Estate recovery is a state’s backdoor approach to offsetting costs by making claims against the assets retained by the patient. If you receive long-term care Medicaid benefits for home care or nursing home care, any benefits paid while you were 55 and over can be recouped from your estate. 

Typically, the largest asset in the patient’s estate that was exempt from the Medicaid spenddown is the primary residence. If the home ends up in probate when the patient dies, the state can recover any money spent on the cost of long-term care from the sale of the home.

There are a number of ways to protect assets from estate recovery. When the Legacy Benefit Planning team puts together any Medicaid asset protection plan, it involves not only protecting assets from the spenddown but also protecting assets from eventual estate recovery.

Even if you are already receiving long-term Medicaid assistance and never needed to implement an asset protection plan to become eligible, we can still assist with asset protection through an estate recovery avoidance plan to protect your home or the home of a loved one in the nursing home.  If you need help protecting assets from Medicaid estate recovery, contact us now for a free consultation.

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