Real Estate and Medicaid – Part 1

As I have written about many times on this blog, Medicaid is a needs based benefit.  Assets must be spent down below $2000.  Not every asset, however, is countable.  There are exempt or non countable assets.  These are assets that do not count against the $2000 limit.  Additionally, in the case of married couple the non Medicaid spouse can keep as much as $154,140 in countable assets.  The primary residence is the biggest exempt asset as long as the Medicaid recipient or the spouse is living in it.  

A number of people calling our office about Medicaid express a common concern.  If they own more than one property, can they exempt all their real estate?

The answer to that question is “no”.  Only the primary residence is exempt and in the case of a single applicant the exemption has a limit of just over $1,000,000.  For a married couple there is no value limit to the exemption for the primary residence.

So, must the other homes be sold and spent down in order to achieve Medicaid eligibility?  Not necessarily.  There may be other options that will allow families to keep the other properties. 

I’ll discuss what I mean next week.