If you’re like most Massachusetts residents, nursing home planning is crucial in order to have resources you will need to pay for your long-term care one day. The majority of older individuals end up requiring some sort of long-term care. If you don’t adequately plan, then your assets can be drained, not only leaving you without the resources to pay for your care, but also without the assets you want to leave to your loved ones.
And inadequate planning can leave your loved ones in a difficult position. That’s why we want to devote the rest of this blog post to how inadequate planning can affect those you care about. Hopefully then you’ll understand what’s at risk when creating your estate plan and addressing nursing home and MassHealth planning.
How poor estate planning negatively impacts your loved ones
If you don’t have the resources and support needed to pay for a nursing home stay or some other type of long-term care, then your loved ones are going to be responsible for taking care of you. That can take quite a toll. Here’s the impact that your loved ones might experience:
- Overwhelming stress: When you’re solely responsible for caring for an aging and sick loved one, it can quickly consume your life. The time needed to devote to your loved one can make it impossible to maintain a social life, take you away from your own family, and make it hard to keep and maintain your current job. All of this can cause an enormous amount of stress that can impact other aspects of your life, including your friendships and your marriage. Do you want that for your loved one?
- Crushing debt: Without an effective plan in place, you’re going to struggle to figure out how to pay for your care. That may mean selling off your assets and dipping into your retirement savings, but even that may not be enough. In these circumstances, your loved ones might feel compelled to pitch in to cover your expenses. But that can be a massive burden that rocks their financial stability. It could even put them in a position where it’s difficult to raise their own children the way they want to.
- Straining of relationships: Given the fact that caring for a parent in the long-term can take a physical and emotional toll, there may come a point where your relationship with your children or other loved one becomes strained. All your conversations might revolve around your care and money, thereby preventing your relationship from blossoming. It could even become so tense that arguments erupt, and relationships and support are lost.
- Losing financial support: If you have to rely on your wealth to pay for your long-term care costs, there’s a good chance that you won’t have anything left to leave your loved ones. That can be heartbreaking when you’ve spent your entire life building up your assets so that you could support your those you care about.
While all of that can be stressful to think about, you can avoid a lot of it, if not all of it, by thoroughly planning your estate well ahead of time. You don’t want to procrastinate given that MassHealth has a lookback period, so start thinking now about how you can put yourself on track to cover your long-term care needs while shielding your assets and your loved ones.