Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: The District of Columbia runs the plain federal half-of-resources formula: no flat figure or automatic-maximum shortcut of its own, but its own Medicaid applicant resource limit is $4,000, double the $2,000 figure most states use, and DC’s own regulation does not print the federal minimum and maximum dollar figures; it points to CMS’s published table instead.
What District of Columbia actually sets out
| What the state provides | What it says |
|---|---|
| The applicant’s own limit | “In order to be eligible for LTCSS, an applicant or beneficiary shall not have gross countable resources that exceed four thousand dollars ($4,000).” |
| What the spousal share is | “Half (1/2) of the total countable resources available to either the institutionalized or community spouse.” |
| What the CSRA equals | “A community spouse shall be entitled to retain a Community Spouse Resource Allowance equal to the spousal share, unless the spousal share is less than the minimum amount or greater than the maximum amount established annually by CMS” |
| Below the floor | “If the spousal share is less than the minimum amount, the institutionalized spouse may transfer excess countable resources to the community spouse to raise the Community Spouse Resource Allowance to the minimum amount.” |
| Above the ceiling | “If the spousal share is greater than the maximum amount, the community spouse may only retain the maximum amount.” |
| When the share is set | “The Department shall determine the spousal share of resources allocated to each spouse either: (a) At the time of the initial eligibility determination; or (b) At the request of either spouse during the institutionalized spouse’s first period of institutionalization lasting thirty (30) or more consecutive days.” |
How it works in practice
- The mechanism is the federal default with nothing added: the spousal share is “half (1/2) of the total countable resources,” and the community spouse “shall be entitled to retain” exactly that share, bounded by a federal minimum and maximum DC’s own text does not restate.
- Where DC genuinely differs is the applicant’s own number: the institutionalized spouse’s resource ceiling is “four thousand dollars ($4,000),” twice the $2,000 figure that governs in most of this family’s other jurisdictions.
- Both directions of the federal band are handled by transfer, not by forfeiture: below the floor, “the institutionalized spouse may transfer excess countable resources to the community spouse to raise the” allowance up to the minimum; above the ceiling, the community spouse “may only retain the maximum amount,” and the institutionalized spouse must “reallocate excess countable resources before the first annual renewal.”
- The share can be set at two different moments, and either spouse can trigger the earlier one: “at the time of the initial eligibility determination” or “at the request of either spouse during the institutionalized spouse’s first period of institutionalization lasting thirty (30) or more consecutive days”. A couple does not have to wait for an application to get an answer.
- DC’s own definition of “spouse” is worth reading directly rather than assuming: it includes “members of common-law and same-sex couples whose marriages or civil unions are recognized under the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Act of 2009,” but the regulation is explicit that “the term does not include registered domestic partners.”
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 District of Columbia.
What this page does not settle
- This page does not restate DC’s current federal minimum/maximum resource figures. The regulation defers explicitly to “the maximum amount established annually by CMS” at a named federal URL rather than printing a number in the DCMR itself, and a figure appearing on secondary sites was not used because it could not be traced to DC’s own publication of it.
- This page reads one source: District of Columbia Municipal Regulations, Title 29, Chapter 98, §§ 9802, 9899 (DHCF Notice of Final Rulemaking, 63 DCR 001605). 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: District of Columbia’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program status; a separate, policy-based way some families protect assets alongside this spend-down allowance.