Medicaid eligibility and gifting

[ChrisC]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brat Do not gift, or leave assets, to a Medicaid recipient. Even if the recipient rejects the resource once they know about it Medicaid treats it as received.

And the house is basically gone to Medicaid if a surviving spouse applies for Medicaid and acquired sole ownership of the homestead, whether by will or because the property was jointly titled with survivorship rights. Medicaid treats the homestead as a resource -- you leave the homestead for a nursing home and it then has to be sold to cover nursing home expenses -- try gifting the homestead to children -- Medicaid will punish you a long time! You stay in the homestead and obtain homecare assistance -- and when you die, Medicaid will slap a lien on the homestead in your estate for payment of Medicaid assistance.

[youbet]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChrisC Medicaid treats the homestead as a resource -- you leave the homestead for a nursing home and it then has to be sold to cover nursing home expenses -- try gifting the homestead to children -- Medicaid will punish you a long time!

Again, glad to hear this! Rumors aboud concerning kiddies grabbing Mom and/or Dad's extensive assets and leaving tax payers to foot the bill for their old age care. It's good that's not true per your description of the process.

In our own case here, MIL owns a modest condo (and little else) and has SS as her only income. Our expectations are that Medicaid will wind up footing much of the bill if MIL requires years of NH care but that they will require her assets (in this case a $140k condo) to be liquidated and used in her behalf first. I wouldn't expect MIL to be able to gift the condo to DW and have Medicaid pick up the NH costs from the get-go, although I know many folks do.

[Brat]

You might consider selling the condo now and use the proceeds for her care as finding a nice NH that accepts Medicaid at admission may be a challenge. Often care facilities will accept Medicaid after a resident has exhausted their assets. Although my Mother was the exception, most NH residents don't live longer than a year after admission.