At Mustico & Harvey Law Group, we work with clients throughout the Elmira–Corning area and across Chemung, Steuben, and Schuyler Counties to help them apply for and meet Medicaid eligibility requirements. Our goal is to protect your hard-earned assets while ensuring you and your loved ones receive the best available long-term care.
Why Medicaid Planning Matters
Long-term care can quickly deplete savings and place family homes at risk. Without proper planning, a lifetime of work may be consumed by the high costs of nursing homes or in-home care. Our attorneys, Donald W. Mustico, Esq., CPA and Brooke Harvey, Esq., help families create strategies that safeguard their assets while maintaining eligibility for vital care programs.
Crisis Medicaid Planning vs Non-Crisis Medicaid Planning
Crisis Planning: When long-term care is imminent or already underway (such as entering a nursing home or requiring immediate in-home care).
Non-Crisis Planning: When care is not yet needed, but you plan ahead for the possibility of future long-term care.
Non-Crisis Planning is always the most effective, allowing more assets to be preserved. But even in Crisis situations, our attorneys can often protect a significant portion of your estate.
New York Medicaid Eligibility
Medicaid rules vary from state to state, and New York has some of the most liberal laws in the nation. That said, eligibility depends heavily on marital status and whether you’re applying for Chronic Care (nursing home Medicaid) or Community Care (Medicaid home care).
Unlike Social Security or Medicare, Medicaid is not an entitlement program. To qualify, applicants must meet strict asset and income requirements. This is where skilled planning makes all the difference.
How We Help Clients Qualify
Our process includes:
- Comprehensive Asset Review – We assess the fair market value of all assets and prepare a personal balance sheet.
- Eligibility Analysis – Using advanced planning software, we calculate Medicaid eligibility and determine “Excess Countable Assets.”
- Exempt Asset Planning – We identify assets exempt under New York Medicaid law (such as a home, car, or retirement accounts) and help restructure ownership accordingly.
- Asset Conversion – We guide clients in converting non-exempt assets into exempt ones through legitimate strategies such as paying off debts, home improvements, or purchasing burial accounts.
- Advanced Protection Techniques – For any remaining excess assets, we apply specialized legal strategies—similar to tax planning techniques for high-net-worth clients—to protect as much as possible under Medicaid’s own laws.
Our attorneys often save clients thousands of dollars, and in many cases, at least half of what would otherwise have been lost to nursing home costs.
The Importance of Advance Planning
Medicaid and estate planning are not “set-it-and-forget-it.” Laws change regularly, especially after elections, and your family and financial circumstances evolve as well. Regular reviews of your plan ensure that your assets remain protected and your strategy remains compliant. Even if a loved one is already in a nursing home and paying out-of-pocket, it is often not too late to save significant assets. Families are frequently misinformed that planning is impossible once care begins — but our experience shows otherwise.
Tax Considerations
Medicaid planning often involves complex tax implications, especially with assets such as annuities, IRAs, Roth accounts, or life insurance. As both an attorney and CPA, Don brings unmatched tax planning knowledge to this process. Brooke complements this with her focused training in Elder Law and Estate Planning, ensuring that every Medicaid strategy is evaluated through both a legal and tax lens. Our team also provides post-planning tax preparation and ongoing plan monitoring, including funding and retitling of assets, so your strategy remains effective and up to date.
A Team Approach
Donald Mustico’s decades of experience, combined with Brooke Harvey’s fresh perspective and dedicated client advocacy, ensure that families in the Southern Tier have access to both the wisdom of experience and the innovation of a new generation. Together, they are committed to helping seniors and their families protect what matters most.