Some Planning Decisions Cannot Wait
New Orleans families are thoughtful people. You plan for Mardi Gras. You plan for hurricane season. You make sure the people you love are taken care of. But when a family member has a disability — a child with autism, a sibling with cerebral palsy, an adult family member with an intellectual disability — the planning that’s required is in a different category entirely.
It’s not just about what happens now. It’s about what happens in ten years, in twenty years, after you are gone. It’s about making sure that the support your loved one depends on today, like the Medicaid that covers their car or the SSI that helps with daily expenses, is still in place when you are no longer here to manage it.
At Legacy Estate & Elder Law, we help New Orleans families build the legal structures that make that kind of long-term security real. We are members of the Academy of Special Needs Planners. This is specialized work that requires specialized knowledge, and we bring both to every family we serve.
The Problem With Good Intentions
It happens more often than you would expect. A grandparent in Metairie updates their will and leaves money directly to a grandchild with a disability, genuinely trying to help. A parent names their child with Down syndrome as a direct beneficiary of their life insurance policy. A personal injury settlement comes in and goes straight to the person with the disability.
Every one of those situations, if not handled correctly, can trigger the loss of SSI, Medicaid, or both. And Medicaid in particular may be covering services worth far more than the inheritance: residential support, behavioral therapy, medical care, daily assistance, services that would be nearly impossible to replace privately.
This is not a technicality. It is the central reason special needs planning exists. With the right legal structures in place, you can provide for your loved one financially without disrupting the benefits foundation that keeps their life stable.
Special Needs Planning Services We Provide to New Orleans Families
Third-Party Special Needs Trusts
A third-party special needs trust holds assets contributed by family members — parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles — and uses those assets to supplement the government benefits your loved one receives, not replace them. The trustee can make distributions for things that improve quality of life: technology, travel, entertainment, education, specialized therapy, transportation, personal needs, and more. None of these distributions affect SSI or Medicaid eligibility when the trust is properly structured.
Third-party trusts have two features that make them especially powerful. First, there is no Medicaid payback requirement. When the beneficiary passes away, whatever remains in the trust goes to the family members or causes you designate, not to the state. Second, any family member can contribute to the trust, which means the entire extended family can participate in providing for your loved one without anyone making direct gifts that would cost them their benefits.
New Orleans has a strong tradition of extended family involvement in the care of family members with disabilities. A third-party special needs trust is the legal structure that lets that tradition continue safely across generations.
First-Party Special Needs Trusts
When a person with a disability already has assets in their own name, perhaps from a personal injury settlement, a direct inheritance that has already been received, or accumulated savings, a first-party special needs trust can reorganize those assets in a way that restores or preserves benefit eligibility.
First-party trusts require a Medicaid payback provision: at the beneficiary’s death, remaining funds must first reimburse Louisiana Medicaid for benefits paid during the beneficiary’s lifetime. What remains after that payback passes according to the trust terms.
Despite the payback requirement, a first-party trust is almost always the right move when a person with a disability has countable assets that are putting their benefits at risk. The trust preserves Medicaid, extends the life of those assets, and allows a trustee to use them in ways that genuinely benefit the person throughout their lifetime.
ABLE Accounts
Achieving a Better Life Experience accounts (ABLE accounts) are tax-advantaged savings accounts for individuals whose disability began before age 26. Louisiana residents can participate in any state’s ABLE program. Contributions grow tax-free when used for qualified disability expenses.
The key feature is that ABLE account balances up to $100,000 do not affect SSI eligibility. Amounts above that threshold will temporarily suspend SSI benefits, not terminate them, and ABLE balances do not affect Medicaid at all.
ABLE accounts work especially well for smaller amounts, for beneficiaries who have the capacity to manage their own finances, and for day-to-day flexibility. Qualified expenses are broad: housing, transportation, education, employment support, assistive technology, health care, and more. Many New Orleans families use an ABLE account alongside a special needs trust — the trust for larger planning and long-term security, the ABLE account for more routine flexibility.
Continuing Tutorship
Louisiana has a specific legal mechanism that allows parents to maintain legal decision-making authority for an adult child with a disability after that child turns 18. This mechanism is called continuing tutorship. In most states this is called guardianship of an adult child. But Louisiana uses its own terminology, as it does throughout its civil law system.
This matters for New Orleans families because once a child turns 18, parental authority ends automatically under Louisiana law — even for children who cannot make their own decisions. Without continuing tutorship, parents may find themselves unable to access medical records, manage benefit payments, or make the day-to-day health and financial decisions their child has always depended on them to make.
