The Steps Involved in Special Needs Planning

A special needs planning attorney at Parman & Easterday can provide personalized advice to parents with a child with disabilities. If your child has a disability, it is important that you work with a compassionate and knowledgeable attorney to create a special needs plan. This plan is vital to ensure your child is safe and provided for throughout his or her lifetime.

Parman & Easterday has helped many families with the special needs planning process. In every situation, we provide an approach customized to you. We know every family is different, so we listen carefully to your future goals and help you make effective use of available legal tools to ensure your son or daughter receives the necessary care.  To find out more about how our firm can help, give us a call today.

Steps Involved in Special Needs Planning

Some of the steps involved in the special needs planning process focus on making sure your child with disabilities is provided for financially. Other steps make sure your child receives appropriate physical care from a trusted guardian if you cannot provide that care yourself.

Children with disabilities often do not become fully independent. They need ongoing support throughout their lifetimes and their parents need to plan for this. There may come a day when the parents are no longer able to care for a child with a disabling condition. When that happens, someone needs to step in and provide care.  This could be a younger relative, such as a sibling. Or the child may need to move to a group home or some other controlled living environment in which professionals provide support.

Any good special needs plan needs to identify where the child will live if no longer living with the parents. If the child will live in an controlled community, the parents will need to make certain money is available to pay for the costs of care. This might mean buying a life insurance policy or setting aside funds in a trust for this purpose.

If a child is going to live in a community with other children with disabilities, it is important for the parents to name a guardian to look after the child and make sure the child is receiving high quality care. The guardian will be an advocate for the child and make important decisions on his or her behalf.

Parents need to work with a special needs planning attorney to make sure they provide an adequate inheritance for the child. This is not as simple as leaving money directly to the child, which could cause the child to lose means-tested benefits, such as Medicaid, especially if this is the only insurance available to the child. Also, the child might not be able to manage the money or property.

Parents will work with Parman & Easterday to create a special needs (or supplemental needs) trust, a specific type of trust used to meet the needs of a person deemed disabled. A special needs trust allows parents to put money and property into a trust managed by a trustee and used to enhance the quality of life for the child.

The money will not cause the loss of means-tested benefits.  Parents can provide specific instructions as to the purposes for which the money is to be used. There are some limitations, including that the trust cannot provide cash or cash-equivalents to the child with the disability.

Getting Help from a Special Needs Planning Attorney

A special needs planning attorney at Parman & Easterday can provide assistance with all the steps needed to accomplish your goals for protecting your child with a disabling condition. We also provide help with a wide variety of other estate and financial planning matters.

To learn about the different ways in which our firm can represent and advocate for you, join us for a free seminar. If you are ready to get underway with your personalized plans for the future, give us a call at (405) 843-6100 or contact us online today.