New Gift Exemption Amount of $13,000 Can Help with Elder Law and Estate Planning

Add comment October 16th, 2009

Achieving Medicaid eligibility with Elder Law methods techniques is accomplished using a series of sophisticated planning tools. One of the most important techniques involves transferring assets to family members or to trusts, so that your total financial profile is within Medicaid’s eligibility requirements. One option for transferring money is by means of non-taxable and non-reportable gifts.

Under our tax laws, the annual gift allowance has been increased to $13,000.  What this means is that you can make a monetary gift of up to $13,000 per year to anyone you choose, without paying any gift tax, and without reporting it.  If you give a son or daughter $13,000 now, you have also removed that amount from your estate, and have avoided eventual estate taxes on it.

The beauty of this simple procedure is that you can make as many of these $13,000 gifts as you like each year.  For example, if you have three children and five grandchildren, you can transfer $104,000 ($13,000 x 9 = $104,000) to them free of gift or estate taxes, and help yourself to gain eligibility for Medicaid benefits.

A well-designed Elder Law plan achieves Medicaid eligibility and also commonly helps preserve assets for your heirs. Oftentimes, it allows them to receive or inherit cash and property they otherwise wouldn’t. Making non-taxable and non-reportable gifts is sometimes an important part of the plan.

There are additional considerations in using gift and other transfer strategies when in comes to Medicaid eligibility. You can get a preliminary overview of them here, depending on your particular situation. Your best option of course is to get a consultation with an experienced Elder Law attorney who can advise you appropriately.