Special Needs Tips for Estate Planners

Katherine N. Barr (attorney & shareholder, Birmingham), Richard E. Davis (attorney, Canton, Ohio), and Kristen M. Lewis (attorney, Atlanta) have published their article Top 15 Tips for Estate Planners When Estate Planning for Special Needs, Prob. & Prop., March-April 2010, at 39.  

The following 15 tips regarding Special Needs Trusts (SNT) are discussed in detail in the article:

• Don’t disinherit the child with special needs.
• Carefully Consider the division of assets among the children.
• Understand the differences among Medicare, Medicaid, Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI), and Social Security Disability Income (SSDI).
• Choose the trustee of the SNT carefully.
• Parents should prepare a letter of intent to assist the trustee of the SNT.
• Include contingent special needs provisions in clients’ estate planning documents.
• Include special language in a parent’s revocable living trust.
• Include special language in a parent’s general durable power of attorney.
• Parents should review all of their assets and beneficiary designations.
• Consider life insurance as a funding method for the SNT.
• Retirement plan assets may not work well.
• Coordinate other relatives’ estate planning documents with the parents’ third-party SNT.
• Don’t forget the estate plan of the child with a disability and of any unmarried sibling of the child.
• What if the parent requires or may soon need nursing home Medicaid?
• Obtain a court order directing that child support be paid to a self-settled first-party SNT.