I'll try to be brief. If you've heard this whine before, sorry.
My mom has always been one to cherry pick the rules. I mean, if she wanted to do something, she did. Against the law, aw, it didn't hurt anyone, did it? What's a little larceny among friends?
I knew that she collected social security. Didn't know the amount. I knew she had income from a family trust. It's income from her family's wheat farm in Kansas. I knew that the amount varied by year. I suspected that social security didn't know about the trust income, but wasn't certain.
Then, three years ago, she went into long term care. During a period of hospitalizations and switching facilities, all of her personal possessions, and her documents, were lost. I don't know exactly how. All of the people involved pointed at each other.
By and by, the trust contacted me to say that she had not been cashing her checks and they needed her to do that.
Then followed a long time with me talking to banks, facilities, trust, DMV, etc. trying to get her some ID so that she could gain access to her checking account and put that trust money in it. At the same time, I was aware that the combination of trust and SSA funds had made her assets and income far too much to allow Medi-Cal to continue paying for her facility. The place costs $6K per month. She needs to stay there, too, she is quite disabled and truly needs the skilled nursing provided.
I hired lawyers to talk to Medi-Cal. I got a copy of her birth certificate (which, as it turns out, spells her name differently than all of her other documents). I got her access to her checking and had the trust funds auto deposited there. I set up a savings at my credit union and put her excess funds in it. It's in my name, per attorney orders. That worries me a little. I took her to DMV to get an ID card.
We are still waiting on Medi-Cal to decide what to do with the money in the savings account ($42K at this point!!) and how they will apply the trust distributions which come twice a year.
Now I find out that the trust has a different SSA# for her than SSA has. Okey, dokey. That explains why Medi-Cal didn't know about the trust funds. Now I'm wondering if she could get prosecuted for fraud. She's 82 years old, blind, disabled, has dementia. And she has been ripping off the government for years.
HOLY CRAP!! |
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