The correct option is b. Vacation home is NOT an exempt asset under the Medicaid eligibility standards. Under the Medicaid eligibility standards, certain assets are considered exempt, meaning they do not count towards the asset limit for Medicaid qualification.
No action will be taken to enforce the lien when you die, if your property is occupied by your spouse, your child under age 21, your child over age 21 who is blind or disabled, or in some cases, your brother or sister. No one will be asked to leave the property.
By setting up an irrevocable trust and transferring into it any assets in excess of the Medicaid financial limits, you can effectively shield those assets from the program's fines and other penalties. One issue here is that assets cannot be transferred back out of the trust, so you have lost control of them forever.
If you inherit money and do not report it, you will be required to pay Medicaid back for the services and benefits that were provided during any period you would have otherwise been ineligible. When a Medicaid recipient receives an inheritance, it is counted as income in the month that it is received.
Once you've been approved for Medicaid coverage, you take on some of the responsibility of maintaining your eligibility and reporting anything that impacts it. Medicaid agencies make annual checks to account balances to ensure the Medicaid recipient still meets the right requirements.
There are also two state exceptions when it comes to the Look-Back Period – California and New York. There is no Look-Back Period for HCBS Waivers in California, and it's 30 months (2.5 years) for Nursing Home Medicaid, although that will be phased out by July 2026, leaving California with no Look-Back Period.
In essence, a Medicaid Asset Protection Trust serves as a firewall that prevents your hard-earned assets from being depleted due to long-term healthcare costs. By transferring ownership of these assets into the trust, you are essentially ensuring they are not counted when assessing Medicaid eligibility.
A Medicaid agency cannot collect more from one's estate than the amount in which it paid. For example, if the state paid $153,000, but one's estate is worth $300,000, Medicaid can only take $153,000. With MERP, all states are required to seek recovery from the deceased Medicaid recipient's “probate estate”.
Medicaid Non-Countable Assets
An essential non-countable asset is your home. Your home remains a non-countable asset even if you move into a nursing home, so long as your spouse or dependent is living in the home or you have an intent to return.
The type of property exempted differs from state to state but often includes clothes, home furnishings, retirement plans, and small amounts of equity in a house and car.
However, in California, the lookback period is only 2.5 years (30 months).
Learn more about MERP. California eliminated their asset limit effective 1/1/24. While this means one's home is automatically safe from Medicaid while they are living, the home is not necessarily safe from Medicaid's Estate Recovery Program.
The nursing home must have a system that ensures full accounting for your funds and can't combine your funds with the nursing home's funds. The nursing home must protect your funds from any loss by providing an acceptable protection, such as buying a surety bond.
The “pay back” cited by the new Illinois law refers to the requirement that the government seek payment from the estates of deceased Medicaid recipients for Medicaid dollars received. This is called Medicaid recovery.
California stands apart from the other states. In CA, Medicaid (Medi-Cal) recipients can gift inheritance, which is considered “income”, the month in which it is received. Furthermore, Medi-Cal recipients have no asset limit, and therefore, can have unlimited assets and still be eligible for long-term care benefits.
One such option to protect assets is a Medicaid Trust. By placing some of your assets in an appropriate trust, you can protect them from Medicaid and have them not be counted when you are applying for benefits.
Each state's Medicaid program uses slightly different eligibility guidelines, but most examine all a person's financial transactions dating back five years (60 months) from the date of their qualifying application for long-term care benefits. (In California, this window is only 30 months.)
The person you care for can transfer assets into an irrevocable trust to protect them from Medicaid spend-down or penalties, as long as they set up the trust more than five years prior to applying for Medicaid. Any assets in the trust must stay in the trust until after your loved one passes away.
Assets are things you own, which can be counted for Medi-Cal eligibility. These items include bank accounts, cash, second vehicles and homes, and other financial resources. Please see below for examples.
Required documentation to be provided by the applicant might include checking, savings, money market, credit union, and certificates of deposit (CD) account statements, life insurance policies, deeds or appraisals for one's home and other real estate, copies of stocks and bonds, deeds to burial plots, and copies of pre ...
Share: The IRS probably already knows about many of your financial accounts, and the IRS can get information on how much is there. But, in reality, the IRS rarely digs deeper into your bank and financial accounts unless you're being audited or the IRS is collecting back taxes from you.
Your first option is creating an irrevocable Medicaid asset protection trust and transferring IRA funds that exceed Medicaid's limits. This way, your IRA's funds will fall beneath the eligibility threshold.