If you or a loved one in your family is in a long-term care facility or otherwise receiving Medi-Cal benefits to help pay for this care, it is vital that you read this article now.

If you or a family member is facing a period in a nursing home, you must read this and act quickly before it is too late. There is a legal solution to this problem, but not for long.

Right now, you can still safeguard your family home and assets from being taken by the State to pay back Medi-Cal after the death of the person receiving care, but it is only for a short time before this will no longer be possible. The trend on the part of the government is to recover Medi-Cal payments made by taking the family home and assets and giving these to Medi-Cal once care is no longer needed.

The most recent stab at taking family assets came suddenly in the form of the adoption of so-called “emergency regulations” by the California Department of Health Services on 23 March 2005 concerning Medi-Cal recovery.

These highly suppressive regulations enabling the government to grab family assets for Medi-Cal were approved without any public discussion or public input as required by the Administrative Procedures Act. At least one group – California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform – has filed a lawsuit against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Department of Health Services challenging their authority to implement these regulations without the usual administrative steps of the issuance of a public notice and holding a public hearing and a public comment period.

But the oversight body, the Office of Administrative Law that would normally hold authority in such matters, has publicly stated that these emergency regulations remove “any authority for us to review whether or not the regulations comply with the Administrative Procedures Act.”

The family that is wise, will take legal steps immediately to safeguard their home and valuable assets before further regulations and interpretations of the law take away their ability to do so, forever. As it stands right now, it is still possible to establish legal barriers to Medi-Cal recovery of family assets. For how much longer is anyone’s guess but the speed with which these “emergency regulations” were adopted, especially when viewed with the other efforts I have reported on this past year to wipe out safeguards against Medi-Cal recovery of benefits paid for long-term care recipients, would forecast that the window of opportunity is shrinking fast and the government’s intention is to close that window permanently.

It has been very heartwarming for me to have been able to help so many of you in the last year who sought out legal assistance and got your estate planning set with maximum benefit for yourselves and your families, safeguarding your homes and ensuring these properties stay in the family. Be smart and act before it is no longer possible to safeguard your estate. Contact me, Tabi Katouzi & Associates at 818-995-9176.

I am an expert in this area of law and have helped hundreds of clients to economically save their homes and other assets over the years through my expertise in Medi-Cal law, estate planning and asset protection.

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