Updated August 27, 2026. Quick answer: Delaware is the outlier in this series, and it is worth knowing before you do any arithmetic. Its long-term care income limit is “set at 250% of the Supplemental Security Income – SSI – standard” — not the 300% figure most states use. Above it, “they will need to establish a Miller Trust in order to qualify”. A calculation done on the usual 300% assumption will put a Delaware applicant on the wrong side of the line.
What Delaware requires
| What the state sets out | What it says |
|---|---|
| Where the income limit is set | set at 250% of the Supplemental Security Income – SSI – standard |
| What is required above it | “they will need to establish a Miller Trust in order to qualify” |
| Delaware’s name for it | Miller Trust |
| Asset limit | “Their assets cannot exceed $2,000 unless they have a spouse.” |
| Level-of-care requirement | the individual must require the level of care provided by a nursing facility |
How it works in practice
- The 250% figure is the single most important fact on this page. Most published guidance about “the Medicaid income cap” assumes 300% of the SSI standard, and applying that to Delaware overstates the limit substantially.
- The trust is not optional above the limit: “they will need to establish a Miller Trust in order to qualify”. It is the mechanism that makes an over-income applicant eligible, and there is no separate medically-needy spend-down route stated here for this programme.
- Income is not the only test. Delaware states the asset side alongside it: “Their assets cannot exceed $2,000 unless they have a spouse.” The spouse exception is what the spousal impoverishment rules exist to handle, and it is a separate calculation.
The mechanism itself — why an income cap exists and what the trust must contain — is explained on the income-cap and Miller trust page. This page is the Delaware record.
See how the income side fits the rest of the money
Where income sits relative to a state limit changes what happens to savings, to a spouse’s position and to the order things are best done in, and an adviser can look at the whole picture rather than one rule at a time.
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What this page does not settle
- There is also a care test independent of money — the individual must require the level of care provided by a nursing facility. Meeting the income rule does not by itself establish eligibility.
- This page reads one source: Delaware DHSS, Division of Medicaid & Medical Assistance — Long Term Care Medicaid Programs. It is the state’s own publication on this rule, but no state puts its whole treatment of excess income in a single document, and a detail that decides your case may sit in one this page did not read.
- A trust fixes an income problem and nothing else. The asset test, the level-of-care test and the transfer-of-assets look-back are separate hurdles, each decided on your own file, and meeting this rule does not clear any of them.
- Every quotation here was read against the source on August 27, 2026. States revise these rules, and a figure or a section number can move without the page around it changing. Open the source before you rely on a detail.
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 assign income 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.
Income is only the first of the two Medicaid questions a family in Delaware faces. The second is what the state can recover after death: Medicaid estate recovery in Delaware (probate estate only).
Spending down to the income limit is only half of what Delaware Medicaid can do for a household that is already providing the care itself, and getting paid as a family caregiver in Delaware names the Delaware program that pays one and answers the family-member and the spouse question separately.
This page covers what happens to income above the eligibility standard. What Delaware actually uses as that standard, and the state document it comes from, is on Medicaid nursing home income limit in Delaware ($2,485/Month).
Related: Delaware’s Medicaid home equity limit for a single applicant with no spouse or dependent child at home.
Related: Delaware’s Medicaid Personal Needs Allowance; the amount a nursing-facility resident keeps from their own income each month.