You Found a Genworth Long-Term Care Policy: A Scottsdale Family's Guide to Using It

It usually turns up in a file cabinet. A manila folder, maybe labeled in your mother's handwriting, with a policy inside that somebody bought in 1998 and nobody has thought about since. The premiums have been coming out of the checking account for twenty-some years. And now that your dad needs real help, you are holding this thing wondering whether it is worth anything at all.

It might be worth a great deal. It is worth finding out either way, and that is what this article is for.

Families in Scottsdale call us in this exact spot all the time, usually a little embarrassed that they do not understand a document their parent has been paying for since before the kids were born. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. These policies are genuinely hard to read, and the people who sold them are long gone. Let us walk through it.

First, Understand What You Are Holding

Genworth is the largest long-term care insurer in the United States. The American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance puts them at roughly a million policyholders, more than any other company by a wide margin. If your parent bought long-term care coverage in the 1990s or 2000s, the policy may not even say Genworth on it. Many of these were underwritten by General Electric Capital Assurance Company, and Genworth was spun off from GE in 2004. If the paperwork says GE Capital Assurance, you are almost certainly looking at a Genworth policy.

Here is the part that worries families most. Genworth stopped selling new individual long-term care policies under its own name, but it did not stop paying claims. Those are two completely different things. New coverage is now sold through CareScout Insurance, a Genworth subsidiary, while the existing block of policies remains in force and Genworth continues to service it and pay on it. An insurer leaving the new-sales market is a business decision about writing new risk. It does not release them from contracts they already signed.

That said, the company still paying claims does not automatically mean your parent's particular policy is still active. Before you count on it, confirm three things: that premiums have been paid and the policy has not lapsed, that no reduced-benefit or paid-up election was taken at some point along the way, and that the benefits described on the original paperwork are still the benefits in effect. Call the number on the policy and ask for a current in-force illustration in writing.

One more thing you deserve to know going in. Premiums on these older long-term care policies have risen substantially over the years across the industry, Genworth's included, and further increases are possible. That is the subject of the class action settlements mentioned below. It does not make the coverage a bad deal, and for most families the benefits still far exceed what they have paid in. But if your parent is still paying premiums, their rate history is worth reviewing alongside everything else.

Find These Five Things Before You Call Anyone

Somewhere in the first few pages there is a summary, often called the declarations or schedule page. Nearly everything you need is on it. Look for:

1. The daily or monthly benefit amount. How much the policy pays per day, or per month, toward care. This is the number that determines how far the coverage actually goes.
2. The benefit period or lifetime maximum. Three years, five years, or in some older policies, unlimited. Policies from this era are often more generous than what is sold today.
3. The elimination period. A waiting period, often 90 days, that your family pays out of pocket before benefits begin. Read this one closely. Some policies count calendar days and some count only days that care was actually delivered, which can stretch a 90-day wait into several months. Many policies also waive the elimination period for home care. The difference is worth real money.
4. Inflation protection. If there is a rider, the daily benefit has been growing every year, sometimes at 5 percent compounded. A policy written with a $100 daily benefit in 1998 may be worth several times that today. Do not judge the policy by the number that was printed on it decades ago.
5. The policy number and the claims phone number. Write both somewhere you will not lose them.

If your parent received a "special election letter" from Genworth at some point offering choices about benefits or premiums, dig that out too. Those went to a large group of policyholders as a result of class action settlements over how future rate increases were disclosed, and the elections made back then can affect what the policy pays now.

What Actually Turns the Benefits On

This is where families get stuck, because needing help and qualifying for benefits are not the same thing.

Most policies issued on or after January 1, 1997 are what the law calls tax-qualified, and they use a standard set of benefit triggers established under HIPAA. Benefits generally begin when a licensed health care practitioner certifies that your parent either:

• Cannot perform at least two activities of daily living without substantial assistance, and is expected to need that help for at least 90 days. The six recognized activities are eating, bathing, dressing, toileting, transferring, and continence. Note that a tax-qualified policy is only required to count at least five of the six, so check which ones yours actually lists.
• Or requires substantial supervision because of severe cognitive impairment, the standard that covers Alzheimer's and other irreversible dementias.

That cognitive trigger matters enormously and gets overlooked. A parent with dementia may still dress and feed themselves perfectly well, and a family assumes the policy does not apply yet. It often does.

