Welcome to CPA at Law, helping individuals and small businesses plan for the future and keep what they have.

This is the personal blog of Sterling Olander, a Certified Public Accountant and Utah-licensed attorney. For over nine years, I have assisted clients with estate planning and administration, tax mitigation, tax controversies, small business planning, asset protection, and nonprofit law.

I write about any legal, tax, or technological information that I find interesting or useful in serving my clients. All ideas expressed herein are my own and don't constitute legal or tax advice.

Fundamental Supplemental Needs Trust Planning

Careful planning is necessary for individuals who have heirs with special needs that qualify for means-tested public assistance. At a minimum, such a plan should include a trust that restricts distributions to any special-needs heir. Any distribution that would otherwise pass to such an heir can only be made for the heir's "supplemental needs," or those needs that are not provided by a government assistance program. This trust provision is necessary to prevent a special-needs heir on means-tested public assistance from ceasing to qualify for such assistance due receiving an inheritance.

Assets subject to a supplemental needs trust are not countable resources for purposes of determining the special-needs heir's qualification for means-tested public assistance. Accordingly, the heir can continue benefiting from their public assistance programs while maintaining the beneficial interest in a supplemental-needs trust. The trust is able to provide benefits that the heir is not already receiving from his or her public assistance program. A trust that is funded solely with assets derived from someone other than the special-needs heir is known as a third-party supplemental needs trust. After the termination of the trust, assets remaining in a third-party supplemental needs trust can be passed to other family members.

If proper planning is not undertaken and a special-needs heir does inherit assets, they have two primary options: Spend down all of the inheritance until the heir qualifies once again for the public assistance program(s), or transfer the inheritance into a first-party or self-settled supplemental needs trust. First-party supplemental needs trusts are funded with assets belonging to the individual with special needs. The key downside of a first-party supplemental needs trust is that upon the termination of the trust, the government must be reimbursed from any property remaining in the first-party trust up to the total amount of medical assistance benefits received by the beneficiary during their lifetime. Accordingly, it is much better if all family members from whom a special needs individual could possibly receive an inheritance complete an estate plan that includes supplemental needs planning provisions.