Are you worried about protecting your family assets from the increasingly high cost of long term nursing home care? Our team of elder law attorneys has significant experience in Medicaid asset protection planning and is well-equipped to assist you in understanding the intricacies of Medicaid eligibility and spend-down requirements.
One of the vital considerations of Medicaid qualification and asset protection planning is the resource and home equity allowance.
A concern that many of our clients frequently express is the fear that the cost of the care needed by the spouse that is in the nursing home (the “Institutionalized Spouse”) will completely bankrupt the spouse that is still living at home (the “Community Spouse”).
An essential piece of the Medicaid asset protection puzzle is the analysis of “countable” income and resources. As we noted previously in our article on Spousal Impoverishment and Home Equity Limits, Congress has established a system for allocating these “countable” assets between the Institutionalized Spouse and the Community Spouse. This legislation has become known as the “Spousal Anti-Impoverishment Act” because it is intended to prevent the Community Spouse from being left with little to no income or resources if the other spouse needs long term care.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released the 2021 Spousal Anti-Impoverishment Standards. Utilizing the figures below to design an asset protection strategy that is custom-tailored to your specific circumstances can often protect tens or hundreds of thousands of your hard-earned assets from the Medicaid spend-down requirements.
The official spousal impoverishment allowances for 2021 are as follows:
Minimum Community Spouse Resource Allowance: $26,076
Maximum Community Spouse Resource Allowance: $130,380
Maximum Monthly Maintenance Needs Allowance: $3,259.50
The minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance for the lower 48 states remains $2,155 ($2,693.75 for Alaska and $2,478.75 for Hawaii) until July 1, 2021.
Home Equity Limits:
Minimum: $603,000
Maximum: $906,000
Please keep in mind that, through the use of our proven and tested Medicaid asset protection strategies, the attorneys at UTBF can help you to protect much more than these statutory limits.
We are here to answer any questions that you may have about Medicaid and the spend-down requirements as well as any other Elder Law issues that you would like to discuss. Please contact our office at 610-933-8069.
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