Minnesota Medicaid Income Limits 2026: Eligibility & Assets

There are two Minnesota Medicaid income limits, and the one that applies depends on your age. An adult under 65 who is not on Medicare qualifies at 138% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines with no asset test at all. Someone 65 or older, blind, or disabled is measured against a 100% FPG standard and a $3,000 asset limit, higher than the $2,000 most states use. Minnesota calls the program Medical Assistance (MA), runs it through the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), and qualifies over-income applicants through a medically needy spend-down rather than a hard income cap, so no Qualified Income Trust is required.1,2,3

This guide covers both tracks for 2026: which test applies to you, Minnesota's MAGI income standards by group, what happens on your 65th birthday when the MAGI pathway closes, and then the long-term-care rules in depth (the $3,000 asset limit, how the spend-down replaces an income cliff, what a nursing-home resident keeps, what a spouse at home is protected from, and how to apply).

In This Guide

• Which Income Limits Apply: MAGI or ABD
• The Asset Limit
• How the Income Limits Work: Spend-Down
• Long-Term Care: What a Nursing-Home Resident Keeps
• Protecting the Spouse Who Stays Home
• After Death: Estate Recovery
• How to Apply
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Learn More

Which Minnesota Medicaid income limits apply: MAGI or ABD

Minnesota runs two different income tests under the same Medical Assistance name, and they give different answers for the same household. Which one applies depends on who is applying, not on which number is easier to find.

• The MAGI test covers children, pregnant women, parents and relative caretakers, and adults without children who are under 65 and not enrolled in Medicare. It measures Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI), and it applies no asset test.2,3
• The ABD test covers people 65 and older and people who are blind or have a disability. It uses the SSI-related income rules, and it does apply an asset limit. This is the long-term-care track the rest of this guide covers.1,3

The $3,000 asset limit and the 100% FPG income standard in this guide are the ABD numbers.1 If the person you are checking on is under 65 and not on Medicare, the MAGI figures below are the ones that decide their case.

Minnesota's MAGI income standards for 2026

Two numbers appear for the expansion group because Minnesota publishes its limits before the disregard is applied. Federal law requires a standard income disregard of 5 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines for the groups that use MAGI, which raises each MAGI group's limit by five percentage points. So the adult standard is 133% FPG as printed in Minnesota's tables and 138% FPG once the disregard is counted. Both figures describe the same rule.2

Above the Medical Assistance limit, Minnesota does not simply cut adults off. MinnesotaCare, the state's Basic Health Program, covers adults with income above the MA limit up to 200% FPG.2

Parents and relative caretakers

Parents and other relative caretakers of dependent children are a federally mandatory Medicaid group, but the federal floor for it is low. A state must cover them only down at its old cash-welfare standard: the state's AFDC income standard, frozen to its pre-1996 rules and converted to a MAGI equivalent, which is typically far below the poverty level. That floor is what bites in states that never adopted the ACA expansion, where a working parent can be over the income limit at a very low income.6

Minnesota sets its standard well above that floor. A parent or relative caretaker of a dependent child qualifies for Medical Assistance up to 133% FPG, the same base standard the state applies to adults without children.2

This is the group a grandparent raising a grandchild would look to. Whether a particular relative meets Minnesota's definition of a caretaker relative turns on the household and the child's dependency, so ask a county or tribal human services office to make that determination rather than assuming it either way.

No asset test on the MAGI pathway

Federal law bars a state from applying any assets or resources test to the MAGI groups: expansion adults, children, pregnant women, and parents and caretaker relatives.3 That is the sharpest difference between the two tracks on this page. The $3,000 countable-asset limit that governs a 66-year-old's application does not touch a 63-year-old applying through MAGI. An applicant on the MAGI pathway who is worried about the asset limit is worried about the wrong test.3,1

The 65th birthday: when the MAGI pathway closes

Minnesota covers the ACA expansion adult group, so an adult without children aged 21 through 64 qualifies for Medical Assistance up to 133% FPG as published, 138% FPG once the standard disregard applies.2 Nationally, 41 states including the District of Columbia have adopted the expansion and 10 have not.7

The expansion group is written narrowly. It covers people under 65 who are not pregnant and not entitled to or enrolled in Medicare, at an effective ceiling of 138% of the federal poverty level, and, being a MAGI group, it applies no asset test.8,3 For one person in 2026 that ceiling works out to about $1,835/month, 138% of the $15,960/year federal poverty guideline for one person in the 48 contiguous states and DC. Alaska and Hawaii run on separate, higher guidelines.4,8

On the 65th birthday that pathway closes. The same person is assessed on the SSI-related ABD track instead, the track federal law expressly excepts from the MAGI no-asset-test rule.3 Two things change at once in Minnesota: the income standard drops from 138% FPG to the MA-ABD standard of 100% FPG, about $1,330/month for an individual, and a $3,000 countable-asset limit appears where none applied before.1,4

So a 64-year-old covered at $1,600/month with $10,000 in savings can be over both tests the day they turn 65, without a dollar of their income or savings changing. What saves them in Minnesota is the spend-down: because the state is a section 209(b) medically needy state rather than an income-cap state, being over the standard means spending the excess down on medical and care costs, not being shut out.1 The asset limit is the harder of the two, and it is the one worth planning for before the birthday rather than after.

