Estate Planning

If your child has special needs, a standard estate plan -- will, trust, power of attorney, and health care proxy -- may not be adequate for your family. Here are three must-have documents...

Special Needs 101

A Special Needs Trust (SNT) can play an important role in preserving the financial security and lifestyle of a person with special needs. A properly drafted SNT allows the individual to benefit from supplemental resources while still qualifying for public...

Special Needs 101

The PASS program allows SSI beneficiaries to use their non-SSI income to pay for job training or to start a business. If beneficiaries follow the complicated rules governing the program, the Social Security Administration will not count income used for...

Special Needs 101

Credit cards offer a way for the trustee of a special needs trust to avoid giving a beneficiary cash while at the same time not serving as the beneficiary's designated shopper.

Special Needs 101

Because beneficiaries of programs like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid must be quite poor to qualify, they can lose their benefits when they come into an inheritance, receive money in their own names from an accident settlement, or merely...

Special Needs 101

Guardianship can provide parents of children with special needs a way to protect their child's financial and medical well-being even after they have turned 18.

Special Needs 101

In most cases, people with disabilities have the capacity to create their own estate planning documents, and in some cases it is crucial that they do so.

Special Needs 101

Parents of children with special needs often want to direct required distributions from IRAs following their deaths into a special needs trust (SNT) for the child. But if the trust is not set up properly, the income tax consequences...