The conversation about caring for elderly individuals is certainly heating up across America as baby boomers approach retirement age and beyond. It might feel as if everyone you know in St. Louis is helping to care for an elderly parent. There are various emotional impacts associated with making the difficult decisions about caring for an elderly parent.
Adult children may have to step in to take over this caretaker role and many are also struggling to figure out how to pay for the essential care their parents need. There are many different possibilities to help support your parent and his or her medical needs, but you may be able to use a current life insurance policy to provide funds for long-term care. This is a relatively straightforward process and maybe something that your parent already has. The owner of a cash value life insurance policy has the opportunity to convert this into long-term care benefits in order to use these funds to pay for nursing homes, home healthcare, and assisted living. In this particular situation, it makes more sense to use the living benefits of the life insurance policy as opposed to waiting for a parent to pass away and leaving behind assets for beneficiaries. There are several different advantages associated with this. Converting the policy to a long-term care benefit instead will ultimately allow you to access it some more than the surrender value of the policy.
Additionally, there is no waiting period associated with converting the policy and the process of conversion takes approximately three weeks. In order to do this, you would need to work with a financial services provider who specializes in elder care. In order to take an existing life insurance policy and convert it into a long term care benefit at this point, the funds from the policy will be used to pay for the senior’s care as well as policy premiums. Although this has been an option for many years, not all life insurance policies were upfront about the fact that they provided such a benefit. If your elderly parent has life insurance coverage, it is worth a phone call to the carrier to determine whether or not this policy feature exists. Discovering this as a supplement could be critical for assistance if your parent needs care. One of the most empowering things about discovering the existence of such a benefit is that it affords you options that you may not have known you had.
Helping your elderly parent can be one of the greatest challenges that you face as an adult child. Understanding all of your options and the various opportunities that you may have to help your elderly loved one as well as pay for the care they so desperately need can be extremely beneficial during this time. Consult with the experts at Senior Health Solutions, LLC to learn more about planning ahead for long-term care and how to fund these services. Contact us at 636-244-4415 or contact us online to schedule an appointment.
