What is your opinion about a shared policy for couples compared to each person getting an individual policy?

You are asking about the shared care benefit and I think it’s a great concept. It came about as the unlimited benefit period became more expensive (only a few policies even offer it now). With a couple, the chances of both needing a lot of care are slim, but who knows which one will actually need care, right? With the shared care benefit, you don’t have to know as you can access to each others benefits.There are three ways this works in today’s policies.  1) Each person has a benefit pool and if one dies, the other one inherits all unused benefits. Or if one exhausts his benefit pool, he can start using the benefits of his spouse’s pool. 2) Each person has a benefit pool and there is a third benefit pool the same size that each person can hit first come first serve. 3) The couple shares one benefit pool.  You have to be careful on that last one so you don’t buy a small pool; i.e. three years which would be easy to use up between two people.

The Long-Term Care Partnership really helps the situation as in most states, if you do run out of benefits, you have the option of turning to the state for help and being able to protect your assets equal to the benefits paid out if your LTC insurance policy is approved for the Partnership in your state. You can also use it in most other states for the asset protection, as long as you meet that state’s functional or cognitive criteria to access that state’s long-term care benefits.

 

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