L. Mark Russell

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  • Home
  • About
  • "Map Out a Plan" Meeting
  • SMART Special Needs Trust
  • Contact
  • PEOPLEX6R PLANNING
  • Q and A: SNTs
  • Planning for the Future

​​You will feel great when you have completed all your legal planning
​to help give your child with a disability a safe and happy future.

 You will feel great when you have all the legal documents in place to protect you and your entire family.
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Providing future security for your child with a disability and your family is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle: All the legal pieces (will, trusts, guardianship issues, powers of attorney, and so forth) have to fit together.

Parents often contact me because they want me to draft a special needs trust for their child with a disability so 
  • their child will remain eligible for government benefits;
  • someone they trust can manage their child’s future inheritance;
  • friends and relatives can make gifts to the trust now.
The special needs trust is the most important legal tool to protect your child with a disability. But as important as it is, it is only one piece of your estate planning puzzle. You need other documents to ensure you and your family will be protected. 
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Other documents
​that protect your family:


1. Living Trust

In addition to the special needs trust you may need a living trust. A living trust has three primary benefits: 1) Any asset in the living trust avoids probate when you die; and 2)  If you were to become incapacitated, the successor trustee can manage the assets in the trust for you and your family; and 3) You can easily name the living trust as a beneficiary on your financial accounts. 

2. Power of attorney for healthcare

Who do you want to make your health care decisions if you are unable to make them yourself?  The person you name will also be responsible for end-of-life decisions if you are unable to make your own healthcare decisions.

If your child with a disability is over age 18 and does not have a guardian responsible for healthcare decisions, then your child will need a power of attorney for healthcare.

3. Power of attorney for property

The power of attorney for property gives the power to someone to sign your name to transact business for you.  For example, if you were incapacitated, your agent can sign your name to file your income taxes, or sell your car if you can no longer drive, or make a decision about your IRA, or sign a severance contract, or make a retirement plan election. Or, imagine you’re incapacitated. Your spouse needs to sell the home to downsize into a less expensive condo. If your home is held jointly, your spouse needs to be able to legally sign your name.

If your child with a disability is over age 18 and you are not the guardian for your child, your child should sign a power of attorney for property so you can represent your child. Your child will also sign a power of attorney for education.


4. HIPPA authorization

This permits the people you trust to be able to receive confidential medical information about you. For example, if you become incapacitated and your successor trustee needs to take over to manage the assets in your trust, the financial institutions will often require your successor trustee to provide them with a letter from your doctor stating that you are no longer able to manage your financial affairs. Without this HIPPA authorization, the doctor cannot legally release your confidential medical information to the successor trustee to give to the financial institutions.

5. Pour-over will

Even with a living trust, you’ll still have what’s called a “pour-over” will that acts as a backstop to your living trust. For example, let’s say die with a $100 bill in your pocket. The legal issue is “Who owns the $100?”  Your will essentially says “pour” any money that you own individually (without a beneficiary designation or as a joint owner) into your living trust. This way, no assets will accidentally be distributed outright to your child with a disability. 

 It’s also in your will that you name who you want to be the guardian for your children.

6. You may need other documents to protect your family:

• Trusts for your other children,
• Estate tax reduction sub-trusts or an irrevocable life insurance trust,
• Short-term Guardian Designation to legally transfer guardianship power if you go
on a vacation without your child with a disability, need to stay overnight at a hospital, etc.
• Living Will,
• Personal and tangible property memo,
• Tangible property assignment to your trust,
• If you do not become guardian over your adult child with a disability, your adult child with a disability, if mentally
​capable, should have powers of attorney for health care, property, education and a separate HIPPA release.
• Standby Guardian Declaration naming successor guardians,
• Declaration for Mental Health Treatment.

Hi:

At birth, my brother Jon did not get enough oxygen causing various neurological issues, including an intellectual disability and mental illness. Much later, in 1963, Jon got into trouble in our neighborhood when he was an adolescent.  Although I won’t go into all the details,  let’s just say Jon did something wrong, but he didn’t understand what he was doing, and the neighbor didn’t understand Jon’s illness. After all, in terms of understanding cognitive and mental health issues, 1963 was essentially the “dark ages.” 

The upset neighbor filed a legal complaint forcing  Jon into the ”juvenile  justice system.”  The final result was Jon was committed and placed in Elgin State Hospital. At the time, Jon was 15, my other brother, Dave, was 12, and I was 9. 

Every Sunday after church, my parents, Dave, and I  piled into our green Buick Skylark, and Dad drove a couple of hours to the state hospital. I’ll never forget one Sunday. That early afternoon Dad drove up to the hospital’s big, imposing wrought iron black gates.  To me, the place felt dark and foreboding. As we drove through the open gates, I peered out my window noticing the bars on all the hospital windows. 

My dad exited the car and went inside to check Jon out for the afternoon. Jon got into the back seat with Dave and me when they returned.  Jon’s gray uniform was so filthy it had an acidic stench that made my eyes water. (Years later, I asked my brother Dave if he remembered that smell, and he said he sure did.)

Dad drove to a nearby park. Set amongst massive old trees were picnic tables and barbecue grills. For lunch, Dad grilled hotdogs. 

