Among the many challenges for families is making sure there will always be enough money to provide lifetime care for special needs children. One solution is to fund a special needs trust with life insurance.
A good special needs plan involves many key players, including a guardian, a health care proxy, an executor, a trustee and possibly a trust protector. It’s a good idea to review these selections on a regular basis, because change is inevitable.
Members of the extended family and friends can also make gifts to a special needs trust once it has been set up.
If you have funds in an IRA that will be distributed to a special needs trust upon your death, it is usually best to stretch these distributions out over as long a period as possible for income tax purposes.
According to court documents, legendary singer Aretha Franklin did not have a will when she died, meaning there are no specific protections for a son with special needs.
Administrator-managed prepaid debit cards offer beneficiaries of special needs trusts greater independence, but up till now such cards existed in a regulatory gray area.
Guardianship hearings are typically little more than a formality for parents of children with special needs who cannot live independently once they reach age 18. But this was not the case for Texas parents Christy and Mark Zartler.
A California mother recently went to great lengths to obtain an inheritance from her deceased son's special needs trust, but a court decided that her attempt went too far and awarded half of the trust to the woman's ex-husband, even...
A bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives would finally allow military retirees to name special needs trusts as beneficiaries of Survivor Benefit Plans, a change that could dramatically improve the lives of military children with disabilities.
