Medi-Cal Planning and Elder Law in California

Long-term care is the expense most likely to consume a California family’s savings, and Medi-Cal is the program most families end up relying on. Ridley Law advises on Medi-Cal eligibility, asset protection, and estate recovery across Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties.

The three questions families arrive with

Will we qualify? The asset test returned effective 1/1/26 under AB 116 § 59, at $130,000 for an individual and $195,000 for a couple. That is a substantial change from the period when the test was eliminated, and a great deal of advice written during that window is now wrong.

Will the state take the house? California’s estate recovery is limited to the probate estate under SB 833. That is narrower than many states, and it means the planning question is often about keeping the home out of probate rather than about hiding it from anyone.

Is it too late? Usually not entirely. Crisis planning has fewer options than advance planning, but it is rarely true that nothing can be done, and it is rarely true that everything can be.

Timing, and the number most people have wrong

California applies a 30-month look-back to transfers connected to nursing-facility-level care. California has never used the federal five-year period. This matters enormously in practice, because families read national advice, assume five years, and either give up on planning that would have worked or make a transfer on assumptions that do not apply here.

The corollary is that timing is genuinely valuable. Planning done well before a health crisis has options that planning done during one does not.

What we actually do

Assess eligibility against current rules rather than the rules of two years ago. Evaluate which assets are countable and which are exempt. Structure the home so it is protected from recovery, which in California usually means keeping it out of probate through a funded trust, a transfer on death deed, or spousal survivorship, each with different tradeoffs. Advise on permissible spend down versus transfers that create ineligibility. Coordinate with the estate plan so that Medi-Cal planning does not quietly destroy a basis step-up or trigger a property tax reassessment.

That last point deserves emphasis. A great deal of aggressive Medi-Cal planning solves one problem and creates a larger one. Giving a house to children during life may protect it from a risk that never arrives while costing the family a capital gains bill that certainly does, and it may trigger reassessment under Prop 19 as well. The right answer is the one that accounts for all three.

What we will tell you plainly

Some families do not need this planning. Some are already eligible. Some are told they need an irrevocable trust by someone selling one, when the honest answer for a California family is usually that a revocable trust does the work and keeps the step-up.

If someone has quoted you a five-year look-back for California, or told you Medi-Cal will take your house regardless of how it is titled, or that a trust automatically defeats recovery, you have been given advice from another state or another decade.

Related reading

Medi-Cal asset limits in California, share of cost and spend down, protecting the family home, and the Medi-Cal asset screener.

Ridley Law practices California estate planning, trust administration, and probate from Port Hueneme, serving Ventura, Santa Barbara, and Los Angeles Counties.