From "What if?" to "Here's how." Every day, we introduce families to the security of our special needs trust program.
Learn About Setting Up a Trust
Special Needs Trust
Special Needs Trust Program
Protect your child’s future
Our Special Needs Trust exists to assist people with disabilities and their families in saving money for the future without losing public benefits, like Medicaid and Social Security that have strict asset caps. The funds invested in the trust will be used to provide security, support, services, and medical care or other supplemental needs not covered by benefits or insurance.
What Do We Do? We work with families across Virginia, Maryland and D.C. to plan and safeguard the future for people with disabilities.
We Plan Trusts
We're there for our trust clients. We listen, support and guide them every day.
Learn How to Use Money from a Trust
We Manage Trusts
Our diverse team of trust experts speak various languages to help our families and individuals, including ASL, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, and Spanish (basic).
Learn About our Trust Team
We Are Here For You
Come to us for webinars, question-and-answer roundtables, online videos, downloadable resources and referrals to knowledgeable experts.
Build Your Knowledge
We Teach and Train
MORE ABOUT OUR PROGRAM
Meet your Trust Services team
We understand that each person who has a trust account with us has unique needs and deserves personalized attention and care. Our team is dedicated to making sure you feel heard and that your needs are addressed with compassion.
The Arc of Northern Virginia is a known and trusted organization with a 60 plus-year history of helping people with disabilities. We know the trust laws and governmental requirements, and how to best serve the needs of persons with disabilities without jeopardizing benefits.
Special Needs Trusts basics
People who receive government benefits, including SSI, SSDI, and Medicaid, are at risk of losing those benefits if their financial resources exceed government established resource/asset limits. A special needs trust (SNT) protects benefit eligibility and allows people to save for the future and use those savings to pay for the extras in life.
Setting up Special Needs Trusts
The prospect of establishing and funding a special needs trust can seem daunting, but it is an important step in managing care for a family member with a disability.
The enrollment process for a first-party or a third-party trust is similar, but extra steps may be needed if a beneficiary is funding his or her own trust and the person does not have capacity to enter into a legal agreement.
Our team of caring, compassionate experts will help you with every step along the way.
Using the money in your Special Needs Trust
A special needs trust can be used to buy things that make the beneficiary’s life better. It can be used for clothing and luggage. It can be used for vacations and vehicles. It’s for education, medical needs, entertainment, subscriptions, sports, health clubs and much more.
But certain government rules may restrict what special needs trust money can be used for. The money in a special needs trust is meant to supplement benefits and add enjoyment to the beneficiary’s life.
The Arc of Northern Virginia works with families and individuals to comply with government rules, while minding the budget and other circumstances of each client.
Security and Reliability are our Focus
What are advantages of The Arc of Northern Virginia’s trust program?
Security and Reliability are our Focus
What are advantages of The Arc of Northern Virginia’s trust program?
Having a friend or relative as trustee can work well. But not always. A person chosen as trustee could move, die or simply decide it's too much work. And it is a lot of work. With our partner, Key Bank, you know the Trustee is stable and dependable.
The people at The Arc of Northern Virginia may change, but the mission of The Arc will not. It will always be an experienced trust manager, a reliable source of information, and a passionate advocate for people with disabilities.
Being a trustee means staying up to date with regulations. It could mean sending reports to government agencies. It means monitoring monthly income. It's a complicated role. And government benefits are at stake every month.
Our trust staff handles all of that. They understand and work with these requirements every day. They monitor changes in laws and regulations. Our team is very good at it because they do it all the time.
People with disabilities may get government benefits if they have very little income and savings. It's fair to say that most banks don't handle trusts for people with low incomes. As a result, most banks are not experts at working with those agencies. Our staff are experts. It's what we do every day.
Most corporations won't set up a trust with less than $350,000. We have a $10.00 minimum and no maximum. With our special needs trust, there's no need to fund the trust right away.
At The Arc of Northern Virginia we are here to help. Together we complete the trust documents. We remind you to follow through with updating and changing other legal documents and beneficiary designations. Each step of the way we are here to answer your questions. Once your document is complete and your questions are answered we keep in touch. We are here for you.
Testimonials
Expressions of gratitude from those we’ve helped
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Your support makes our work possible
As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, The Arc of Northern Virginia relies on private support from individuals, corporations, organizations, and foundations to fund our efforts. Your generous donations help make it possible for us to provide programs, services, and advocacy so that people with IDD can live “A Life Like Yours.”
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