No matter what stage you are with futures planning, we’ve got you covered. Split into categories, this ongoing, curated resource lists the essentials on special needs trusts and futures planning; where to get started, what documents you need to secure benefits, plus relevant news to deepen your knowledge.
Click on the “+” at each section header to view all listings.
Disabled Americans Are Losing a Lifeline
Disabled Americans Are Losing a Lifeline, and how President Biden can help.
EMPOWER Magazine
The Arc of Northern Virginia: Transition POINTS
The Arc of Northern Virginia’s Transition POINTS program (Providing Opportunities, Information, Networking and Transition Support) offers families realistic, actionable information on decision making through the lifetime of their loved one with an intellectual disability.
The following guides are available:
- Early Intervention – Starting Life with your Child with a Disability
- Special Education – Getting the Most from Special Education
- Transition to Adult Services – Securing a Future for your Child with a Disability
- Employment – Entering the World of Work
- Housing – Finding a Home for Adults with Disabilities
- Aging – Aging with a Disability
VA – CommonHelp
Online listing for Virginia’s many social services assistance programs. Use CommonHelp to check assistance eligibility, submit applications, check or renew benefits and report household changes, or renew benefits.
Family & Divorce Law 2020
The document covers latest trends and regulatory developments from around the world. It includes expert discussions on high conflict cases, divorce costs, valuation and division of complex assets, international family law, and child custody. Featured countries are: Dominican Republic, South Africa, Turkey and the United States.
Child Support for an Adult Child with Disabilities
Can a parent be required to financially support a child who reached the age of majority? This article describes in general terms the law throughout the United States with respect to a parent’s support obligations for a child with disabilities.
An Introduction to Special Needs Trusts: How They Work and Why People with Disabilities Need Them
A guide from Disability Rights North Carolina
Northern Virginia Funeral Costs
The Memorial Society of Northern Virginia offers a detailed directory of funeral homes and the costs for each service.
Virginia Department of Social Services: Burial Funds
Learn how much burial funds you are entitled to, upon the death of your spouse.
KeyBank Financial Wellness Topics
Our Trustee KeyBank’s financial wellness center is a helpful guide on the basics of financial health and future planning.
Planning for Your Long-Term Care Checklist
Securing a sound post-retirement future is critical to not only navigating health, but preserving family wealth as well. Use this list as a starting point.
Estate Planning in a Digital World
All aspects of our lives—whether financial, social, work or leisure—increasingly have a presence on our computers or the Internet. Start planning to protect these digital assets.
Make the Most of Charitable Giving with Your IRA
When we think about leaving a charitable giving legacy, making a bequest from our estate naturally comes to mind. However, individual retirement accounts (IRAs) can be an attractive and flexible way to manage charitable gifts and meet estate planning needs.
Crafting a Portfolio Aligned with your Financial Goals
It's essential to construct an investment portfolio thoroughly integrated with your financial goals. Considering and coordinating both allows you to create a successful blueprint to meet your long-term financial goals.
Navy Mutual Estate Planning: Personal Log
By completing this log, you ensure that your family will have vital information that might otherwise be forgotten upon your death. It can also guide your loved ones through the necessary tasks that must be performed after your death.
Secure Your Financial Future - U.S. Dept. of Labor
A toolkit for Individuals with Disabilities, providing a path forward, based on where you are in your employment journey.
Corporate Fiduciaries Are Shying Away From Special Needs Trusts
Our Special Needs Trust program remains uniquely valuable to the beneficiaries we serve, aligning with our nonprofit mission. For over 30 years, the Special Needs Trust Program is managed by experts in the disability field, with Key Private Bank as the trustee and fiduciary.
The Arc National: Futures Planning
This resource provides reliable information and assistance to individuals with I/DD, their family members and friends, professionals who support them and other members of the community on areas such as person-centered planning, decision-making, housing options, and financial planning.
A Wake Up Call For Professional Trustees and Parents
The importance of choosing the right trustee, plus the measures in place to make sure the trustee is acting in the right interests of the beneficiary.
Pooled and special needs trusts
A primer on pooled trusts, first-party and third-party special needs trust.
Why Your Will Should Name Designated Beneficiaries
Understand what “designated beneficiaries” are and how you should get started.
