by Diana Armatage Johnston
As seen in Exceptional Parent Magazine: The Family and Professional Journal for the Specials Needs Alliance
Vol 38, Issue 07, July 2008 2008

When your clients seem to know more than you do about services for their special-needs children, you listen hard to what they have to say. You hear stories of 3-year waiting lists, unwritten rules that seem to change monthly, and the arbitrary loss of essential benefits for reasons clients do not understand. You hear questions about why one family gets all-day help, while your client’s child gets none. When you ask your client the name of the program that has denied assistance the answer is often, “I don’t know.”
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by Diana Armatage Johnston
As seen in Exceptional Parent Magazine: The Family and Professional Journal for the Specials Needs Alliance
Vol 38, Issue 04, April 2008

When parents and their legal counsel have determined that a special needs trust is the best way to preserve means-tested government benefits like Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medicaid for their child, they still have some important matters to decide: Who should administer the trust as trustee? Who should monitor the trustee’s performance? Who should advise the trustee about their child’s special needs? There is no single right answer to these questions because the best choices depend on a wide variety of factors and the realities of each family’s situation. This article will attempt to help parents make the best choices for their child. Because a special needs trust must be carefully drafted and administered with great skill, one person or institution rarely has all the skills needed to do the job. Choosing a team to administer a special needs trust may often be the best approach.

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