Special Needs Planning

Special needs planning for the care of a child is a priority for families with special needs children.

Many parents worry about what will happen to their children, and who will take care of their children after they pass away. An important concern for parents of special needs children is securing government benefits like SSI and Medicaid for their children.

The special needs attorneys at Wilchins Cosentino & Novins provide representation to disabled persons and their parents, especially as it relates to estate planning and advocating for their educational and other legal rights. A special needs trust or supplemental needs trust is an excellent planning tool to address some of these concerns.

Our special needs planning attorneys regularly work with clients to put together estate plans that are tailored to the needs of a child or other beneficiary with special needs and considers how those special needs interrelate with the planning for other intended beneficiaries.

Many clients have questions and wonder what is a special needs trust and what are the special needs trust rules? A “special needs trust” is frequently an integral tool used in this planning, whether it be a third party “supplemental needs trust,” a first party “D4A trust” or a “pooled trust” that is created by a nonprofit organization.

These types of trusts enable disabled beneficiaries to inherit money, gifts, settlements or other funds, but still allow them to maintain eligibility for certain government programs, such as SSI and Medicare. The trusts are structured so the funds do not belong to the beneficiary when they are qualifying for public benefit programs.

We provide answers and information and advise clients as to the purposes and different uses for these special needs trusts, including advice as to appropriate funding of the trusts, and how to enable a disabled beneficiary to have access to trust funds for a wide variety of needs while still preserving eligibility for federal and state health care, as well as other benefits including Medicaid and SSI.

In addition to the more traditional uses, a particularly valuable use of the D4A-type of special needs trust is to use it to hold funds that a disabled person receives from the settlement of a personal injury or medical malpractice lawsuit, an unexpected inheritance or from a life insurance policy.