Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Nebraska runs the familiar half-with-a-floor-and-ceiling calculation — “The community spouse may reserve up to half of the couple’s combined resources, subject to a minimum and maximum reserved amount.” — but the provision that decides real cases is a different one: the assessment is taken once, and what was not on it cannot be added later.
What Nebraska actually sets out
| What the state provides | What it says |
|---|---|
| The calculation | “The community spouse may reserve up to half of the couple’s combined resources, subject to a minimum and maximum reserved amount.” |
| The floor always applies | “The minimum amount may always be reserved, even if the combined resources are below the minimum.” |
| One assessment per couple | “A married couple is allowed one assessment.” |
| The list is closed | “Resources acquired after the assessment is completed, resources which were not disclosed, and resources which were discovered after completion of the IM-73 cannot be later added in order to increase the amount reserved for the community spouse.” |
| Marital property law does not apply | “For the purposes of the spousal impoverishment Medicaid program (SIMP), prenuptial agreements or laws or principles of marital property do not apply.” |
| The assessment is reused | “If one spouse later needs an institutional level of care, then the original assessment of resources and reserved amount is used in determining Medicaid eligibility.” |
| Appealing it | “The couple may appeal the value assigned to the resources, the amount reserved for the community spouse, or both.” |
How it works in practice
- The headline calculation is the standard one: “The community spouse may reserve up to half of the couple’s combined resources, subject to a minimum and maximum reserved amount.” And the floor is a floor in the strong sense: “The minimum amount may always be reserved, even if the combined resources are below the minimum.” A couple with very little still protects the minimum.
- The rule that catches people is about the assessment form. Nebraska allows one: “A married couple is allowed one assessment.” And once it is done, it is closed: “Resources acquired after the assessment is completed, resources which were not disclosed, and resources which were discovered after completion of the IM-73 cannot be later added in order to increase the amount reserved for the community spouse.” A resource that was overlooked, or that the family did not think counted, cannot be added afterwards to raise the spouse at home’s protected amount.
- Nebraska also disapplies the law a couple might expect to govern who owns what: “For the purposes of the spousal impoverishment Medicaid program (SIMP), prenuptial agreements or laws or principles of marital property do not apply.” A prenuptial agreement assigning assets to one spouse does not keep them off the assessment.
- The assessment follows the couple even through a gap in care: “If one spouse later needs an institutional level of care, then the original assessment of resources and reserved amount is used in determining Medicaid eligibility.” That can help or hurt depending on which way the couple’s resources moved in the interval, and it is not a choice they get to make.
- There is a route to challenge it, and it has a precondition: “The couple may appeal the value assigned to the resources, the amount reserved for the community spouse, or both.” The rule requires the institutionalized spouse to apply for Medicaid before an appeal can be taken.
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 Nebraska.
What this page does not settle
- This page does not print Nebraska’s minimum and maximum reserved amounts. The rule states that they are adjusted annually by the consumer price index and directs the reader to a separate departmental standards document for the current pair, and this page does not restate figures out of a table it would have to read across columns to interpret.
- This page reads one source: Nebraska Administrative Code Title 477, Chapter 26, Spousal Impoverishment Medicaid Program (SIMP), effective July 29, 2020, as published by rules.nebraska.gov. 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: Nebraska’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program status; a separate, policy-based way some families protect assets alongside this spend-down allowance.