You have been together for years. You share a house in Wilton Manors. You share the bills and the grocery list. One of you may need a nursing home. The question that keeps you up is simple. Can the person who stays at home keep the savings?

If you are legally married, Florida Medicaid has a rule for that. The spouse who stays at home may keep a large share of the couple's countable savings. Florida's published 2026 figure is $162,660. That is not "half of whatever we have." It is the amount the state currently publishes for the spouse at home. The spouse at home can also keep some income, so the household is not stripped down to pocket money. A legally married spouse is a spouse for this rule. That includes a same-sex spouse. The marriage is what turns the tool on. How long you have lived together does not. A local partnership card does not.

If you are not married, that rule does not apply. Decades together do not create it. An unmarried partner of any gender is not a spouse for Medicaid. There is no published savings share for a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or a partner, no matter who paid the mortgage. Gifts to a partner in the five years before an application are usually treated as gifts to a third person. The partner also cannot use the married-couple income rules that let a spouse at home keep more of the monthly checks. Affection is not the test. A marriage certificate is. If you later marry, a different set of tools comes on. Hoping years under one roof will be treated the same is how people get a hard no at the application window.

The house is a different problem. Do not mix it into the savings math. A home can still be treated as the person's residence in some situations. Whether a partner living there protects the house the way a spouse would is a separate question. Occupancy is not the same as the spouse rules. Do not assume the deed, the equity, and the savings all follow one path. They do not. That is a meeting about title and who lives there, not a number you can pull from this page.

If you are married, we look at both names, both accounts, and what the spouse at home actually needs to live on. The couple's countable savings are viewed together. The spouse at home keeps the published share. If you are not married, Medicaid looks at the person who needs care, not at a couple's protected share. Money in the partner's sole name is a different question from money in the applicant's name, or in both names. That is why title matters before anyone is in a facility. We also look at whether transfers already happened, and what a will or a trust can still do for the person who stays home. Those are different conversations. Pretending they are the same is how people lose coverage, or lose the partner's nest egg, or both.

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