Practice No. 5 — A lifetime of provision
Special-Needs Trusts
From $2,400 · first-party and third-party trusts
Providing for a child or family member with a disability — without disqualifying them from the SSI and Medicaid benefits their care depends on.
For parents of a child with a disability asking the question that keeps them up at night: what happens when we are gone?
How we handle it
An inheritance left directly to a person with a disability is often an act of accidental harm: a few thousand dollars of countable assets and the SSI check stops, the Medicaid card — and with it the services, the waiver slot, the care team assembled over years — is suspended until the money is spent. Grandparents do this out of love every year. A special-needs trust exists so that love arrives as help instead.
Drafted properly, a third-party special-needs trust holds the family's provision (inheritances, life insurance, the house) outside your loved one's countable assets, while a trustee pays for the things public benefits never cover: therapies beyond the approved list, a decent wheelchair van, travel to see family, a private room. We draft these trusts to the federal and Virginia rules, and just as carefully we draft the practical machinery: who serves as trustee for the forty years after you, who watches the trustee, and how your knowledge of your child gets written down.
That last piece matters more than the legal boilerplate. Every special-needs plan we build includes a letter of intent: the unofficial manual that tells a future caregiver how your son takes his medication, what calms your daughter in a waiting room, which cousin should be called first. Judges never read it. The people who love your child will read it constantly.
What the fee includes
- Third-party special-needs trust, drafted to protect SSI and Medicaid eligibility
- First-party (payback) trust counsel when a settlement or direct inheritance has already arrived
- Trustee succession design — individual, professional, or pooled-trust arrangements
- Coordination of your own wills, trusts, and beneficiary designations so nothing leaks around the plan
- Guidance for grandparents and relatives on how to leave gifts the right way
- The letter of intent: a guided template and a working session to complete it
- ABLE account guidance and how it works alongside the trust
- Review of the plan when benefits rules or family circumstances change
The honest timeline
Week 1 — Design meeting
The full picture: diagnosis, benefits, family resources, the people who will carry the plan.
Weeks 2–4 — Drafting
Trust and coordinating documents drafted; beneficiary designations mapped account by account.
Week 5 — Signing & funding plan
Execution at our office, then the written checklist that routes every future gift and policy to the trust.
Ongoing — The letter of intent
A working session to complete it, and a standing invitation to update it as your child's life changes.
What to bring
Or what to gather — none of it needs to be perfect.
- A summary of your loved one's diagnosis, benefits, and services — SSI, Medicaid waiver, school supports
- Your current wills or trusts, and life-insurance beneficiary designations
- A list of relatives likely to leave gifts or inheritances to your child
- Names of possible future trustees and guardians, even if you are unsure
- Anything already written about your child's routines and needs — we build the letter of intent from it
Questions we hear about special-needs trusts
Will a trust affect my child's SSI or Medicaid?
A properly drafted and administered third-party special-needs trust does not count against SSI or Medicaid asset limits — that is its entire purpose. The dangers are informal arrangements ('we'll leave extra to his sister'), direct bequests from well-meaning relatives, and trustees who pay for the wrong categories. We draft against all three.
What is the difference between first-party and third-party trusts?
A third-party trust holds other people's money (yours, grandparents', life insurance) and owes Medicaid nothing when your child dies; you choose where the remainder goes. A first-party trust holds the child's own money (a lawsuit settlement, a direct inheritance already received) and must repay Medicaid at death. The first kind is better; families end up in the second when planning happened too late. Both are fixable situations.
Who should be trustee after we die?
The honest answer: usually not the sibling alone. A sibling co-trustee paired with a professional or pooled trustee keeps family knowledge in the loop without asking one child to be banker, advocate, and brother at once for forty years. We will talk through your actual candidates by name.
Often planned together
Wills & Revocable Trusts
Flat fee from $1,200 individual · $1,950 couple
A will or revocable trust drafted for Virginia law and actually funded: deed, retitling, and every designation confirmed in writing.
Probate & Estate Administration
From $3,500 · scoped in writing at the first meeting
We handle the court, you handle the family: qualification, inventory, the Commissioner of Accounts, and the final accounting, carried.
Powers of Attorney & Advance Directives
Flat fee from $350
A durable power of attorney a bank will actually honor, and an advance medical directive your family can actually follow.
Put your affairs in order this season.
Thirty minutes on the telephone, no charge, and you will know exactly which documents you need and exactly what they cost. That is the whole commitment.
Or telephone the office: (804) 555-0158