Key Takeaways
- Florida’s homestead property is an exempt asset under Medicaid — it is not counted toward the $2,000 asset limit, and Medicaid cannot force its sale during your lifetime or recover from it after death.
- Florida Medicaid law is dramatically more protective than most other states. If you moved here from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, or elsewhere, do not assume the rules you knew still apply.
- If your home’s equity exceeds the $752,000 cap, selling is not your only option — a home equity line of credit can reduce equity below the threshold while keeping the home intact.
- A “sell all my assets” clause in a will or trust drafted in another state can accidentally strip Florida’s homestead protections and expose your home to Medicaid recovery after death.
- The best time to do Medicaid planning is 10 to 20 years before you think you’ll need it — not when a crisis is already underway.
If you’ve ever wondered whether Medicaid can force the sale of your home to pay for nursing care, you’re not alone. It’s one of the most common — and most misunderstood — questions that estate planning and elder law attorney John Marshall hears from families across Central Florida.
The short answer is: in Florida, Medicaid generally cannot take your house. But the longer answer comes with important catches, and the exceptions can be costly if your estate plan isn’t set up correctly.
Marshall, who serves clients in The Villages, Wildwood, Leesburg, Lady Lake, Fruitland Park, Minneola, Sumter County, and Lake County through his firm Marshall Law, breaks it all down in a recent episode of Trust Me, It’s Complicated. What follows is a plain-English walkthrough of what Florida law actually says — and what could go wrong if you’re not paying attention.
Why This Question Comes Up So Often — and Why It’s So Confusing
The vast majority of people asking Marshall about Medicaid planning didn’t grow up in Florida. They came from Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Missouri — states where Medicaid rules are very different, and in many cases far less forgiving.
In states like Ohio, Marshall explains, qualifying for Medicaid can feel almost punitive. The system is designed to exhaust nearly everything — from the applicant’s assets to those of their immediate family. So when people arrive in Florida and start thinking about long-term care, they carry those expectations with them.
That assumption causes real, measurable harm. Many families come to Marshall’s office having already spent down most of their savings — liquidating accounts, cashing out investments — because they believed they had to in order to qualify. By the time they sit across from him, their options are significantly narrower than they needed to be.
Florida is simply a different state with a different system, and treating it like anywhere else is where families start losing money they didn’t have to lose.
The Real Cost of Long-Term Care — and Why Medicaid Matters
Before getting into the rules, it helps to understand why this conversation is so important in the first place.
Long-term care insurance was supposed to be the safety net for this kind of situation. It was aggressively marketed in the late 1990s as the solution to nursing home costs — but the product never fully delivered on that promise. Today, only four or five companies nationwide still sell long-term care policies, and the premiums have become so expensive that for many people, the math barely works. If you pay premiums for years and never need the care, the money is largely gone.
The result is that most Floridians have no dedicated coverage for skilled nursing care, assisted living, or 24/7 in-home support. And those services are not cheap — costs range from $8,000 to $15,000 per month, sometimes more. Even families with substantial savings would feel that drain within a year or two.
Medicaid becomes the realistic option for most people. Which makes understanding how Florida’s system actually works — not how another state’s system works — absolutely essential.
Florida Medicaid’s Asset Rules: What Counts and What Doesn’t
To qualify for Florida Medicaid in 2026, an applicant’s gross income cannot exceed $2,982 per month, and their countable assets cannot exceed $2,000. That $2,000 figure tends to alarm people — until they understand what “countable” actually means.
Countable assets are things like bank accounts, stocks, and bonds. What the state is not counting includes some significant items. A vehicle of any value — any make, any model — is an exempt asset. Marshall notes that even a $200,000 Ferrari sitting in your garage wouldn’t count against you. And most importantly for this conversation, your homestead property is an exempt asset. It does not count toward the $2,000 limit at all.
That means a person can own a $500,000 home, have $2,000 in the bank, and still qualify for Medicaid without selling the house. Florida’s Medicaid rules were designed this way intentionally. The state has a strong policy interest in not impoverishing a healthy spouse — who might otherwise end up needing Medicaid themselves down the road.
The Equity Cap — and What to Do If You’re Over It
There is one meaningful limit on the homestead exemption: the equity value of the home cannot exceed $752,000 as of 2026. This number adjusts annually for inflation, so it will be higher in 2027 and beyond. For most Florida homeowners — including the majority of Villages-area residents where average home values run around $400,000 — this cap isn’t a concern. But for higher-value properties, it requires some planning.
