A spouse of a Medicaid nursing home recipient, is living out in the country and needs to move in town to be closer to family and hospitals. If they sell the home and farm, will Missouri let them keep all the proceeds or will they have to give Missouri half?
What also could be good is for her doc to do an "advisability" letter, like " as the MD of Jane Jones I have advised her to be within 15 minutes of an ER due to her brittle diabetes....."
New home will still be subject to MERP but if she survives him, then she will need to file the MERP exemption as surviving spouse. If she predeceases him, then house subject to MERP. Speak with attorney if any options at all feasible to keep MERP reduced ( she wills her half to someone other than hubs)
Just a tidbit on the " lateral exchange", insurance companies pay close attention to this on policy pay outs. We had friends who had homes destroyed by hurricane & had windstorm insurance. 750K policy pay out, this was a pretty expensive specialty premium policy too. They got 250 max flood also. They bought an interim home for 250 further down on the Gulf and planned on holding the rest to use to rebuild back on old house site. Within the year, they got a demand letter from insurer for the 750..... They did not "replace" but downsized & not allowed under their policy as it must be for replacement. They ended up buying 1M home so to keep the funds. We only got our full windstorm (& 2 years later too) only because we rebuilt and provided insurer with building permit and builder contract that was OVER the replacement value (insurer did a 25% depreciation). I'm digressing, but my point is that you have to pay attention to what the powers that be use to set value. They could look at the value of the ranch as a separate value from the value of the home on the ranch. Ranch isn't being replaced only the house is, that could be an issue. All this totally do-able but probably with a flurry of paperwork. Get good legal. Good luck.
My guess is he really does not want to move anyway.