Can You Plan for Long-Term Care Without Losing Your Home?

Many families face tough choices when it comes to covering the costs of nursing homes or in-home assistance as they age, and it’s wise to be thinking about how to manage things in advance. In El Paso, TX, a Medicaid attorney can guide you through ways to secure your future with the care you need while keeping your house safe from being sold off to pay bills.

Medicaid Eligibility for Long-Term Care

Medicaid helps cover long-term care expenses for those who qualify, but to get approved, you have to meet some financial requirements. In Texas, a single person applying for nursing home coverage in 2026 must have monthly income below $2,982 and countable assets under $2,000. The biggest hurdle for most people is the limit on assets. “Assets” for this purpose include your bank accounts, investments, and some real estate, and Medicaid can place a lien on the home after your death through estate recovery. Every state is required to recoup costs paid for care when possible, but this recovery only happens if there’s no surviving spouse and/or a qualifying child still in the home.

Another rule to watch is the five-year look-back period. When you apply, Medicaid will review all your asset transfers for the past 60 months to check for gifts or any sales you made for a below-market price. If they find any, it could trigger a penalty period where you’re ineligible for coverage. The penalty length depends on the value of what was transferred, divided by the average monthly nursing home cost in Texas. This is why early planning is so very important.

Your Medicaid Attorney and Asset Protection

Hiring a Medicaid attorney early can make a real difference. An experienced attorney will know how to structure your finances in such a way that you’ll be able to meet the eligibility criteria without losing valuable assets like your home. For instance, they might recommend setting up an irrevocable trust, where you transfer ownership of assets like your house to the trust, which removes the home from your countable resources. Once it’s in the trust, the home is protected from Medicaid’s spend-down rules as long as that move was made more than five years before you apply for Medicaid help.

There are many types of trusts, and an attorney will help you find the right trust for your estate and financial realities. The whole long-term care plan needs to be made in conjunction with all your other plans for your estate. For married couples, you’ll also want to take into account the spousal impoverishment protections that are in place. These rules allow a healthy spouse to keep a certain amount of assets and income without that disqualifying the other spouse from getting the coverage they need. Your attorney will make sure you maximize all these allowances so both you and your spouse are protected, no matter what happens.

In the end, taking careful and thoughtful steps now is the best way to protect your home. For personalized help in the El Paso area, reach out to us now at Townsend Allala Coulter & Kludt.

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