January 10, 2017
If your spouse is disabled and has qualified to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or Medicaid benefits, you will need to carefully consider how to provide your Spouse with an inheritance, or else those benefits be endangered. The resource and income limits required in order to qualify for SSI and Medicaid are very low. A poorly planned inheritance to your Spouse can result in disqualification from these vital programs.
There are a number of planning techniques that can be utilized in order to prevent this disqualification. They include converting counted resources into exempt resources, such as using the inheritance to fund the purchase of a home, car, a pre-need funeral contract, or a qualified-Medicaid annuity for the benefit of the disabled Spouse. Another technique is the establishment of a third-party Special Needs Trust.
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December 14, 2016
Medicaid Special Needs Trusts have received much needed legislative attention from the United States Congress and President of the United States. HR 34 was signed into law by President Obama on December 13, 2016. Title 5, Section 5007 of HR 34 is entitled “Fairness In Medicaid Supplemental Needs Trusts” and contains exactly two sentences designed to correct a 23 year old omission made in the Social Security Act.
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October 14, 2016
The Stephen Beck, Jr. ABLE Act (Achieving a Better Life Experience) was conceived and championed by Stephen Beck, Jr., a Virginia father of a daughter with Down’s Syndrome, who thought up a new way to allow disabled people to save money without impacting their qualification for Medicaid and SSI benefits. The Act was signed into law by President Obama on December 19, 2014. This Act’s purpose is to provide a new account type specifically for special needs individuals which enables them to save money without losing their needs-based public benefits like Medicaid and SSI.
Under the ABLE Act, the individual states set up the savings program for people with disabilities. This savings program is similar to how 529 college savings accounts work. With certain restrictions, an account can be established for use by a beneficiary with special needs. On April 1, 2016, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed SC’s ABLE Act-enacting legislation into law.
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March 14, 2016
The Social Security Administration recently issued an Emergency Message to all personnel requiring workers to specifically inform SSI applicants or beneficiaries of the reasons a special needs trust has been rejected by the agency. And elder law attorneys everywhere say thank you!
In the past, when the SSA determined that assets in an SSI beneficiary’s or applicant’s trust were countable, the agency would frequently send a notice of ineligibility to the beneficiary or applicant because his/her assets exceeded the resource limit. However, this notice almost never explained the reasoning behind the SSA’s rejection of the trust.
The new Emergency Message, which went out to all field level SSA personnel, requires caseworkers to spell out exactly what portion of the Program Operations Manual System (POMS) applies to the trust being rejected. Unfortunately, the Emergency Message does not tell field workers that they have to explain their reasoning in plain English — merely citing the appropriate section of the POMS appears to be enough. While this will make it relatively easy for professionals to determine what went wrong with a trust and whether an appeal is in order, it will likely give the layperson little if any guidance about his or her trust.
To read the Emergency Message, go here.
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