Deducting Medical Expenses Paid By Trust

[kate]

Trying to find out if a person can deduct medical expenses paid directly to provider by a trust on the person's behalf.

The trust is an irrevocable trust set up when husband died.  (His living trust became an irrevocable trust.)  The wife is the sole beneficiary.  She receives all trust income annually plus funds "required to maintain the lifestyle to which she is accustomed."

She now entered an assisted living/continuous care facility and has been certified as chronically ill/cannot conduct at least two ADLs.  Trust is paying about $5k/month for housing/meals/care.

I found reference to court case Lang v. Commissioner:  Lang v. Commissioner, No. 27276-08 | Casetext Search + Citator  This ruling seems to run so contrary to the guidance that you are not allowed to deduct medical expenses paid by someone else?

Seems payments by the trust to the third party provider may be deductible by the wife on her return if the trust is not required to pay/payments are considered a gift.  Or since the trust is required to maintain her lifestyle, the expenses are mandatory and therefore not deductible?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[BobKamman]

Aren't the medical payments considered distributions to her, and show up on her K-1?  So she is the one who is paying them, and she should get the deduction.  

[kate]

She receives 100% of trust income (not much), and is taxed on it via K-1.  In addition, the medical payments are from corpus.  They are paid direct to the facility by the trust.

[BobKamman]

Doesn't make any difference whether paid from corpus or income.  For the 1041 they are part of DNI.  

[sjrcpa]

It's the same as if she received trust distributions - income and corpus- and then paid the medical expenses.