Special Needs Planning

When you care for and support a child with special needs, you know that caregiving is a lifetime job. Most dependents with disabilities will outlive their parents.

Estate and financial planning for a person with a disability is like no other type of planning – it is specialized. It ensures that your child with a disability will always have a friend, advocate and protector of their legal rights. Unless you put the right plan in place now, their governmental benefits can be altered, diminished or even destroyed after your death.

A traditional will is not enough to ensure your child with special needs will have a meaningful life after you are gone. When a child with disabilities inherits money from their parents, their government benefits and medical coverage are cut off. Even the most generous inheritance will often run out before the end of the child’s life. Unfortunately this reality has led many parents to intentionally disinherit their child with special needs, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Special Needs Trust

There is an alternative to the traditional Will called a Special Needs Trust (SNT). The SNT keeps your assets available to your child and doesn’t disqualify him or her from other benefits. When it is properly drafted, an SNT will specify that the money is not to replace the benefits, but is to supplement them. We can help you prepare an SNT that will ensure that funding is available to enhance your child’s life.

We can guide you through all of your special needs planning so you can provide a meaningful life for your cherished child long after you are gone.