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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A federal district court in New Jersey holds that an annuity purchased by the spouse of a Medicaid applicant with the couple’s countable resources which exceeded the resource limit under Medicaid is not a transfer for less than fair market value for purposes of Medicaid eligibility. Carlini v. Velez (U.S. Dist. Ct., D.N.J., No. 12-7290 (JEI/KMW), [...]

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Fully Developed VA Claims The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has implemented a new process designed to expedite claims for VA benefits having all information required by the agency and all required supporting  evidence. The new process, officially titled in 38 CFR §20.1509(a) as the “Expedited Claims Adjudication Initiative-Pilot Program,”  is unofficially called the Fully [...]

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New Jersey appeals court ruled that a Chancery court’s order holding that certain trust expenditures “shall not” act to deprive the beneficiary of any Medicaid benefits should a Medicaid application be made, exceeded the court’s subject-matter jurisdiction because New Jersey’s Medicaid agency, the Division of Medical Assistance and Health Services (DMAHS), was the single state [...]

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In recent years, applicants for Medicaid benefits in New Jersey have been incorrectly denied eligibility as a result of including as “countable income” the applicants’ Veterans Administration Improved Pension (“VAIP”) benefits awarded pursuant to 38 U.S.C. § 1541(d)(1) for unreimbursed medical expenses (“UMEs”). New Jersey’s Medicaid agency, the Department of Medical and Health Services (“DMAHS”), [...]

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On Saturday, April 27, 2013, I presented a session on the impact of elder law issues on divorce mediation at the 2013 Annual Divorce Mediation Seminar by the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators. The topics covered in my session included Social Security, including retirement, disability and survivors benefits, Supplemental Security Income benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, [...]

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is causing Medicaid applicants to be incorrectly denied benefits due to the way the federal agency is reporting the VA pension benefit to state agencies for the purpose of determining Medicaid eligibility. In that regard, the VA is issuing letters to state Medicaid agencies which breakdown the VA benefit [...]

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In the event of a Medicaid denial as a result of an unauthorized transfer or gift to a third party, one avenue of redress that may be available to a Medicaid applicant is to seek a waiver of the penalty based upon the “undue hardship” exception in the Medicaid regulations. The standards under which a [...]

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Below, courtesy of the ElderLawAnswers website, is the annual roundup of the top 12 elder law decisions decided by federal and state courts in 2012. The cases were selected based upon readership as measured by the number of readers who “clicked through” to the full story in the website’s Weekly and Monthly e-letters. Links in [...]

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For years, clients have asked about pension benefits available from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Because of this consistent client interest, I’ve written about VA pension benefits with Housebound or Aid and Attendance Supplement in many blog posts over the years. However, one issue I haven’t blogged about yet involves calculating the amount of [...]

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