DISABLED CHILDREN & ESTATE PLANNING

When parents are met with the challenge of raising and planning for their disabled children, whether such disability arise at birth or as they are growing up, it is important to attain appropriate professional advice. Proper legal structure of your estate for their well being is even more appropriate than when you have children that are capable of fending for themselves and asserting control over their own future. For disabled children will invariably require financial assistance, and the associated support that comes wtih such access to finances, to make their lives that much better (with comparable investment resources put to their benefit).

This is reflected in the manner that Alberta provincial legistlation puts constraints on government financial assistance when it is sought to operate in conjunction with personal finances that are directed towards their benefit through estate planning (wills and trusts). Because of restrictions on standard trusts, which limit the trust to holding no more than $100,000 for the benefit of a disabled individual, a standard trust that has greater than this baseline figure will precipitate the loss of government benefits for which you had been paying a life-time tax payments into, without some careful estate planning. For at that threshold, a Henson trust will unnecessarily eliminate government if not correctly undertaken.