by Anita Schnee, Attorney at Law
Those who are raising children with special needs must cope with the same challenges every parent faces – keeping children healthy, helping them find success in life, creating the world we want for them – except multiplied many times over. Here are ways we lawyers can help parents manage the added stress and legal needs.
- With turbo-charged powers of attorney, we can make sure parents appoint an agent or guardian to step in and care for the child if anything should happen to the parents.
- We will design an estate plan for the parents, which must be tailored to include the next step, which is –
- Establish a supplemental-needs trust for the child as beneficiary. The trust can be funded immediately, or later, as needed, but the trust must be ready for immediate use, for example, to permit the child to receive gifts and inheritances without jeopardizing government benefits.
- We can get a responsible adult qualified to be a representative payee, to manage the child’s benefits. For more about representative-payee status, go here.
- We can advise about the availability of ABLE accounts for the child. These permit special-needs people to set up their own tax-free accounts, by which they can keep their benefits and still spend for themselves. Find information on ABLE services here.
- We can investigate whether children are getting the full range of educational accommodations to which they are entitled. A brief introduction can be found here and here.
- To make sure children are educated as they have a right to be, parents may need a lawyer to step in with specific expertise in special-needs law. Find one here.
