Colorado's published long-term-care eligibility rules start with a $2,000 resource limit for a single applicant and a basic $3,000 limit for a married couple. Those starting numbers don't tell the whole story for a couple where only one spouse needs LTSS — HCPF's rules layer on community-spouse protections and a separate resource assessment for the couple. Because countable-resource analysis gets technical fast, a home, vehicle, burial account, trust, retirement asset, or jointly held account shouldn't be sorted by a generic list alone.
On the income side, Colorado applies a 300%-of-SSI limit for its long-term-care pathways, which HCPF's 2026 memo sets at $2,982 a month effective January 1, 2026. Go above that figure and the state's income-trust instructions kick in: someone whose gross income exceeds 300% of SSI but stays under their region's nursing-facility private-pay rate can use a state income trust to establish and maintain eligibility for institutional care, HCBS, or PACE.