If you are like us, you don’t have resources to invest into a trust fund, thousands to pay an attorney to create (and maintain) a special needs trust, or know someone young and yet mature enough (18+) who can be named as trustee for the rest of your child’s adult life.
Yet, without establishing a special needs trust, any assets your child inherits in excess of $2,000—such as life insurance proceeds—could cause them to lose eligibility for SSI and Medicaid, and could even result in displacement from a group home.
To remedy these problems, many states including Texas have created Master Pooled Trusts, which provide for the supplemental needs (that is, other than food, housing and basic medical care) for your adult child with an Intellectual Disability. Information about the Master Pooled Trust can be found here: http://www.thearcoftexas.org/trust/index.php.
Master Pooled Trusts serve to provide disbursements for your child—to travel or buy video games, a bicycle, music, computer or clothes—and from what we have gleaned it seems to be working.
If you meet with a special needs lawyer in Texas about creating a will and a Special Needs Trust, and he or she does not tell you about the Master Pooled Trust option, or doesn’t know about it, I’d take my business elsewhere. –ENT