Special Needs Trust Administration
Lifetime Security for Your Disabled Child
Establishing a well-funded Special Needs Trust (SNT) for a disabled person in Massachusetts is an important part of providing them with a lifetime of safety, security, and quality of life after you are gone. Money, managed well, means options, choices, and a better life.
If you are the trustee of a SNT, finding good legal counsel is the key to ensuring the continued health and wellbeing of the individual under your care, and keeping you operating clean and trouble-free. Special Needs Law Group of Massachusetts serves as legal counsel to a great many friends and family members who are trustees of SNTs.
Alternatively, our sister company, Special Needs Family Services, Inc., itself serves as a trustee of Special Needs Trusts for beneficiaries all over the United States. Clients may name us as trustee because they prefer an experienced professional, or when no family member or friend is available (or appropriate) to serve. In some circumstances, a current trustee of an SNT may decide that he or she is not the right choice for the job and seek a professional to take over as trustee.
Precautions for SNT Trustees
- You must follow all of the terms and instructions in the trust document, even if they are more restrictive than public benefits law requires.
- Trust assets for the beneficiary must be used in ways that take into consideration the beneficiary’s public benefits.
- Only beneficiaries of the trust may benefit. For a self-settled d4A Trust, that means just the disabled individual and for third-party SNTs, it means only those the trust document states may benefit.
- The trust must be treated with the utmost respect. The trustee should not borrow from the trust nor commingle the trust assets with the trustee’s personal assets.