The petition must be filed before the child turns 18 or within a limited window afterward. Missing that window creates a more complicated path. We help New Orleans families file continuing tutorship petitions in Civil District Court for Orleans Parish and throughout the metro area’s parish courts, and we help families think through whether full continuing tutorship — or a more limited legal arrangement — is the right fit for their child’s particular situation and level of capacity.
Letter of Intent
A letter of intent does not carry the legal weight of a trust or a court order. But among all the documents we help families create, it may be the one that does the most to protect your loved one’s quality of life.
It tells future caregivers everything the legal documents cannot: how your loved one communicates, what their daily routine looks like, what they love and what upsets them, their full medical history, the services and supports that work for them, and your vision for the kind of life you want them to have. In New Orleans, where family relationships and community connections are so central to how care actually works, a well-written letter of intent can be the bridge between the legal plan you build and the people who will carry it out.
We help families draft letters of intent as part of every comprehensive special needs planning engagement. We consider it an essential part of the plan.
Making Sure the Whole Family’s Plan Points in the Same Direction
One of the most common and most avoidable mistakes in special needs planning is a failure of coordination. A parent builds a carefully drafted special needs trust and then a grandparent leaves a direct gift in their will that bypasses the trust entirely and costs the grandchild their benefits.
Coordination is part of what we do. When we build a special needs plan for a New Orleans family, we make sure:
- The family’s wills and beneficiary designations direct assets to the trust, not to the person with the disability directly
- Extended family members know the trust exists and how to use it when making gifts or updating their own estate plans
- The plan addresses what happens if the beneficiary predeceases the parents
- Siblings and other family members are treated thoughtfully, which sometimes means differently, with clear reasoning they can understand
- The trustee understands their role and has clear guidance for how the trust should be administered
Special needs planning is not a single document. It is a system. We help New Orleans families build the whole system.
Common Questions New Orleans Families Ask About Special Needs Planning
Can any attorney draft a special needs trust?
Technically, yes. Practically, this is specialized work that requires specific knowledge of federal benefit program rules, Louisiana trust law, and the intersection between the two. A trust that is not drafted correctly can fail to protect benefits , but that failure may not be discovered until it is too late to fix it. We are members of the Academy of Special Needs Planners specifically because of the specialized expertise this work requires.
What can a special needs trust pay for?
A special needs trust can pay for almost anything that enhances your loved one’s quality of life and is not already covered by government benefits. This includes technology, travel and vacations, entertainment, education and training, specialized therapies not covered by Medicaid, clothing, personal care items, transportation, and more. The trustee should avoid using trust funds to pay for food and shelter in most cases, as those distributions can reduce SSI benefits. We help trustees understand these rules from the beginning.
What happens to the trust when my child passes away?
For a third-party trust, you name successor beneficiaries so that remaining funds pass to other family members or charitable organizations you designate, with no Medicaid payback required. For a first-party trust, remaining funds must first reimburse Louisiana Medicaid for benefits paid during the beneficiary’s lifetime; after payback, the remainder passes according to the trust terms.
How does an ABLE account interact with a special needs trust?
They work well together. A special needs trust is better suited for larger amounts, long-term planning, and complex situations. An ABLE account works well for smaller, more accessible savings that the beneficiary may want to manage themselves. Having both allows a family to cover different needs with the right tool for each.
Who We Serve in the New Orleans Area
Our New Orleans office is at 629 Cherokee Street. In addition to visiting us in person, we see families over Zoom and phone as well. We serve families with special needs loved ones throughout the metro area, including:
- Orleans Parish — all neighborhoods
- Jefferson Parish — Metairie, Kenner, Gretna, Marrero
- St. Tammany Parish — Covington, Mandeville, Slidell
- St. Bernard Parish — Chalmette
- Plaquemines Parish — Belle Chasse
- St. Charles Parish — Luling, Destrehan
We also serve families statewide for complex special needs planning matters and situations that require coordination across multiple areas of Louisiana law.
Why New Orleans Families Choose Legacy Estate & Elder Law
We are members of the Academy of Special Needs Planners, an organization specifically for attorneys who focus on disability planning. That membership reflects a real commitment to the depth of knowledge this work requires.
Our attorneys are board certified in Estate Planning and Administration by the Louisiana Board of Legal Specialization, a credential held by fewer than one percent of Louisiana attorneys. The trust law, benefit coordination, and long-term planning expertise reflected in that certification is exactly what special needs planning demands.
We have nearly 40 years of combined experience. We know the government benefit programs that Louisiana families with disabilities depend on. We know Louisiana’s trust law. And we know that behind every plan we build is a family whose entire relationship with the future depends on getting it right…tell us is that we explain things clearly, we’re easy to reach, and we treat their plan like it matters. That’s how we’ve built our reputation — and how we intend to keep it.