Paying for special needs can place an extra load on a family in all kinds of ways. This post will take a quick look at retirement options . What it may mean for couples looking after someone with special needs.

Consider a special needs child who has no way of earning an income. The child depends on his parents for everything. As the parents plan for retirement, they also must plan for an extra income that will look after their special needs child. This must include when they are retired and later when they are no longer alive. This is a very serious situation that keeps many people up at night worrying about what will happen to their child. Also their spouse or someone they are looking after. Another situation is where one spouse becomes sick or has a major health challenge. They may need special care in a health facility costing thousands of dollars. While the other remains at home with all of the normal home-related expenses.

Paying for special needs – Set Up a Trust Fund

For many couples, this means setting up a trust that will have sufficient money to look after their child as long as he or she lives. There also needs to be instructions as well for what to do with the trust when the child also passes away. There are also must be a trust administrator to make sure the trust is maintained. They must look after the child’s financial requirements.

All of these factors can be handled by your lawyer or a trusted financial adviser. It is important to have things set up in a professional way with everything set out properly and clearly. The paperwork and financial plans are important. There are other factors that need to be considered. For example, after you are gone who will administer the trust fund. More importantly, make sure that your child is looked after? Selecting an administrator is an important decision.

The Personal Touch

While it is nice to have the money in place, it is also important to have someone that you trust to look after the special needs person. Usually, this is a brother or sister, or a cousin that is close to the family and can be trusted to take good personal care of the person. Aside from paying for whatever services you may need, it is the personal needs, such as clothes, toiletries, visitations, medical visits, etc that also need to be taken care of.

This can be a significant commitment for many people and sometimes it will be shared by members of the family so that not all of the time and the work is born by one person. When people share responsibilities it can be much easier for everyone. Still, there must be one person that takes the responsibility to coordinate and manage everything. Diplomacy is required since you want to avoid creating differences that become major issues at the same time. Choose wisely.