Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Delaware runs the familiar half-of-resources calculation, but its manual writes a $25,000 flat floor directly into the rule: a figure fixed by a 1993 state law, higher than the lower federal minimum most states default to, so a Delaware couple with modest savings protects more than a half-share state’s own floor would give them.
What Delaware actually sets out
| What the state provides | What it says |
|---|---|
| The calculation | “The community spouse resource allowance is the amount of resources equal to whichever is greater: $25,000.00 (current state spousal share) OR 1/2 of the value of the couple’s combined countable resources as of the beginning of the first continuous period of institutionalization on or after 9/30/89, but no more than current maximum resource allowance determined by Federal law.” |
| Where the $25,000 floor came from | “Delaware Senate Bill 99 increased the minimum resource allowance from $14,148 to $25,000 for applications filed on or after 10/1/93.” |
| Topping up to the floor | “If the share belonging to the spouse in the community is less than $25,000, the institutionalized spouse’s resources are deemed available to the community spouse to bring the community spouse’s resources up to $25,000 for initial eligibility determinations.” |
| The applicant’s own limit | “Compare the remaining resources to the Medicaid resource limit of $2,000.” |
| Marital agreements don’t change it | “These rules apply regardless of State laws relating to community property or to the division of marital property. For example, resources listed in a prenuptial agreement are not excluded.” |
| Income comes first | “The income first methodology requires that an institutionalized spouse who applies for Medicaid must first divert income to his or her community spouse before the institutionalized spouse may increase the amount of the couple’s resources that would be protected” |
How it works in practice
- The $25,000 figure is not the federal default; it is Delaware’s own, and its history is on the record in the manual itself: “Delaware Senate Bill 99 increased the minimum resource allowance from $14,148 to $25,000 for applications filed on or after 10/1/93.” Three decades later that state-set floor is still the operative number, not the (lower) federal minimum other states in this family apply.
- If half the couple’s resources would leave the community spouse with less than $25,000, Delaware closes the gap rather than leaving the spouse at the lower figure: “the institutionalized spouse’s resources are deemed available to the community spouse to bring the community spouse’s resources up to $25,000.”
- Delaware also runs an “income first” sequencing rule most states in this family don’t name explicitly: the institutionalized spouse “must first divert income to his or her community spouse” before any increase to the protected resource amount is considered. Income is the first lever, resources the second.
- As in Colorado, how the couple’s assets are titled does not matter: the rules apply “regardless of State laws relating to community property or to the division of marital property,” and the manual specifically calls out that “resources listed in a prenuptial agreement are not excluded.”
- Delaware also names a hardship exception, narrowly: “Undue hardship exists when application of the spousal impoverishment provisions would deprive the individual of medical care such that his/her life would be endangered.” That is a life-endangerment standard, not a general financial-difficulty one.
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 Delaware.
What this page does not settle
- This page does not restate Delaware’s current federal minimum/maximum resource figures. The manual states only that the allowances “increase on January 1 of each year by Federal law,” and its own printed floor figure dates to the 1993 SB 99 change; a DHSS notice that might carry a current-year update returned a not-found error this session, so no current dollar ceiling is reported.
- This page reads one source: Delaware Division of Social Services Manual (DSSM), Chapter 20000, §§ 20900-20995. 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 September 4, 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 September 4, 2026. Every quotation on this page was checked against those bytes.
Related: Delaware’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program status; a separate, policy-based way some families protect assets alongside this spend-down allowance.