New York Supplemental / Special Needs Trust: Be Careful Of Medicaid’s Five Year Look Back Period

UPDATED: Jul 16, 2021

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UPDATED: Jul 16, 2021Fact Checked

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Jeffrey Johnson

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Jeffrey Johnson is a legal writer with a focus on personal injury. He has worked on personal injury and sovereign immunity litigation in addition to experience in family, estate, and criminal law. He earned a J.D. from the University of Baltimore and has worked in legal offices and non-profits in Maryland, Texas, and North Carolina. He has also earned an MFA in screenwriting from Chapman Univer...

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UPDATED: Jul 16, 2021

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UPDATED: Jul 16, 2021

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It’s all about you. We want to help you make the right legal decisions.

We strive to help you make confident insurance and legal decisions. Finding trusted and reliable insurance quotes and legal advice should be easy. This doesn’t influence our content. Our opinions are our own.

UPDATED: Jul 16, 2021Fact Checked

A supplemental or special needs trust is designed to either provide additional income for a special child or an individual who has special needs, according to Elliot Schlissel, a New York estate lawyer who has been assisting clients for over 30 years in the New York metropolitan area and in Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties. He says that, while these types of trusts can be beneficial, it’s important to remember that Medicaid has a five year look back period.

Creating a special needs trust

Special needs trusts (SNT) usually involve individuals receiving Social Security Disability (SSD) or Medicaid, according to Schlissel. He explained:

Those programs have restrictions as to how much income or assets an individual can have, so you can’t give the recipients any assets through inheritance or gifts. If you were to give them assets, they would be forfeited to Medicaid or it would cause them to lose their Medicaid medical benefits or benefits under SSD.

If someone has a child with special needs and they’re doing estate planning, they put in their will, or in what’s called an inter vivos trust, something called a special needs or supplemental needs trust. This sets up the trust, which is basically an artificial device designed to hold money. They put assets in the trust and a trustee is appointed to supervise providing benefits to the individual with special needs. When the individual with special needs passes, the trust has provisions as to who will inherit the balance of the funds, if any exist.

Medicaid’s five year look back period

One of the most basic misconceptions people have about special needs trusts concerns Medicaid’s five year look back period. Schlissel explained:

People often say to me, “Well I’m going to give the deed of my house over to my children and put my money in their name, so, therefore, I will have no assets and then I’ll qualify.” That doesn’t make you qualify. Medicaid looks back for five years. There are some planning devices which allow you to save about half of your assets if you are within that five year period. However, they are very sophisticated and sometimes people don’t want to give up their assets. You have to become poor on paper to qualify for Medicaid.

Contact an experienced wills and probate lawyer to discuss whether a special needs trust is right for you.

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Jeffrey Johnson

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Jeffrey Johnson is a legal writer with a focus on personal injury. He has worked on personal injury and sovereign immunity litigation in addition to experience in family, estate, and criminal law. He earned a J.D. from the University of Baltimore and has worked in legal offices and non-profits in Maryland, Texas, and North Carolina. He has also earned an MFA in screenwriting from Chapman Univer...

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Editorial Guidelines: We are a free online resource for anyone interested in learning more about legal topics and insurance. Our goal is to be an objective, third-party resource for everything legal and insurance related. We update our site regularly, and all content is reviewed by experts.

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