Children and CHIP, briefly

Federal law makes coverage of children under 19 mandatory down to at least 133% FPL, a floor states may exceed.9 Minnesota covers well above it, at 283% FPG under age 2 and 275% FPG for ages 2 through 18, and it runs no separate CHIP program: CHIP-funded children are covered inside Medical Assistance, which is why Minnesota's entry in the federal Separate CHIP column reads N/A.2,9

The Minnesota Medicaid asset limit: a $3,000 feature, not the $2,000 default

For most of Medicaid's history, the countable-asset limit for a single aged or disabled applicant has been $2,000, a federal figure frozen since the 1980s. Minnesota sits higher. As one of a handful of section 209(b) states, allowed to use eligibility rules that predate the federal Supplemental Security Income (SSI) standard, Minnesota lets a single Medical Assistance applicant for aged, blind, and disabled coverage (MA-ABD) keep $3,000 in countable assets, and a household of two keep $6,000, with another $200 added per additional household member, per the Minnesota Health Care Programs Eligibility Policy Manual.1

The extra $1,000 over the national default is real but modest. The larger protections for a married couple come from the spousal-impoverishment rules below, not from the individual asset limit.1

"Countable" is the load-bearing word. Minnesota, like every state, exempts a long list of assets from the count: the home (subject to an equity cap), one vehicle, household goods and personal effects, and a prepaid burial. So the $3,000 applies to things like bank accounts, a second car, and investments, not the roof over your head. The 2026 home-equity limit for an exempt primary residence is $752,000.1

How the Minnesota Medicaid income limits work: spend-down

The MA-ABD income standard in Minnesota is 100% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, about $1,330/month for an individual and $1,803/month for a couple in 2026.1,4

Being over that number does not disqualify you. Minnesota is a section 209(b) medically needy state. A person whose income exceeds 100% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines and who has medical expenses may qualify for Medical Assistance with a spend-down: the excess income becomes a spend-down amount, and once you incur that much in medical and care costs, Medicaid covers the rest.1

Long-term care is measured differently. For institutional care and home and community-based waiver services, Minnesota applies a Special Income Standard of $2,982/month, equal to 300% of the SSI federal benefit rate. A nursing-facility resident above that contributes income toward the cost of care, after set allowances, rather than meeting a fixed monthly spend-down.1,5

This is why Minnesota does not require a Qualified Income Trust, also called a Miller Trust. In strict income-cap states, an applicant even a dollar over the limit is shut out unless they route the excess through a special trust. Minnesota has no such cliff: if your income is high, you spend it down or contribute it toward care. You are never simply "too rich" for long-term-care Medical Assistance.1

Long-term care: what a nursing-home resident keeps

When Minnesota Medical Assistance pays for nursing-facility care, the resident contributes almost all of their monthly income toward the cost of care. What they keep is the Clothing and Personal Needs Allowance (PNA), money set aside for the resident's own small expenses, such as clothing, a haircut, or a phone. Minnesota's PNA is $132/month (effective January 1, 2026), one of the highest in the country and well above the $30 federal floor many states still use.1,10

The same $3,000 asset limit applies to nursing-home applicants.1 And because Minnesota uses a spend-down rather than an income cap, even a resident with substantial monthly income can qualify; they simply contribute more of it toward care. For the national picture on how the allowance is set, see our explainer on the Medicaid personal needs allowance.

The five-year look-back

Minnesota reviews asset transfers made in the 60 months before a long-term-care application.1,11 Giving away money or property for less than fair market value inside that window, such as gifting a grandchild a down payment or signing a house over to a child for a dollar, can trigger a penalty period during which Medical Assistance will not pay for long-term-care services, even though you are otherwise eligible.

There are legitimate exceptions (transfers between spouses, transfers to a disabled child, certain caregiver-child home transfers) and legitimate planning approaches, but anything done inside the five-year window deserves an elder-law attorney's review first. If long-term care is on the horizon for someone in your family, talk to a professional before moving assets. For the broader toolkit, see our guide to Medicaid planning strategies.

Protecting the spouse who stays home

When one spouse needs long-term care and the other stays in the community, federal spousal-impoverishment rules keep the at-home spouse from being left destitute. Minnesota applies the federal figures.1

A married couple is in a very different position from a single applicant. The community spouse can hold up to $162,660 in countable assets and keep income up to the maximum monthly allowance while the other spouse receives Medical Assistance-funded care.1 Minnesota's manual sets the CSRA at half the couple's countable assets up to that $162,660 maximum; the federal range runs from a $32,532 minimum to that maximum, with states electing a standard within it.1

After death: estate recovery

Like every state, Minnesota runs a Medicaid estate-recovery program. After a recipient who was 55 or older and received long-term-care services dies, the state may seek repayment from the estate. Federal exceptions apply (a surviving spouse, or a surviving child who is under 21, blind, or permanently and totally disabled), and an undue-hardship waiver exists.1,12 For how recovery works and where families have room to plan, see our Medicaid estate recovery explainer.

How to apply for Minnesota Medical Assistance

Minnesota Medical Assistance is administered by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), but applications are taken locally through county and tribal human services offices. You can apply online, on paper, or by phone; people who are not on Medicare may apply through the state marketplace instead. Long-term-care applicants also go through a level-of-care assessment to confirm they need nursing-facility-level services.

Apply even if you think you are over the limit. Between the $3,000 asset rule and the medically needy spend-down, many people who assume they are disqualified are not.1

Learn More

Find personalized help working through Minnesota Medical Assistance eligibility for your family at brevy.com.

The information on Brevy.com is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional legal, financial, or medical advice. Rules vary by state and program and change frequently. Always verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional. Brevy is not a law firm, financial advisor, or healthcare provider.