Can Illinois Medicaid take insurance policy I am beneficiary of? I cashed the checks, how long should I wait?

RebeccaCp, Thank you. Yes they knew about both policies beforehand. Rebecca how long does Medicaid have to come after assets? She has no property or anything. Just the two policies.

The term policy wasn't a countable "Medicaid asset" so that policy wouldn't be in play for Medicaid and Medicaid won't come after that benefit.

If Medicaid knew about the policy with the small cash value in advance, it was likely deemed not a countable asset and the benefit paid to you likely would be okay as well - as long as Medicaid knew about the policy during the application process.

I work in the legal department for a large insurer. We get requests from Medicaid all the time to get the asset values of policies and annuity contracts. If Medicaid knows about policies and there is cash value involved, these are handled in advance ( like JoAnn mentioned) or Medicaid becomes a beneficiary (I see this more in annuities), etc. or a lien is placed, or the ownership is changed to a funeral service provider, etc. As long as it knew about the cash value policy in advance, and you weren't asked to cash it in or change the beneficiary, you should be okay.

Best wishes.

They knew about them but didn't make me cash them in because the term policy didn't have no cash value and the other just had a 600 cash value.

These should have been brought up at time of filing. Medicaid would have asked them to be cashed in to help pay for her care. With my Mom, it was a policy valued at 13k. Probably set up for funeral expenses. I cashed them in and prepaid Moms funeral which Medicaid Okd. If this is pretty much what these policies were for and Medicaid wasn't made aware of them and they did just cover the funeral expenses then I wouldn't worry. But if the checks were a large amount, then Medicaid deserves some money back for Moms care. Funeral expenses include funeral costs, flowers and luncheon.