West Virginia Medicaid Estate Recovery

West Virginia Code §9-5-11c gives the Department authority to file a claim or lien against the estate of someone who was 55 or older when they received Medicaid-funded nursing-facility care, home- and community-based services, or related hospital and prescription-drug services. The claim is capped at the total amount of assistance actually provided for those specific services — the state can't recover more than it paid.

BMS Chapter 900 spells out essentially the same scope in more procedural detail: it lays out how recovery works from the estates of certain deceased recipients and from property sold by permanently institutionalized recipients, capping recovery at what was actually paid for nursing-facility care, home- and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription costs. The manual's definition of "estate" covers real and personal property belonging to the decedent at death, including intangible interests — a reminder that how title is actually held matters, and that assuming a nonprobate arrangement automatically sidesteps recovery isn't a safe assumption.