Updated August 25, 2026. Quick answer: Almost nobody publishes one. Of 28 pages read this session that rank for or answer what an elder law attorney charges for Medicaid work, 7 publish a price the publisher itself charges; 19 report a market range with no source attached, and 2 carry no dollar figure at all. Below are the 5 law firms that published a number, in their own words, with a link to the page it was read from.
The census, and what it found
This page does not report an average, because there is nothing to average. There is no regulator, no court and no trade body that collects or publishes what Medicaid planning costs, so every range in circulation is somebody’s impression written as a fact.
So instead of adding another range, we counted who publishes a price at all. 28 pages were fetched and archived on the date above: law firm fee pages, law firm explainers, and the senior-care directories that rank alongside them. Each was read for a dollar figure and sorted into one of three buckets.
| Bucket | Pages | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Publishes a price it charges | 7 | the publisher states its own fee |
| Reports a market range | 19 | a range with no source, method or date |
| No dollar figure at all | 2 | the question is answered without a number |
28 pages fetched and archived on August 25, 2026. Each archive carries its own SHA-256 in SHA256SUMS.json.
The distinction that matters is between a firm saying what it charges and a page saying what the market charges. The second is not evidence. It is repeated so often that it reads like evidence.
One page in the census is titled with this exact question, runs 16,315 characters, and contains no dollar figures.
The firms that published a price
These are the five law firms in the census that state a price they charge. Each row is that firm’s own sentence, from a page archived this session.
| Firm (link to the page) | State | What the firm published |
|---|---|---|
| Senior Solutions Attorneys at Law (Belmont MA) | MA | “Our Hourly Rates for 2026 are: $425/hour for Attorney time $250/hour for Senior Paralegal time $195/hour for Paralegal time We always provide a written fee agreement.” |
| Wessels & Liebau LLC (WI) | WI | “After the initial appointment, most cases involving Medicaid and Long Term Care planning, and special needs planning, are billed at an hourly rate of $400-435 for partners and $275 for associate attorneys.” |
| Law Office of Yuriy Levin (NY) | NY | “We charge $5,000 for a Medicaid Package.” |
| Eldercare Lawyer | NJ | “I cannot speak for every attorney, but I charge between $6,500 and $8,500 to save a client a portion of their estate from the ravages of long-term care (often saving tens of thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars) and apply for Medicaid benefits from start to finish.” |
| DeLoach, Hofstra & Cavonis PA (FL) | FL | “We charge $400 for an office consultation to see if we can assist your family in a difficult time.” |
Reproduced as published. A firm is listed here only because it states a price it charges; nothing in this table is a market average.
Two of them are worth reading twice. One publishes a package at $5,000 and, on the same page, prices the components inside it at $3,000 + $1,000 + $3,000 = $7,000 – so the bundle is $2,000 less than the parts. The other publishes an hourly rate and then says, of the flat fee, “We will tell you what the flat fee is during the initial meeting.” A published fee page with the number withheld is still the ordinary case, not the exception.
five firms is a census of who publishes. It is not a national average, it cannot be turned into one, and this page does not offer one.
What the fee is actually paying for
The work under the fee is statutory, and knowing the mechanism is how you tell a real quote from a round number.
Transfers made during the look-back period do not simply disappear. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c)(1)(E)(i) the period of ineligibility is “the total, cumulative uncompensated value of all assets transferred by the individual (or individual’s spouse) on or after the look-back date specified in subparagraph (B)(i), divided by (II) the average monthly cost to a private patient of nursing facility services in the State (or, at the option of the State, in the community in which the individual is institutionalized) at the time of application.” There is no ceiling in that formula. We calculate it here: the Medicaid penalty period calculator.
If income is over the state’s cap, a qualified income trust has to exist. The federal authority is 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(4)(B), which exempts a trust where “the trust is composed only of pension, Social Security, and other income to the individual”. Drafting it, funding it every month, and deciding whether it is needed at all is legal work, and in Florida a nonlawyer doing it is the unlicensed practice of law – see where the line is, in four states. The same subsection also decides whether a trust is the route in your state at all, because it is available only where the state does not run medically needy coverage for nursing facility services.
