When a parent or spouse in Maine needs nursing-home or other long-term care, Medicaid planning means learning how MaineCare, the state's Medicaid program, counts assets and income. It also covers what a spouse at home may keep and how the 60-month look-back treats past gifts. Planning then organizes the family's finances and application within those rules.
Most people facing a nursing-home placement in Maine arrive at this question suddenly. A hospital discharge planner mentions MaineCare. A facility quotes a monthly private rate. Then comes the question of how long savings will last and what happens to the husband or wife still living at home. The sections below set out what Maine's own official sources say about long-term-care MaineCare and what federal law requires of every state. Where Maine's published sources do not settle a point, the page says so once in that section and names where it is confirmed.
What Maine Medicaid Planning Means — and Why MaineCare Has Its Own Rules
MaineCare is the federal Medicaid program in the state of Maine. Within the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Office for Family Independence determines eligibility and ongoing enrollment. MaineCare includes options for people who need long-term care services, such as nursing facility or residential care.
Federal law sets the framework. The rules on transfers, trusts and estate recovery are in 42 U.S.C. § 1396p, and the spousal protections are in 42 U.S.C. § 1396r-5. Each state runs its own program within that framework, so Maine's limits and procedures are Maine's own. They are not the same as those in neighboring states such as those New Hampshire Medicaid planning covers.
A few terms come up throughout this page:
- A countable asset is property MaineCare counts toward the asset limit.
- An exempt asset is property it does not count.
- The community spouse is the husband or wife who stays at home.
- The look-back period is the window of past transfers MaineCare reviews.
- A penalty period is a stretch of months during which MaineCare will not pay for long-term care because of a transfer.
- Estate recovery is the state seeking repayment from a deceased member's estate.
Medicaid planning for long-term care means arranging finances within what the law allows. The aim is for a person to qualify for MaineCare coverage of nursing-facility or home- and community-based care while preserving what the rules let a spouse or family keep. This page does not cover Medicare, private long-term-care insurance or veterans' benefits.
MaineCare Eligibility: Countable Assets, Exempt Assets, and the Asset Limit
The 2026 MaineCare Eligibility Guidelines list figures that are updated annually. For 2026, those figures include:
- an asset limit of $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple;
- up to $8,000 of savings for an individual, or $12,000 for a couple, which may be excluded, with any amount over the excluded amount counted toward the limit;
- a statewide average for burial and funeral costs of $18,985.
How the savings exclusion and the asset limit fit together. The two figures are separate steps. Savings up to the excluded amount ($8,000 for an individual, $12,000 for a couple) may be left out of the count. Only savings above that excluded amount are counted, and that counted amount is then measured against the $2,000 or $3,000 asset limit, along with any other countable assets.
Basic MaineCare eligibility criteria must also be met, and the applicant must meet medical level of care requirements.
The guidelines do not spell out how other assets are treated, such as a vehicle, a second property or a prepaid burial arrangement. Those points turn on Maine's current rules, and the DHHS guidelines are the place to confirm them.
The home deserves care here. Under federal law (42 U.S.C. § 1396p), a state may not cover nursing-facility or other long-term care for a person whose home equity exceeds a set limit. The exception is when a spouse, a child under 21 or a blind or disabled child lives in the home. How Maine applies that limit, and its approach to intent to return home, are also set by Maine's rules rather than the federal statute.
Spend-down means reducing countable assets to the limit before MaineCare pays for care. Spending down assets is separate from income. Once a person is eligible, they pay a monthly cost of care to the facility from their income, described below.
The MaineCare Look-Back Period and How Transfer Penalties Work
The 2026 guidelines state that a 60-month financial lookback is completed for applicants seeking Long Term Care MaineCare. The lookback checks whether the individual or their spouse transferred assets for less than fair market value. A transfer for less than fair market value leads to a penalty, or period of ineligibility.
That matches the federal rule. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c)(1)(B)(i), the look-back is 60 months for any disposal of assets made on or after February 8, 2006. For a person in a nursing facility, the window is counted back from the first date the person is both institutionalized and has applied.
Federal law sets how the penalty is calculated. The total uncompensated value of the transfers is divided by the average monthly private cost of nursing facility care in the state. Maine's 2026 guidelines give that divisor as $13,339. Maine's eligibility manual says the average private rate is redetermined annually, with effective dates of June 1. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c)(1)(E)(iv), states may not round down a fractional month of penalty.
Timing matters to families. Under 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c)(1)(D)(ii), the penalty starts on the later of two dates:
- the month of the transfer; or
- the date the person is otherwise eligible and would be receiving institutional-level care.
A gift made four years ago and one made last month are therefore penalized the same way if both fall inside the look-back.
Not every transfer is penalized. The statute lists exceptions, including a transfer of a home to the person's spouse (42 U.S.C. § 1396p(c)(2)(A)(i)). Federal law also places no transfer penalty on transfers to a spouse. Whether an exception applies to a particular transfer turns on its facts and on how MaineCare applies the list.
Spousal Protections Under MaineCare: What the Community Spouse Keeps
A husband or wife at home often worries most about being left without enough to live on. Federal spousal-impoverishment rules in 42 U.S.C. § 1396r-5 address that concern.
When eligibility is first determined, the couple's resources are generally treated as available to the spouse in the nursing facility. That applies only to the extent they exceed the community spouse resource allowance, the share the spouse at home may keep. The statute lets the institutionalized spouse transfer that allowance to the community spouse without a transfer penalty. After eligibility is established, the community spouse's resources are not deemed available. While one spouse is in the institution, the community spouse's income generally is not counted as available to them either.
Maine's 2026 guidelines list $162,660 as the asset limit for a community spouse. Maine's eligibility manual describes the maximum as $60,000, increased by the change in the consumer price index from September 1988.
The minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance is the monthly income the spouse at home may keep. It can allow part of the institutionalized spouse's income to go to the community spouse. The sources cited here do not state Maine's current figure for that allowance for nursing-facility care. For home- and community-based waivers, Maine's manual sets the maximum spousal allowance at the federal SSI maximum for an individual.
These sources also do not address whether Maine allows spousal refusal, or how.