Updated September 5, 2026. Quick answer: California’s Medi-Cal nursing-home asset limit is $130,000 for a single applicant, reinstated January 1, 2026 under DHCS All County Welfare Directors Letter 25-14. From January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2025, California ran no asset test at all under AB 133. If you were told California has no asset limit, that was true for exactly two years and is not true anymore.
The reinstated $130,000 limit, and why it came back
AB 133 (2021) eliminated the Medi-Cal asset test for Non-MAGI programs, including long-term-care Medicaid, effective January 1, 2024. DHCS’s own ACWDL 25-14 (June 30, 2025) reversed that: “No sooner than January 1, 2026, the asset test shall be reinstated for Non-MAGI programs, including LTC and MSPs, except for the Pickle, DAC, and DW programs… the asset limits will be set at $130,000 for one person and $65,000 for each additional person (up to a maximum of 10 people).” DHCS’s own budget fact sheet ties the reversal to the state’s 2025-26 budget deficit (AB 116, the Health Omnibus bill), not to any finding that the earlier elimination had failed.
How $130,000 compares to the rest of the country
Among every state researched this session, $130,000 is the highest individual nursing-home Medicaid asset limit found, well above New York’s $33,038 and Illinois’s $17,500. It is still a real limit, not “no limit”: a single applicant with $135,000 in countable savings is over it by $5,000, the same as an applicant in a $2,000-limit state being over by $5,000. The Pickle and DAC programs (protections for certain former SSI recipients) and the Working Disabled program keep no asset test at all, an exception carved out explicitly in the same DHCS letter.
If you applied for Medi-Cal long-term care in 2024 or 2025
Anyone whose Medi-Cal long-term-care eligibility was approved during the January 2024 through December 2025 no-asset-test window was not screened against any resource figure at the time. That approval is not automatically undone by the January 2026 reinstatement, but anyone applying fresh, or going through a redetermination, after January 1, 2026 is screened against the $130,000 figure above. This page does not cover eligibility for the community spouse; see the California community-spouse resource allowance instead for that separate, and much larger, protected amount.
| Citation | DHCS All County Welfare Directors Letter (ACWDL) No. 25-14, “Reinstatement of Asset Limits for Non-MAGI Medi-Cal Programs,” June 30, 2025 (asset limit reinstated effective no sooner than January 1, 2026); superseding ACWDL 22-25 and MEDIL I 24-07, which established the 2024–2025 elimination under AB 133 |
| What it says | “No sooner than January 1, 2026, the asset test shall be reinstated for Non-MAGI programs, including LTC and MSPs, except for the Pickle, DAC, and DW programs… the asset limits will be set at $130,000 for one person and $65,000 for each additional person (up to a maximum of 10 people).” |
This page covers the applicant’s own asset limit. The amount an at-home spouse gets to keep is a separate, usually much larger, figure: see the California community spouse resource allowance and what happens to a spouse’s money when the other spouse needs a nursing home.
Every citation on this page was read directly from the state’s own Medicaid agency, administrative code, or official eligibility manual this session. General information, not legal or financial advice; a figure this specific can change with a budget cycle or a rule amendment, and a county or state caseworker has the final say on any individual application.