Ny - Estate Question

Location: NY

My grandmother passed away. She was pre-deceased by my grandfather, as well as my mother. Her remaining descendants are my uncle, my sister, and myself.

Grandma was in a nursing home, and did little to protect her assets. Spend down and nursing home costs depleted most of her liquid assets. She qualified for Medicaid a few weeks prior to death. The limited cash/retirement accounts that remained, my uncle was a direct beneficiary on.

She drew up a new will about a year ago in the nursing home, which left her residual estate after funeral expenses to a trust she also created in the nursing home. This trust directed for my sister and I to receive $25,000 each, and my uncle to receive the residual.

Since there were no liquid assets available due to the nursing home, and direct beneficiaries, my uncle (the executor) says the clause doesn’t matter.

Where this gets tricky is she still had her house. There was a placeholder Medicaid lien put on it when she qualified a few weeks before passing. Somehow, the day before she passed (she was completely incapacitated and in hospice at this point), my uncle created a life estate deed as Power of Attorney to transfer the house to himself. He intends to move into the house.

My question is, is it kosher for a power of attorney to essentially self-gift themselves a house? The house was not mentioned in the will or trust specifically. My understanding is that since the will left everything to the trust, had he not made that move the house would’ve gone into the trust. Had the house entered the trust, would we have a claim to receiving our cash gift bequest from the value of the house, in absence of liquid assets? I am not clear whether in that scenario if the cash gift would’ve failed, or if we would’ve had recourse to either force a house sale, or be bought out from the proceeds of the sale of his house before he moves into her house.

I am looking for IRL legal advice as well, but trying to determine if there is even recourse to be had in this situation.