Are there any assets that Medicaid does not consider available to the Medicaid applicant and/or his spouse?
There are several assets that are considered exempt for accounting purposes for Medicaid. For example, your home, $2000 in assets for an individual, a burial account to a certain value, a life insurance cash surrender value to a certain value, and in general your one vehicle per person and a vehicle that’s older than seven years, as long as it’s not an antique or a special car that’s worth significant dollars.
Planning for this, you will want to look at what your assets are and how they’re titled because if you’re planning for an ill spouse for example and the other spouse is well, you can transfer assets to that well spouse up to about $120,000 right now. You can still, as the ill spouse, qualify for Medicaid. You will want to seek the services of a qualified elder law attorney to make sure these assets are titled correctly.