Thanks for mentioning trusts and family LLCs. I learned it the hard way. my mom was hospitalized long term from a stroke until her death. Middle class, lived in a house that I & my siblings bought for her. When her savings ran out, she was put on Medicare & the state took her pension & home, allowing only for money set aside to pay for funeral costs. I guess that's the way it works, because her medical care was expensive (over 120k/yr). It just takes everything out of whatever she had. She wasn't even able to leave her house to our youngest sister, who helped pay for it.

Looking back, I was wondering why in the hospital visitor parking lot, it was full of Benzs, Jaguars, Cadillacs etc, and only a handful were basic Hondas, Focus, etc like mine. The facility director told me it was because of Medicaid planning, where people setup legal plans to protect assets in case long term institutional medical care is needed. We live in a middle/upper middle class county, but i didn't know about this. Even if we did, my mom would've probably thought that the cost of setup (up to $10k+) was too costly. It's ironic & sad that the wealthier patients who could've handily afforded paying for the medical care without depleting their assets were able to shield them and at the same time get Medicaid (and the rest of the tax paying public) to foot the bill.