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...
Attorneys who focus on special needs planning have dedicated their practices to helping families with a wide variety of legal issues, and they must master a vast section of the legal canon in order to properly assist their clients. Here's...
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.
Help is available for families of children with special needs whose private health insurance will no longer cover children once they reach a certain age. The new federal health insurance law requires many private insurers to allow children to remain...
A 29-year-old Virginia woman with Down syndrome is fighting her mother's attempt to obtain guardianship in a case that has drawn attention to the tenuous balance between laws that seek to protect people with special needs while affording them maximum...
