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ok so basically we where going to move into my grandmother in laws house and rent out ours but we cant do it because of the type of loan we have so we are thinking of moving her to our house and selling her's as it is paid for but in need of repair. So i was wondering how this would affect any possible medicaid benefits in the future because for now we are trying to keep her out of a home but we may need other help or if in the future her dementia is severe enough you just never know. i have heard that fl medicaid wont take your house if its less than 500000 which this one definitely is. I mean we will probably use the money from the sale to build onto our house because it is way to small to handle three adults and future children as it is only two bedrooms. the rest will be for her care, for me to possibly stay home with her full time and some to help out the rest of the family. I mean we dont want to put her in a home anyway but i dont want any legal issues to go wrong and i dont know what to do if we cant use a good hunk of the money to add on to our house. Should we just put her in a home and let medicaid take the house? or does medicaid even do that in fl? no one would be living in it. She really isnt that bad yet she just needs a lot of help physically. i really think her issues are because she is alone to much. please help

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First of all Medicaid doesn't "take the house". What Medicaid does, for those that quality for Medicaid in the first place, is place a claim or lien on the Medicaid exempt homesteaded property. In order to go on Medicaid, you agree to that - you don't sign off on it per se. The is MERP - Medicaid Estate Recovery Program. When the Medicaid recipient dies in order to sell or transfer the property, the MERP claim or lien has to be released. How MERP is done depends on each states' approach to Medicaid (a joint state & federal program) and the state's estate / death laws. One of the experts on this forum is based in FL - ask him
about FL.

For example, in TX, MERP is a "claim" against the estate. It is a Class 7 claim - so there are 6 other classes that get paid or settled first in probate. Because of that MERP is low in Texas but it still happens. You really should get legal advice from someone experienced in your state.

About the 500000 value - in most states the homesteaded property is an exempt asset for Medicaid IF it is below 500000 in it's property assessment. This is based on the county tax assessor not what a Realtor tells your or what you think it's worth. If it is above 500000 it is NOT exempt in order for them to qualify for Medicaid. In a few states, the assessed value is 750000. 500K seems high but you would be surprised at what the assessors value is for those that bought prior to the 1980's and real estate skyrocketed. One thing that happens is that since the seniors taxes are usually frozen, they never try to have their assessment lowered to reflect the changes in real estate. If you have stuff on the house that lowers it's value significantly - like foundation issues - then it's worth the time to file an appeal on the assessed value if Medicaid is in the future. Good luck.
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