Nursing home taking a participant's assets in a Profit SHaring Plan in

[Guest Kimberly Speck]

I would like to know if anyone has heard if a Nursing Home can take a participant's assets in a Profit Sharing Plan?

[david rigby]

Take?

Pension and profit-sharing plans are (with a few specific exceptions) regulated by federal law. Internal Revenue Code section 401(a)(13) provides that no plan shall permit a benefit to be "assigned or alienated." For example, this means that a creditor cannot get at the money, and the participant cannot do anything to give the money to a creditor; however, once a benefit is paid to a participant, then it is merely part of the participant's assets, no longer in the plan.

Does this help?

[mbozek]

While a third party cannot seize a participants assets held in a qualfied plan unser ERISA, a participant can make a voluntary assignment of benefits to a third party benefits provided that the assignment is voluntary and revocable. In some cases the nursing home may accept an assignment of the participants benefits as payment for nursing home care.

[jeanine]

Kimberly, are you asking about paying down assets before medicaid kicks in?