Can Medicaid Take Your House in Florida? Homestead and Recovery

Florida Medicaid cannot take your house while you are alive in most situations, but after you die the state can pursue reimbursement from your probate estate, and a home that lands in probate without a protection in place can be sold to satisfy the debt. So the honest answer to whether Medicaid can take your house in Florida is: not directly, not during your lifetime in most cases, and not at all if you plan around probate or a protected survivor is in the picture.

Florida’s rules are more protective than many states’. The state only reaches assets that pass through probate, homestead property carries constitutional protection, and several categories of survivors shut recovery down entirely. Understanding where those protections start and stop is the whole game.

When the House Is Actually at Risk

Two things have to be true before Florida can touch your home through the Medicaid Estate Recovery Program: the house has to be part of your probate estate when you die, and no exemption can apply.¹ A house ends up in probate when it’s titled solely in the deceased person’s name with nothing else transferring it automatically at death.

Florida uses a narrow, probate-only definition of “estate” for recovery. Assets that bypass probate, whether through a survivorship deed, a trust, or a beneficiary designation, are outside the program’s reach in Florida. Some states sweep those in. Florida does not. That distinction is what makes planning around the house possible.

Even when a home is in the probate estate, the statute bars the state from forcing a transfer of real property to itself. The property has to be sold on the open market, and only if the expected proceeds would exceed the costs of sale. If a sale would cost more than it would bring in, the state cannot compel one.

Recovery applies to Medicaid paid for people who received benefits at 55 or older, and only for certain services: nursing facility care, home and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug costs.² Regular medical Medicaid for a younger adult doesn’t create the same claim.

Florida’s Homestead Protection

Florida’s constitution shields homestead property from forced sale to pay most creditors’ debts. The narrow exceptions are property taxes, mortgages, and contractor liens. Medicaid is not on that list.

Florida’s estate recovery statute mirrors the constitution: no debt under the recovery law can be enforced against property exempt from creditor claims under state law.¹ If the home keeps its homestead status and passes to a lawful heir or devisee under the constitution’s descent rules, the exemption blocks Medicaid from forcing a sale even when the home is administered in probate.

Homestead protection can be lost. Renting the property out, abandoning it, or leaving it to someone outside the constitutionally protected class of heirs can strip the shield. Where the protection holds, it is one of the strongest in the country.

Survivors Who Stop Recovery Entirely

Even if the house sits in probate with no homestead protection, Florida law blocks estate recovery altogether when the deceased Medicaid recipient is survived by any of the following:

A spouse. The state cannot pursue any recovery while a surviving spouse is alive.¹
A child under 21.
A child of any age who is blind or permanently and totally disabled, using the federal SSI disability standard.²

These bars are not partial. If any one of these survivors exists, AHCA cannot file a claim against the estate at all. The house is safe along with everything else.

Caretaker Children and Resident Siblings

Two more protections turn on someone living in the home. Under Florida’s hardship provisions, recovery may be waived when an heir who is the recipient’s son, daughter, or sibling can document providing full-time care that delayed the recipient’s entry into a nursing home, plus at least one year of shared residence before death.¹ The word “document” matters. Medical records showing the recipient’s care needs, proof of co-residence, and ideally a physician’s statement that home care delayed institutionalization are what carry the request.

Federal law also protects a sibling who has an equity interest in the home and lived there for at least one year immediately before the recipient entered a nursing facility.² That sibling’s presence blocks recovery and also prevents a lien during the recipient’s lifetime.

Liens While You’re Still Alive

Estate recovery happens after death, but there is one situation where Florida can attach the home during life. TEFRA liens, named for the federal law authorizing them, can be placed on the home of a Medicaid recipient who is in a nursing facility, is contributing nearly all income toward care, and is not reasonably expected to return home.²

A TEFRA lien cannot be placed on a home where any of the following lawfully lives: the recipient’s spouse, a child under 21, a blind or disabled child of any age, or a sibling with an equity interest who has lived there for at least a year. If the recipient does return home, the lien must be dissolved. And the lien itself does not force an immediate sale. It attaches and gets enforced later, typically through probate after the recipient dies.

Keeping the House Out of Probate

Because Florida limits recovery to probate assets, the cleanest way to protect a home is to make sure it never enters probate. Three tools do this in different ways.

Lady Bird Deed

A Lady Bird deed, formally called an enhanced life estate deed, lets you keep full control of your home during your lifetime. You can sell it, mortgage it, or revoke the deed entirely. At your death, the property transfers automatically to the beneficiaries you named. It never enters probate, so AHCA has no claim against it.

Because you keep an enhanced life estate, the deed is not treated as a gift for Medicaid purposes. There is no look-back penalty for signing one. The filing is straightforward and typically much cheaper than setting up a trust. For many Florida homeowners, this is the simplest workable protection.

Irrevocable Trust

Placing the home in an irrevocable trust removes it from your estate, but this move takes advance planning. Transferring property into the trust is a gift for Medicaid purposes and triggers Florida’s 60-month look-back. Any transfer for less than fair market value in the five years before you apply creates a penalty period during which Medicaid will not pay for nursing home care.³ The penalty is calculated by dividing the transferred value by Florida’s monthly penalty divisor, which was $10,645 as of April 2025.

The tradeoff with a trust is control. Unlike a Lady Bird deed, you cannot revoke it and take the house back. Once the five-year window has closed, assets in the trust are generally protected from Medicaid counting and from estate recovery.

Joint Ownership With Right of Survivorship

Holding the home as joint tenants with right of survivorship means the property passes automatically to the surviving owner at death. It skips probate and stays outside Florida’s recovery reach. The catch: adding someone to the deed can create gift tax issues and exposes the property to that co-owner’s creditors, so this is not always the right move.

The Trap: Giving the House Away Too Late

Simply deeding the house to a child before applying for Medicaid usually backfires. It counts as a transfer for less than fair market value, triggers the 60-month look-back, and creates a penalty period during which Medicaid will not cover nursing home care. Families sometimes give the home away thinking they’ve protected it, then need care within five years and cannot qualify. The home is gone and there is no way to pay for the care.³ Any real protection strategy has to be in place well before care is needed.

Hardship Waivers

If a claim does arrive, Florida law requires AHCA to waive recovery when enforcing it would cause undue hardship for the heirs. The personal representative or any heir can file the request.¹ AHCA weighs whether recovery would deprive an heir of food, clothing, shelter, or medical care necessary for life or health.

Documentation is what carries these requests. Financial records, medical bills, proof of income, and specific evidence of the hardship all help. A bare assertion that recovery would be difficult is not enough. Heirs who can show that selling the home would leave them homeless or unable to meet basic needs have the strongest cases. The caretaker child provision runs through this same hardship framework and requires proof of full-time caregiving plus at least a year of shared residence.

If a Claim Shows Up

Read it carefully. AHCA sometimes overestimates what Medicaid paid or includes services that are not recoverable. An elder law attorney can check the numbers, assert applicable exemptions, and handle the hardship waiver process. These cases sit at the intersection of Florida homestead law, federal Medicaid rules, and probate procedure, and the interplay is genuinely difficult to navigate alone.

1
The Florida Legislature. Florida Code 409.9101 – Recovery for Payments Made on Behalf of Medicaid-Eligible Persons
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets
3
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Estate Recovery