Illuminate, what is a special (supplemental) needs trust? Is it recognized country-wide?

One permissive way of putting assets IN without affecting your SSI benifit is through supplemental needs trusts.
Special needs trusts allow a disabled beneficiary to receive gifts, lawsuit settlements, or other funds without having to lose the eligibility for certain government programs like SSI.
The funds held in the trust will not be considered to belong to the beneficiary, thus, will not affect its eligibility for any government benefits received or entitled to received.

Good lights, Thank You.
If I may add, special needs trusts are there not to provide basic support, but to pay for things like medical or dental expenses, education beyond the necessities of life.
In addition, depending on the program, the disabled individual can create the trust himself.
Termed as self-settled trusts, that are established by individuals who become disabled because of an accident and later receive the proceeds of the injury settlement.

When the supplemental needs trust found in someone's will is certain to be highly inappropriate and literally harmful rather than helpful to a beneficiary whose mental disability has been seriously misjudged, is there any way in which the trust can be prevented from being set up, dissolved, or dissolved in effect through asset depletion in such a way that the beneficiary would immediately receive all of the assets of the trust outright (as the wording of the will clearly indicates would have happened if his mental condition had not been severely misjudged), when there are no legal grounds for challenging the will as a whole, and the trust not only contains no explicit provisions for its dissolution if it should prove to be irrelevant, but also cannot be dissolved with the consent of all of the beneficiaries since the beneficiaries of the trust who will receive what remains of its assets when the primary dies (the remaindermen) cannot be identified at this time?

Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html. You can certainly try to speak to a lawyer to determine what legal options may be available. In the meantime, you may be able to learn more on your own. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.

With respect to the availability of Supplemental Needs Trusts in other states, this is a particular type of trust available in all states because it has its origin in Federal law, where it is instead called a "Special Needs Trust" (as it is also called in many states other than NY). This type of trust was developed in conjunction with the Social Security Administration to be a way in which assets could be held for someone who is chronically and severely disabled without having these assets be considered to comprise assets of the beneficiary per se, so that they will not be relevant to the SSA's determination of whether the beneficiary is in effect poor enough to be eligible for SSI and Medicaid benefits. The assets of a Supplemental Needs Trust can only be distributed by the Trustee to cover the cost of things other than the basic subsistence costs (i.e., the cost of basic food, clothes, and housing) which SSI benefits are intended to cover. (Actually, it is possible for assets of the trust to be spent on something belonging to one of these three categories, but for each category where this happens, this will result in the loss of 1/3 of the SSI benefits to which the beneficiary would otherwise have been entitled.)

I have searched this site, the Social Security Administration site, and the web in general quite extensively to no avail for information concerning how it may be possible for me to have the seriously harmful and abusive Supplemental Needs Trust which is to hold my share of my mother's residuary estate dissolved judicially, over the not unlikely objections of the other members of my family, who have continually failed to make a reasonable effort to ascertain the literal accuracy of what I have repeatedly tried to tell them regarding (a) the temporary nature of my current disability, (b) the fact that my clinical depression has not impaired my mental competence to think in a rational and responsible manner in any way whatsoever, and (c) the fact that I myself am the only person who is in a position to be able to competently manage these assets in my best interests. This certainly does not, for example, include using these assets in a way which will promote the worsening of my depression and my eligibility for SSI and Medicaid benefits, but in a way which I am competent to determine is likely to result in the resolution of my depression, my return to work, and my IN-eligibility for SSI and Medicaid benefits.

I am sorry, I am not sure what you are asking.

Thanks very much for responding. I'll try to see if I can explain a bit better what it is that I am asking.

Twenty years ago, all of the members of my family were well aware of the fact that I was receiving medical treatment for the unipolar clinical depression without psychotic symptoms which had been formally diagnosed by the psychiatrist I was seeing at that time as my only mental condition. They would have continued to be aware of the fact that I have continued to have exactly the same mental condition ever since then if they had taken care either to respect what they had originally known or made a reasonable effort to acquire appropriate professional confirmation of any changes in my mental condition which they may have suspected had occurred, since I have continuously been receiving medical treatment ever since then for this same condition (and only this). Unfortunately, family members unwittingly allowed themselves to acquire increasingly inaccurate beliefs regarding the nature of my mental condition over the course of many years, responsible for their having unwittingly treated me increasingly inappropriately and harmfully. Finally, early in 2004, they began treating me seriously abusively as if I were suffering from such severe mental impairment and psychoses (which have never in fact existed) that this warranted their simply ignoring anything I said to them which seemed inaccurate at first glance or likely to discomfit them in some way.

Unfortunately, my mother directed in her will that my share of her residuary estate (of which she left an equal share to each of her children) was to be held by a Supplemental Needs Trust rather than distributed to me outright as was the case with respect to each of my siblings. I am extremely interested in finding a way in which I can succeed in forcing the dissolution of this trust, which in effect is nothing more than a legal formalization of family members' very harmful and abusive mistreatment of me for many years. That is, this trust is in effect simply a legal instrument which makes it possible for my mother to continue to seriously mistreat me long after her death by proxy, comprised by an equally misguided family member acting as Trustee.

Unfortunately, every time I have talked to a lawyer so far about the possibility of having this trust judicially dissolved, the response I have always gotten is that my mother was legally entitled to leave her money to whomever she wished in whatever way she liked, and that if I didn't want to deal with the Supplemental Needs Trust set up by the probate of her will I should simply ignore it. I find this a rather poor solution, however, since it was clearly my mother's intention to make the assets in question more useful to me rather than less useful by directing that they be held by this trust--she simply did not know that such a trust would not in actuality be helpful to me because of the fact that she had greatly misunderstood the nature of my circumstances.

Having direct control over the assets in question would make it possible for me to make use of them in ways which can be expected to substantially promote the resolution of my depression and my return to work. And it is really not an option for me to interact with the trustee of this trust in order to request distributions of the assets it holds. The members of my family continually violated my trust and control in 2004 very severely, intimately and disorientingly. Consequently, my having to beg a family member acting as Trustee to agree that one or another distribution of the assets in question would be in my best interests would be much like requiring someone who had been raped by a therapist to see exactly the same therapist afterwards for treatment of the resulting post-traumatic stress disorder!

There are apparently extremely few precedents involving a request by the beneficiary of a Supplemental Needs Trust to have the trust judicially dissolved on the ground that it is irrelevant to his actual circumstances. In fact, a lawyer who spent several hours looking for such precedents told me he could find only one, either positive or negative in nature, although this involved a request which was in fact successful. However, given how important it is to me not to let the members of my family continue to treat me abusively, I would like to have more to back up the reasonableness of my request for a judicial dissolution of this trust than just this one precedent.

hatlessacorn
(G R Coulter)

This seems very complicated. I would suggest that you speak with an attorney who can go over everything with you and give you some direction. Have you browsed through the information in LawInfo's Free Legal Resource Center to learn more about your issue yet? See: http://www.lawinfo.com/consumer.html. Search the "Free Legal Resources" tab, or browse the Consumer Resources. Good luck.