cost of monthly payments for her mentally ill daughter’s rent could not prove the payments were made for a purpose other than to qualify for Medicaid because she did not prove that [...]

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Continuing Care Retirement Communities (“CCRCs”) are considered “a viable choice for relatively healthy seniors with upper-middle-class or upper-class incomes.” Begley, T. and Barrett, C., Representing the Elderly or Disabled Client, ¶9.03 at 9-10 (Thomson Reuters 2013). As described in a GAO report entitled “Older Americans: Continuing Care Retirement Communities Can Provide Benefits, but Not Without [...]

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A Rhode Island trial court holds that a niece who signed a nursing home admissions agreement on behalf of her aunt did not sign as a responsible party, and is therefore not personally liable for her aunt’s unpaid nursing home bill. Sunny View Nursing Home, Inc. v. Gorman (R.I. Super. Ct., No. KC 11-0491, Dec. 4, [...]

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New Jersey’s Medicaid rules are complicated, and seem like they’re always changing. One such change in the rules that occurs on a regular basis is the State Medicaid agency’s amendment to the Medicaid program’s “penalty divisor.”  On December 10, 2012, a Medicaid Communication, or notice, was released by the Division of Medical Assistance and Health [...]

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An appeals court in New Jersey held that a nursing home resident’s adult child who signed a nursing home admission agreement as the “Responsible Party” can be sued in his/her individual capacity for monies owed to the facility for services rendered to the resident if the adult child fails to use the resident’s financial resources [...]

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The cost for care in an assisted living facility (ALF) varies widely throughout the United States. You may have expected some states listed below to be expensive, but there are others with high costs which may surprise you. Is your state on the top 10  list for the most expensive yearly cost? 10. New Hampshire [...]

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Federal district court in New Jersey denied a Medicaid applicant’s request for an injunction directing the state to disregard his wife’s purchase of a life estate in their daughter’s home when determining his eligibility for nursing home Medicaid benefits.  The Court ruled that issues of fact were in dispute, preventing an injunction from being issued. [...]

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The Director of New Jersey Medicaid recently decided that, when a couple is institutionalized, the resources of the couple are not combined when determining Medicaid eligibility. Rather, the resources of each spouse must be considered separately.  Therefore, when only one spouse applies for Medicaid benefits and that spuse’s resources alone do not exceed the resource [...]

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For most of her life, V.P. resided in her home with her adult son, R.P. V.P. suffered from many significant impairments, including spinal scoliosis and other degenerative diseases of the spine, hypertension, diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux disease, anxiety, and frequent urinary tract infections. As a result of her poor health, V.P. relied upon her son R.P. [...]

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A New Jersey appeals court held that a Medicaid applicant who transferred money to her daughter and then a few months later received a life estate in her daughter’s home made a gift to the daughter rather than engage in a bona fide transaction involving the purchase of a life estate, resulting in the imposition [...]

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