Many professionals with advanced degrees, designations, and respect in their communities promote Medicaid's loopholes as a way to get someone else to pay for parent's nursing home care. Rather than keeping up on every new idea to cheat the system, I've learned to look at the long-term effect of qualifying for Medicaid. The qualification criteria is where all the people who claim to be smarter than you and I focus their attention. Most states look at an applicant's assets and income. Medicaid is a joint federal-state program, so each state can be different from what is stated in this article.
Some states even allow counties to develop their own qualification criteria.
I highly recommend the agent consult with his or her local Medicaid office to obtain the specific details of the program in his area. It may take several calls to find the right person, the agent will be happy he was persistent. Exempt assets range from a home to a wedding ring. After an exempt asset is identified many states add contingencies to keep it exempt. Most states will combine all countable assets of the husband and wife, assign half to the nursing home resident and half to the community spouse, then determine if each meets the financial criteria.