If a life insurance policy is assigned to a funeral home and the funeral home returns some money to the family, can medicare take some of it?
Question Details: A DSS worker advided my mother to assign her $62,000 life insurance policy to a funeral home in order to qualify for medicare. If the funeral home gives the family money back deducting the cost of the funeral, will that money be subject to medicare estate recovery?
Medicare estate recovery depends on how the estate is audited and reported to medicare. If medicare finds out that there are assets and your mother was in a home wherein she agreed to repay or medicare would be allowed to recoup monies from her estate, the assignment would be considered insurance and medicare fraud. The issue is once the monies are assigned, you cannot be 100% certain any monies will be returned to you.
