One of the questions I get is “Is it necessary to take care of your elderly parents as they age? And the answer is, of course no. But this raises the question of who will take care of your parents as they age and how will it be paid for?
In this country, we have a system of a variety of different levels of care for elderly people. This ranges from independent living apartments all the way to skilled nursing care. Now, the question of who pays for it is an important one. In this country, we do not have a solid social safety net for our elderly citizens. And so what that means is that there are typically three ways to pay for elderly care and long term care.
The first is that the elder, the senior, uses his or her assets to pay for nursing home care. The second is that if the senior has long-term care insurance and that long-term care insurance is activated, they could then use that long-term care insurance to pay for the cost of care. The third way is that they protect their assets so that they get qualified for medical for long term care or certain VA benefits such as aid and attendance benefits.
Quick Question Corner is a video segment where we answer common questions about estate planning and elder law. If you have similar questions, leave them in the comment section and we can feature them in one of our videos in the future.
