Transferring Assets Before Applying for Medi-Cal: What to Know

Giving away money or property before applying for Medi-Cal long-term-care coverage can trigger a penalty period — but the rules in 2026 are more nuanced than they used to be, because of how California phased asset limits back in. This page walks through the mechanics based directly on DHCS’s own guidance.

Talk to an elder-law attorney before transferring any asset if you’re thinking about a future Medi-Cal application. This is exactly the kind of decision where a webpage can’t replace advice tailored to your specific transfer, timing, and family situation — getting it wrong can mean months of paying privately for care that Medi-Cal would otherwise have covered.

The look-back period is 30 months

California’s Medi-Cal look-back period for long-term-care eligibility is 30 months. Ordinarily, that means the county can review transfers made in the 30 months before you apply, looking for transfers that weren’t for fair value.

2024–2025 transfers are permanently excluded

Here’s the detail that matters most for families who did any financial planning in the last two years: transfers made from January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2025 are permanently excluded from review, under any circumstance. That’s because the asset test itself didn’t exist during that window — there was nothing to test a transfer against. This isn’t an inference; it’s stated explicitly in DHCS ACWDL 25-18 and reaffirmed in ACWDL 26-03.

How the phase-in works, month by month

Because 2024–2025 is off the table, DHCS is phasing the full 30-month look-back back in gradually rather than applying it all at once. For long-term-care applications from January 2026 onward, only the months from January 1, 2026 forward are reviewed at first. Starting in July 2026, the reviewable window grows by one additional month every month, until it reaches the full 30-month look-back in July 2028.

A couple of examples of how that plays out:

Someone applying in January 2027 faces roughly a 12-month reviewable window (covering transfers made since January 2026).
Someone applying in July 2028 or later faces the full 30-month look-back window.

This mechanism is confirmed directly from DHCS’s own published month-by-month chart in ACWDL 25-18 — the exact schedule is more detailed than the examples above, so if a transfer date is close to a boundary, ask the county or an attorney to check the precise window that applies to your application date.

If a penalty period applies: the divisor

If the county finds a disqualifying transfer, it calculates a period of ineligibility (POI) — the number of months you’re disqualified from Medi-Cal long-term-care coverage. The math: roughly the transferred amount divided by the 2026 Statewide Average Private Pay Rate (APPR) for nursing facility services, which is $14,440 per month (DHCS ACWDL 26-03, dated February 9, 2026). In practice, this penalty period is capped by the look-back window itself — the county can’t reach further back than the reviewable window described above.

Undue hardship: a check before any penalty

Before a penalty period is imposed, the county must check for undue hardship under Welfare & Institutions Code §14015.1(b). In plain language, the six statutory circumstances are:

You’re already Medi-Cal-eligible under specific older rules.
Denial would endanger your life or health.
Denial would cause you to be evicted from a nursing home.
You’re otherwise eligible and unable to get needed care without Medi-Cal.
Denial would hasten institutionalization by preventing you from staying at home or in the community.
Denial would deprive you of food, clothing, shelter, or other necessities.

Exempt-asset transfers, and rebutting the presumption

Transfers of exempt assets (not just any transfer) are never penalized, under Welfare & Institutions Code §14015. And when a transfer isn’t exempt, there’s a rebuttable presumption that it was made to qualify for Medi-Cal — but that presumption can be refuted with evidence the transfer was for another purpose. DHCS’s own ACWDL 25-18 gives a real example of this: someone who gifted money toward a relative’s education, unrelated to any Medi-Cal planning at the time.

Why this needs an attorney, not a guess

The interaction between the 2024–2025 exclusion, the phased look-back window, the penalty divisor, and the undue-hardship exceptions is genuinely complex, and it changes based on exactly when you transferred an asset and exactly when you apply. Before making any transfer with a future Medi-Cal application in mind, talk to an elder-law attorney. See our guide to choosing an elder-law attorney.