Protecting Your Assets from the Nursing Home (Contd.)

Under the current Medicaid rules, if you are married and one spouse is in
the nursing home, there are ways to protect your marital assets for the well
spouse. By reallocating your assets to non-countable assets, none of those
assets would have to be spent down on nursing home care before Medicaid starts
paying for the care.

If you are single and in the nursing home, there are also ways to protect
your assets for your loved ones. Although you cannot protect all of your assets
as you can with a spouse, you could save about half of your assets for your
loved ones. You would only spend down about half of your assets on private pay
nursing home care before Medicaid starts paying for the care.

To protect your assets when you are in the nursing home, you need to be able
to make transfers of assets to your spouse or other loved ones. For you to be
able to make these transfers, you either have to be mentally capable of making
those transfers, or you have given appropriate instructions in your financial
power of attorney.