When it comes to Medicaid planning, the sooner you start, the better. A large part of my legal practice focuses on helping clients qualify for Medicaid—either immediately when they’re facing the high cost of nursing home care or proactively, in case long-term care becomes necessary down the road. This proactive approach is known as Medicaid preplanning, and it often centers around one critical concept: the five-year lookback period.
Understanding the Five-Year Lookback
Let’s clear up a common myth right away: the Medicaid lookback period is five years, not seven. Despite persistent rumors to the contrary, it has never changed. When you apply for Medicaid, the state will review your financial activity over the previous five years. This includes bank statements, investment accounts, annuities—anything that shows where your money has gone.
Why the scrutiny? Because Medicaid is not just regular health insurance. It pays for long-term care, such as a nursing home or assisted living facility. But to qualify, you must have very limited assets—generally less than $2,000 for an individual. That strict limit leads many people to try and give their money or property away to family before applying. Medicaid’s lookback is designed to penalize those gifts.
How the Penalty Works
Let’s walk through a real-world example: Mrs. Smith moves into a nursing home that charges $15,000 per month. When she applies for Medicaid, she has only $1,000 left in her bank account. Her family submits five years of financial records as part of the application.
Medicaid conducts a forensic accounting and finds four gifts Mrs. Smith made during that time: $10,000, $15,000, $5,000, and $20,000—a total of $50,000. Medicaid divides this $50,000 by a standard penalty divisor, which in New Jersey is currently $12,270 (the average monthly cost of a nursing home in the state). That results in 4 months of ineligibility. Since Mrs. Smith has no funds to pay the nursing home during those 4 months, she risks discharge for non-payment. This is exactly why planning ahead is so important.
How a Trust Can Help
One of the most effective tools in Medicaid preplanning is the irrevocable trust. Here’s how it works: I help clients transfer ownership of their home into an irrevocable trust, where their children serve as trustees and beneficiaries. This removes the home from the client’s name and starts the five-year lookback clock. If five years pass without applying for Medicaid, the home transfer won’t be seen as a gift. It’s off-limits to Medicaid’s penalty calculation.
Even better, the trust structure I use:
- Protects the home if the children face lawsuits, divorce, or pass away.
- Preserves the step-up in basis for capital gains purposes when the parent dies, potentially saving the heirs tens of thousands in taxes.
Final Thoughts
Nobody wants to think about nursing homes or the possibility of needing long-term care. But by planning now, you can protect your assets, avoid costly penalties, and make things easier for your family. Putting your house in trust isn’t just a legal maneuver—it’s peace of mind.