Special Needs News

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.

Trustees of special needs trusts are frequently approached by family members of trust beneficiaries who would like to be paid as caregivers for the beneficiaries.  While the Social Security Administration (SSA) currently does not explicitly prohibit payment of family caregivers from special needs trusts that support Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients, there are plenty of other reasons why trustees should be cautious about doing so.

The Earned Income Tax Credit gives people with disabilities an incentive to file a tax return even if they are not required to do so. 

A U.S. district court refuses to dismiss a claim for reformation of a pooled special needs trust to force the trust to distribute a deceased beneficiary\’s remainder interest to the beneficiary\’s family. National Foundation for Special Needs Integrity v. Reese (U.S. Dist. Ct., S.D. Ind., No. 1:15-cv-00545-TWP-DKL, Feb. 5, 2016).