Grandpa dumped Grandma

I heard a pitiful story yesterday about a woman who spent her entire life cleaning up after some man’s crap and now he’s dumping her without an education and with about two pennies to scrap together to consider getting a reverse mortgage to make it through the rest of it. … Well at least from her point of view…

From his point of view… the nagging hag of a crazy woman he was tricked into marrying before he joined the service is finally being deployed and not in no damn box … he’s freeing himself before he spends eternity laying directly next to her… ugh.

Hey there are two sides to every story. Here’s some of Liz’s tips for those of you old farts that might be considering divorce in your medicare medicaid social security years…

• Talk about it. If you’re married, discuss with your partner how you’ll pay for long-term care. Home care and nursing homes can run $50,000 to $150,000 a year. Where would the money come from? How do you feel about using government assistance to pay for it?
• Evaluate long-term-care insurance. This coverage pays for nursing-home and (often) in-home care and can help you preserve your assets. But you need to purchase it before one of you becomes ill, and the older you are when you buy it, the more it costs. AARP has more information on how to evaluate coverage and costs.
• Consult an elder-law attorney about your options. If it’s too late for long-term-care insurance or you can’t afford it, you should know about your alternatives, whether or not you decide divorce is among them.
• If you do divorce, do it right. This is not a do-it-yourself project, particularly if you want to keep Medicaid from going after your assets after an ill spouse dies. Both partners need to be represented by attorneys, and a court-appointed guardian may be needed for a spouse who’s incapacitated.