Minimum Monthly Maintenance Needs (Income) Allowance for Nursing Home Resident’s Spouse Is Now $2,465.00 from 7/1/2023 until 6/30/2024

When one spouse is living in a nursing home and the other spouse is living anywhere else, the spouse who is not living in the nursing home (who is known under federal Medicaid law as the “community spouse”) is allowed by MassHealth to keep some (or sometimes all) of the nursing home resident’s income through an income allowance known as the Minimum Monthly Maintenance Needs Allowance (MMMNA). Every July 1st, this figure changes based on federal poverty level guidelines. The MMMNA has now been increased to $2,465.00, effective July 1, 2023, and continuing through June 30, 2024. (This MMMNA figure is the same in 48 states; Alaska and Hawaii have higher figures.)

The income calculation for the community spouse does not end there. If certain basic household expenses are more than 30% of the MMMNA, which is $739.50, the community spouse is entitled to keep an extra amount of the couple’s income. This extra income is known as the Excess Shelter Amount (“ESA”). Between the MMMNA and the ESA, the community spouse can now be entitled to keep as much as $3,715.50 of the married couple’s total income. If even more income is needed, such as where the community spouse is living in an assisted living facility, the community spouse can request a fair hearing and attempt to prove the need for more than $3,715.50 of the married couple’s total income. In some cases, the community spouse would need more than $3,715.50 due to the costs of an assisted living facility but would be required at the fair hearing to prove the need to live there.

Utilizing the MMMNA provisions in Medicaid/MassHealth law is always better than purchasing an immediate annuity with excess assets, since all payments from the annuity are treated as income, and taking that step ends up reducing the amount of the married couple’s income that the community spouse could otherwise keep. Unfortunately, due to the asset rules under Medicaid/MassHealth, in many situations in the past the community spouse has had no choice but to purchase an immediate annuity with the so-called “excess” assets.

What in recent years has become more common as an alternative for dealing with the excess assets has been for the community spouse to refuse to make the excess assets available for expenditure through a process known as spousal refusal. (For more information on spousal refusal, see our webinar titled Can a Spouse Refuse to Cooperate in the MassHealth Application Process?. Whether the community spouse claiming spousal refusal can still be entitled to the MMMNA is an interesting issue that may soon be tested.