my parents are at the age where this question comes up, and I don't have a good answer. I'm thinking it's too late for long term care ins (too expensive at their ages). They don't have a fortune, but enough we don't want them to lose (house plus IRA). I've heard they can come after your house and IRAs to cover costs if they end up in a nursing home, but I'm not sure of the details. Maybe they need to transfer things now into my name?
Interested to hear other thoughts on this subject.
Generally speaking (it depends a bit on the state where you live), elderly needing nursing home care will be required to pay out of pocket until their money runs out, at which point Medicaid hypothetically pays. Often one spouse needs care prior to the other. In that case, the state allows the remaining spouse to remain in the house and keep a modest amount of assets only. At the remaining spouses death, the house reverts to the state to sell.
You can transfer assets to protect them, but there is a claw back period (I think currently 5 years). So e.g., if you transferred the parents assets to you to qualify them for Medicaid nursing home requirements, this would have to be done at least 5 years prior to them needing Medicaid, or the state will refuse to qualify them until an amount of time passes that is cost-equivalent to the amount of assets that were transferred.
In other words, if you transfer assets worth 100K, and average nursing home cost in your state is 20K/year, Medicaid would not kick in for 5 years after the elderly person was deemed eligible. Making a mistake in this can be very dangerous, as you can see.
In some states, you can transfer title and protect the house and still get Medicaid coverage, but usually that requires the person receiving title to be living in the house caring for the soon to be Medicaid recipient for some period of time prior to applying for Medicaid.
It's very complicated, and often requires consulting an elder care estate planning attorney who has thorough knowledge of the particulars of laws in your state.