Pay Your Parents' Bills or Else

Source: ABC News


Pay Your Parents' Bills or Else
Little-Known State Laws Force Some to Pay Their Parents' Nursing Home Bills


Could you be sued for your parents' unpaid health care bills? It happened to Andrea August.

One spring day, the 39-year-old Pennsylvania woman was stunned to learn that a nursing home was suing her for more than $300,000 in unpaid bills related to her father, who died after spending about a year in the home, and her mother, a dementia patient still living there.

"I was devastated," August said. "We're living basically paycheck to paycheck. We don't try to live beyond our means -- it was just unbelievable that all of a sudden there was this debt hanging over us."

August said that both she and her husband work two jobs each to make ends meet for themselves and their two children. She loves her parents, she said, and did what she could to help them. But footing their bills was out of the question.

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The comments at the end of the article are interesting - many wishing for universal health care and decrying expensive 'end of life' measures which most often serve to enrich the medical industry at the expense of the elderly and their family.

the *rent* on a small room and access to a community area is only a small portion of the total cost of a nursing home.

For one thing I would be willing to bet the daughter is occupying her parent's house. When people apply for medicaid assistance the SS administration will look back at the past five years to see if the mother/father have improperly gifted assets to children in an effort to bankrupt themselves or if they still have some assets.

I have watched for years as children illegally assume possession of their parents assets. They are then afraid to apply for assistance for fear that their illegal shenanigans will be revealed.

So, a lot of children move their parents into rest homes. The children say they will be responsible for her care. They pay the bill for a few months and then stop. What would you do if you were the rest home? They can't evict them but they need to be paid - either by the children or by medicaid.

I also wonder who is cashing the social security checks?

In said Nursing home and owe a bill, that bill should be paid by me and my two sisters.

that's the way it was when my dad died.

If they signed themselves in, perhaps not, but if they have ANYTHING of value that they might want to pass down, that will be attached by the state, if the state paid any part of their care.


in many states, you have to do any transfers of assets YEARS before . I think it's 4 years here.

In alphabetical order, they are Alaska, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and West Virginia.

eta: one word

:wtf:

I thought the notion that people were responsible for, or inherited the debts of, their parents was a primitive, barbaric notion that went out with the Enlightenment.

It's about forcing compliance so the parent can GET ON Medicaid...or recovering assets the parent gave away in order to avoid paying for their own care.



"Kennedy said that for most of his cases, he uses filial support lawsuits to persuade adult children to do the paperwork necessary to establish Medicaid eligibility for their parents. Most of the time, he said, the children being sued agree to help and aren't stuck paying their parents' bills.

In its statement, Suburban Woods said its first recourse is usually to apply for Medicaid coverage and to seek help from family members if a patient can't apply on her own."

We just lost our mother. We did hospice in a facility during the last month. We got advice (of course) and we were told that now states can go back 5 years to reclaim any funds withdrawn by family for indigent care. I love this law. My own father ripped off his mother to the tune of 500k and then dropped her in a welfare nursing home. I would love to see him jailed.

Why anyone would start hitting up ones parents accounts is beyond me.

Had to take it to a mediator with my lawyer and argue it out with the head of California's Health and Human Services (who was worried enough about a precedent that she came from 200 miles away to deal with it personally).

Won too, in no small part because our story was a feature article in the LA Times, and the state hates negative publicity.

I am a caretaker of my mom and she has dementia. I am concerned because time will come when she goes spirling downward and I will need help with her care. My two sisters and one brother are not helping me with her care and costs. Two sisters lost their jobs and my brother just had 30% pay cut by State of California so they're struggling. Mom lives in my house now and has been since last December. I am in Arkansas, but we both are natives of Florida and I plan on moving back there next year or so. Hope Florida will offer a better care for her. She gets $1,000 per month from SS which is all she gets. I have a pretty good income monthly from SSDI and pension which is a good thing, but would hate for a nursing home to take that from me for Mom's care??

assets, etc. Talk to Medicaid. They're not so scary.

"
August was more fortunate. Through Berman, she contested the nursing home's claim and in January, she and the nursing home reached a settlement that freed her of her parents' debts.

Part of the reason they were successful, Berman said, is because Pennsylvania's fillial support law states that adult children can only be held liable if they have the means to pay. August, she said, clearly didn't.

