My Mom recently passed in NH. She was on Medicaid. She has 2 small life insurance policies with me being the beneficiary. One is term and one is whole with 600 cash value. Can Medicaid take these from me? I have cashed checks and put the money aside in case they do. How long do I wait?
If Medicaid knew about the policy with the small cash value in advance, it was likely deemed not a countable asset and the benefit paid to you likely would be okay as well - as long as Medicaid knew about the policy during the application process.
I work in the legal department for a large insurer. We get requests from Medicaid all the time to get the asset values of policies and annuity contracts. If Medicaid knows about policies and there is cash value involved, these are handled in advance ( like JoAnn mentioned) or Medicaid becomes a beneficiary (I see this more in annuities), etc. or a lien is placed, or the ownership is changed to a funeral service provider, etc. As long as it knew about the cash value policy in advance, and you weren't asked to cash it in or change the beneficiary, you should be okay.
Best wishes.