Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Minnesota is unusual in putting the number in its statute rather than adopting the federal one by reference. The allowance is the greater of “the maximum amount of assets allowed to be transferred is the amount which, when added to the assets otherwise available to the community spouse, is the greater of: (1) $119,220 subject to an annual adjustment on January 1, 2017, and every January 1 thereafter, equal to the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers” or “the amount required by court order to be paid to the community spouse.” So the operative figure today is that statutory base carried forward by nine annual CPI adjustments, not a number this page can quote from the statute.
What Minnesota actually sets out
| What the state provides | What it says |
|---|---|
| Minnesota’s name for it | the community spouse asset allowance, Minn. Stat. § 256B.059 |
| What it is | “”Community spouse asset allowance” is the value of assets that can be transferred under subdivision 3.” |
| The figure and its indexing | “the maximum amount of assets allowed to be transferred is the amount which, when added to the assets otherwise available to the community spouse, is the greater of: (1) $119,220 subject to an annual adjustment on January 1, 2017, and every January 1 thereafter, equal to the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers” |
| The alternative | “the amount required by court order to be paid to the community spouse.” |
| When it is calculated | “Upon application for medical assistance benefits for an institutionalized spouse, the total value of assets in which either the institutionalized spouse or the community spouse has an interest shall be assessed and the community spouse asset allowance shall be calculated as required in subdivision 3.” |
| If the spouse at home is already at the limit | “If the assets available to the community spouse are already at the limit permissible under this section, or the higher limit attributable to increases under subdivision 4, no assets may be transferred from the institutionalized spouse to the community spouse.” |
| Deadline to transfer | “The transfer must be made as soon as practicable after the date the institutionalized spouse is determined eligible for medical assistance, or within the amount of time needed for any court order required for the transfer.” |
| After eligibility | “After the month in which the institutionalized spouse is determined eligible for medical assistance, and during the continuous period of enrollment, no assets of the community spouse are considered available to the institutionalized spouse, unless the institutionalized spouse has been found eligible under paragraph (b).” |
How it works in practice
- The statute states a base and a rule for moving it, and this page will not guess the result. The text sets $119,220 “subject to an annual adjustment on January 1, 2017, and every January 1 thereafter” by CPI. Compounding that by hand would produce a number that looks authoritative and is not what the department publishes, so the figure a family needs is the one on the department’s current standards page, not one computed here.
- Minnesota protects a figure, not a half. The statute’s test is what the allowance is “when added to the assets otherwise available to the community spouse” — so the spouse at home is brought up to the allowance, counting what they already hold, rather than being given a share of the total.
- A spouse already at the limit gets nothing more. “If the assets available to the community spouse are already at the limit permissible under this section, or the higher limit attributable to increases under subdivision 4, no assets may be transferred from the institutionalized spouse to the community spouse.” That is the direct consequence of protecting a ceiling rather than a proportion.
- The transfer has a soft deadline with a hard exception. “The transfer must be made as soon as practicable after the date the institutionalized spouse is determined eligible for medical assistance, or within the amount of time needed for any court order required for the transfer.” The standard is “as soon as practicable after the date the institutionalized spouse is determined eligible for medical assistance” — which is not a date, and the court-order clause acknowledges that some transfers cannot be done quickly.
- The protection becomes absolute after eligibility. “After the month in which the institutionalized spouse is determined eligible for medical assistance, and during the continuous period of enrollment, no assets of the community spouse are considered available to the institutionalized spouse, unless the institutionalized spouse has been found eligible under paragraph (b).” The spouse at home is not re-tested every year while enrollment continues.
- The route to a larger allowance runs through income, and Minnesota conditions it tightly: “A substitution under this paragraph may be made only if the assets of the couple have been arranged so that the maximum amount of income-producing assets, at the maximum rate of return, are available to the community spouse under the community spouse asset allowance.” A couple who has left money in a non-earning account has not met that condition.
What the allowance is for, and why protecting the spouse at home is a federal requirement rather than a state kindness, is explained on the community spouse resource allowance page. The date the couple’s resources are counted is its own subject, on the snapshot date page, and the monthly income allowance that runs alongside it is on the MMMNA page. This page is the record for Minnesota.
What this page does not settle
- This page quotes the statute, not the department’s manual. Minnesota’s health care programs manual restates these rules with current figures and worked examples, and a detail that decides a real case may be there rather than in the statutory text.
- This page reads one source: Minn. Stat. § 256B.059, Treatment of assets when a spouse is institutionalized. It is the state’s own publication on this rule, but no state puts its whole treatment of a couple’s resources in a single document, and a detail that decides your case may sit in one this page did not read.
- The resource rule is one hurdle. The income rules for the spouse at home are separate and are decided on their own numbers, the level-of-care test is separate again, and the transfer-of-assets look-back is separate from all of them. Clearing this rule does not clear any of the others.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on August 27, 2026. The federal minimum and maximum figures are reset each January, and a state can revise its own rule without the page around it changing. Open the source before you rely on a number.
Eligibility is decided by the state agency on the whole file, not by one rule on one page. Nothing here is legal advice, and no one should move, retitle or spend a couple’s savings on the strength of a web page.
Sources
The source above was retrieved and read against the state text on August 27, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.
Related: Minnesota’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program status; a separate, policy-based way some families protect assets alongside this spend-down allowance.