Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

For what purpose? Themoney is for your mother's care, not your inheritance, and not for the attempt to avoid medicare.

Why do you need the money? If it is the name of the trust, you should just keep it there and pay for your mother's expenses as you go.

If you are trying to qualify your mother for Medi-Cal benefits, you need to seek specific advice from an attorney. However, with $33,000 it may be best to have your mother placed in a nice facility, use the funds to pay for it until they are exhausted and then qualify her for Medi-Cal.

But again, it is best if you speak with an attorney to make sure any Medi-Cal planning is done correctly.

Contact an elder law attorney in your area that does Medi-Cal planning as soon as you can. It's possible to shelter almost all of your mother's excess assets to qualify her for Medi-Cal without having to spend the remains of her life savings on private pay nursing home bills.

However, you can't just remove money from your mother's accounts - your mother's power of attorney must specifically authorize gifting if you do the transfers, otherwise it's just theft. Also, you can't just transfer $33,000 all at once - that would trigger a four-month transfer penalty period. This transfer penalty can be minimized by breaking the gift apart into smaller gifts, but you really shouldn't do any of this without the help of an elder law attorney.

While I appreciate the opinions of the lawyers who say that you should spend down all of the money and then qualify for Medi-Cal, once your mother is on Medi-Cal benefits she will be allowed to keep only $35 of her monthly income - the rest all goes to the nursing home as share of cost. By sheltering some of her assets, you'll have money on hand to supplement the care she receives and also pay for necessities including clothing, haircuts, nail-trimming and the like, the costs of which are usually out of pocket.