Long-Term Care Planning Attorney in Atlanta, Georgia
Plan for Care Before You Need It — When You Still Have Options
An Atlanta-area nursing home costs a 2025 median of about $9,277 to $9,885 per month. Without a plan, that cost falls entirely on your savings. A plan that starts more than five years before care is needed gives you the most options. No plan is a guarantee.
Find Out Where You Stand
Why Long-Term Care Planning Starts Years Before You Need Care
Long-term care planning is not about nursing homes. It is about giving your family options. A plan built today — before a medical crisis — means your family can choose the right level of care, at the right facility, with the right financial structure in place. A plan built after the fact means reacting to a crisis with the options that remain.
What Happens Without a Long-Term Care Plan
When a family member enters a nursing home without a plan in place, the spend-down process starts immediately. Georgia Medicaid requires an individual to have $2,000 or less in countable assets before benefits begin. A married couple follows different rules: the spouse remaining at home may keep up to $162,660 in countable assets. Everything above those limits must be spent on care before Medicaid covers anything.
At about $9,277 to $9,885 per month in the Atlanta area, a couple with $400,000 in savings exhausts their protected limit in months. The spend-down reaches the savings, most retirement accounts, and the investments that represent a lifetime of work. The home is usually exempt while you or your spouse live in it, if your equity is under $752,000, but it can face an estate recovery claim after you both die. Families who call us after a parent has entered a nursing home face a narrower set of options than families who planned more than five years earlier, when the full range of strategies was still available.
What Long-Term Care Planning Accomplishes
Long-term care planning combines the legal structures, insurance analysis, and care coordination decisions that protect your family from nursing home spend-down. The primary legal tool is the Medicaid asset protection trust, an irrevocable trust. After five years, Medicaid generally does not count the trust’s principal when it decides if you qualify. Any income the trust pays you still counts as your income. Anything you move in counts in full toward a penalty if you apply less than five years later, so the trust works best when it is funded early. No trust is a guarantee.
Beyond the trust, planning addresses the full care picture: what level of care you would want, how your home should be handled, how the community spouse’s finances should be structured, and which Georgia Medicaid programs cover in-home care versus facility care. We coordinate the legal documents with your specific care preferences and family situation so the plan works as intended when it is needed.
Without a Trust
- Nursing home costs exhaust savings before Medicaid coverage begins
- The Medicaid lookback penalizes transfers made in the past five years
- No legal authority for family to manage finances and healthcare without court involvement
- Family must react to a crisis without a plan in place
With a Trust
- After five years, Medicaid generally does not count the principal of a MAPT
- Your family has clear legal authority through a durable POA and healthcare directive
- Georgia Medicaid waiver programs for in-home care are part of the plan
- A crisis triggers your plan — not a scramble to build one
How It Works
Schedule Your Free Call
Book your 15-minute free strategy call with Shawn. No cost, no commitment.
Meet With Melissa
Melissa reviews your assets, your family situation, and your exposure. Virtual or in-person.
Get Your Plan
Receive a written plan with clear recommendations for protecting your family and your assets.
Move Forward
No pressure, no commitment required. Move forward when you are ready.
Melissa Breyer
Georgia Estate Planning Attorney
Melissa Breyer is a Georgia-licensed estate planning attorney focused exclusively on trust-based planning for individuals and families. She personally meets with every client and designs every plan from scratch. No templates. No associates handling your case. Every plan is built for your specific family, your specific assets, and your specific wishes.
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What Our Clients Say
The whole process of creating a family trust felt simple, clear, and stress-free. We really appreciated how patient, helpful, and easy to communicate with the team was throughout everything. Shawn and Melissa gave us great guidance and helped us feel confident every step of the way. We're grateful for their support and would definitely recommend them.
After my father passed away, my mother had to rely on my father's employer to navigate the estate. It was a disaster. After this experience, I knew I needed a plan. I turned to Atlanta Estate Planning Attorneys to set up a trust. I no longer have to worry about my wife and children going through a difficult process if something happens to me. I highly recommend Atlanta Estate Planning Attorneys!
