You get what you sow

Have you ever considered the consequences of what you are doing now and how they may affect your life years from now?

Enjoy chain smoking?  According to the CDC, life expectancy for smokers is at least 10 years shorter than for nonsmokers. Quitting smoking before the age of 40 reduces the risk of dying from smoking-related disease by about 90%.  So, for all those teenagers who smoked like stacks in high school, you might be wanting to crank out a will some time soon.

How about alcohol consumption?  In a study involving 599,592 drinkers, the study found that persons who consume 100 grams to 200 grams of alcohol weekly have an estimated life expectancy at age 40 that’s about six months shorter.

One more?  How about persons who are addicted to something worth being addicted to?  According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, Drug use can have a wide range of short- and long-term, direct and indirect effects. Short-term effects can range from changes in appetite, wakefulness, heart rate, blood pressure, and/or mood to heart attack, stroke, psychosis, overdose, and even death.

These health effects may occur after just one use. What the Institute doesn't take into account is the affect drugs and drug addiction has on persons long after they stop taking drugs and get clean.

Take, for example, the young lady who came to me the other day.  Seems in her youth, she had a kid.  At some point, kid was involved in a car accident that left him in a state where his brain was damaged.  Apparently, he was in such a state that it was determined that he would need someone to care for him the rest of his life.

At some point, kid was awarded a large sum of money in settlement for his injuries.  At the time of the settlement, young lady was addicted to a variety of mind-altering drugs and, apparently, her life was in shambles.  

The attorney, at the time, determined that young lady was not in a state of mind to determine how to best spend the monies and "strongly suggested" that young lady let him create a Special Needs Trust to protect the settlement monies for the benefit of kid.

Fast forward a few years.  Kid is now 23 years old.  Well, physically, he is 23 years old. Mentally, he is hovering around 5 or 6. Young lady has gotten her act together and is no longer addicted to anything. 

Kudos to her.

Problem is that even though lady is no longer addicted to anything, the Special Needs Trust that was created years ago prohibiting young lady (i.e. mother of kid) from getting any significant portion of those settlement monies to spend on kid was doing exactly what it was created to do.  That is, of course, to provide support for the kid and protect the funds in the trust from persons who want to spend it all in riotous living and live a life of Riley.

Lady now wants to be rid of the Special Needs Trust so that she and kid can move on with life without having to conform to the requirements of the Special Needs Trust (see "riotous living, above).

See how a moment in time of raucous living can be a millstone about your neck later on?

Anyway, there is one additional problem.  Apparently, one of the beneficiary's of the SPN trust is the State (i.e. government).  If there is one thing I know about government, whenever there is money involved, the state always plays to win.  They're not going to want to cancel a cash cow - no matter how small.  Cash is king.

The problem is that the only resources I have in my library is stuff about how to create a Special Needs Trusts - not how to end one.  OK, I do have one resource that deals with Special Needs Trust called:  Special Needs Trusts: planning, drafting, and administration (CEB) but its only got the one chapter on Terminating the SNT and Lady wants a lifetime of information on the subject.

Fact is there are 4 (count them, four) ways a Special Needs Trust can be terminated.  FIRST is upon the death of the primary beneficiary.  Since her son was not yet deceased, lady has a swing and a miss for strike one.  

Other ways a Special Needs Trust can be terminated is:

• There is a a change in law or eligibility for benefits;
• There are improvements in ability to engage in sustainable gainful activity so that beneficiary no longer meets disability criteria;
• The SNT no longer holds funds sufficient to justify the costs of administration.

Since the law on a SNT is pretty solid and son definitely eligible for benifits, strike two.

I then suggested lady look at whether the her son's (i.e. the beneficiary of the SNT) condition had improved such that he no longer met disability criteria.  No?  Then, strike three.

Finally, does the trust not have sufficient funds to take care of her son?  That's an easy strike four (because lady knows the trust is stuffed with lots of juicy cash).

When I suggest that maybe she needs to hire an attorney, lady goes nuclear.  She's hopping around demanding that her due process rights are being violated and that the attorney who created the SNT didn't explain to her all the consequences of creating a SNT.  

Yeah, about that.  Remember those drugs you were popping years ago?  Then again, probably not.  I guess that's one of the consequences of drug popping - you don't remember the pain.

I'm thinking, how could he know every single consequence?  There are some things that can be known but there is no way to know if lady would ever get her act together at some point down the line.  Kid was his client and, I suspect, he was trying to act in the best interest of his client (i.e. the kid) not the person popping pills.

I guess the moral to this story is, if you don't want someone else making decisions that you should be making, and you suspect that the decisions others make for you may have dire consequences in the future (i.e. restrict what you can and/or can't do) then maybe you need to do whatever you need to do to keep a clear head.

Just, maybe.