Planning Now: An Estate & Futures Planning Guide
This Maryland edition of Planning Now discusses the importance of planning for children and adults with disabilities; provides essential information, suggestions, and a framework for planning, with various tools and resources to assist you.
Social Security Administration Supplemental Security Income
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a Federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues (not Social Security taxes). It is designed to help the following who have little or no income: seniors, adults and children who are blind or have qualifying disabilities. SSI provides cash to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. Use this site to learn more, check eligibility and apply for SSI.
Social Security and SSI for People with I/DD and Their Families
This Arc’s National Policy Matters edition explores how Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Medicare and Medicaid related health insurance operates, the vital support they provide, and current policy proposals that may impact people with I/DD and their families.
2023 Social Security Factsheet
The latest changes to Social Security, including an increase in the cost-of-living adjustment.
Applying for SSI and SSDI: Checklist
SSA’s official checklist to help you complete the online Disability application.
Help for Representative Payees and VA Fiduciaries
A guide for family and friends serving as a representative payee (“rep payee”) or VA fiduciary. Taking on this responsibility makes you a fiduciary with fiduciary duties. You are managing money or property for someone else, and must act in their best interests.
Medicaid and Medicare Dual Eligibility
DMAS breaks down how Medicaid and Medicare works, and how to apply for them.
Benefits for Children with Disabilities
A document that assesses whether the child with disabilities might be eligible for SSI or SSDI.
How to Request and Prepare for a Medicaid Appeal
This 8-page document written by Disability Rights Maryland helps Medicaid applicants and recipients know their appeal rights if their services are denied, reduced, or terminated, and it provides guidance on how to pursue the Medicaid appeal process in Maryland.
How to Appeal a Denial, Reduction, or Termination of Community First Choice Personal Assistance Services
As a supplement to the more general guide on Medicaid service appeals, this document can be used in preparing for a hearing regarding Community First Choice (CFC) personal assistance services. It outlines the eligibility for the CFC program and the types of documents and evidence that you can prepare and use in a CFC hearing.
Medicare Savings Programs
You can get help from your state paying your Medicare premiums. In some cases, Medicare Savings Programs may also pay Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) and Medicare Part B (Medical Insurance) deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments if you meet certain conditions.
Medicaid Waiver Practical Guide
This guide explains explain how to apply for services for people with developmental disabilities. It will also explain what services are available, why there is a waiting list for services, who is most likely to be able to get services, who will help you, and what to expect once you are enrolled in the system.
Social Security Fact Sheet 2023
Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for approximately 70 million Americans will increase 8.7 percent in 2023. The 8.7 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) will begin with benefits payable to more than 65 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2023. Increased payments to more than 7 million SSI beneficiaries will begin on December 30, 2022. (Note: some people receive both Social Security and SSI benefits)
A Consumer’s Guide to Homesharing
Homesharing is an alternative way for people to meet their housing needs that provides numerous benefits to both homeowners and renters. The guide details the scenarios, consideration factors and how to get started.
Home Repair for Elderly Program for Elderly and Disabled Adults
The program provides minor home repairs to eligible low and moderate income elderly homeowners residing in the property, as well as accessibility modifications for homeowners with disabilities.
Roommate Agreements for SSI Application
Use these template documents to support your SSI application.
Power of Attorney
What it is and how it works.
Supported Decision Making
The disAbility Law Center of Virginia’s resource on decision making and advance directive.
Guardianship and Its Alternatives: A Handbook on Maryland Law
This resource covers adult guardianship law in Maryland and explains when a guardian can be appointed to act for a person who lacks the capacity to make decisions for herself/himself. It also lists many alternatives to a formal guardianship proceeding that may be more appropriate and less expensive than a formal guardianship.
Dental Resources
A listing of Virginia and Washington D.C.’s dental clinics. (as of December 2019)
Medicaid Adult Dental Program
Adult Dental Services for Virginia Medicaid members; starting July 1, 2021, adult members will have access to more services and provider choices through DentaQuest.
Maryland Healthy Smiles Dental Program
Dental services for adults between the ages of 21 and 64, who receive full Medicaid and Medicare Benefits.
Military Survivor Benefits Program
Congress passed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2015, which allows military members and retirees to irrevocably assign annuity payments from Survivor Benefit Plans (SBP) to a Special Needs Trust (SNT) for the benefit of their dependent child with disabilities. The SNT must be established as a Self-Funded (First-Party) SNT.
