FREE PRACTITIONER REFERENCE · THE INSTITUTE

Special Needs Family Financial Planning

By Philip A. Baratelli, CPA, MBA · Baratelli Institute · 110 pages

A free public reference for the family raising a child with special needs — and the attorneys, CPAs, and financial planners who serve them. Trust architecture, the public-benefit rules that govern SSI and Medicaid, insurance funding mechanics, and a lifecycle map that runs from birth through parental death. Built to sit alongside your attorney’s advice, not replace it.

5parts
(trust · benefits · insurance
· lifecycle · resources)

6state-by-state
appendices

4free companion
calculators

FREEDownload the guide PDF → ↓ What’s inside ↓ Four free tools

★ THE SINGLE MOST ACTIONABLE FIRST STEP

If this reference feels like too much to read right now, contact your state’s PTI.

Every state has a federally-funded Parent Training & Information Center (PTI) — staffed by parents of children with disabilities, trained to walk a family through IEP rights, benefit applications, and the local provider network. It’s free. They will return your call. The state-by-state PTI & CPRC directory is in the guide.

Find your state’s PTI in the guide →

What’s inside — 5 parts, 6 state-by-state appendices

The guide is organized so you can read it front-to-back or jump to the part that matches the decision in front of you. Every chapter pairs the mechanic with a plain-English walk and (where the dollars matter) a worked example.

PART I

Trust Architecture

Third-party SNT, first-party d(4)(A) SNT, pooled d(4)(C). When each one is the right tool, who funds it, who serves as trustee, and the beneficiary-discipline rules that keep benefits intact.

PART II

Public Benefits

SSI resource rules, the $2,000 cliff, ABLE accounts (the $100K SSI suspension trigger, ABLE-to-Work mechanics, $19K 2026 annual limit), Medicaid waiver basics, and the inheritance trap — before it lands or after.

PART III

Insurance Funding

Second-to-die ILIT mechanics, the §2042 inclusion trap, term-vs-permanent for the SNT funding role, beneficiary audits on every retirement account, and the IRC §213(d) medical-deduction walk (with $35K worked example).

PART IV

Lifecycle Planning

Birth through parental death: early-intervention years, IEP transitions, age-of-majority guardianship/supported-decision-making, the post-22 services cliff, employment routes, housing options, and the parental-death handoff plan.

PART V

Resources & Letter of Intent

The Letter of Intent reframed warmly. The 30-day starter checklist. The single-parent worked example. How to build the team (attorney, CPA, planner, care coordinator) without commercial directories — using the public-agency rails instead.

Six state-by-state appendices

The guide ends with six appendices that turn the national rules into the agency you actually call in your state. Each appendix lists the named office, the program, and the public URL.

APX AHealth, Disability & Advocacy — state Medicaid, DD agency, P&A organization

APX BEducation & Employment — state DOE special-education office, voc-rehab, employment-first contacts

APX CParent Training & Information (PTI) & CPRC — the family-facing federal-funded center in every state

APX DAT Act — the state assistive-technology program (device demos, loans, reuse)

APX EStatutory & Case-Law Citations — the federal + state legal scaffolding behind the planning

APX FTitle V CYSHCN — the state Children & Youth with Special Health Care Needs program

Plus the front-matter that families use most: a complete index for cross-reference, a 30-day starter checklist sized for a family who just received a diagnosis, and a worked single-parent example showing how the architecture changes when there’s only one income and one decision-maker.

Four free companion tools — the math, on your numbers

The guide walks the architecture. The four calculators below run the actual math on the family’s actual numbers. All four are free, all four are public, and all four show every line of the math — no black box, no email gate.

The Special Needs Family toolkit

Built as the interactive companion to the guide. Use each tool while you read the part of the reference it pairs with — or use any one of them on its own.

SNT Funding Calculator ABLE-vs-SNT Layering Tool Medicaid Cliff Calculator Medical Deduction Estimator (§213(d))

SNT Funding sizes the third-party trust against life expectancy. ABLE-vs-SNT shows when each is the right vehicle (and when both). Medicaid Cliff shows what happens to SSI / Medicaid if an inheritance lands — and the d(4)(A) restructuring path if it already has. §213(d) shows how much of the family’s real medical spend is deductible (specialized schooling, caregiver wages, home modifications) above the 7.5% AGI floor.

About the author

Philip A. Baratelli, CPA, MBA — Founder, Baratelli Institute. Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

Phil spent thirty-five years as CFO, controller, and treasurer to public and private companies (NYSE Closing Bell, Armor Holdings, 2003), then founded the Baratelli Institute to mentor at scale — the practitioner-grade guides and free public tools he’d hand to a family if they were sitting across the desk. The Special Needs Family Financial Planning guide is the longest free public reference the Institute publishes. It exists because the families who need it most are usually the ones too tired to pay for it, and the people in their corner deserve a reference written for the work rather than the brochure.

The guide is companion material to Estate Planning Decoded (Chapters 16-17, Special Needs Architecture and Benefit Preservation) and pairs with the four free calculators above. Nothing in it replaces an attorney admitted in your state — but it makes the conversation with that attorney faster, cheaper, and better-aimed.

The Institute works together — free tools, guide, reference. A total solution for the family doing this work.

The four calculators run the math on your numbers. The 110-page reference walks the architecture. The state-by-state appendices route you to the named office in your state. Every piece is free, public, and built to interoperate with the others. No email gate. No upsell. No funnel.

If you want the deeper estate-planning context, the trust mechanics map to Estate Planning Decoded Chapters 16-17, and the trustee-execution side maps to Trust Administration. Both are paid practitioner references — this guide stands on its own.

↓ Download the 110-page guide (free PDF)