An Ohio Medicaid Asset Protection Trust Shields What You Move Into It, 5 Years Later

What the trust actually changes

Three legal facts move at once. The assets leave your countable total for Medicaid. They leave your estate, so the recovery program that claims homes after death has nothing to attach, as explained in what really threatens the house. And they pass to your chosen beneficiaries on your terms, with a stepped-up tax basis your children would lose if you simply deeded the house over.

If you already have a living trust

Many families arrive believing the trust they signed years ago covers this. It almost never does. A revocable living trust is built to avoid probate and keep matters private, and it does that well. It gives no Medicaid protection at all, because the right to revoke is the same as ownership in Medicaid's eyes. Protection starts only when you give that right up, which is exactly what makes this trust irrevocable and what makes it work.

What you give up

Irrevocable means irrevocable. You cannot be the beneficiary, you cannot pull assets back out, and a properly drafted trust limits your control on purpose, because retained control is exactly what makes Medicaid count a trust. You typically keep occupancy of the home for life and the trust can sell and replace it, but the principal is no longer your spending money. A family that will need those savings within 5 years should not put them in.

The 5-year clock

Funding the trust is a transfer for look-back purposes. Apply for Medicaid within 60 months of funding and the transfer is penalized at $7,787 per month of penalty, per the look-back rule. Clear the window and the assets are simply invisible to the application. This is why the MAPT is a planning tool, not a crisis tool: it rewards the family that acts 5 years before the question is urgent.

Why not just give it to the kids?

Because an outright gift triggers the same 5-year clock with none of the protections: the house becomes exposed to the children's divorces and creditors, the tax basis carries over instead of stepping up, and nothing stops a child from selling. The full comparison is in gifting versus the trust.

Cost and fit

Ohio MAPT work generally runs in the low-to-mid 4 figures depending on the estate's complexity. The fit question is simpler than the drafting: if your equity plus savings meaningfully exceed what the exempt rules already shelter, and the 5-year horizon is realistic, the trust earns its fee many times over. If care is likely sooner, crisis tools in the protection overview are the honest path instead.

The caveat to weigh: a MAPT only protects what it holds and only after the window clears. Fund it thin, or late, and you have paperwork instead of protection.