Updated September 4, 2026. Quick answer: Virginia protects the greatest of four amounts: a fixed spousal resource standard, half the couple’s resources, a DMAS hearing officer’s figure, or a court order, but the dollar standards its own manual prints are dated January 1, 2024, at least one annual cycle behind the 2026 figures other states in this family report.
What Virginia actually sets out
| What the state provides | What it says |
|---|---|
| The applicant’s own limit | “The $2,000 Medicaid resource limit applies to each spouse.” |
| The calculation | “at the time of Medicaid application as an institutionalized spouse, the greater of: the spousal resource standard in effect at the time of application; the spousal share, not to exceed the maximum spousal resource standard” |
| What the spousal share is | “means ½ of the couple’s combined countable resources at the beginning of the first continuous period of institutionalization, as determined by a resource assessment.” |
| The published figures | “$30,828 (Spousal Resource Standard, 1-1-24); $154,140 (Maximum Spousal Resource Standard, 1-1-24)” |
| Locked in for good | “Calculate the spousal share only once; it remains a constant amount for any Medicaid application filed after the resource assessment.” |
| The assessment deadline | “A resource assessment must be processed within 45 days of the date on which the agency receives the written and signed Medicaid Resource Assessment Request form.” |
How it works in practice
- Virginia’s test has four candidates, and the community spouse keeps whichever is largest: “the greater of: the spousal resource standard in effect at the time of application; the spousal share, not to exceed the maximum spousal resource standard”, plus a DMAS hearing officer’s figure and a court-ordered amount named elsewhere in the same definition.
- The dollar figures Virginia’s own manual prints are “$30,828” and “$154,140,” both dated “1-1-24” in the table itself, named here as read, not smoothed into a current-year claim the source does not make. Virginia’s standards reindex every January by rule, so a manual dated to 2024 may simply not yet reflect an update this page’s own reading session could not see.
- Once the spousal share is set, it does not move: “calculate the spousal share only once; it remains a constant amount for any Medicaid application filed after the resource assessment.” An assessment taken years before an actual application still governs it.
- The agency is held to a clock the family is not: a resource assessment “must be processed within 45 days” of a signed request, and the couple then has “a period of time, not to exceed 90 calendar days after an initial determination of Medicaid eligibility” to complete any resulting transfer.
- Virginia’s undue-hardship route is narrow and specifically about the marriage itself, not general financial difficulty: it requires that “the applicant and spouse have lived separate and apart without cohabitation and without interruption for at least 36 months.”
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 Virginia.
What this page does not settle
- This page states Virginia’s own dollar figures as printed, dated January 1, 2024 in the manual read this session. Virginia’s Spousal Resource Standard and Maximum Spousal Resource Standard normally reindex every January; whether the manual has since been updated for 2025 or 2026 without this session’s copy reflecting it is not settled here. Check the current M1480.231 table before relying on either number.
- This page reads one source: Virginia Medical Assistance Eligibility Manual, Chapter M14, Subchapter M1480 (Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services). 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: Virginia’s Long-Term Care Partnership Program status; a separate, policy-based way some families protect assets alongside this spend-down allowance.