2021 Drafting Special Needs Trusts for Vulnerable Clients

Original program date 10/19/2021

Special Needs Trusts are designed to provide for the long-care of individuals who have physical or intellectual impairments and are unable to provide for themselves, whatever their age.  SNTs are intended to preserve the beneficiary’s eligibility for public benefits – Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – while maximizing the private resources of the beneficiary’s family.  Drafting distribution clauses and selecting the right trustee to make financial and health-care related decisions for the beneficiary are the essential steps in the planning process. This program will provide you with a practical guide to the types of SNTs, the situations in which each is most appropriate, preserving public benefit eligibility, distribution provisions, and trustee selection.

• Planning and drafting issues with Special Needs Trusts
• Types of SNTs and eligibility standards
• Relationship of SNTs to public benefits – Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI
• Key considerations in drafting distribution clauses
• Choosing individual and institutional trustees, and the use of “pooled trusts”
• Administrative issues in SNTs

Note: This material qualifies for self-study credit only. Pursuant to Regulation 15.04.5, a lawyer may receive up to six hours of self-study credit in a reporting year. Self-study programs do not qualify for GAL Certification, ethics, elimination of bias or Kansas credit.