A Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, often called a MAPT, is an irrevocable trust designed to hold a person’s assets so that those assets are not counted when he or she later applies for Medicaid to cover long-term care. Signing the trust agreement is only the first step. If a trust is never properly funded, it […]

Some of the clients who meet with me about a Medicaid trust already have their basic estate planning documents in place, usually a will, a power of attorney, and a health care proxy signed years earlier. A Medicaid Asset Protection Trust, which is an irrevocable trust designed to shelter assets from the cost of long-term […]

It is the most common piece of kitchen-table planning in New York. A parent is worried about a nursing home taking the house, so they add a son or daughter to the deed and assume the problem is solved. It usually is not. Adding a child to the deed costs you a tax exemption you […]

New York's Medicaid program pays for much of the long-term care older adults in Queens and Brooklyn receive, whether in a nursing home or at home. The State is required to seek repayment of some of that spending through the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General. When families come to me with questions about a […]

When a family begins the process of applying for Medicaid to cover a parent's or spouse's nursing home care, one of the first requirements they encounter is the look-back period. I explain it to families early, because it affects the financial decisions made in the years before the application. The rules are technical, but the […]

When one spouse needs nursing home care or long-term home care, the other spouse is often concerned about what will happen to the savings the couple built together. New York law offers a more protective option known as spousal refusal, which allows the healthy spouse to keep his or her own assets and income out […]

When one spouse begins to need long-term care, the financial question that follows is almost always about the other spouse. Nursing home care in New York City runs well past two hundred thousand dollars a year, and home care hours add up quickly, so what the healthy spouse asks me is whether the savings the […]

Crisis Medicaid planning is the work I do when a nursing home admission is already on the calendar rather than years away. It is different from the planning I do with clients five or more years ahead of time, where assets are moved into an irrevocable trust and left to season past the look-back. In […]

Families who include a child, a sibling, or a grandchild with a long-term disability come to my office with two goals that appear to work against each other. They want that person to receive a fair share of the estate, and they want the Medicaid coverage and Supplemental Security Income that pay for home care, […]

Many of the people who come to me needing help at home are in an awkward middle position. Their income is too high for Medicaid, but nowhere near high enough to pay an aide privately at New York rates. In 2026, a single applicant for Community Medicaid in New York is permitted to keep $1,836 […]