Case Law Library

In this case the court is asked to determine whether the Department erred in calculating Appellant's assets by including the contents of Appellant's irrevocable trust as an available resource thereby denying Appellant benefits for medical assistance.

The court was asked to determine whether the corpus of the Irrevocable Trust owned by Appellee, and for Appellee's sole benefit, was an available asset to Appellee and should be included as a countable resource to Appellee for Medicaid eligibility purposes.

In July 2011, Geyen created two irrevocable trusts with herself as Grantor and her children as trustees. Central to this appeal is whether the county and then the commissioner properly denied Geyen's application for Medicaid benefits on the basis that the funds held in the irrevocable trusts established by Geyen in 2011 were "available" to her when she applied for Medicaid in 2019 and thus were required to be counted in calculating whether Geyen met the asset limit for Medicaid eligibility.

A nursing home resident's agent and special representative appealed against the Illinois Department of Human Services' ruling that the assets in the resident's irrevocable trust were available assets that need to be spent down before Medicaid assistance could be granted.

After the Department of Human Services (DHS) required plaintiff to "spend down" the funds in an irrevocable trust before Medicaid would cover her long-term care nursing home expenses, plaintiff filed an appeal with the Court. The Circuit Court in Henry County reversed the DHS's decision, leading to an appeal by the DHS.

In this consolidated case, nursing home residents were denied Medicaid benefits resulting from their purchase of a short-term Medicaid Compliant Annuity. The applicants purchased the annuity as part of a half-a-loaf gifting strategy, but were assessed a period of ineligibility resulting from the annuity purchase. According to the Department, the annuities were sham transactions and classified them as trust-like devices. After analyzing controlling statutes and instructive case law, the Court reversed the Department's determination.

In preparation of her imminent admittance to a nursing home, the applicant executed a Power of Attorney (POA) document authorizing her husband to make certain transfers on her behalf. However, after the transfers were completed, it was determined that the applicant lacked the capacity to execute these documents making the documents invalid. As a result, the guardians of the applicant's estate requested that the assets that were converted under the powers provided to the husband in the POA documentation be returned to her.

The Plaintiff's application for Medicaid benefits was denied after the Department included the income stream from the community spouse's Medicaid Compliant Annuity as an asset. Despite the annuitant obtaining a letter stating that the policy could not be sold, the Department alleged that they located a buyer for the policy. After reviewing Title XIX, SSI methodology, and Third Circuit analysis on the issue, the court determined that the annuity's income stream was not an available asset.

A Medicaid applicant's promissory note was scrutinized in this case after she sold her farm and Edward Jones account to her son in exchange for the promissory note. Because the note complied with federal regulations, the Court determined that the promissory note was not a liquid asset and could not be defined as a "resource." As such, the promissory note was exempt from a transfer penalty.

Following their application for Medicaid, the institutionalized spouse was denied long-term care benefits because the annuity that was purchased by the community spouse as part of the couple's spend-down was found to be an improper transfer of assets. The Court reversed the Department's treatment of the annuity, determining that this type of spend-down was not only permissible under federal and Ohio state law, but such purchases were also held proper in a similar Ohio Court of Appeals case.