Recovery scope
Colorado may recover correctly paid medical assistance for a recipient age 55 or older, or a permanently institutionalized recipient, through a claim against the probate estate when recovery is cost-effective.
Controlling authority
Colorado Revised Statutes § 25.5-4-302 authorizes estate recovery, institutional liens, and good-cause compromise, settlement, or waiver.
Exemptions and deferrals
Recovery is deferred while a surviving spouse or a child under 21, blind, or disabled survives. Home-sale recovery also excludes qualifying siblings who lived there for at least one year before institutionalization and qualifying caregiving children who lived there for at least two years.
Hardship-waiver path
Colorado may compromise, settle, or waive recovery when an heir would otherwise need public assistance or Medicaid, an inheritance would let the heir stop receiving that aid, or recovery from a family business, farm, or ranch would destroy the heir's livelihood.
Lien practice
A lifetime lien may be imposed only after Colorado determines an institutionalized recipient is not reasonably expected to return home, no protected spouse, child, or sibling occupies the home, and later recovery is likely cost-effective. The lien must be dissolved if the recipient returns home.
Sources
Methodology & sources
Checked at least annually and whenever recovery statutes, waivers, liens, or agency practices change.
General information, not legal advice.