How to Save the House (and the Savings) When Your Spouse Needs a Nursing Home

The rules of state aid are designed to deplete your assets, but the law has built-in survival hatches for the spouse staying home.

If you walk into a state assistance office and ask how to pay for your husband's nursing home, they will hand you a checklist of things you must sell. They will tell you that you are allowed to keep exactly $2,000 in cash. What they won't tell you—not because they are evil, but because it is not their job—is that the rules for the spouse staying home are entirely different. You do not have to become destitute to keep your partner alive.

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