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With Long-Term Care Insurance, you, along with your Long-Term Care Insurance specialist, decide the total amount of benefits in your policy. If you exhaust all your benefits, you must first consider what that means. You received perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax-free money to pay for your choice of quality care options. If you exhaust your benefits, you are way ahead of the game.
You might have 'unlimited' long-term care coverage - meaning it is impossible to exhaust your benefits. However, few insurance companies offer unlimited benefits today. Policies with unlimited benefits are expensive. However, you can design a plan that would unlikely ever get exhausted.
Yet, it is still a good question - what happens next? What happens if you do exhaust your benefits?
Shared Spousal Benefits/Partnership LTC Plans
If you have shared spousal benefits, you would use the benefits from your spouse's policy. Otherwise, you would start paying for your care out of pocket.
Keep in mind; however, if you have a Partnership Long-Term Care Insurance policy, you get additional dollar-for-dollar asset protection - otherwise known as 'asset disregard.' You get to shelter part of your estate based on the total amount of benefits paid by the policy and still access Medicaid's long-term care benefit. In other words, you would never lose all your money no matter what!
Plan Design
You design your Long-Term Care Insurance policy based on several factors, including:
- your total assets
- your budget
- family history
You select your daily or monthly benefit amounts, your account's initial pool of money, spousal benefit options, and inflation benefits.
A qualified Long-Term Care Insurance specialist can guide you so you don't 'over-insure' and match you with the best coverage based on your age, health, family history, and other factors.
More Detail on Exhausting Benefits
Read even more detail by clicking here.