Category: Special Needs

Raising a child is expensive and can cost about a quarter of a million dollars, excluding college. For a child with special needs, that cost can more than double. If you’re the parent of a child with special needs, it’s vital to ensure your child will continue to be provided for after you’re gone. It can be difficult to contemplate, but with patience, love, and perseverance, a long-term strategy may be attainable.

Even though the financial costs may be a major factor in your caring and planning for a child with special needs, finances can seem like a small part or afterthought when it comes to also dealing with the emotional needs, physical needs, caregiver needs, and more that go along with making sure you, your family and your dependent are cared for in the best manner.

Let’s take a look at 4 important steps to protecting a child with disabilities:

By Jessica Searcy Kmetty

My 15-year-old son, Tyler started his first ever job at McDonald’s a couple of weeks ago. It’s been entertaining to hear his anecdotes about how each shift has gone when he comes home. Some of his stories have me thinking about all of the skills he’s been taught that have now become the cornerstone of job readiness for him.

Most of us take pre-employment skills for granted, but for students with disabilities, these skills are often not learned through osmosis, but rather, they have to be explicitly taught.

By Jessica Searcy Kmetty

Estate Planning looks different for parents who have a child with special needs.

The Life Plan

For many, Estate Planning involves directing assets to be disbursed in a way that benefits those we leave behind. You might have a simple Will or you might create a Trust to have more flexibility. If you have a child with special needs, your estate plan may be designed to provide for their needs without disqualifying them from government benefits.

Taking care of the formalities are essential, but as a parent, how can you be assured that your child will lead as full and complete a life as possible after you die?

By Jessica Searcy Kmetty

Finding a great job is not always easy, and it can be even harder for a parent who is juggling responsibilities of caring for a child with special needs.

In the 2019/2020 school year, there were 7.28 million disabled 3 to 21 year olds in the United States who were covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). According to the US Census Bureau Report, 2 in 7 households report having at least one member with a disability and one in every 26 American families reported raising a child with a disability.

With regulations in place prohibiting employers from asking certain interview or health-related questions, you may wonder how much information you should openly share with an employer or a perspective employer.

By Jessica Searcy Kmetty

Medical coverage is a big deal in the special needs community. Many of my friends and neighbors spend excessive amounts of money on special needs private schools, therapies, and professional evaluations. However, I’ve come across a number of families who are unaware of, or know little about, medical tax deductions.

If you have a child with special needs, a trust may be a financial priority. There are many crucial goods and services that Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income might not pay for, and a special needs trust may be used to address those financial challenges. Most importantly, a special needs trust may help provide for your disabled child in case you are no longer able to care for them.

Families with special needs children have a new tax-deferred savings option. The ABLE account, also called a 529A savings account, is patterned after the popular 529 savings plan, created to help parents save for a child’s higher education. Like 529 plans, ABLE accounts are run by states rather than the federal government. These plans emerged after the passage of the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act in 2014.

By Michael J. Searcy

Twenty-five dollars. That was the tiny amount that caused a friend’s daughter to lose the government benefits she was receiving for her special needs.

When you are a parent or caregiver to a child with special needs, navigating the system alone is a challenge. As hard as you try to do everything right, sometimes a small mistake can have lasting repercussions. In this instance, a friend set up an account for her daughter and paid a $25 fee to get the account started. She then transferred $2,000 into the account, the legal limit allowed in her daughter’s case, so they could manage her finances from this account. She was devastated to find out that the $25 had been reported as causing her daughter’s account to exceed her limit and therefore lose her benefits.

By Michael J. Searcy

Parents of children with special needs face a whirlwind of emotions dealing with the health of their child, physical demands of caregiving, financial concerns and future planning. While there isn’t any one place you can turn for all of the answers, we spoke with several of our clients who are caregivers about their situations. Based on their responses and our experience in the area of special needs, we developed a list of 5 big mistakes caregivers make and pointers to help avoid these mistakes.

By Michael J. Searcy

A friend shared with me…Several of our friends had kids at the same time as us, and we started noticing that our son was developing a lot slower than the other children. He had been born premature and was about 9 months old when he started having bad seizures. He was cared for at the Shawnee Mission Infant Development Center and that’s when we found out about his situation and that he would have a mental delay his entire life.