A typical spousal impoverishment case is one in which one spouse is headed for the nursing home and the other will remain in the community. The community spouse is entitled to a certain level of asset protection which at the minimum is $21,912 and the maximum is $109,560.

The amount the community spouse is allowed to keep is known as the Protected Resource Amount ("PRA"). However, what many individuals who go through the Medicaid process do not discover is that there are federal regulations that can be utilized to preserve in many, if not most, cases a significant amount of assets for the community spouse which far exceeds the published maximum stated above.