Incapacity and special needs
Who decides when you cannot.
The documents most likely to be needed suddenly are the ones people leave in a drawer without telling the person named in them. And a gift made without thought can cost a beneficiary the benefits they live on.
In short
Who decides when you cannot, and how to provide for someone whose benefits an outright gift would put at risk.
Two problems sit together here. The first is who acts for you when you cannot act for yourself, which is answered by documents signed in advance or, failing that, by a court. The second is how to leave something to a person whose public benefits an outright gift would end.
Both are more easily solved before they are urgent, and both are commonly left until they are.
What this covers
Four things we do here
Who decides when you cannot
A durable power of attorney and a health care directive, signed while they can still be signed.
Special needs trusts
A gift that is meant kindly can end the benefits someone lives on. A trust is how you avoid that.
Conservatorships
What happens when nothing was signed in advance, and how to keep it from being needed.
Planning for long term care
A move to care changes the arithmetic of a plan that was written for a different decade.
Read about this
Four questions we are asked about incapacity and special needs
- Will the cost of long-term care take the house?It can, and the decisions taken in the first months are usually the ones that matter most. This is planning rather than avoidance.
- When is a conservatorship actually necessary?Less often than families are told. It is the fallback where nothing was signed in advance, and the better answer is usually the documents that make it unnecessary.
- Will an inheritance disqualify my child from SSI and Medi-Cal?An outright gift can end SSI, and losing SSI can cost the Medi-Cal that comes with it. A trust is how the gift is made without that happening.
- What happens if I become incapacitated without a power of attorney?Your family goes to court. A conservatorship is the fallback, and it is a proceeding rather than a document.
Who does this work
Elsewhere
The other practice areas
- Estate planningThe documents that decide who acts for you and who receives what, written to be used rather than filed.
- Trust administrationWhat happens after. The notices, valuations, transfers and accountings a successor trustee is required to produce.
- ProbateThe court proceeding that moves property when there was no trust, or when the trust did not own it.
- Property transfersDeeds, retitling and the reassessment questions that follow a change in ownership of California real property.
- Business successionWhere the estate plan meets the operating agreement, and the two have to be made to agree.