Hello, and thank you for contacting Just Answer.

Unfortunately, there is generally no minimum gift that a person can give to someone prior to applying for medicaid coverage for nursing home care. During the "look back" period of 60 months, generally any gift will be considered a prohibited transfer, and will delay when she would qualify for medicaid funding.

While there is a minimum gift that can be given before a gift tax kicks in, under Medicaid rules, generally there is no minimum, any gift of assets or cash can trigger a penalty under the look back period.

Any assets transferred during the look back period will trigger an ineligibility period, the length of which is based on the amount of the transfer. The larger the amount, the longer the ineligibility period.

There is a very good description of this rule among other eligibility rules at:

http://elder-law.lawyers.com/Transferring-of-Assets-for-Medicaid-Look-Back-Periods.html

So, within 5 years of application for medicaid coverage for nursing home care, any transfer of assets, including profit from the sale of a home, would trigger an ineligibility period.

I wish I had better news for you, but Congress made these rules much stricter in the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act.

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