Personal finance and worry

[Tybee]

Couldn't DH and I put the house in an irrevocable trust at some point? I do understand that it could get very messy with managing co-ownership. My DIL has a family "camp" (as they call it up here) in the Adirondacks. Her grandfather built it on a lake and It is supposedly a great family vacation home. But as the cousin pool keeps getting larger and larger and the older generation starts to disappear, they are now trying to set up more formal "rules" regarding the co-ownership of the place.

I'm so sorry about the commercial building, Tybee, but why do you feel you're letting the family down?

I had not thought about an irrevocable trust. I looked it up and it looks like that works but you have to do it before the 5 year lookback period:

How Can a Trust Help You Avoid Nursing Home Costs? | Kiplinger

I have known people where they did not do that, and when the house sold after the person died, they only had to pay back a portion of the money, not the whole amount of the sale. So maybe if the house was not put in a trust, then the kids could get together and get a mortgage to pay off what the estate owed to Medicare. I would talk to a lawyer if you want to leave the kids the house, no matter what you do about a trust, it would be much better to talk to a lawyer now.*


*I would involve the kids in these discussions, and maybe they could as a group start a bank account and start saving for this possibility--each contribute the same amount each year, to have a head start on paying back the Medicare money if they need to. Or if they don't need to, a bank account that they could use to fund expenses to the house.