The federal Medicaid program covers long term care expenses for the elderly, but only when a family can no longer pay those expenses itself - only after its life savings have been wiped out and the family home has been sold. This fully revised and updated edition of The Medicaid Planning Handbook shows how to avoid financial ruin by planning in advance for your parents' and your own long term care. The Medicaid Planning Handbook reviews the current Medicaid rules; covers in great detail all the available options for protecting assets from devastating nursing home costs; and explains how to use devices such as revocable and irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, and intrafamily transfers, with a special emphasis on ways to protect the home. Alexander A. Bove offers clear, concise advice for every situation - both those in which there are no immediate long term care problems and those in which one or both spouses are already in a nursing home.