Uncategorized

Guides › Medicaid and Your House Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: a Lady Bird deed (enhanced life estate) is the rare tool that beats BOTH Medicaid clocks at once — in the minority of states that recognize it, most prominently Florida, Texas, and Michigan. Because you keep the power to sell, mortgage, or revoke […]

Guides › Medicaid and Your House Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: adding a child to the deed is the most common do-it-yourself Medicaid move — and usually the worst one available. It is a gift of half the house the day it records: within the 60-month look-back, that is a penalty period computed on

Guides › Medicaid and Your House Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: federal law (42 U.S.C. §1396p(c)(2)(A)(iv)) lets a parent transfer the HOME to an adult child with no look-back penalty when two conditions are both met: the child lived in the home for at least two years immediately before the parent entered a facility,

Guides › Medicaid and Your House Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: gifts made within the 60-month look-back do not disqualify you forever — they create a penalty period computed by one federal formula (Deficit Reduction Act of 2005): total gifted amount ÷ your state’s average monthly nursing-home cost (the “penalty divisor”) = months Medicaid

Guides › Medicaid and Your House Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: “can Medicaid take the house” is really TWO questions with different timelines, and most articles blur them. Before and during care: the home is usually an EXEMPT asset — it does not count against eligibility while a spouse, minor, or disabled child lives

Guides › Settling an Estate Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: a sibling co-owner living in the inherited house generally owes the others no rent by default — every co-owner has the right to occupy the whole property, and absent an “ouster” (excluding the others) or a written agreement, courts in most states will not

Guides › Settling an Estate Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: you cannot make a co-owner sell by insisting — but you are not stuck either. The realistic ladder, cheapest first: (1) a buyout at appraised value, which turns an argument into arithmetic; (2) a written co-ownership agreement (who pays taxes and insurance, who can

Guides › Settling an Estate Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: while an estate is still in administration, there is a way to move the house to one heir that is not a sale at all: a non-pro-rata distribution — the executor distributes the house to the sibling who wants it and offsetting assets (cash,

Guides › Settling an Estate Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: three tax rules decide a sibling buyout, and ranking articles state two of them wrong. (1) The sellers’ gain is appreciation since death, not the sale price: every heir’s share took a stepped-up basis at the date-of-death value, and inherited property is automatically long-term.

Guides › Settling an Estate Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: a sibling buyout has four numbers, and most families only compute the first: the equity split. The others — the buyer’s cash to close, each seller’s taxable gain (their share of appreciation since the date-of-death value, not the whole check), and the buyer’s blended