Can a widow's pension be protected from nursing home costs?
If your mother's nursing home stay is covered by Medicaid, her Social Security payments are automatically used to help pay for her care. If she also gets a veterans pension, that money, too, goes into the pot of total monthly income used to pay for her nursing home care.
Medicaid does have a provision allowing a nursing home resident to keep a burial fund of up to $1,500. The veterans pension could be used for such a fund once your mother's other burial insurance coverage runs out.
Under some circumstances, Medicaid allows some money to be set aside to pay for the "personal services" of a family member who helps care for an elder. This has to be a reasonable amount paid for legitimate care, and should be spelled out in a written personal services contract. But this type of arrangement is almost always approved by Medicaid only for people who get home care, not for people in nursing homes. That's because it's presumed that the nursing home takes care of all resident needs. You can't be paid simply for visiting your mother. As for getting paid for taking her food, you would probably have to have a doctor or licensed nutritionist certify that for health reasons your mother needs to eat your food rather the food served by the nursing home.
My son-in-law sent me an advertisement that might prove helpful. I'm not benefitting from this referral in any way.
If you do a Google search for March 30, 2010 and Financial Update: You might find the ad. It also says 3 Proven Strategies For Saving Your Home and Protecting Your Life Savings From Devastating Nursing Home Costs.
They gave a phone number: 800-499-6747.
Let us know what you find out.
