What Counts as a Countable Asset for Medicaid in Wisconsin?

When a family asks whether they will qualify for Medicaid long-term care, the real question underneath is usually simpler: what counts, and what doesn’t?

Wisconsin keeps two lists. Nearly everything you own lands on one of them, and which list it lands on often decides whether you apply this month or spend the next year rearranging your finances.

The limit itself is small. A single applicant can keep $2,000 in countable assets. That figure has not changed since 1989, and it is not adjusted for inflation. Anything above that is the spend-down. For a married couple with both spouses in long-term care and both applying, the combined limit is $3,000.

The two lists

Countable assets are the ones Medicaid expects to be spent on your care. Exempt assets are the ones it sets aside. The state publishes both lists, and most of the confusion we hear comes from a family assuming something is exempt when it is not.

Here is how the Wisconsin Department of Health Services draws the line.

What Wisconsin counts

• Cash on hand
• Checking and savings accounts
• Certificates of deposit
• Investments, stocks and bonds
• Life insurance policies with a cash value
• Real estate other than your home
• Retirement accounts, including IRAs, which generally count once you can draw on them

Notice what is not on that list: nothing is excluded because it is small, and nothing is excluded because you were saving it for something else.

What Wisconsin does not count

• Your home, as long as you, your spouse, or a dependent relative lives there
• One vehicle
• Some burial assets, including burial plots and amounts held in irrevocable burial trusts
• Household items
• Clothing and other personal items
• IRAs and other retirement accounts in the community spouse’s name, which are not treated as available to the spouse who needs care

That is a short list, and it is shorter than most people expect. A second car counts. A vacation property counts. A savings account you have never touched counts.

There is one more lever, and it takes planning rather than paperwork. An IRA can be converted into an IRA annuity that is already paying out. Once it is in payout status, Wisconsin stops counting the balance as an asset and counts the monthly payment as income instead, and the name on that check decides whose income it is. The conversion has to happen in the right order, with the annuity’s terms and the beneficiary designation set correctly, which is why it is a conversation to have before the application rather than after.

The home has a ceiling

The home is exempt, but the exemption is not unlimited. For 2026, Wisconsin’s long-term care home equity limit is $752,000. Equity above that figure can be counted against you. The exemption also depends on someone living there. A house that sits empty with no spouse or dependent relative in it stops being exempt.

This is the asset families most often get wrong in both directions: they assume the house is untouchable, or they deed it away in a hurry and create a different problem.

If you are married, the math changes

One spouse in care, one at home. The spouse who needs care is held to the $2,000 asset limit and, in 2026, an income limit of $2,982 a month. The spouse who stays home is not expected to spend down to zero.

The $3,000 limit is a different situation: both spouses in long-term care and both applying. They count as one Medicaid group of two, so their combined countable assets have to stay at or below $3,000. There is no community spouse in that case, so nothing is set aside for someone at home.

When only one spouse is in care, the assets are split instead. If your combined countable assets are $100,000 or less, the community spouse keeps $50,000 and the spouse applying for coverage keeps $2,000. Above $100,000, the community spouse’s share grows with the estate, up to a maximum of $162,660 for 2026. Wisconsin’s own fact sheet on spousal impoverishment walks through the arithmetic, and it is worth reading before you move a single dollar.

The income side works differently from the assets. The community spouse, the one at home, can have unlimited income, and none of it is counted against the spouse in care. The spouse in the facility is allowed to keep $55 a month for personal needs, and everything else, including their Social Security and pension, goes toward the cost of their care.

Three mistakes we see most often

1. Cashing out a retirement account to get under the limit. The withdrawal becomes a countable lump sum and a tax bill in the same year, and it rarely gets you where you wanted to go.
2. Signing the house over to a child. Wisconsin looks at transfers made for less than fair market value. A deed signed in a panic can create a penalty period longer than the crisis it was meant to solve.
3. Waiting until the week of admission. The look-back period is five years. The decisions made in a hurry are the ones that cost families the most.

Spending down is not the same as spending wildly

Excess assets can be reduced legitimately. The state allows money to go toward care costs, home repairs and improvements, a vehicle, clothing, and ordinary household expenses. What it will not accept is money moved out of reach. There is a difference between spending an asset down and making it disappear, and that difference is the whole game.

Where to start

Get the inventory right before you make any moves. Gather the last three months of statements for every account, the deed to the house, any life insurance policies, and the burial paperwork if it exists. That list, not a guess, is what tells you where you stand.

Our Medicaid spend-down page walks through the process step by step, and two related reads go deeper: The Truth About Medicaid Myths and How to Prevent Spousal Impoverishment.

If you would rather have someone look at your actual numbers, call Elder Life Group at (877) 336-7782 or request a free consultation. We will tell you what counts, what doesn’t, and what to do next.

Scott A. Moan, LUTCF, is founder and managing director of Elder Life Group in Janesville, Wisconsin. This article is general education, not legal or tax advice, and Medicaid rules change annually. Confirm your situation with a licensed elder law attorney in Wisconsin before acting.