“And the State now has an implied lien on all her assets to pay for all this”
This.
Once a person officially becomes a resident in a care facility, a burgeoning industry, their assets are documented with the state. If (when) their care costs exceed insurance/benefits and ability to self-pay, then the state does have a lien on all of their assets. Will or no will.
I warned my husband about this in time to have his grandmother have the “talk” with her estate planner, and she immediately “sold” husband the home that she had planned to leave him in her will. It is a good thing she did. Back then NY had a three year look-back, but shortly after she went into care, it was changed to a five year.
With the emergence of nursing care facilities as a powerful industry, the families are at a distinct disadvantage. My father spent the last five months of his life in one, and I can’t stress enough how uncaring we found the administration and some of the nursing staff to be. No matter how we tried to charm and how we bent over backwards to be reasonable we were frequently misinformed. When he died recently, the staff was HORRIBLE.
“Once a person officially becomes a resident in a care facility...their assets are documented with the state.”
More specifically, under state control, eg; as a ward of the state, as one declared NCM. This of course does not happen if you place your Mom into eldercare and pay for it. This is the terrible danger of a person being declared incompetent. The state jumps to the head of the line in terms of control, in terms of ownership of estate assets, and all opptys for intelligent estate planning are lost. It is a terrible, terrible threshold to cross and it is emotionally wrenching because whatever it is you feared before that happened, now it’s being forced on you.