• Someone who wants to apply and qualify for Medicaid, but who has too many assets to qualify, will sometimes set up a trust — or have a spouse or custodian set up a trust — using the applicant’s own assets, under which the applicant may be the beneficiary of all or part of the payments from the trust, which are distributed by a trustee with discretion to make trust payments to the applicant. Such a trust may be presumed to have been established for the purpose of attempting to qualify for Medicaid, and may be counted as an asset of the applicant, resulting in a denial of benefits and the imposition of a penalty period during which the applicant cannot reapply. Nonetheless, Medicaid rules allow three types of trusts that do not impair Medicaid eligibility, since the trust assets are not considered the beneficiary’s property: Miller trust, pooled trust, and under-65 trust. [Cases: Health 471(6).]
Medicaid qualifying trust
A trust that is deemed to have been created in an effort to reduce someone’s assets so that the person may qualify for Medicaid, and that will be included as an asset for purposes of determining the person’s eligibility.
