North Dakota Medicaid Estate Recovery

North Dakota HHS describes Medicaid estate recovery as a requirement under both federal and state law, meaning a deceased recipient's property may be used to repay benefits the state paid out. Under Century Code section 50-24.1-07, once a recipient who was 55 or older when assistance was received passes away — or in certain cases involving permanently institutionalized recipients — the medical-assistance amount becomes a preferred claim against the decedent's estate, paid after specified higher-priority expenses. That's a probate-estate claim structure, not a statute defining the recoverable estate to sweep in every nonprobate arrangement.

HHS's estate-recovery manual follows that same narrower focus: it defines the estate as property and other assets the decedent owned at death, walks through probate claim procedures, and states that named-beneficiary financial accounts and life estates generally fall outside recovery. A transfer-on-death deed still needs its own separate look, though, because the TOD deed statute itself permits estate creditors to reach deeded property when the probate estate can't cover the claim — so avoiding probate alone isn't a complete recovery analysis.