Ask the Expert: No Medicaid residency requirement

My mother lives in Pennsylvania but may move in with a daughter in New York. Must she be a New York resident for a certain period of time before being entitled to Medicaid nursing home assistance?

No. For Medicaid purposes, anyone who is in New York is a New York resident. However, to qualify for Medicaid nursing home assistance, a person can't have more than $50 of monthly income and $13,800 of assets, not including exempt assets like a primary residence and Individual Retirement Account.

Your question was unambiguously answered in "Shah v. Helen Hayes Hospital," a case in 2000 concerning a man who lived in New Jersey but sustained a catastrophic injury at his job in New York. His wife's Medicaid application for his long-term care in New York was denied, partly on the grounds of residence and partly because the agency challenged her right (as her husband's court-appointed guardian) to transfer his assets to herself, to make him eligible for assistance while keeping funds to raise their children.

She appealed the decision, and her appeal was upheld by both New York's Appellate Court and the New York Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals noted that anyone in her husband's condition would want his guardian to ensure that the costs of his care be paid by the state rather than his family, adding: "No agency of the government has any right to complain about the fact that middle-class people confronted with desperate circumstances choose voluntarily to inflict poverty upon themselves, when it is the government itself which has established the rule that poverty is a prerequisite to the receipt of government assistance in the defraying of the costs of ruinously expensive, but absolutely essential, medical treatment."

The bottom line: New York has no prior residency requirement for Medicaid eligibility.

Websites with more information: bit.ly/a9rrST and bit.ly/cmtpPC