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NO gifting or she will be penalized by Medicaid equal to the amount gifted. Whatever money she receives is to go to paying for her care then Medicaid makes up the difference. Best get with Medicaid and the facility she is in to get this straightened out.
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Are you referring to the "spending allowance" required to be saved from SS or SSI funds at the nursing home?

Spend the money on her, buy her a fancy walker, wheelchair, or mobility scooter.  Transportation is another allowable expense.
A set of winter clothes, robes, slippers, coffeemaker for her room, an I-phone?
Gift card to a restaurant if she can get out, tickets to the movies, extra nice snacks, small refrigerator for her room, a special pillow or washable cotton blanket.
There, spent yet?
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I take it your mother is in the nursing home on Medicaid, or you wouldn't be concerned about a $2,000 limit. That is not related to her personal allowance, but the amount she could have in assets (usually a bank account) when she was approved for Medicaid. Am I understanding this correctly?

How is that account growing? Her income should be used to pay for the nursing home, with Medicaid picking up what her income doesn't cover. So where is this additional money coming from?

My mom's $2,000 account slowly drained to a few hundred, as we used it to pay for a medical transport so she could attend her sister's 100th birthday party, buying her a new coat and shoes, etc. We could withdraw some and put it in her personal account in the nursing home, too. Her one extravagance was getting her hair done weekly, and that would be hard to do on just her personal allowance.

Can you clarify -- is your mother on Medicaid now, or in the application process? How is her bank account growing?

In any case, no she cannot gift it within the Medicaid rules.
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Her PNA account should be handled by her NH not going into her bank acct but it does count against the $2000. Like said, you can spend it on something she can use.
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If she is considered low income....I believe its $25,000 a year or less, you apply thru medicaid. Her bills will all be paid. If she has liquid money in the bank over $2000 she probably won't quality and you will pay a lot a month for a care center until its under $2000. Its a racket....terrible terrible terrible. It wipes out your accounts until you are nearly in poverty before Medicaid helps if at all. If she has no savings and makes over the low income amount, your out of luck too. My father in law took out a reverse morgage on his house a few years ago but its like a 'loan' not liquid money in his account, so medicaid can't touch "loans" thank God. He was able to get full coverage for his wife in the nursing home because she has just a tiny social security check so she is way under low income. Again, medicaid only looks at the patient's money, and no one elses. BEST ADVICE is to get an Elder Care Lawyer who knows all of the ends and outs of your problem. My mom got one when my dad was about to go into a nursing home, and it saved the day. She was able to get dad's name off of all their accounts, and have them in her name only through the lawyer. They just had his retirement check in his name of course, and she did have to pay out some, but not near the full amount. It is well worth the money to retain an Elder Care Lawyer for the duration your loved one is in the care center until the end.
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She has to spent the $ on herself or her needs.

I’m assuming that her bank account is building each month from the $ that is her personal needs allowance (PNA). Like for my mom PNA was $60 a mo. What you might want mom to do is have a weekly beauty shoppe visit scheduled. At my late moms weekly was $15 shampoo & set; so basically if scheduled weekly would use all the entire $60 each month. Beauty shoppe gets paid automatically from the PNA if mom has a at the NH account for PNA or other funds to be “banked” at.

States can do renewals for Medicaid eligibility and mom must have assets under 2k and state can ask for current bank &/or PNA statements to establish this. You don’t want to be caught out with this as a real bother to deal with. I’d really suggest you asap go and spend some of the $ on winter clothing for her to get it down to under $1700 and onto a twice a mo beauty shoppe so she’s not up on the wire again in another mo or two.

New eyeglasses or two would be a good spend as they go MIA.
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