Policies issued before 1997, and non-qualified policies generally, can use different standards. Your parent's actual contract governs, not this article and not anything a phone representative says offhand. Read the benefit trigger section, and if it is unclear, ask Genworth to send you the section in writing.

Why This Lands on the Whole Family

Nobody is prepared for this. You are trying to arrange care for a parent who is declining, and simultaneously you have become an amateur insurance adjuster, reading a contract written in 1998 by lawyers who were not thinking about you.

There is also a clock. Hospital discharge planners work fast, and if your parent is being sent somewhere in three days, you do not have three weeks to decode a policy. Meanwhile a sibling is asking whether the insurance will cover it and you honestly do not know.

Give yourself some grace here. Almost nobody gets this right alone on the first try, and getting it wrong is not a moral failure. It is a document problem, and document problems can be solved.

Where These Benefits Can Usually Be Used

Here is the question families care about most: can we use this for assisted living, or only a nursing home?

It depends on the policy, and specifically on when it was written. Some older policies were built around nursing home care and cover little else. Many policies from the late 1990s onward cover a broader range of settings. Common options include:

• In-home care. Often covered, sometimes at a percentage of the daily benefit rather than the full amount.
• Assisted living communities. Frequently covered in newer policies, and the licensing category of the community can matter to the insurer.
• Group homes, also called assisted living care homes. Small, home-like settings. Whether these qualify depends on the policy language and the home's license, and this is worth confirming in advance rather than after a move.
• Memory care. Usually covered where assisted living is covered, and the cognitive trigger often applies.
• Adult day programs and respite care. Included in some policies as smaller supplementary benefits.

Do not guess on this one, and do not sign a residency agreement assuming the policy will pay. Confirm the setting qualifies first, in writing.

If you are still sorting out which kind of care your parent actually needs, our guide to assisted living versus memory care walks through the levels of care in plain language. And if you have the policy in hand and are ready to use it, how to file a long-term care insurance claim covers the paperwork step by step.

How Integrity Senior Placement Helps Your Family

We are a senior placement service, not an insurance agency. We do not sell policies and we are not paid by any insurer. What we do is help Scottsdale families find the right care, and our service is completely free to the family.

That includes the paperwork side of it. We have sat with a lot of families holding a lot of confusing policies. We help you read what you have, we know which communities across the Valley work smoothly with long-term care insurance and which ones do not, and we handle the coordination between the community and the carrier so the claim moves as smoothly as it can. We have been doing this in Arizona since 2016.

The rest of it looks like this. You call, usually overwhelmed. We listen. We come out for a free in-home assessment to understand the real level of care needed, where you want to be, and what the finances and the policy will support. We bring you a short list of communities we have personally vetted out of more than 1,000 options across the Phoenix and Scottsdale metro. We tour them with you. We negotiate on price. And we follow up after the move, because what a community promises on a tour should still be true in month three.

If you want to learn more first, Arizona Senior Resources hosts free family webinars on elder law, estate planning, and care planning, with no sales pressure, at arizonaseniorresources.com. And if you believe a claim has been handled improperly, the Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions takes consumer complaints at 602-364-2499.

You Do Not Have to Figure This Out Alone

Take the folder out of the file cabinet. Find the daily benefit, the benefit period, the elimination period, and the inflation rider. Then call us and we will help you make sense of the rest.

Reina and David answer the phone at 480.271.7759. The consultation is free, there is no obligation, and there is no wrong time to call. We treat every family the way we would want our own parents treated.

---

Sources: American Association for Long-Term Care Insurance, "Top 10 LTC Companies," for lives in force and market share. Genworth Financial and CareScout Insurance published company materials for current product availability and claims status. Internal Revenue Code section 7702B(c)(2) for the tax-qualified benefit trigger standards established under HIPAA. Skochin v. Genworth Life Insurance Company and related settlements for the special election letters. Arizona Department of Insurance and Financial Institutions for consumer complaint contact information.

Integrity Senior Placement is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or compensated by Genworth or any insurance company. We do not sell insurance. This article is general information, not medical, legal, financial, or insurance advice. Long-term care policy terms vary significantly by policy form and year of issue, so your parent's actual contract governs. Confirm all coverage questions with the insurer in writing before making decisions. If you are facing a medical emergency, call 911.

Published September 5, 2026. The facts in this article were verified against the sources listed above on that date.