CALIFORNIA SPECIAL NEEDS TRUST ATTORNEY

If you are a person with disabilities and have government benefits (SSI and HUD) and expecting a money through an inheritance or a personal injury lawsuit settlement, you may need to put this money (or real estate) into a Special Needs Trust to maintain your Public Benefits. Joseph McHugh, Esq. has over 20 years in creating the correct Special Needs Trust documents and giving guidance to his clients on how the operate the bank account set up with Special Needs Trust.

It is critical for you to talk to our Special Needs Trust Attorney BEFORE the money comes to your bank account to maintain your benefits!

Most public needs programs (especially SSI, CAL Fresh, Section 8 housing) have asset limits. Putting the incoming money into a Special Needs Trust bank account (with a separate trustee in control of the account) allows you to keep your Government benefits.
 

First-Party Special Needs Trust Are Set Up By The Person Getting A Settlement Or Inheritance

The rules for setting up Special Needs Trusts can be complicated, and it is important to make sure that a person in need of a Special Needs Trust gets good legal advice from an attorney with Special Needs Planning experience about how to set one up to avoid serious government approval problems. Our Special Needs Attorney, Joe McHugh is highly experienced at setting these trusts up and understands that they in many cases need to be created quickly as generally time is of the essence! In many cases we do not charge for the trust until the settlement money is given to the disabled person’s personal injury attorney.
 
You must be under 65 years old to set up a First Party Special Needs Trust.

A 1st Party Special Needs Trust can be the only way for you to keep your SSI payments and have extra money to enhance the quality of your life when you get your settlement or inheritance.

You must get this set up BEFORE your settlement comes to you!

Our Special Needs Trust Attorney, Joseph McHugh will work quickly with your Personal Injury Attorney to ensure the Special Needs Trust is properly set up before the court ordered settlement(s) is available… so the money can quickly be put into the Special Needs Trust as soon as it is available to you.

We are proud to work with Personal Injury Attorneys to make sure this process is seamless, and our law firm notifies SSI about the money going into the Special Needs Trust, so you can keep your government benefits. We work with you (our client), the trustee, family members, personal injury litigation attorneys, and/or structured settlement brokers to create a customized special needs trust to protect your needs and public benefits.

We guide the trustees (both individuals and institutional) of special needs trusts, ensuring they understand implementing and maintaining the terms of the trust on an ongoing basis to keep our client’s benefits in place.

Special Needs Planning and the creation of Special Needs Trusts is a very important part of California and Federal laws that help disable people protect their public benefits and still have a way to help them have a higher quality of life. There are several types of Special Needs Trust, but in California, generally the special needs planning attorneys use two trusts.

What is a Special Needs Trust?

A Special Needs Trust is a legal document that allows a trust fund to be set up that a different person or financial institution manages assets for the disabled person so that this person keeps or qualifies for public benefits (SSI, Medi-Cal CalFresh, etc.). The disabled person is called the “beneficiary” and the person or institution that manages the assets is called the “trustee.”

Once the trust is set up, a variety of assets can be put into a trust fund, such as cash, stocks, bonds, and real estate investments. This type of trust is extremely important if the disabled person was injured and is expecting a large sum of money from a court ordered settlement!

If this person is already on public benefits, placing the money from the settlement directly into the Special Needs Trust will ensure this person will not lose his/ her public benefits.

The funds in this Special Needs Trust can help with supplement needs for your life, for example, clothing, household goods, computers, internet, vehicles, enhanced medical therapies, insurance, education costs, attorney fees, musical instruments, travel, entertainment (tickets to movies, concerts) as general rules. It can also help with housing and food, but this may reduce SSI benefits, so you need to be guided by an experience Special Needs Attorney to make sure you and your trustee understands the laws and how to adhere to payments from the trust account.

A Special Needs Trust can provide for the supplement needs of a person with a disability without losing or reducing their benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI),Cal Fresh and HUD housing assistance (Section Eight).

After a thorough review of the best strategies for your special needs’ situation and our fees for the scope of work, we will structure a comprehensive plan created specifically to give you (or your loved one) the best care possible, while protecting your assets and government benefits.

Our Law Firm is centrally located in Burbank (Southern California); however, our special needs attorney, Joe McHugh with his wife Kathy McHugh, Legal Triage Director serve many clients throughout California using the phone, Zoom, emails and FedEx to accomplish the setup and guidance of each special needs trust. They can expediate creating the trust and emailing it to the beneficiary and or Trustee for immediately signing (in front of a notary).

Many clients never have to leave their home and just need a mobile notary to come to your home to notarize the trust documents. After the trust documents are signed, then the trustee goes to the bank and sets up the trust account for the funds to be deposited, quickly making the funds available for the trustee to begin to pay for things for the beneficiary.

We are very proud of the many personal and professional referrals and internet rating we receive from happy clients and colleagues. Please contact our office today to schedule a free phone consultation.

Call for consultation: (818) 241-4238. Or you can submit this form to request a consultation.