Services: Special Needs Planning

All parents plan for their children’s future and when a child has special needs these plans need an extra dimension of planning. We will listen to your family’s goals and help you develop a comprehensive estate plan. Special needs planning is a unique part of estate planning that requires much care, thought and understanding.

Special Needs Trust or Supplemental Needs Trust

A special needs trust is created for a disabled individual (the beneficiary) with the intent of allowing distributions from the trust to the beneficiary while the beneficiary has the option to maintain eligibility for government benefits that are "needs based" benefits.

A special needs trust can be created by a disabled person's own assets or by a third-party gifting assets to the trust. This is a very important distinction and one that should be discussed with an attorney.

The most common goal of a Special Needs Trust (SNT) is to maximize the client's government benefits and therefore it is very important to understand the types of benefits the individual may receive. An SNT is to provide for "supplemental needs" of a disabled individual. Government benefits often only provide the bare minimum of the disabled individual's living expenses and/or medical expenses. Gifting assets over to a SNT rather than to the disabled individual preserves eligibility for such government benefits and allows the disabled individual to have a better quality of life. However the terms of such a trust and what the trust may pay for are dictated by the types of government benefits they wish to preserve, family goals and objectives. 

An SNT is a very important document but one that should be prepared with careful research and a clear understanding of the needs of the disabled individual.