490
Opinion of the Court
plain meaning of the term "community spouse's income" unambiguously precludes the income-first method. She does not dispute that a monthly allowance regularly transferred from one spouse to the other could qualify as "income" under any relevant definition, but instead focuses on the modifier "community spouse's," contending that "[b]y choosing the possessive . . . Congress clearly expressed its intent that the income possessed by the community spouse" is the relevant measure. Brief for Respondent 16. We disagree. Congress' use of the possessive case does not demand construction of "community spouse's income" to mean only income actually possessed by, rather than available or attributable to, the community spouse; to the contrary, the use of the possessive is often indeterminate. See J. Taylor, Possessives in English: An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar 2 (1996) ("[T]he entity denoted by a possessor nominal does not necessarily possess (in the everyday, legalistic sense of the term) the entity denoted by the possessee."); see also Smiley v. Citibank (South Dakota), N. A., 517 U. S. 735, 739 (1996) (questioning characterization of a statutory term as unambiguous when its meaning has generated a division of opinion in the lower courts).
Blumer maintains as well that the "design of the Act as a whole" precludes use of the income-first method. K mart Corp. v. Cartier, Inc., 486 U. S. 281, 291 (1988). She relies heavily, as did the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, 2000 WI App. 150, ¶¶ 21-23, on the Act's distinction between rules governing the initial Medicaid eligibility determination and those that apply posteligibility to the extent-of-assistance calculation. See Brief for Respondent 17-18. Blumer notes that the (e)(2)(C) hearing to obtain an enhanced CSRA occurs only at the time an eligibility assessment is conducted, while no CSMIA income is transferred until after eligibility has been achieved, see supra, at 481-482. This sequence, she contends, shows that Congress intended the CSRA enhance-
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