Fleming & Curti, P.L.C. - Alimony Payments Continued Despite Medicaid Eligibility

MAY 29, 2006 VOLUME 13, NUMBER 48

Alimony Payments Continued Despite Medicaid Eligibility

After nearly fourteen years of marriage, Joseph Coker filed for divorce from his wife Virginia Ulch. Because Mr. Coker was legally blind he received Social Security Disability benefits, but that was not enough to pay for his care. In addition, Mr. Coker suffered from ALS—Lou Gehrig’s Disease—and required assistance with his activities of daily living. The couple’s divorce decree awarded him spousal maintenance—alimony, in common parlance—of $200 per month.

Five years later, Mr. Coker’s condition had deteriorated to the point that he was living in a nursing home, and his care was being subsidized by Medicaid. Ms. Ulch thought that should end her obligation to pay support, and so she filed a petition to terminate the payments.

When a nursing home patient receives Medicaid assistance, that does not mean that the program pays for the entire cost of care. The patient must first pay nearly all of his or her income to the facility, and Medicaid picks up the difference between that amount and the actual nursing home cost. The amount that the patient is allowed to retain is fixed by state law, and does not increase if the patient receives additional income. In other words, whether Mr. Coker received spousal maintenance or not, he was still going to be able to retain just $40 per month. [Note that Mr. Coker lives in Illinois; in Arizona, he would be permitted to retain substantially more—currently $90.45—of his monthly income.]

Ms. Ulch reasoned that her support payments were not benefiting her ex-husband at all, and that they were effectively going into state coffers by reducing the amount the state had to pay for Mr. Coker’s care. While not denying that effect, Mr. Coker insisted that the support payments should continue, and the question was submitted to the courts.

A divorce court magistrate found that Ms. Ulch’s income had increased by 42% since the divorce—she was by then receiving just short of $5,000 per month—while Mr. Coker’s Social Security Disability income had increased by only 17%. It would violate public policy, reasoned the magistrate, to allow Ms. Ulch to forego making support payments and shift the burden onto the taxpayers, especially since it was clear that she could afford to continue the monthly payments.

The Illinois Court of Appeals agreed with the divorce magistrate. One of the key questions in modification proceedings is whether the parties’ circumstances have changed, and the only material change the appellate court could see was Ms. Ulch’s increased income. The Social Security income received by Mr. Coker is supposed to supplement his income, not act as a substitute for it, and Ms. Ulch’s request was properly denied. Coker v. Ulch, May 12, 2006.

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