Each year, MetLife surveys the cost of assisted living facilities in all 50 states. While the survey is performed by Met’s elder services group, The MetLife Mature Market Institute, the numbers can be helpful for families planning to provide for a person with developmental disabilities who may not be able to live without 24 hour care.

This year, MetLife surveyed three California cities and found a range of $1,300 at the lowest end to $5,500 at the highest end. In Los Angeles, the average base rate was $2,426. Base rates typically include two or three meals per day, assistance with “activities of daily living,” medication management, laundry and housekeeping.

While assisted living costs are up 17% since 2004, this year’s increase was a modest 2.2%.

For families with kids who may not require skilled nursing care but who also may not be able to live at home, these numbers are a good basis for projecting the cost of lifetime care for their child.

To ensure that children receive the maximum government benefits they are entitled to, a special needs trust should be established to provide the child with important quality-of-life goods and services like dental care. The Special Needs Trust is the gold standard in protecting the child’s inheritance when the parents are no longer there to help.

With the holidays approaching, I know the dread of many siblings of adults with special needs: what am I going to get my brother?! For parents of children with special needs that question can be even more daunting because their children’s development may be advanced in one area and delayed in a another which makes finding a toy that’s both challenging enough to be engaging and easy enough to be enjoyed is tough.

Toys R Us is now distributing a guide developed specifically to address choosing the right toys for kids with special needs . 600,000 of the “Toy Guide for Differently Abled Kids” will be printed and available at Toys R Us. Of the 85 toys listed inside, 79 can be obtained at stores other than Toys R Us. The guide indicates for each toy, which developmental area it can stimulate.

You can even look at it online right now!

In a private letter ruling recently, the IRS addressed the issue of transferring an inherited IRA into a Special Needs Trust. The law around taxation of inherited IRAs and the interaction with trusts has been unpredictable and fast-moving for several years now.

Fortunately, this private letter ruling indicates the direction the IRS is headed on two important questions:

First, the transfer to the SNT was not a taxable transfer for estate and gift tax purposes. That’s great! It means that if a person with special needs inherits an IRA, we can still do some limited planning without immediate tax consequences.

Second, the trustee was able to stretch out the distributions from the IRA (and therefore stretch out the tax deferral benefits) over the life expectancy of the beneficiary. Another positive result.

Of course, the best result would have been achieved if the decedent had made the IRA payable to the SNT directly. That way, court costs, private letter ruling costs, anxiety, and a “pay back to the state” provision all could have been avoided.

For those of you who enjoy a humorous but substantial approach to advocacy, check out Mothers From Hell 2 .

I am delighted to announce the formation of a ground-breaking organization: The Academy of Special Needs Planners.

Harry Margolis (Managing Partner of Margolis & Associates, a Boston law firm, and founder of Elder Law Answers ), Vincent Russo (Managing Shareholder of Vincent J. Russo & Assocates, a New York law firm, and past-President of The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys ) and I have joined forces to create The Academy of Special Needs Planners (”ASNP”). ASNP is a national member organization of attorneys who are dedicated to improving the lives of people with special needs by helping them and their families plan for the future.

The Academy’s website connects families with attorneys who are experts in providing legal guidance and services that enhance the lives of their loved ones with special needs. Our new organiation offers information, education, networking and assistance to our member attorneys, to other professionals concerned with special needs planning, and to families of people with special needs.

As my co-Founder, Vince Russo, says, “Clients need attorneys who combine compassion with skilled estate planning and knowledge of the public benefits programs on which many individuals with special needs must rely.”

Does your child or family member with Autism or Asperger’s appreciate reminders? Does he like repetition of social cues, like “make eye contact”? My brother has a list of things he likes to be reminded of in particular situations. For example, when he’s at the airport, he likes to be reminded, repeatedly, not to make jokes about hijacking. He gets very worried that he might say something inappropriate.

My parents and I have always acted as his reminder system. We all know the scripts. When he asks about an imponderable, like why he gets upset by barking dogs, he wants the answer “Why does Scott hit?” (Scott was a classmate who, much to Nathan’s distress, could not seem to control his hitting.)

Unfortunately for Nathan, we are not always with him. This must be one of the reasons he is unwilling to be in stressful situations without family present.

The Boston Globe has written an article on a new technology that helps people with Asperger’s and Autism to remember the social cues and scripts using a hand-held PDA. I think it can be applied to all sorts of reminders. To read the story, Click Here . To check out the technology company’s website, go to Symtrend.

When creating a special needs trust, parents must take into account not just where the beneficiary lives now, but where she might live in the future. Because state laws vary on the level of services provided and on what special needs trust provisions will be respected, we build lots of flexibility into our trusts to address these differences.

Some clients have asked me, when choosing between good guardians in different states, whether the services in one state are dramatically different from the services in the other. Until now, I have not had a comprehensive resource to help me answer that question.

The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) has recently released the first state-by-state rankings of services and infrastructure to support the mentally ill in 15 years. (While those with developmental or injury-related disabilities have different challenges, many of the infrastructure issues are the same for all three groups.)

Read on to learn more about California, which states are best, which states are worst, and what to do about it for your child.

California’s grade is “C” which is above the national average “D” but not as great as states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut, Maine, and South Carolina. No state received an “A”. Most distressing, California received a “D” for services — perhaps the most important category.

If your guardian lives in one of the states ranked “F”, it may be time to revisit your choice. Those states are: Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Kentucky.

For clients who would like to revisit their choice of guardians in light of this newly released resource, or new clients who’d like to learn more about how to protect their children, we invite you to call Anna Spektor, our Director of Community Relations, at (805) 778-0600 to schedule an appointment.

People with autism are more intelligent and better able to function than previously believed. The erroneous beliefs come from biased test and a long history of assumptions. IQ tests used to estimate the intelligence of people with autism have relied heavily on verbal abilities, which in many cases lag far behind other forms of intelligence, such as spatial and logical.

Go to the Social Security Administration to see the new eligibility and penalty figures for Supplemental Security Income recipients in 2006. Or just read here!

Maximum benefits for California recipients will be $836 per month (the federal benefit is only $603 but California and some other states provide supplements to increase the benefit level).

The maximum reduction for recept of “stuff” (in-kind support and maintenance — not cash) is $221. That means that if a parent or a special needs trust buys stuff for an SSI recipient, that recipient will have his or her $836 reduced dollar for dollar for the value of those benefits but only up to a maximum of $221.00. So a person with a special needs trust that spends $225 or $2,000 or $20,000 per month on her will still receive an SSI benefit of $615 ($836 minus $221).

Thanks to Steve Dale of The Dale Law Firm for the link!

The United States Supreme Court ruled in Lockhart v. U.S., 04-881 that student loans can be collected through garnishment of up to fifteen percent (15%) of Social Security benefit payments. Because the ruling covers disability as well as retirement benefits, recovery may be made against SSDI (Social Security Disability Income — payable to disabled adults whose parents paid into the Social Security system) and SSI (Supplemental Security Income — payable to those with almost no income or assets) as well as traditional retirement Social Security.

Further, in 1996, Congress removed the statute of limitations on recovery of defaulted student loans. So people who attend school then become disabled and unable to work may have their very limited public benefits further reduced to repay their student loans.

Money left or given to a disabled person in a Special Needs Trusts is not impacted by this ruling and is still safe from attachment.

It is possible that Congress will reconsider this issue, as lower courts have been divided on whether student loans can be collected against Social Security benefits.