Elder Law & Medicaid Planning Intake Forms: Capturing What Matters Before the Clock Runs Out

Most elder law consultations happen in crisis mode. A parent fell and broke a hip. A spouse got a dementia diagnosis. The rehab facility is asking about long-term placement, and nobody in the family knows what Mom’s finances actually look like. You’ve got maybe 30 minutes in that first meeting to figure out where the family stands—and a generic estate planning intake form isn’t going to cut it.

Elder law sits at the intersection of Medicaid eligibility, asset protection, healthcare decision-making, veterans’ benefits, and family dynamics that are often strained before anyone picks up the phone. Your intake form needs to pull the right information out of a stressed family in a single session, because the second meeting might not happen for weeks—and by then, another month of the look-back period has ticked away.

Why Estate Planning Forms Fall Short

If you handle both estate planning and elder law, you might be tempted to use one intake form for both. That’s a mistake we see practitioners make all the time. A standard estate planning intake form focuses on testamentary intent—who gets what when someone dies. Elder law intake has a fundamentally different urgency: who pays for care right now, and how do we protect the surviving spouse from financial ruin while qualifying someone for benefits?

Estate planning forms typically ask about wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations. They don’t ask about the 60-month Medicaid look-back period. They don’t distinguish between countable and exempt assets. They don’t capture whether someone has already made transfers that could trigger a penalty period. And they definitely don’t ask about the community spouse resource allowance or whether the family has explored Veterans Aid & Attendance benefits.

You need a form built for the elder law consultation specifically. Here’s what it should cover.

The Medicaid Look-Back: 60 Months of Financial History

The single most important section on any elder law intake form is the asset and transfer history. Medicaid’s 60-month look-back period means every gift, transfer, trust funding, and property conveyance from the past five years is potentially relevant. Miss one, and your client could face a penalty period that leaves them without coverage during the exact months they need nursing home care.

Countable vs. Exempt Assets

Your form needs to separate assets into the two categories that matter for Medicaid eligibility. Countable assets—bank accounts, investments, cash value life insurance over a certain face amount, non-primary real estate—are the ones that must be spent down or sheltered. Exempt assets—the primary residence (up to equity limits that vary by state), one vehicle, personal property, prepaid burial arrangements—don’t count toward the resource limit.

A well-structured intake form doesn’t just ask “list your assets.” It walks through specific categories with checkboxes and value fields:

• Primary residence—current market value, outstanding mortgage, whose name is on the deed, whether a spouse or dependent child resides there
• Additional real property—rental homes, vacant land, timeshares
• Bank accounts—checking, savings, CDs, money market (all institutions, all account holders)
• Retirement accounts—IRAs, 401(k)s, pensions (and whether they’re in payout status)
• Life insurance—term vs. whole life, face values, cash surrender values
• Vehicles, boats, RVs
• Prepaid funeral or burial plans
• Annuities—type, value, whether they’re Medicaid-compliant

Transfers and Gifts in the Look-Back Window

This is where families get tripped up. Dad transferred the house to the kids three years ago. Mom wrote a $50,000 check to a grandchild for a wedding. Someone funded an irrevocable trust 18 months ago. Each of these needs its own line item on the intake form: date, amount, recipient, purpose, and whether any consideration was received in return.

You also need to capture whether any transfers were made for fair market value—selling a car to a child at its actual worth, for instance—because those don’t trigger penalties. The form should make this distinction clear so you’re not chasing phantom penalty periods.

Spousal Protections: The Community Spouse Resource Allowance

When one spouse needs nursing home care and the other stays in the community, federal law provides spousal impoverishment protections. The community spouse is entitled to keep a minimum resource amount (the Community Spouse Resource Allowance, or CSRA), which in 2026 can be up to roughly $154,000 depending on the state, plus the family home and a vehicle.

Your intake form should capture the marital situation front and center:

• Marital status and length of marriage
• Whether the couple is legally separated or has a separation agreement
• Which spouse needs care and which will remain in the community
• Whether both spouses’ assets have been aggregated (a “snapshot” of total household resources)
• The community spouse’s income sources and monthly amounts
• Whether a Minimum Monthly Maintenance Needs Allowance (MMMNA) argument may be warranted

This is the kind of detail that a general intake form will never capture. If you’re handling family law matters as well, you know how much marital financial detail matters—elder law requires that same depth but organized around benefit eligibility rather than equitable distribution.

