Practice Area

Medicaid Crisis Planning

When a loved one needs nursing home care now, we work within the rules to qualify them for Medicaid while lawfully protecting what the family can keep.

Free Consultation Call (800) 355-1504

Before you transfer anything, call us

The most damaging thing a well-meaning family does is move money or deed a house to a child in the hope of qualifying for Medicaid. Uncompensated transfers inside the look-back period create a penalty period of ineligibility, and it is frequently longer and more expensive than the outcome lawful planning would have produced. Some transfers can be cured. Call (800) 355-1504 before, not after.

What crisis planning means

Ideal Medicaid planning happens five or more years before care is needed. Crisis planning is the realistic version: a parent has had a stroke or a fall, is being discharged to a nursing facility, is paying privately at several thousand dollars a month, and has assets over the eligibility limit. Options are narrower than they would have been, but they are far from zero, and doing nothing is almost always the most expensive choice available.

The rules that shape every case

  • The look-back period. The agency reviews transfers made in the years before the application, five years for most transfers under federal law. Gifts inside that window generally trigger a penalty period rather than a flat denial.
  • Countable versus exempt assets. Not everything counts. A primary residence up to an equity limit, one vehicle, personal belongings, and certain prepaid funeral arrangements are commonly treated as exempt. Precise limits are set by each state and change annually.
  • Protections for the healthy spouse. When one spouse enters care and one stays home, federal law lets the at-home spouse keep a share of the couple’s resources and, in many cases, divert part of the institutionalised spouse’s income. These figures are updated every year, and they are frequently the single largest lever in a case.
  • Estate recovery. States are required to seek reimbursement from the estate of a deceased Medicaid recipient, most often against the home. Planning for eligibility without planning for recovery solves half the problem.

Medicaid crisis planning calculator

Answer a few questions about your family’s numbers for an illustrative read on where you stand under Medicaid’s asset rules, the spousal protection, and any transfer penalty. It takes about two minutes, and nothing you enter is sent anywhere, the calculation runs in your browser.

For indicative purposes only, not a determination

This calculator is general education, not legal or financial advice, and using it does not create an attorney-client relationship. It works from simplified, illustrative figures, actual income limits, resource limits, and rules are set separately by each state, change every year, and involve exceptions this tool cannot see (trusts, annuities, exempt-asset rules, waiver programs, and more). Treat the result as a starting point for a conversation with us, not an answer.




Bank and investment accounts, CDs, a second property, and similar. Leave out the primary home, one vehicle, and personal belongings.


Market value minus any mortgage still owed. Enter 0 if renting.



What we can often still do

The right combination depends entirely on marital status, asset mix, income, and which of our three states you are in. Tools we use include restructuring countable assets into exempt ones, spousal resource protections and fair-hearing requests for increased allowances, properly drafted Medicaid-compliant annuities, promissory notes, personal care agreements between a family member and the person needing care, and, where the timeline allows, irrevocable trusts.

Every one of these is technical, and each is straightforwardly wrong in some fact patterns. That is precisely why this is legal work rather than a form.

What it costs, and what it saves

We charge a flat fee for crisis planning, quoted after we have seen the actual numbers. In a typical case the fee is a fraction of one or two months of private-pay nursing care. We will also tell you plainly when the honest answer is that little can be protected, you should not pay a law firm to confirm bad news it already suspected.

See elder law for the surrounding issues including guardianship and capacity, and estate planning if you are planning well ahead of any need for care.

Medicaid Crisis Planning, common questions

Where we can help with this

We handle Medicaid Crisis Planning matters in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The applicable rules differ in each, tell us your state and we will tell you what actually applies to you.

Charlotte, NC Rock Hill, SC Nashville, TN