THE BARATELLI INSTITUTE · Mentoring at Scale
BARATELLI INSTITUTE · FOR FAMILIES WITH SPECIAL-NEEDS CHILDREN

How much does the Special Needs Trust need to fund a lifetime of care?

The single hardest question every special-needs family faces: how big does the SNT have to be today, so that after parents are gone, the child has support for their remaining life expectancy? This tool runs the present-value math on housing, medical-not-covered-by-Medicaid, recreation, supplies, and future independence supports — then shows the funding gap in dollars and percent, with three return-and-inflation scenarios side-by-side.

Required principal
Today's dollars
Year-by-year
Cashflow waterfall
3 scenarios
Conservative / Base / Aggressive
Funding gap
In $ and %
STAGE 1 OF 4

Child and annual cost of care

Start with the child's age and the lifetime horizon. Annual cost of care is the total amount needed each year above what Medicaid, SSI, schools, and other public-benefit programs already cover.

Drives the funding horizon. The tool plans from today through the child's expected end of life.
Default 75. Modern care has dramatically improved life expectancy for many conditions; ask the care team for a realistic estimate.
Annual cost of care today (in current dollars)
$
Group home, supported apartment, or family-provided housing — the SNT’s share above Medicaid. Direct SSI in-kind support reduction may apply; coordinate with attorney.
$
Dental, vision, specialists outside Medicaid network, alternative therapies, supplements, OT/PT extras.
$
Community programs, day trips, family vacations, religious community, the things that make a life rather than just survival.
$
Adaptive equipment, communication devices, clothing differential, household consumables not covered.
$
Personal-care attendant, job coach, transportation, services that scale as the child ages into adulthood. Set higher if anticipating supported-living settings.
$
Catch-all for anything else the SNT will need to pay for.
Read first. This is an education tool, not legal or financial advice. The actual SNT amount depends on Medicaid mix, Florida iBudget waiver participation, ABLE coordination, and the trust’s investment-policy statement. Use the output to walk into a Florida special-needs attorney meeting prepared — not to skip it.
STAGE 2 OF 4

Trust assumptions — inflation and return

Two assumptions drive the result more than anything else. We compute three scenarios automatically using your Base inputs.

%
Medical and care-services inflation runs hotter than headline CPI. 3.5% is a conservative long-term blend; some practitioners use 4-5%.
%
Conservative blended return for a properly invested trust. SNTs are typically held in moderate-allocation portfolios; 5% nominal is realistic and prudent.
The tool computes three scenarios automatically: Conservative (lower return, higher inflation), Base (your inputs), and Aggressive (higher return, lower inflation). The range gives an honest picture of how much the answer depends on assumptions.
STAGE 3 OF 4

Existing trust funding sources

What’s already in place or coming, so we can show the funding gap honestly.

$
Current balance in the third-party SNT (and/or first-party SNT, if any). Enter zero if not yet funded.
$
Annual contributions from parents and grandparents to the SNT while parents are alive. The 2026 gift-tax exclusion is $19,000 per donor per beneficiary; SNT can receive from multiple donors.
$
Lump-sum death benefit assumed to land in the SNT at the year of parental death. Best practice: name the third-party SNT (not the child) as beneficiary.
Age at which annual contributions stop and the insurance payout lands. Default 80; use a sensible midpoint or worst-case for planning.
Used to compute how many years of annual gifts arrive before the insurance payout. If two parents, use the younger one for a conservative horizon.
STAGE 4 OF 4

Results — required principal, gap, waterfall

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