What is not part of the fee: filing the application. Under 42 C.F.R. § 435.908(a), “The agency must provide assistance to any individual seeking help with the application or renewal process in person, over the telephone, and online, and in a manner that is accessible to individuals with disabilities and those who are limited English proficient, consistent with § 435.905(b) of this subpart”. That help is the state’s obligation and it is free.
How to read a quote you have been given
Ask which of the three the quote is: hourly with no estimate, a flat fee for a defined scope, or a flat fee for an undefined one. The third is where surprises live.
Ask what happens if the application is denied and has to be re-filed, and whether that is inside the fee or outside it.
Ask whether the fee includes the trust, the funding of the trust each month, and the response to the agency’s requests for documents – those are three separate jobs and they are not always in the same quote.
And ask for the fee in writing before anything is drafted. Every firm in this census that publishes a price also publishes it in writing; that is the whole point of publishing it.
The money side is a separate question from the legal one
A financial adviser is not an elder law attorney and does not handle Medicaid filings, but where there are savings, a home or retirement accounts in the picture it can be worth having the financial side priced while the legal work is still being scoped.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here. You stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions (age, investable assets, location), then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button. Submitting the form does not guarantee an adviser or a match. This matching form is not tax or legal advice.
What this page does not settle
Scope: 28 pages, read and archived on the date above, chosen because they rank for or directly answer the question this page asks. It is a census of publication, not a survey of prices. No state’s rules on trusts, spend-down or personal service contracts are described here.
Seven publishers is a census of who publishes, not a survey of what the market charges. No weighting, no sampling frame, no national average is claimed or computable from it.
No regulator, court or trade body publishes a fee benchmark for Medicaid planning. Nothing on this page is a government figure.
Prices were read on one day and firms change them. Every figure carries the publisher, the URL and the date it was read; check the source before relying on it.
For the state-specific transfer math, start from your state’s divisor:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Arizona
- Arkansas
- California
- Colorado
- Connecticut
- Delaware
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- Illinois
- Indiana
- Iowa
- Kansas
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maine
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- Michigan
- Minnesota
- Mississippi
- Missouri
- Montana
- Nebraska
- Nevada
- New Hampshire
- New Jersey
- New Mexico
- New York
- North Carolina
- North Dakota
- Ohio
- Oklahoma
- Oregon
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
- South Dakota
- Tennessee
- Texas
- Utah
- Vermont
- Virginia
- Washington
- West Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Wyoming
Sources
- 42 C.F.R. 435.908(a) — https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-42/section-435.908
- 42 U.S.C. 1396p(c)(1)(E)(i) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1396p
- 42 U.S.C. 1396p(d)(4)(B) — https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/1396p
Related: Medicaid Crisis Planning Cost · Non-Attorney Medicaid Planners · what attorney-drafted estate documents cost · the transfer penalty, computed.
General information drawn from the primary statutes, regulations, court opinions and published fee schedules named above, not legal, tax or financial advice. Fees change and the figures here are what each publisher stated on the date above; check the source before relying on it.
If your income is over the limit: the rule in your state
Twenty-four states below publish a rule specific enough to quote. Seventeen require a trust; seven run a spend-down instead. Each page quotes that state’s own source.
More states: the excess-income rule where you live
Twenty-five more jurisdictions, each quoting its own source. Six require a trust; nineteen run a spend-down, a deductible, a recipient liability or a share of cost. Together with the list above this covers fifty of the fifty-one.
The last two: Connecticut and New Hampshire
These two complete the set at fifty-one of fifty-one. Both were previously left out of this family, and in both cases the reason was the document that had been searched rather than anything the state does or does not publish: New Hampshire keeps its spend-down in He-W 878, not in the chapter first read, and Connecticut publishes UPM 5520 as separate legacy files rather than at the single path first tried.
Not all of the help an aging parent needs is legal help. Bill paying, statements and paperwork are a daily money manager’s job, with a separate fee range and a separate credential to check.
The state-by-state estate-recovery comparison covers all 51 jurisdictions as of September 3, 2026. The seven added that day: Medicaid estate recovery in Arkansas (probate estate only), Medicaid estate recovery in Colorado (probate estate only), Medicaid estate recovery in Connecticut (probate estate only), Medicaid estate recovery in Delaware (probate estate only), Medicaid estate recovery in Mississippi (probate estate only), Medicaid estate recovery in Virginia (expanded estate) and Medicaid estate recovery in West Virginia (probate estate only).