Advantages

• You can prevent your assets from being depleted by expensive medical care costs, such as long-term nursing home care by creating an irrevocable Medicaid trust.
  
  

Disadvantages

• You will need to hire an attorney who specializes in irrevocable Medicaid trusts, which can be expensive. In addition, the assets transferred to the trust are no longer under your control. For example, if you transfer $200,000 to the trust, you can receive any interest produced by the funds, but you can never use the funds.
  
  

Medicaid Look-Back Rules

• Although irrevocable Medicaid trusts are legal, the Medicaid application requires you to disclose all assets transferred out of your name for the five years prior to applying for benefits.
  
  

Limited Ineligibility Period

• After you apply for Medicaid, you may encounter a period of limited ineligibility depending upon the amount of assets you transferred to your irrevocable Medicaid trust and the particular Medicaid rules in your state.
  
  

Warning

• An irrevocable Medicaid trust also goes by other names, such as Medicaid qualifying trust and asset protection trust.