By Minneapolis Senior Advisor Care Team · August 5, 2026
Minnesota law dictates what an assisted living contract must disclose, what it may never contain, and what a facility has to hand you before you sign. Here is how to read one, and what changed in 2026.
You can ask for the contract before you commit to anything
Most families see the assisted living contract for the first time on move-in day, in a conference room, with a pen already out. It does not have to happen that way. Under Minn. Stat. 144G.50, subd. 1(c), a licensed assisted living facility must offer prospective residents a complete unsigned copy of its contract. You are entitled to take it home, read it at your kitchen table, and have somebody else look at it.
Every facility also has to file that unsigned contract with the Office of Ombudsman for Long-Term Care. That office is a single statewide office in Minnesota, reachable at 1-800-657-3591, and its regional staff read these documents for a living.
There is no state-issued template. The Minnesota Department of Health has confirmed it does not publish one, and each licensee drafts its own. Two communities four miles apart in Edina and St. Louis Park can hold the same license category and hand you contracts that differ substantially on fees, transfer rules, and Medicaid policy. Comparing them side by side is the only way to see it.
One more thing worth knowing: an assisted living contract is a consumer contract under Minn. Stat. 325G.29 to 325G.37. It is held to plain-language and fairness standards that an ordinary commercial lease is not.
The UDALSA comes first, and it comes by itself
Before any contract is signed, the facility must give you the Uniform Disclosure of Assisted Living Services and Amenities, universally called the UDALSA, under Minn. Stat. 144G.40, subd. 2. MDH requires that it be handed over separately from all other documents and forms. If it arrives stapled inside a fifty-page welcome packet, that is a problem worth naming out loud.
The UDALSA matters because it is the one document in this whole process that is identical in structure from building to building. MDH created it precisely so families could compare communities line by line. Every facility fills out the same form. Bring three of them home from three tours in Maple Grove, Roseville, and Eagan and the differences jump off the page in a way that glossy brochures never allow.
MDH has also added language to the UDALSA directing prospective residents to call for objective counseling before signing, tied to Minn. Stat. 256.975. That service used to be called the Senior LinkAge Line. It is now Minnesota Aging Pathways. The name changed; the number did not: 1-800-333-2433, weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The counselors there do not sell anything and do not work for any community you are touring.
The license disclosure, and what it must admit about dementia
Minnesota has exactly two assisted living license categories: assisted living facility, and assisted living facility with dementia care. There is no acuity tier, no evacuation-time classification, nothing in between.
Minn. Stat. 144G.50, subd. 2(c)(1) requires the contract to state which category the facility holds. It goes further than that. If the facility does not hold the dementia care license, the contract must affirmatively disclose that it does not. That is a legal requirement to state a negative, and it exists because families kept assuming that a locked door or a wing called a memory neighborhood meant dementia licensure.
If your parent has a dementia diagnosis, or is likely to develop one, find that sentence in the contract before anything else. Then check the license itself against the state's public records, which we walk through on our page on verifying a facility's license, and read our explainer on Minnesota's dementia care license.
The money paragraphs families tend to skim
Subdivision 2(c) requires the contract to describe the housing and services covered by the contracted amount, itemize the cost and nature of anything provided for an additional fee, and, critically, spell out the additional fees the resident may owe if the resident's condition changes during the term of the contract. That last clause is the one that surprises people eighteen months in, when a mother who moved in walking with a cane now needs two-person transfers.
Ask for that fee schedule as a document, not as a conversation. Ask what triggers a move from one service level to the next, who decides, and how much notice you get in writing. The statute requires the contract to lay out billing and payment procedures; it does not set a statewide minimum notice period for a rate increase. Whatever the contract says on that point is what governs, which is exactly why you read it before signing rather than after.
On the underlying numbers, be careful with anything you read online. CareScout publishes cost medians for Minnesota as a state. There is no published median for the Twin Cities metro, and no published national or state median for memory care at all, because it is not a surveyed category. Any site quoting you a precise monthly Minneapolis memory care figure invented it. Our page on what senior care costs lays out the figures that do exist and the caveats attached to each.
The Medicaid paragraph that decides whether your parent can stay
This is the most consequential and least-read part of the document. Subd. 2(e)(5) requires the contract to describe the facility's policies on medical assistance waivers and the housing support program, and it enumerates what must be disclosed:
Whether the facility is enrolled with the Department of Human Services to provide customized living services under a waiver. Whether it holds a housing support agreement under Minn. Stat. 256I.04. Whether there is a cap on how many residents can be on customized living or housing support at one time, and if so, what that number is. Whether the facility requires a period of private pay before it will accept waiver payment, and if so, how long that period runs. And a plain statement that waivers pay for services but never for rent.
