The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts rules that lower courts erred in denying a grandfather\’s request to intervene as an interested person seeking to limit his granddaughter\’s guardianship, finding that the grandfather qualifies as an interested person because he is interested in the welfare of an incapacitated person and not because of any personal interest that he may have in the proceedings.  Guardianship of B.V.G. (Mass., No. SJC-11925, May 23, 2016).

Can a special needs trust have more than one trustee at a time?

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a lower court\’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the state, ruling that Indiana may have violated the Americans with Disabilities Act with a policy change that reassigned many developmentally disabled individuals to a capped waiver program, putting them at risk of institutionalization. Steimel v. Wernert (7th Cir., No. 15-2377, May 10, 2016).

My special needs trust refers to someone called a settlor but my friend\’s trust has a grantor.  Are these roles different?

At ASNP\’s Annual Meeting, Oregon attorney Melanie Marmion gave a helpful primer about the relationship between special needs trusts and retirement benefits.

The Supreme Court of Connecticut rules that the state Department of Social Services improperly denied a Medicaid application after counting assets in a testamentary trust that should have been considered exempt because, the court holds, the trust was a discretionary supplemental needs trust, not a support trust. Pikula v. Department of Social Services (Conn., No. SC 19533, May 10, 2016).

Academy of Special Needs Planners co-founder Harry S. Margolis had the honor of being one of the first guests on a new podcast created by North Carolina elder law and special needs law attorney Bob Mason.  

The Social Security Administration recently issued an Emergency Message to all personnel requiring workers to specifically inform SSI applicants or beneficiaries of the reasons a special needs trust has been rejected by the agency.

In most cases, people with disabilities have the capacity to create their own estate planning documents, and in some cases it is crucial that they do so.

SSDI payments, like old-age Social Security retirement benefits, can be taxed, depending on the SSDI beneficiary’s other income. Because the rules governing the taxation of SSDI payments can be very confusing, we have put together a short primer to explain how the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) taxes these important benefits.