Here’s what not to do: sell the house.
Selling a home worth $800,000 doesn’t solve the Medicaid problem — it creates a new one. That equity becomes cash, and cash is 100% countable. Marshall is currently working with a family who sold the home before consulting an attorney, moved Mom into assisted living, and is now sitting on nearly $500,000 in cash they’re burning through rapidly with no clear Medicaid pathway. One of the options now being explored is purchasing a new home — because real property is exempt and cash isn’t.
The better approach when equity exceeds the cap: a home equity line of credit. Take out a HELOC large enough to bring the equity below $752,000, then work with an elder law attorney to strategically deploy that cash. It might fund a caregiver agreement, convert into another exempt asset, or be structured to cover the home’s ongoing expenses while the parent receives care. The home stays intact, the HELOC payments are manageable over time, and the family preserves the asset rather than surrendering it.
Why Medicaid Can’t Touch Your Florida Home
The protection isn’t just a policy preference — it’s constitutional. Article X, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution declares homestead property exempt from creditor claims. The only creditors who can legally come after a Florida homestead are the IRS (because federal law supersedes state law), the county for unpaid property taxes, and secured lienholders like mortgage companies and HOAs.
Florida Medicaid is not on that list. There is no legal mechanism allowing Medicaid to force the sale of a Florida homestead during the owner’s lifetime, and no right of recovery from homestead property after death.
Marshall has seen this protection hold in remarkably extreme circumstances — including successfully defending a homestead claim on a property purchased with fraudulently obtained life insurance proceeds. The constitutional protection still applied. For most families, the takeaway is far simpler: if a parent needs Medicaid and owns a Florida home, that home is safe. It doesn’t need to be sold to qualify, and Medicaid cannot claim it after death.
What Happens When a Parent Moves Into a Facility and Isn’t Coming Back?
This is where one of the most persistent misconceptions arises. Marshall hears it regularly: “Dad has dementia. He’ll never go home again. Does he still have homestead protection?”
The answer is yes — and the legal standard is more nuanced than most people expect. The Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the question isn’t whether someone can return to the home independently. The question is whether there is a proven intent to abandon the homestead. The burden falls entirely on demonstrating that abandonment — not on proving an intent to stay.
A person with dementia cannot legally express an intent to abandon their homestead. They lack the legal capacity to waive that right. And even a person with full capacity, if asked whether they’d return home if they could, would almost universally say yes. As Marshall puts it, what rational person would say they want to stay in a facility if they had a choice?
So the home remains protected even when a parent moves into memory care and will realistically never walk through the front door again.
The Math on Maintaining the Home — Why It’s Worth It
Here’s where practical reality meets legal strategy. Once a parent is on Medicaid with $2,000 in countable assets, there’s very little left to pay for homeowner’s insurance, property taxes, and utilities — including air conditioning, which in Florida is non-negotiable. Turning off the AC in a vacant Florida home is an invitation for mold and structural damage.
Someone has to cover those costs. Marshall’s message to adult children: do the math before you decide it’s not worth it.
He walked one skeptical client’s son through exactly this calculation. The son was reluctant to spend $5,000 to $10,000 over the remaining years of his father’s life maintaining a home the father would never return to. Marshall’s response was pointed: go to the casino, put $10,000 on a single number at the roulette table, and ask for a guaranteed 37-to-1 payout. No casino would offer that. But maintaining Dad’s home — worth $370,000 — for a total outlay of $10,000 is essentially that deal.
“You inherit the home. You sell the home. You keep every dime, every penny. Medicaid does not get it.”
And it gets better. When the parent dies, the inheriting child receives a stepped-up basis in the property. If Dad bought the home for $250,000 and it’s worth $370,000 at death, the capital gain disappears entirely. The child sells it for $370,000 and owes no capital gains tax. The homestead exemption protects the asset both during life and after death — and the step-up eliminates the tax consequence on top of it.
The Hidden Drafting Trap That Can Cost Your Family the House
Even with all of Florida’s homestead protections in place, there is one common estate planning mistake that can undo them entirely — and Marshall sees it regularly.
The mistake is a clause in a will or trust that says something like “sell all of my assets” or “sell the homestead property.” In many other states, this language is harmless. There are no comparable homestead protections, so a directive to liquidate everything is simply carried out without consequence.
