Shared Care Rider: Balancing a Couples' Risk

The shared care rider allows you and your spouse to both purchase plans that can work together.  By attaching the shared care rider, which must be done when both of you apply together, you can share benefits should one deplete their policy benefit.  This means that if you both buy 4-year policies, and one only use, say, $200,000 of their policy, which has a benefit amount of $400,000, there is still $200,000 available to the other spouse.

Partnership Plans: A New Phenomenon

Many states are beginning to implement so-called Partnership Plans as a way to encourage consumers to buy long term care insurance.  The biggest benefit of partnership programs is that states with this in place allow the total value of long-term-care policies to be counted against Medicaid requirements for drawing on personal assets to pay health bills.  This can allow for owners of LTC insurance to leave an estate, even if they have spent down their entire LTC policy - a rare occurance if proper coverage is purchased to begin with.  States such as California and Connecticut use what's termed dollar-for-dollar protection. In those cases, authorities count the value of a private insurance policy to determine the amount of assets that are protected against pay-down requirements in Medicaid.

Get Discounts for Applying Together

Most companies now offer drastic discounts for couples applying together.  Savings of as much as 40% can be realized for joint applicants who are both accepted.  Be sure to select a company with a strong financial rating and a history of taking care of its policyholders.  The long term care insurance market can be tricky, so having a good advisor is very important.