For now, August said she's grateful for how her case was resolved. But she's unhappy that Pennsylvania's fillial support law is being enforced and she hopes others are able to fight back against lawsuits based on the statute.

"People are just letting these default judgments go through," she said. "They need to realize if we don't stand up for ourselves we're going to be in debt for the rest of our lives for something that we didn't even do."
"

""Most people would rather cooperate then be held financially personally responsible," he said.

In its statement, Suburban Woods (me:the nursing home)said its first recourse is usually to apply for Medicaid coverage and to seek help from family members if a patient can't apply on her own.

Andrea August's lawyer, Linda Berman, said her client had already helped fill out Medicaid forms for her parents -- her particular case, Berman said, was more complicated than that. August said she never had power of attorney over her parents' assets and, before the lawsuit, thought that the nursing home and a guardian appointed to look after her mother had worked out how the bills would get paid.

August considers herself lucky -- her husband's employer had a legal coverage plan that allowed the couple to afford Berman's services. Many adult children hit with such claims, Berman said, can't afford legal representation and often get sacked with costly judgments. A Havertown, Pa. man tried representing himself in court against an $8,000 nursing home claim and lost, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

August was more fortunate. Through Berman, she contested the nursing home's claim and in January, she and the nursing home reached a settlement that freed her of her parents' debts.

Part of the reason they were successful, Berman said, is because Pennsylvania's fillial support law states that adult children can only be held liable if they have the means to pay. August, she said, clearly didn't.

For now, August said she's grateful for how her case was resolved. But she's unhappy that Pennsylvania's fillial support law is being enforced and she hopes others are able to fight back against lawsuits based on the statute.

"People are just letting these default judgments go through," she said. "They need to realize if we don't stand up for ourselves we're going to be in debt for the rest of our lives for something that we didn't even do."

ie, you have to show the patient has no wealth to cover the expenses on their own. Neither the nursing home nor the gov't can take hold of assets that are *clearly* your own and not recently transferred assets.

Technically you could have been estranged from them for the last 35 years, literally no contact, and some states have laws enabling them to come after your money.

See posts 3 and 34 on this threat

Her care cost on average of $5,000 per month. My Dad is now in that same unit and the cost has gone up to a little over $6,000 per month. They live in the midwest.

Do the research and apply for medicaid as soon as she is eligible. Good luck.

It only covers medically necessary skilled care.

In other words, if a person is in a long-term care facility, Medicare will cover prescription medications and doctor's visits and perhaps some physical therapy, but not the day-to-day charges of the nursing home to house, feed, bathe and give general care to their residents. Those are not medical expenses.

I would make sure you have all of the bills accounted for, that is what I am doing.

:mad:

This is the result of the past 30 years, where the likes of the Bill Frist family have taken health care down several notches while making the heralded bottom line the only thing that matters.

IS NOT A RIGHT. JUST THIS ONE ISSUE TELLS ME I WOULD NEVER, EVER VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN BECAUSE THAT IS THE WAY THEY THINK

Ron Paul is a better libertarian than he is a republican, imo.

He gets at least one thing right: the "war on terror." He gets many things wrong.

I support health care as a right. I always have.

I don't know why this topic makes you think of Ron Paul, and sets you to screaming. There are a hell of a lot of other politicians, Democrats as well as republicans, who are doing more to block authentic health care reform than he.

You might start with Max Baucus, if you want to kick some health-care killer ass.

He should lose his Doctors permit (license?) for THAT comment.

Children are financially responsible.

I had a couple of doctors and the hospital call me to ask if I would be responsible for her outstanding bills . . . I even had one guy try to lay a guilt trip on me, asking me if he wanted my mother to be a "deadbeat in death," or some such nonsense . . . said it was my "moral responsibility" to take care of these bills . . .

given that the total they'd collected already approached a half million bucks, I had no qualms about denying their request and sticking the lot of them for another three hundred grand -- give or take . . . especially when I went over the itemized bills I requested and found things like an asperin for $30, a pair of vinyl gloves for over $50, and a "specialized" foam mattress pad for $1,500 . . . nope, didn't bother me one little bit . . .

Basically for a large percentage of us this is the case: Work your whole life to build a nest egg and own a home. If you get sick, you will lose it all and have nothing to leave to your kids.