In Florida, it’s a different story entirely. Under both Florida statute and case law, a directive to sell homestead property — even one that can only be implied — nullifies homestead protections after death. That means Medicaid can then pursue recovery from the property. The constitutional protection that would have kept the home safe is gone, because the estate plan itself gave it away.
This mistake shows up in Florida estate plans in two ways.
First: failing to update an out-of-state plan after moving to Florida. Someone drafts a will in Michigan, Ohio, or Nebraska with standard liquidation language. They move to Florida, never update the document, and die years later. Florida law is applied to the administration of that estate — including that “sell everything” clause — and the homestead protection evaporates. The fix is straightforward: update your estate plan every time you move to a new state, without exception.
Second: working with an attorney who doesn’t push back. Price-driven estate planning — firms competing on low flat fees that have to move clients through quickly — often results in attorneys who draft exactly what the client asks for without asking whether what the client wants is actually permissible or wise under Florida law.
Marshall uses a direct analogy: a patient with a wound that needs stitches who walks into a doctor’s office asking for a Band-Aid. The right doctor says the Band-Aid won’t fix it and explains why. The wrong doctor slaps on the Band-Aid, takes the co-pay, and sends the patient home feeling fine — until the infection sets in.
He had a client recently who insisted on a specific estate planning arrangement he identified as legally invalid. When she pushed back, his response was clear: he wouldn’t draft it, because she would walk out believing the problem was solved when it wasn’t. Instead, he offered to find a legal alternative that accomplished what she actually wanted — without creating a ticking time bomb in her documents.
He’s also seen the consequences of bad drafting firsthand when handling probate and trust administration for documents prepared by other attorneys. A husband who had lived separately from his wife for twenty years — she in another state, he in Florida — had a will drafted leaving his home to one specific son while disinheriting his wife, his daughter, and another son. The attorney never told him that was impossible. You cannot disinherit a spouse in Florida, especially on homestead property. A surviving spouse has the legal right to either a life estate in the property or a one-half ownership interest — period. The invalid devise brought the disinherited children back into the estate. Nobody warned him.
The Mobile Home Exception Most People Miss
There is one category of homestead property where Florida’s protections don’t fully extend — and it catches a surprising number of people off guard.
Mobile homes and modular homes located on rented land are protected from creditor claims during the owner’s lifetime, including Medicaid. The state cannot force their sale to meet eligibility requirements while the owner is alive. But after death, that protection disappears. Mobile homes on rented land are not exempt assets after death, which means Medicaid can pursue recovery from them.
The fix is simple but requires planning ahead: own both the mobile home and the land beneath it. The two don’t need to be legally combined into a single title — you simply need to hold ownership of both. A half-acre within city limits or up to 160 acres outside city limits, combined with the mobile home, creates full homestead protection during life and after death.
Marshall sees people spend $150,000 or more on a mobile home in a park without realizing that placing it on a small parcel of owned land would have preserved all of their protections. It’s a straightforward fix — but only if someone tells you about it before it’s too late.
The Right Time for Medicaid Planning Is Long Before You Need It
The consistent thread running through every scenario in this conversation is timing. Medicaid planning done in advance — 10, 15, even 20 years before care is needed — opens up a wide range of options. Medicaid planning done in the middle of a crisis closes most of them.
A properly designed estate plan built with future Medicaid involvement in mind uses the correct language to preserve homestead exemptions, avoids directives to sell that strip Florida’s constitutional protections, accounts for the equity cap, and protects a healthy spouse from becoming impoverished in the process.
For families throughout The Villages, Wildwood, Leesburg, Lady Lake, Fruitland Park, Minneola, Sumter County, and Lake County, that planning starts with a conversation — before the health crisis, before the assisted living move, and well before the Medicaid application.
Don’t Wait Until You Need Medicaid to Start Planning
Medicaid cannot take your Florida home — but bad planning, outdated documents, and the wrong attorney can remove the very protections that would have kept it safe. The difference between a family that preserves a $370,000 home and one that loses it often comes down to a single conversation that happened — or didn’t happen — years earlier.
Attorney John Marshall and the team at Marshall Law have spent years helping families across Central Florida navigate Medicaid planning, estate planning, and elder law with clarity and confidence. If you have a parent approaching the point where long-term care may be needed — or if you simply want to make sure your own plan is built correctly for Florida — now is the right time to have that conversation.
Call Marshall Law at (352) 432-8859 or schedule a consultation online today. Your home is likely your most valuable asset. Make sure your plan actually protects it.