 I don’t know why that particular Sunday afternoon has lodged in my memory since we did the same thing the other Sunday afternoons. Anyway, I remember standing about 30 or 40 feet from the grill under a tall tree— just looking at my family, feeling grateful that my parents were acting like everything was “normal” – however, I knew it wasn’t. 


​
Much later in life, I learned that my parents were frantically searching for a residential program for Jon. In those days, few community settings existed in Illinois. I can’t recall how long it took, but eventually, my parents found a place and moved Jon to a private out-of-state program in Texas.  And much later, Jon eventually moved back home. 

Fast forward in time to when I was in law school. I was near the top of my class, and almost everyone’s goal was to join a prestigious law firm. However, my future trajectory changed during my second year in law school.  My dad asked me to be a board member of a nonprofit organization he co-founded.  

After Dad retired, he wanted to “give back” to the community. Dad was worried about Jon’s future, so he co-founded one of the first non-profit organizations in the country trying to help parents solve a vexing problem:  “What will happen to my child with a disability after I die?”  The nonprofit organization acted as an advocate, corporate guardian, or trustee for people with disabilities after their parents died.

My experience working beside my father on that board of directors changed my career path. After I graduated from law school, instead of joining some big firm,  I opened my firm; I wanted to help parents give their children with a disability a safe future. 

Two years later, in 1983, I wrote the first book in the country about estate planning for parents with a child with a disability.

Forty years and hundreds of clients later —  I’m still doing the same thing: Helping parents protect their child with a disability. 

Best wishes, 

Mark



Mark Russell

Other involvements

  • Legal Counsel for Estate Planning for Persons with Disabilities (EPPD).
  • Executive Director of the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, currently called Brain and Behavior Research Foundation that since 1987 has awarded more than 380 million to fund more than 5,500 grants to 4,500 scientists around the world.
  • U.S. Representative to the International League on Disabilities – legal rights committee.
  • Founding board member of PACT, one of the first private charitable advocacy, guardianship, and trust organizations in the country.
  • I introduced the concept of the Letter of Intent and in 1990 created a Letter of Intent template still used by parents across the country. 
  • Co-author of Planning for the Future: Give Your Child With a Disability the Gift of a Safe and Happy Life (7 later editions and currently out of print).
  • I have spoken about special needs future and legal planning on public TV, to national, state, and local organizations in the disability field, and to parent and school groups. 
  • A wide variety of publications have praised my books including the New York Times, Estate Planning Magazine, Estates, Gifts & Trusts Journal, and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Magazine.
  • ​Publisher and chief editor of New Ways Magazine, a national publication in the disability field (no longer in print).
  • B.A. Northwestern University, Kent Law School (Magna Cum Laude. American Jurisprudence Awards in Property Law and Federal Civil Procedure. Baker and McKenzie academic scholarship.)

I enjoy

every second with family and friends, hiking, sailing, reading, biochemistry, global macroeconomics, geopolitics, trail biking, skiing, skating, roller blading, libraries, GPS, manual-shift cars, Triumph motorcycles (it"s been a long time since I've owned one), German Shepherd dogs, cats, the Blackhawks!!, Mariott Lincolnshire Theatre, history, historical fiction, and narrative nonfiction books by authors like Steven Pressfield, Daniel James Brown, Stefan Zweig, Jack Fairweather, Gregory Freeman, Peter Zeihan,Thucydides, and many others, mystery and thriller novels by authors such as Jason Mathews, Jack Higgins, Attica Locke, David Baldacci, Dick Francis, C.J. Box, Ava Gardner, and many others,  Apple products, listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme, Annie Lennox, Alicia Keys, Norah Jones, George Straight, Richie Havens, Don Henley, Stevie Nicks, countless movies like Great Escape, Dirty Dozen, Guns of Navarone, Bullitt, To Have and Have Not, African Queen, Roman Holiday, It Happened One Night, Woman of the Year,  Silverado, A Knights Tale, any movie with dancing in it, TV shows like Homeland, Foyle's War, Prime Suspect, Shetland, 24, Yellowstone, Jack Irish, the Voice, DCI Banks, Line of Duty, So You Think You Can Dance, British platforms AcornTV and Britbox, and lots of other stuff big and small like people with "geeky" pun-filled humor, martial arts, outdoor photography, The Art Institute, The Field Museum, western Michigan, New England states, Upstate NewYork, Atlantic Ocean, Devil's Lake, Sanibel and Captiva Islands, most any beach. A few of my favorite actors: Laura Fraser, Helen Mirren, Bel Powley, Eve Myles, Claire Danes, Angeline Ball, Piper Perabo, Stana Katic, Mareille Enos, Marta Dusseldorp, Sarah Shahi, Archie Panjabi, Martin Compston,​ Joel Kinnaman, Russell Crowe, Liam Neeson, Gene Hackman, Lennie James, Mark Wahlberg, Morgan Freeman, Wendel Pierce, Douglas Henshall, Guy Pearce...

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Office: 401 E. Prospect Ave., Suite 106, Mt. Prospect, IL 60056
Phone: (847) 262-3120
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