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By Jamie Long
The Passionate Patient Advocate
GolderCare Solutions, Unlimited, LLC

Dear Relatives,

The purpose of this letter is let you know that we are in the midst of doing our life and estate planning and, at the urging of our planner, wish to bring a couple of things to your attention.

Life Planning, as its name implies, involves general legal, financial and care planning issues for the period from now throughout the rest of our lives. Estate Planning involves
similar issues for what happens regarding assets (our ‘estate’) and loved ones we leave behind at the time of our death.

We realize that traditional practice is to keep these matters private and not discuss them with family or friends. So, it is not surprising if you are perhaps somewhat taken aback at receiving this letter. Our planner has emphasized to us, however, that undue privacy in these matters can come at great cost to our plan and, ironically, might even destroy it. More on that in a moment. In an effort to head off such a problem, they advise it is best practice to share the contents of this letter with each of you.

As you are aware, we are the parents of a special needs child whose disabilities require additional care and support beyond those of people without such disabilities. Even though our special needs child is no longer a minor, they nonetheless remain what is known as a ‘dependent adult’ and will continue as such for the rest of their life. Because they are younger than we are and are likely to survive us, part of our planning entails preparing for a time when we are no longer here and personally able to help and support them.

In planning for such a time, we, with the advice and assistance of our planner, have prepared a ‘Special Needs Trust’ – also known as a ‘Supplemental Needs Trust’ – as a receptacle for any monies that we or any others might wish to leave for the benefit of our special needs child after we are gone.

Like so many dependent adults, our child likely won’t have adequate monies to pay for both the costs of their support and the costs of meeting their extra – or ‘supplemental’ – needs.  For the costs of basic support, we anticipate their having to rely on public benefits to pay.  For the costs of providing supplemental needs above and beyond basic support, we intend the Special Needs Trust to pay.

Why can’t we just leave money for our child’s special needs directly to them?  Why the Special Needs Trust?  It’s because of a hitch in the system, which prioritizes basic needs. Any monies given directly to our child are considered ‘available’ for both their basic needs and their supplemental needs. Hence, the system requires they be spent first on their basic needs.  Only if there is sufficient money left over after paying for basic needs can supplemental needs be met.  The ‘magic’ of the Special Needs Trust is that all the monies it holds are considered ‘unavailable’ for basic needs.  They are ‘available’ only to be used on our child’s supplemental needs.

So it is that we ask you all that, in the event you wish to give anything to our special needs child during your lifetime or after, you utilize the Special Needs Trust to do so.  Please do not give or leave any monies or other assets directly to our child, as that could end up disqualifying them for public benefits and undo the current life and estate planning we are so carefully putting in place.   

We are sorry to burden you with this request, but have been assured by our planner that the benefits of doing so – for all of us, most especially our special needs child – outweigh the burdens to any of us.

We are also especially eager that you understand this letter is not in any way intended as a solicitation for monies or an inheritance for our child or for us.  We hope to able ourselves to fund the Special Needs Trust sufficiently in order to meet all of our child’s supplemental needs over time.  The sole purpose of this letter is to head off any well-intended gestures by family during our child’s lifetime that could possibly backfire and work instead against our plan and our child’s best interests.

Please contact us if you have any further questions.

Thank you for taking the time to take this all in.

Our love to all!

Parents of a Special Needs Child

Jamie Long is the Founder and Chief Patient Advocate for GolderCare Solutions and can be contacted at 309-764-2273.