The Claim After A Death
ORC 5162.21 — medicaid estate recovery, and what delays it
Families usually meet this as a letter arriving after a funeral, and the reaction is that somebody must have made a mistake. Nobody has. Medicaid paid for care, and the programme is entitled to recover from the estate afterwards. Knowing that in advance changes what people do with a house years earlier.
A house is reachable. Where recovery is sought against somebody who was permanently institutionalised, there are further protections while certain people lawfully live in the home, including a caregiver child and a sibling in defined circumstances.
A running total can be asked for while somebody is still alive rather than discovered afterwards, which is the difference between planning and reacting.
“Is there a surviving spouse, and does anybody live in the house.”
What counts as the estate for this purpose, how transfers made before an application are treated, the look back period on a medicaid application, and planning tools such as trusts each run under their own rules and none of them are on this page. Transferring a house to avoid recovery has consequences of its own and frequently backfires. Whether a claim is valid, what it covers, and whether hardship applies are questions for a licensed Ohio attorney, and elder law is the specialism that handles them.
Sources for this section (2)
- ORC 5162.21 — Recovery from the estate of a person who received medicaid
- OAC 5160:1-2-07 — Medicaid estate recovery, including the delay while a spouse or certain residents survive
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Talk to a licensed Ohio attorney about your situation.