24 Apr Update on bill to help senior’s families

A Whitehouse Station man is working to pass a bill to help families of those who live in Continuing Care Retirement Communities, or CCRCs. The bill would stop a practice that allows CCRCs to hold on to residency fees indefinitely.

This man’s mother paid about $273,000 for her residency fee. When she died, the CCRC was supposed to return 90 percent of that fee to her heirs per the contract. The contract also says the fee doesn’t have to be returned until the unit is reoccupied. But this unit wasn’t resold, so the CCRC held onto the money for more than five years until the man settled for a smaller refund so he could close out his mom’s estate. Taking less money was a double whammy: When he filed the estate’s final tax return years earlier, a tax was due, but once the smaller refund was applied to the estate, it was below the estate tax threshold. A three-year statute of limitations on estate tax refunds meant it was too late to get that money back.

The man has pressured legislators to propose a bill that would require CCRCs to give refunds within one year of vacancy. See an update on the legislation and how you can support it in this Bamboozled column on NJ.com.