Questions & Answers

• Categories:
• Special Needs Trusts
• |
• Special Needs Planning

• Categories:
• Special Needs Trusts
• |
• Special Needs Planning

Many disabled people rely on SSI, Medicaid or other government benefits to provide food and shelter. You may have been advised to disinherit your child with special needs - the child who needs your help most -- to protect that...

• Categories:
• Special Needs Trusts
• |
• Special Needs Planning
• |
• Estate Planning

Income paid from a special needs trust to a beneficiary will reduce SSI benefits by one dollar for every dollar paid to him or her directly. In addition, payments by the trust to the beneficiary for food or housing are...

• Categories:
• Special Needs Trusts
• |
• Public Benefits
• |
• SSI and SSDI

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...

• Categories:
• Public Benefits
• |
• Special Needs Trusts

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...

• Categories:
• special needs trust
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• life insurance
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• funding
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• second to die
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• Special Needs Trusts
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• Estate Planning

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...

• Categories:
• Special Needs Trusts
• |
• Special Needs Planning
• |
• Public Benefits

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...

• Categories:
• Special Needs Planning
• |
• Estate Planning
• |
• Special Needs Trusts

Where is your son going to live when he can no longer live with you? Will he move in with a sibling? Or into a group home? Who will make the decision? Who will monitor the care he receives? It's...

• Category:
• Special Needs Planning