Ahern v. Thomas

The plaintiff, Mildred F. Ahem, established a trust in 1993 for the obvious purpose of insulating her principal assets — which exceed $600,000 — in order to render herself eligible for benefits under the Title XIX Medicaid Program (medicaid), a government program designed to allocate scarce funds among the poor. Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 301, 100 S. Ct. 2671, 65 L. Ed. 2d 784 (1980) (“[t]he medicaid program was created in 1965 . . . for the purpose of providing federal financial assistance to States that *744choose to reimburse certain costs of medical treatment for needy persons”).

As it…