Navy Mutual Calculators
Navy Mutual’s calculators estimate your military survivor benefits, including SeaBAAG, Military Pension Benefits and WebCACO.
Disabled Military Child Protection Act Policy Issued
How to provide a survivor benefit for a child with a disability, and have it paid to a special needs trust for that child’s benefit.
Military Service Record
Submit DD Form 149, Application for Correction of Military Records to the relevant service branch.
Exceptional Family Member Program: Special Care Organizational Record
The Special Care Organizational Record for Children with Special Health or Educational Needs is an organizing tool for parents to track and organize their child’s information. You can use the SCOR to capture information, including your child’s birth history, likes and dislikes, medical and educational information, insurance and step-by-step action plans in case of an emergency.
Navy Mutual: Education and Veterans Service Education Team
Navy Mutual is here to assist veterans and their families in securing federal benefits and is committed to educating servicemembers and their families on matters of financial security. We have been an approved DoD educator for over 40 years.
Navy Mutual: Veterans Service Organization (VSO)
Navy Mutual Aid Association is the oldest federally recognized Veterans Service Organization (VSO). We assist our Members, veterans, servicemembers, and their families in navigating the benefits that service has earned them.
Navy Mutual: Candid Conversations
A military career provides some great benefits to take care of a member's family if they were to pass away while serving. How do you continue the protection post-service? Join us to explore your survivor benefit resources.
Navy Mutual: Understanding Your Survivor Benefits 2023
Navy Mutual Aid Association's Mission is to provide our members with high quality, low cost life insurance options, educate our members as well as the military and uniformed service community at large on matters of financial security, and help our members secure the survivor benefits they have earned through their service.
United Cerebral Palsy The Case for Inclusion Report 2019
Covering 50 States and the District of Columbia (DC), the report is the preeminent annual ranking of how well state Medicaid programs serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) and their families.
With the 2019 change to the Secure Act (Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Act), know the impact on individuals, retirement, tax, and estate planning strategies.
IRA distributions to special needs trusts
The SECURE Act and Elimination of the Stretch IRA
These articles will focus on the changes to the SECURE Act and the impact on individuals and, more importantly, on the biggest provision that affects estate planning — the elimination of the “Stretch IRA”.
SECURE Act Changed IRA and Retirement Plan Inheritance Rules
Individuals who plan to leave IRA and retirement plan assets to heirs — and individuals who stand to inherit retirement assets — should understand the new rules and distribution options.
The SECURE Act and Your Retirement Savings
The legislation expands savings opportunities for workers and includes new requirements and incentives for employers that provide retirement benefits. It also restricts a popular estate planning strategy for individuals with significant assets in IRAs and employer-sponsored retirement plans.
New Retirement Law Changes Special Needs Planning
The Arc of Northern Virginia’s Special Needs Trust is a conduit trust or a see through trust. Conduit Trusts are See-Through Trusts which require any distributions received by the trust from an inherited retirement account be passed right out from the trust to the trust beneficiaries. The trust acts as a ‘conduit’ for distributions from the IRA to the underlying trust beneficiaries. We fulfill this requirement.
Filing a Tax Return for a Special Needs Trust
The primary focus of this article is to introduce the tax form that typically must be filed for Special Needs Trusts (SNTs) which generate income.
Tax Benefit Checklist for Families Caring for Children with Special Needs
Information for the 2021 tax year. (The information provided is not written or intended as specific tax or legal advice.)
Paratransit & Transit Accessibility
Paratransit services are special transportation services for people with disabilities who are unable to use fixed-route public transportation for some or all of their mobility needs. Covers Accessible Fixed-Route Public Transportation, Reach A Ride Paratransit Service Directory, Regional Transit and Paratransit Systems, Services in Virginia and Maryland
Service Source Transportation Program
The program offers transportation services for people with disabilities: On Demand rides and Scheduled rides. Enrollees must be referred by an approved agency in which they are receiving services or scheduled to begin receiving services.
Rehab Driving Process Explained
If you have been diagnosed with one or more medical conditions that have resulted in loss of physical, visual, cognitive or medical abilities OR if someone has told you to stop driving, you should consider investing in an evaluation.