"Spousal Refusal" is a nursing home and Medicaid planning tool.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Robert, what else you've been working on this week?

Attorney Robert Hidock: We've also been working on a Spousal Refusal. We don't usually talk a lot about that on here, but it's a very specific and can only be used for married couples. It's when you have one spouse that's going into a skilled nursing facility, and one spouse is at home and they're over Medicaid's income limit or asset limit of accountable assets. They have more than $137,400 in assets and with that, it has to be just tailored perfectly where every asset gets changed to the person at home, the community spouse's name. With that, though, you also have to take into account you have to take that person who's going into the institution off as a beneficiary or let's say, they have trust together, you have to take them off of the trust if God forbid the community spouse dies first.

Once everything is perfectly lined up, we then have the community spouse at home say, "I'm refusing to make my assets available to support my husband or wife that's in the nursing home," and then that person that's in the nursing home will sign what's called an assignment of rights to the state for recovery, but we really know there's going to be no assets to recover. That person then gets approved for Medicaid. The spouse at home gets all the assets that they've had.

Tom: That's called a Spousal Refusal and that can be used when married couples have a lot of wealth and still get Medicaid to pay for the nursing home for one.

Robert: There's no limit to how much we can transfer because Florida allows for interspousal transfers of assets.

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