How to protect your vacation home from nursing homes and Medicaid in Florida

Attorney Tom Olsen: Medicaid is a combination of both state and federal law. What's true here in Florida is not necessarily true in another state. Here in the state of Florida, you can qualify for Medicaid, go into a nursing home, and you're allowed to keep the home that you live in. You don't need any special planning from us or anybody else to get that protection as far as your home state is concerned.

Attorney Robert Hidock: Correct. The home is not a countable asset.

Attorney Tom Olsen: A lot of people out there they've got a home that they live in, but they have a condo at the beach too that they'd like to go to on weekends. If a single person or a married couple came to you and said, Robert, I've got a home and I've got a condo at the beach that I'd like to go enjoy, how would you protect that condo?

Attorney Robert Hidock: For the condo, there are a couple different choices that they can do. If they're a single person, it's very simple. If you put the condo up for sale, it automatically becomes not a countable asset. If the house sells or condo sells while they're on Medicaid, then we just have to use one of our Medicaid compliant tools such as a personal services contract to redirect the money so they can stay on their assets, or they can just simply make the condo a rental property and that asset itself becomes protected for their family but the income less expenses would then be part of income that would go to the skilled nursing facility.

However, if the client is married, there's a whole bunch of other things that we can do. If they rent the condo out, the income can be diverted solely to the spouse that's at home, the community spouse.