Even as the current issue of Kiplinger Personal Finance magazine was explaining the estate planning benefits of a special needs trust, the Indianapolis Business Journal was reporting problems plaguing the system for granting disability Medicaid waivers on which many Indiana special needs children had come to depend.
Medicaid waivers
The waivers allow disabled Hoosiers to stay in their homes, rather than an institutional setting and still qualify for financial assistance through the Medicaid system. Questions had arisen about the way case managers were implementing the assessment tool used to decide whether a special needs child qualified for a waiver (and therefore qualifies to continue to receive benefits) “After a break,” the IBJ reports, “the system is already back in place”.
The Arc of Indiana
The IBJ article makes mention of the Arc of Indiana, an organization which advocates for disability rights.
Often, parents of disabled children turn to Geyer Law for help planning their estates, wanting to ensure that, even after they themselves are gone, their children will be provided for. A Trust I or 3rd party funded account at The Arc helps those parents accomplish that goal. As Indiana estate planning attorneys, we help create coordinate with the ARC, keeping their special needs children in mind. We also assist clients in drafting their own special needs trusts for their loved one if they choose not to use the ARC.
The Arc Master Trust, founded in 1988, is Indiana’s leading special needs trust, allowing individuals with physical, emotional, intellectual or developmental disabilities to:
- save and invest their assets
- enjoy the benefits of professional money management at an affordable price
- spend on a broad variety of qualified personal expenses, without being disqualified from receiving their government benefits
Special Needs Trusts
“If you take care of a child or another loved one who has a disability, you’ll need a plan to provide for them after you pass away,” Ella Vincent explains in the Kiplinger article. You can put a variety of assets in the trust, including cash, real estate property, and stocks and bonds, and that trust can be named as the beneficiary of your life insurance policy. These trusts help ensure your child or another loved one can benefit from an inheritance without jeopardizing their eligibility for means-based government resources.
– by Rebecca W. Geyer