My biggest fear was that if I died first, my wife would have no idea how to navigate the estate and legal system. I reached out to Atlanta Estate Planning Attorneys and they put my mind at ease immediately. Their process is easy to follow and they took care of everything. Atlanta Estate Planning Attorneys is the best decision I've made for my family's future.
Working with Melissa Breyer to set up our Living Trust was one of the best decisions Scott and I have made. We did this so our boys are protected from confusion and chaos if something happens to us. Melissa was knowledgeable, patient, and made what felt overwhelming completely manageable. I would absolutely recommend Melissa Breyer.
Working with Shawn and Melissa at Atlanta Estate Planning Attorneys has been an excellent experience. They asked great questions during our initial call and clearly explained what we needed. We feel confident we're in good hands and would highly recommend them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Long-term care planning is the process of arranging your finances, legal documents, and care preferences before a serious illness or disability requires someone to manage your affairs or pay for care on your behalf. In Georgia, it primarily addresses two things: the legal authority structure (who manages your finances and healthcare if you cannot) and the financial structure (how assets are arranged so Medicaid can cover nursing home costs without a full spend-down). A complete long-term care plan includes a Medicaid asset protection trust, a durable financial power of attorney, an advance healthcare directive, and a written care preference document that your family can follow when they need to make decisions for you.
The best time to start long-term care planning in Georgia is more than five years before you might need nursing home care. Medicaid looks back five years at assets you gave away or moved into a trust. After five years, Medicaid generally does not count the principal of a Medicaid asset protection trust when it decides if you qualify. Assets moved in less than five years before you apply count in full toward a penalty period. For most people, starting in their late 50s or early 60s leaves enough time before care is needed. If a parent is already in their 70s or showing early signs of decline, planning sooner leaves more options.
Georgia Medicaid pays for nursing home care (room, board, nursing services, and most medical care) for residents who meet the financial and functional eligibility requirements, after the resident puts most of their monthly income toward the bill; the resident keeps $70 a month for personal needs. Financial eligibility requires countable assets of $2,000 or less (individual) or up to $162,660 for the community spouse (2026 figure). Functional eligibility requires a level of care assessment confirming the need for skilled nursing facility placement. Medicaid also covers some in-home care through waiver programs including the SOURCE program and the Community Care Services Program, though these programs have enrollment caps and waiting lists. Medicaid does not cover assisted living in Georgia — only nursing home and certain home and community-based settings.
Nursing home costs in the Atlanta metro area have a 2025 median of about $9,277 per month for a semi-private room and $9,885 for a private room (CareScout). Specialized memory care units — for residents with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia — typically run $5,500 to $8,000 per month in Atlanta assisted living facilities, though nursing home memory care units are covered by Medicaid once eligibility is met. At $9,000 per month, a three-year nursing home stay costs $324,000. A five-year stay costs $540,000. These figures represent out-of-pocket costs for families without a Medicaid plan in place and without long-term care insurance coverage sufficient to offset the expense.
A Medicaid asset protection trust (MAPT) can protect assets from nursing home costs in Georgia. It is an irrevocable trust built for Medicaid planning. After five years, Medicaid generally does not count the trust’s principal when it decides if you qualify. You give up control of the principal. You can keep the income the trust assets earn, but that income still counts as your income for Medicaid. The trustee manages the assets, and the beneficiaries you name receive them at your death. A MAPT is the primary legal tool for protecting savings, investment accounts, and real estate from nursing home spend-down. The revocable trust commonly used for probate avoidance does not provide this protection. Only an irrevocable trust structure does. No trust is a guarantee.
Find Out Where You Stand
Whatever brought you here today, the real question underneath it is simple: is your family protected if something happens to you? Without a plan, the people you love could face months in probate court, a fight over what you meant, or bills nobody has the authority to pay.
A clear plan closes every one of those gaps in writing, while you are still here to make the decisions. In one free 15-minute call, you will find out exactly what you have, what is missing, and what it takes to fix it.
- No pressure. This is a conversation, not a sales pitch.
- No jargon. We explain everything in plain language.
- A clear next step. You will know exactly what to do when the call ends.