MERP put claim on my grandmother's home. I have paid property tax but do I owe money to have a deed?

Phew, that's a hard one! In my opinion, they should give y'all the house and a gold star too, but that's not likely.

Have you checked with your local Area Agency on Aging? If you google it and your city or county, you can get the information on where they are. It's likely that they can point you towards some useful help.

With any luck, someone who understands these things will chime in.

Your claims for taxes paid would be against the estate and fall in line behind MERP. So MERP takes precedence, for the full amount of $16,338.19. I doubt they will accept less than that.

So you are the other 50% heir, right?
As one who has dealt with estate recovery, I'd suggest you can approach this first by contacting via certifed mail to whomever is doing estate recovery / MERP for your state with documentation as to costs paid and request a release of the claim and if the state or its outside contractor won't budge then whomever was named executor as per grannies valid will then opens probate. Probate provides a defined system for everbody to deal with all this. It will have costs but those amounts could further reduce any recovery $ the state could possibly get. Both MERP and your costs will be claims against the estate as well as probate atty costs, funeral expenses and court fees, etc. Just where MERP and your claim falls is going to be very interdependent on the probate laws and administrative codes for your state. Usually the costs to secure assets of the estate (house taxes, insurance, maintenance, etc) are a priority claim over unsecured claims (which MERP is). Like for TX those are class 1-3 claims while MERP is a class 7. So the costs from day of death forward to secure the asset will have to be settled first & foremost in my executor experience. Now The costs before death paid on property well how those are dealt with will likely depend on IF there was an agreement, note or understanding as to being a secured or unsecured bill before death which becomes a secured or unsecured claim against the estate. Ideally it would have been a notarized agreement or promissory note. Whomever is named executor as per the will should take the lead in all this and get probate done and determine claim priority & possible payment under atty advise.

? For you? Has an MERP NOI (notice of intent) & questionnaire been received and responded to within the required timeframe? was this done and mom got the hardship due to this? The costs paid on the property should have been provided to merp to either be deducted from the Medicaid recovery tally or let MERP know you plan on making a documented claim against the estate in probate....so was this done?

Couple of other items...the $ 43,700, is that the tax assessor value?
Is it whack for a realistic property value? If so, I'd get it inspected & appraised & both done by licensed inspector & appraisers to get a valid hard $ # on value. If there are structural issues maybe get a residential engineering report too. Value maybe less than 43K. Significantly less perhaps. The appraisers value is what is entered in probate as to value of this asset of the estate. Keep in mind that MERP has a cost effectiveness bar on recovery attempts. Estate needs to be over 3k in value or over 10k as recoverable estate under federal guidelines. But you may need to be in probate to get this worked through to get a verifiable & documented value of the estate entered in court with a judges order supporting & approving all. If you go probate, MERP has to actually file their claim too and within whatever period of time required from when probate opened and letters testamentary done and Notice to creditors placed / sent. All claims have to be done as per probate rules. However the executor - if it's an independent administration - has a good bit of discretion as to how claims are dealt with. MERP may not even file a claim. Executor can require verification of claims & their can be errors in claims.

43k is a pretty low value property. Having to actually sell it, could take time and has costs to do so. Vacant property insurance policy will be $$. Realtor commission 6%. Plus whatever costs -utilities, yard, taxes, repairs, insurance, etc - needed while listed. Could likely go negative equity pretty quickly once added to your 10k. It's all things to bring up - with estimates or biils - if estate recovery gets hard-ball on this. Probate atty $ 1500 - 4k; court costs $300 - 600; inspector $ 250 - 500; perhaps same or a bit more for appraiser; structural engineer those are $$, maybe $ 1k. Taxes once they die gets all exemptions & homestead removed so that will go up too. Really costs all up & could be in Everbody's best interest to get all resolved in short order. Good luck!