Rhode Island Medicaid Estate Recovery

Under Rhode Island General Laws section 40-8-15, Medicaid benefits paid on behalf of a recipient who was 55 or older can become a lien against that person's estate after death. The statute defines 'estate' as all real property, personal property, and other assets included or includable within the individual's probate estate — and the lien attaches to that property whether or not probate has actually opened.

Read strictly, this makes Rhode Island a probate-estate recovery state rather than one whose statute expressly names joint tenancy, life estates, or revocable trusts as fair game. The law does build in protections: a surviving spouse, a child under 21, and a blind or permanently and totally disabled child are shielded, and EOHHS is directed to maintain an undue-hardship waiver process. Estate representatives handling a decedent age 55 or older also carry a separate statutory duty to notify EOHHS.