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If my spouse is in a nursing home and we need help paying for care, what will I have to
live on if they receive Medicaid? For a married couple that might be applying
for assistance in Medicaid, if one spouse is in a nursing home needing care and the
other spouse is still living at home, that spouse living at home Medicaid calls that
the ‘community spouse’. And there is certain safe harbor protection for that community
spouse. When they look at the income, there are some formulas involved. The community
spouse is entitled to keep all of his or her income, if his or her income is below a certain
threshold, they might be entitled to claim some of the income of the spouse that’s
in the nursing home. It’s formula based so I can’t really tell people how that’s
going to be until I have all the information from them but you can usually assume at a
minimum that the community spouse is going to be able to keep about $1,992 a month but
often its higher than that. It honestly depends on whose income it is. That will dictate how
much they will be able to keep. There are also sometimes shelter allowances to go towards
living expenses, utilities, things like that so that’s part of the formula that comes
into play. When it comes to the savings and how much of the savings of the spouse might
be able to keep, a rough way to think of it Is they total up everything the couple owns,
his, hers, ours it doesn’t matter how it’s titled. If you're married they're going to
count all assets of either spouse. They total everything up and they say community spouse
can keep half but no more than $119,220. I should say all of these numbers do get adjusted
periodically, so they do change over time. It gives you an idea of how the program works.
That’s what Medicaid will tell you, that the community spouse can’t have more than
$119,220 but often through planning we can preserve more than that. There are some allowances
for things, that certain amount of life insurance or a car, prepaid funeral arrangements, and
then there may be through some panning that we can do to preserve more assets for that
community spouse but that gives you some idea of that minimums.