Estate Planning

You may have heard that special needs trusts are required to reimburse the government for Medicaid expenses incurred by the trust's beneficiary when she passes away, and, in some cases, this is true. But not all special needs trusts are...

One type of expense that a special needs trust has been able to cover is reimbursing family members for their costs when they travel to visit the trust beneficiary (the person with special needs). Due to a recent rule...

If you don't know one trustee who knows all there is to know about caring for a person with special needs, you may want to consider setting up a care committee for your special needs trust.

One question that typically comes up when an attorney is drafting a special needs trust for a beneficiary whose disability may end at some point is whether the attorney can write a clause into the special needs trust stating that...

Some parents choose to avoid the complication of a trust by leaving their estates to one or more of their healthy children, relying on them to use the funds for the benefit of their disabled siblings. This is not a...

An inheritance from parents who fund their child's special needs trust by will rather than by revocable living trust is in the public record. Predators are particularly attracted to vulnerable beneficiaries, such as the young and those with limited self-protective...

Special needs trusts (also known as "supplemental needs" trusts) allow a disabled beneficiary to receive gifts, lawsuit settlements, or other funds and yet not lose his or her eligibility for certain government programs. Such trusts are drafted so that the...

A parent with a child with special needs should consider buying life insurance to help fund the special needs trust set up for the child's support. What may look like a substantial sum to leave in trust today may run...

Each public benefits program has restrictions that the special needs trust must comply with in order not to jeopardize the beneficiary's continued eligibility for public benefits. Both Medicaid and SSI are quite restrictive, making it difficult for a beneficiary to...