What To Do With Your House When You Enter The Nursing Home

When you begin the process of planning the medical decisions that fit your needs the best, the talk of nursing homes or assisted living facilities will certainly become a topic.

Leaving your home and going to a nursing home can seem like a challenge which will leave you with a lot of questions. What will happen to your home? Will it get sold? Are my children able to acquire it? If it does get sold, who gets the money from the sale? How will this affect taxes and insurance? Will this affect my Medicaid? 

With all of these questions, it is best to consult an elder law attorney who can properly guide you through the process. Contacting an elder law attorney is a necessary step in planning your estate and medical futures, as you navigate through the aging process. 

After creating a long-term care plan with help from an attorney, you can go through the steps that are required to put your medical needs first, which includes some kind of senior housing. 

There’s a good chance that you have been financially planning your retirement for years, if your employer offered you a 401K. This will help build up some of your income, but you will probably need more, in order to get the required funds to pay for long-term care. 

Selling The Home 

Many elders who still own their homes while they’re living in some sort of assisted living facility or nursing home think about selling their homes. If they don't have a lot of family in the immediate area, it can seem like a logical conclusion to the problems that they are facing. 

Yet, most of them do not think of the challenges they could face in a possible sale. To be able to sell a home, you need to make it look appealing to the eyes, and if you are elderly, living somewhere else, the state of the house will probably not look its best. 

There also are the challenges of the real estate market. You have to find a way to inform others that the house is for sale, and if you cannot sell by owner fast enough, it may require the help of a real estate agent, whose costs may hurt the sale of the house. 

Going through your possessions can also prove to be a challenge. You may have developed some sort of movement issues and may no longer be able to get around your home like you used to. You also may not have that big of a space at your new senior living home for everything you own, and if you do not have a big family or your family lives far away, you may have to sell some of your possessions or invest in a storage unit. 

Emotional Attachment 

There also is the emotional aspect that you will have to work through. This may have been the house that you raised your children in and spent holidays and birthdays in. Given how many memories you may have in the place, it may be hard for you to think about selling it. 

However, the financial trouble on how to pay for long-term housing and care may overcome the emotional attachment you have for your house. Even though you may love that house very much, you don’t want to put yourself or your family in any sort of financial squeeze by holding onto a property that you are not even living in anymore. 

Interested in Working With Us?

If you need any help regarding your business or other legal matters please reach out to us directly here and schedule a call with one of our paralegals on our scheduling page here.