Excerpt from: Raymon B. Harvey, P.A. (click for full article)
The changes last fall addressed several sections of the POMS dealing with how to treat expenditures from special needs trusts. Some of the changes focused on just “self-settled” special needs trusts, others included expenditures by “third-party” special needs trusts and perhaps even payments by family members or others who try to help recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Among the changes posted last fall:
When family members paid for items for a trust beneficiary — like medical supplies, clothing, transportation or pretty much anything else — reimbursement from a trust would be treated as income to the beneficiary, even though nothing ever went through the beneficiary’s hands or account. The same would have been true for trust payments to the family member’s credit card.
Payments for caregiving could not be made to a family member unless the family member was certified in some way.
Travel expenditures for third persons to visit a trust beneficiary would have been prohibited in pretty much all circumstances.
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