Meyerson Law Includes Special Needs Trust Planning in Our Client’s Revocable Living Trusts, and Wills

If you are creating a revocable living trust for your family, you may have beneficiaries who could now or in the future be using public benefits at the time of inheritance. Many public benefits have resource limits and thus, the inheritance could disqualify the beneficiary from receiving further public benefits. To avoid this Meyerson Law can include contingent SNT provisions in your trust or will. These provisions allow that if the beneficiary is on public benefits, their share will be held according to the SNT provisions.

The SNT provisions are designed in a way to allow the beneficiary to benefit from the trust property (their inheritance) but still maintain eligibility for public benefits. The two types of distribution standards are supplemental or supplemental and discretionary. The former only allows the Trustee discretion to distribute the trust property in a manner that would not decrease the beneficiary’s public benefits; the latter would allow the Trustee to distribute in a way that would supplant the beneficiary’s public benefits. (If the SNT beneficiary is not receiving public benefits, then the distribution standard is wholly discretionary.)

It is important to include contingent SNT planning in your estate plan because it is in your family’s best interests, as the provisions protect your heirs.

Unless you are only leaving assets to charities, Meyerson Law strongly recommended that you include contingent SNT provisions in your revocable living trust (and Last Will and Testament. It does no harm to have the provisions in the documents and not need them but could do a lot of harm if they were needed and not there.



Give us a call at Meyerson Law Firm. 678-892-5910.