Read those five items together and you have the honest answer to the question every family is actually asking: what happens when the savings run out. A community with no waiver enrollment, or a two-resident cap, or a three-year private-pay requirement, is telling you in writing that your parent will likely have to move. Our pages on Medicaid waivers and assisted living and what happens when the money runs out go deeper on the room-and-board gap.
There is genuinely good news here as of this year. A 2025 change to Minn. Stat. 144G.53, effective January 1, 2026, prohibits a facility from terminating or refusing to renew a contract because a resident switched from private funding to public funding, if the facility has represented or advertised that it accepts public funds. Separately, a change to 144G.19 requires a new owner after a change of ownership to honor existing contracts until they expire, for contracts signed on or after January 1, 2026.
What the contract is not allowed to say
Subd. 5 is short and absolute: the contract must not waive facility liability for the health, safety, or personal property of a resident, and must not contain any provision requiring or implying a lesser standard of care than the law requires. MDH has cited and upheld violations over language making the resident assume the risk for their own safety, or holding the facility harmless from any and all claims. If you see the phrases assumes the risk, hold harmless, or any and all attached to your parent's safety, flag it.
Arbitration changed in 2025. Under the amended Minn. Stat. 144G.51, an assisted living facility cannot require a resident or their representative to sign a binding arbitration agreement as a condition of admission or as a condition of continuing to receive care. Arbitration must be optional, presented in a separate writing, with notice that it is optional. A provision that violates this is void. If an arbitration clause is buried mid-contract with no separate signature page, that is not how the law works anymore.
Some limits are permitted, which is worth knowing so you do not waste energy on the wrong fight. A contract may limit the facility's liability for the acts of genuine third parties, may recommend renter's insurance, and may include a narrow indemnification clause covering only events for which the resident is legally responsible. It is the sweeping version that is prohibited.
The designated representative notice that must stand alone
Under subd. 3, before or at the time of signing, the facility must offer your parent the chance to name a designated representative, and must deliver a specific verbatim notice about that right on a document separate from the contract. The contract itself must contain a place for the representative's name and contact information, plus a box the resident initials if they decline to name one.
A designated representative is not a guardian, not a power of attorney, and not a health care agent. It does not replace any of those. What it does is give a named person the standing to receive notices about the resident, including certain health information, and to advocate on their behalf. In practice it is the difference between a facility calling the adult child in Bloomington about a fall, and the adult child finding out three days later.
Your parent can add, remove, or change that person at any time, and unlike other contract changes it does not require a new signed amendment. If the family situation shifts, update it.
Read the termination paragraphs while everyone is still happy
Subdivision 2(c)(5) requires the contract to delineate the grounds for transfer, termination, and emergency relocation, and subd. 2(e) requires a clear and conspicuous notice of the right to appeal a termination under Minn. Stat. 144G.54. The statutory notice periods are not negotiable: 30 days for nonpayment or a contract violation not cured, and 15 days where the resident substantially endangers other residents or staff, endangers themselves, or has needs the facility can no longer meet. A short-lived interruption in public benefits of 60 days or less does not count as nonpayment.
There is a metro-specific rule most families have never heard of. A 2025 amendment to Minn. Stat. 144G.55, effective July 1, 2025, requires a facility carrying out a coordinated move to identify other facilities actually willing and able to meet the resident's needs. For residents in the metro, that means at least three facilities, including at least one within the seven-county metro area. The facility must then document in writing that the resident or representative either consented to a move or refused the options offered. If your parent is being moved and you have been handed one address, the law expects more.
Three phone numbers belong in your own notes, and the third one is required to appear in the contract itself under subd. 2(e)(7). The Office of Ombudsman for Long-Term Care is 1-800-657-3591. The MDH Office of Health Facility Complaints is 651-201-4200 or 1-800-369-7994, business hours only. The Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center is 1-844-880-1574 and answers 24 hours a day. Our guide to appealing an assisted living termination covers the timeline once notice has been given.
None of this makes the decision easier. It does mean that the document in front of you is a legal instrument with real rules attached, not a formality, and that reading it carefully is a reasonable thing to insist on.