Setting up your child’s Special Needs Trust for Success
So, you’ve been taking terrific care of your adult special needs child— attending lovingly and steadfastly to the big picture as well as the endless details. How do you ensure a seamless transition to the time when you are unable to further serve your child?
Here are three rules:
Get Prepared: Assess, plan and project. Take as much information out of your head as you can and put it down on paper. Your trust and care management plans are a start. But they probably don’t include the myriad of items you keep in your head. Things like: setting budgets, keeping track of care, prioritizing schedules, noting his likes and dislikes and generally being the grand coordinator that you are.
Now it’s time to get it all down on paper— or video!— and create the best users’ manual you can. Detail what your successor needs to know to step into your shoes.
To the extent you are dealing with dynamics: such as an unsettled budget or the child’s evolving situation. Make projections as best you can and plan for them. Your determining and planning for these might be better— and more to your liking — than what your successor might otherwise concoct.
Get the best help you can afford — and help them do their best. The truism “you get what you pay for” applies in the special needs world. Though exceptions exist, this general rule extends from your legal counsel, doctors and care specialists, financial and benefits advisors as well as to guardians and trustees.
You won’t be around to supervise them, but you can make it your business both to vet and prepare them. Vet them carefully— and look not only to substantive expertise but their ability to communicate and collaborate. If you are fortunate enough to have family who are willing to be involved, make sure they trust and can work well with the professional.
Look also to personal continuity. You like that particular advisor— how long will she be on the job? Who is her successor — and how familiar with your family will he be?
Breathe. Until cloning is permitted, no one other person can commit their life to the care of your child as much as you have. And few can find, let alone afford, the team of people who did exactly what you did. You are doing the best you can.
© 2009 – 2024 Daniel P. Felix, all rights reserved.