Legal Documents Already in Place

One of the first things you need to establish is what legal infrastructure already exists. Elder law clients often come in with some documents but not others, and the gaps are where the biggest risks hide.

Powers of Attorney and Healthcare Proxies

Your intake form should ask specifically about:

• Durable power of attorney—does one exist, who is the agent, is it a general or limited power, and critically, does it include Medicaid planning authority? Many older POAs don’t authorize the agent to make gifts or asset transfers, which guts your ability to do any meaningful planning.
• Healthcare proxy / healthcare power of attorney—who is designated, is there an alternate, and does the family know where the original document is?
• Living will or advance directive—has the client executed one, and does it reflect current wishes?
• HIPAA authorization—critical for communicating with medical providers, and often overlooked until you’re on the phone with a hospital that won’t release information.

Trusts and Prior Estate Planning

Capture whether any trusts exist and their type. The distinction between revocable and irrevocable trusts matters enormously for Medicaid. A revocable trust is a countable asset—Medicaid looks right through it. An irrevocable trust may be sheltered, but only if it was funded outside the look-back window and the grantor retained no control over distributions. Your form should flag this with a simple question set: trust type, date created, date funded, grantor, trustee, whether the grantor can access principal.

Care Needs and Current Living Situation

The medical and care picture drives the entire planning strategy. Someone who needs skilled nursing care today is a different case than someone with early cognitive decline who’s still living independently.

Your intake form should capture:

• Current living arrangement—home alone, home with spouse, assisted living, skilled nursing, or hospital/rehab
• Primary diagnoses and current medications
• Activities of daily living (ADLs) the client can and cannot perform—bathing, dressing, eating, transferring, toileting, continence
• Cognitive status—any dementia diagnosis, behavioral issues, wandering risk
• Current care providers—home health aides, visiting nurses, family members providing unpaid care
• Whether the client has been assessed for a particular level of care (this affects Medicaid waiver programs for home and community-based services)

The care level matters because Medicaid covers nursing home care under a different program than home care. If you can help a client qualify for a home and community-based services waiver, the asset picture may look different than if they’re headed to a skilled nursing facility.

Veterans Benefits and Other Overlooked Sources

Too many elder law intake forms skip the veterans question entirely. The VA’s Aid & Attendance benefit can provide over $2,000 per month for a qualifying veteran or surviving spouse who needs assistance with daily activities. It’s a pension benefit, not service-connected, so many families don’t know it exists.

Your form should ask about military service for both the client and the client’s spouse: branch, dates of service, discharge status, and whether they’ve ever applied for VA benefits. The VA has its own look-back period (36 months as of the 2018 rule change) and its own net-worth limits, so you need separate data points.

Other income and benefit sources worth capturing: Social Security (retirement vs. disability), SSI, any long-term care insurance policies (type, daily benefit, elimination period, remaining benefit pool), and whether the client has ever applied for Medicaid or any other public benefits before.

Family Dynamics and Decision-Making Authority

Elder law cases almost always involve family members beyond the client. Often it’s an adult child sitting across the table from you, not the elder themselves. Your intake form needs to capture who’s who:

• Who is the actual client? (This matters for privilege and conflicts.)
• Who is the primary contact person, and what is their relationship?
• Are there other children or family members involved in decision-making?
• Is there disagreement among family members about the care plan or asset strategy?
• Has anyone petitioned for or been appointed as guardian or conservator?
• Is there any existing or anticipated guardianship or conservatorship proceeding?

That last point is critical. If there’s a guardianship in place, the guardian’s authority—and the court’s oversight—shapes everything you can do. You need to know about it on day one, not after you’ve drafted an asset protection plan that the guardian has no authority to execute.

Building the Form That Actually Works

The common thread across all of these sections is specificity. A field that says “describe your legal issue” is useless in elder law. You need directed questions that pull out the data points—the transfer dates, the asset values, the POA provisions, the VA service records—that drive your analysis.

A well-built intake form also serves as a checklist for your own file. When you review it after the meeting, gaps in the form tell you what documents to request and what follow-up questions to ask. That structure prevents the all-too-common scenario where you realize two weeks later that you never asked whether Dad’s IRA has a named beneficiary.

If you’re building or refining your elder law practice, investing in a purpose-built intake form pays for itself immediately. Browse our full catalog of intake forms and questionnaires to see how structured, profession-specific templates can tighten up your client onboarding across every practice area.