Dad lived with my brother and sister-inlaw for 4 years. They had a living agreement that stipulated that my Dad would pay for a third of all household expenses such as food, utilities, heat etc. My sister-inlaw was in charge of that and kept all the receipts and spreadsheets for that. Then they also had a caregiver agreement that paid my brother for any time that he could not work if he had to care for our Dad. My brother has POA. All Dad's assets, house and car, were sold and went into his bank account. However, Dad had a habit of wanting to spend roughly about $500 a week on whatever and not keep receipts. Stuff that he would spend on was clothes, haircuts, books, sweets, cigerettes etc. but he never kept any receipts because he considered it his money and he earned the right to spend it on anything he wanted without anyone's approval. The only gifting he did was a card with $25 to all the 8 grandchildren and a $100 each Christmas to us 3 kids. That's $500 total each year that Dad would gift in cash but he spent on gifting but he managed to spend on miscellaneous stuff in cash about $25,000 a year. Over the course of 4 years he has burned through almost of his cash reserves. My brother could only take care of our Dad full time for the length of FMLA time that he could get time off for and had to check Dad into a memory care NH fascility. Dad only has enough money for 3 months and none of us kids can handle taking care of Dad physically or financially. The NH home says that they have a problem with the accounting of Dad's weekly cash spending habits without receipts. It is great that there is an accounting for living expenses and receipts for that. They were lukewarm about the reimbursement about my brother's timeoff reimbursements. It is the cash spending without receipts that is freaking them out. Not sure what to expect since none of our bank accounts got any of the money other than the Christmas gifting mentioned. Plus there are no big purchases made that you could point to say he spent it there. Dad was always spender and I never understood where or how he could spend that much on little stuff. So what happens now once Dad runs out of money and we kids can't take care of him anymore and we don't have any extra money to cover Dad's NH? My brother is freaking out and wished he never took in Dad now because he is worried that he going to lose his home over this. None of us kids make anything close to 6 figures so we are at a lose as to how this is going to turn out. Someone said he might wind up a ward of the state and the state will come after us to pay? Is this true? How does that work when we didn't get his weekly spending money? Really could use some advice and answers since none of us have money for a lawyer to sort this out.
And yes he can be made a ward of the state. If you should get a "30 day notice" from the facility and do nothing, a NH can contact APS which asks the court for an emergency ward action. It will be granted with a temporary guardian named as court usually has a list of vetted guardians at the ready. They are totally in charge too. At my moms first NH, a lady in her wing had this happen. Her son sold her home, kept the $ & once Medicaid found out (easy as all real property is recorded) she was suspended from Medicaid. Son contacted by state & NH but ignored all. She was moved to another facility, no family notified and when Sonny came to visit mom she was l....o....n...g gone. Very not pretty as cops called. Plus that NH bill was still outstanding and would be turned over to collections against the son. APS could file endangerment of a vulnerable adult charges against the son. Think carefully if APS did an investigation on you, your brother or your spouses if that would cause issues for your work. If your military, work public sector, have ex's with shared custody, an APS investigation on you could pose huge problems.
You all need an NAELA level atty and ASAP.
To help matters you can try to figure out what dads assets were. Dad got annual awards letters from SS and any retirements. Those give you a baseline annual income. Find them & add it up. Lets say its $20k a year. If he got interest paid, then he got a 1099. By filing for medicaid, you allow for info sharing with irs. So the you find the value of whatever (annuity, investments, savings) and add that in. Let's say there's a savings account that was 50k 5 years ago and now has 10k in it. Dad sold his house, right? Then that sale to the penny was recorded with tax assessor. House sale is big puddle of $ that is hard to spend without some type of trail. Let's say house sold for $ 150k.
Dads last 5 yrs had $ 300k. You need these documents so atty can determine how to approach the situtation. But not to sound harsh, it sounds just too too bogus not to have some sort of penalty. Even if he had a rental agreement to share housing costs, there should still be money left to pay for more than 3 mos. I'd guess a 90k - 120k penalty. Once penalty issued he is toast on family ever getting him into a NH without a binding contract done by family at private pay rates. The court appointed guardian can get him into a facility though. Or dad can move back into your brothers or your home and family caregives or uses his SS income to pay for some help till he is outside the lookback for penalty.
Really try to find an NAELA level atty before he end of this month.
If the NH goes