In Stoddard County, the question is often not just about savings. It is about ground — land that has been in the family for two or three generations, and a fear that a nursing home is about to take it.
That fear is reasonable. It is also, very often, avoidable.
The number behind the worry
Missouri’s official figure for private-pay nursing home care is $8,235 a month — $98,820 a year. Few families in this part of the state can absorb that for long. When the cash runs out, attention turns to whatever else can be sold, and that is usually the land.
Farm ground is particularly exposed, because it is valuable, it is countable, and it cannot be spent down gradually. It tends to go all at once.
You can act after they have already moved in
The most expensive belief we encounter is that the door closes at admission. Families assume that once a parent is in the facility, the only option is to spend everything and wait for Medicaid.
That is not the law. Crisis planning is specifically for families whose loved one is already in a nursing home — it is the bulk of our practice. Depending on the circumstances, a meaningful share of what remains can often be protected, sometimes including the homestead and land.
What no one can recover is the money already paid out while a family waited. That is why we would rather hear from a Dexter family too early than three months too late.
Married couples have far more room than they think
When one spouse enters a facility and the other stays home, Missouri performs a Division of Assets. The spouse at home may keep up to $162,660 in countable assets — not the $6,220.50 that applies to a single person — plus a guaranteed monthly income floor of $2,705.
We have sat with wives in Stoddard County who had already resigned themselves to losing the place, and who did not know either of those rules existed.
See the current Missouri Medicaid figures →
“We already put the farm in the kids’ names”
We hear this constantly, and it is the single most common way rural families create a problem while trying to prevent one.
Missouri looks back five years at gifts and transfers. Whatever was given away gets divided by $8,235, and that is how many months the applicant is ineligible — starting when they would otherwise have qualified, by which point the money is spent and the land is no longer theirs to sell.
Transferring ground to children can also create income tax consequences the family never saw coming, and exposes the land to a child’s divorce, lawsuit, or creditors.
If this has already been done in your family, it is worth a conversation. There are often ways to limit the damage, but they get narrower with time.
Working with families from Dexter and Stoddard County
Our office is in Cape Girardeau, roughly an hour from Dexter, and Stoddard County families are a regular part of our practice. We hold seminars around the region, including in the Dexter area, and much of a first conversation can be handled by phone — families in the middle of a nursing home admission rarely have a spare afternoon.
More of our Stoddard County work involves families with a loved one at Memory Lane of Dexter than any other facility in the county. We also regularly help families at Crowley Ridge Care Center and Dexter Living Center.
Probate matters for Stoddard County run through the county’s circuit court in Bloomfield.
One thing worth saying plainly: we are not affiliated with any nursing facility. We represent families, not facilities. Our only obligation is to the family sitting across the table.
What we handle — and what we do not
We do one thing deeply: protecting what Missouri families have spent a lifetime building. Medicaid crisis planning, asset-protection trusts, wills and trusts, and probate. It is why other attorneys refer us their toughest Medicaid cases.
We do not handle divorce or family law, criminal defense, traffic, or personal injury. The Missouri Bar’s Find-a-Lawyer directory is the fastest route to the right attorney for those.
Find out where your family stands
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Or call us directly: (573) 334-5125
This page is general information about Missouri Medicaid and nursing home planning, not legal advice, and reading it does not make you a client of the Law Office of Mark McMullin. Every family’s circumstances differ, and the rules change several times a year. Please speak with an elder law attorney before making decisions about your assets or your land.