Illinois Medicaid denied my mother's long-term care application after 11 months of $9,400/month nursing home private-pay spend-down brought her below the $2,000 asset limit, citing a $28,000 "improper transfer" from a 2019 check she wrote her granddaughter for a college tuition semester more than four years before her application but still inside the 60-month look-back window as they calculated it from the date my father died, not from the date she applied, and the denial letter is one paragraph, no penalty period calculation shown, no explanation of how the look-back start date was chosen, no mention of the undue hardship waiver process. What are the numbered moves for fighting a Medicaid look-back transfer denial: the fair hearing timeline, the penalty period math, the intent-to-transfer versus intent-to-qualify defense, the undue hardship waiver, the sibling caregiver and disabled child exemptions, and when does an elder law attorney's contingency fee actually make sense here?
my mother is 82, she is in a nursing home in central Illinois after a hip fracture and a rehab stay that did not put her back on her feet, and the private-pay bill for 11 months has been $9,400 a...