The task of providing long-term fund management for the benefit of an individual with a disability can be a challenging one. The Berkshire County Arc Family Special Needs Pooled Trust exists to help families deal with the specialized financial and legal complications raised by this situation. The hardship of disability falls on families as well as the individual with a disability. A family faces the challenge of providing care throughout a lifetime, and one of those challenges is providing appropriate financial support in a manner that does not compromise access to public benefits.It is not simply a question of money. Persons with disabilities and their families face special financial management challenges. In addition to the typical challenges inherent in all financial administration, there are specialized trust administration issues raised by the complex nature of public benefits for which a person with a disability may be eligible. The complicated nature of financial administration for a person with a disability involves the added cost of dealing with specialized estate planning issues. The Berkshire County Arc Family Special Needs Pooled Trust can help with this problem.

Berkshire County Arc has designed an efficient intake process using a Master Trust document, an Intake Questionnaire and a sub-account Joinder Agreement so that we can work easily and efficiently with you and your personal estate-planning attorney to create a special needs trust. This is cost effective, because there is no need to draft a whole new trust in order to deal with the specialized disability estate planning issues.

Since the Third Party Pooled Trust is established by using assets belonging to someone other than the person with a disability, it is not a Medicaid pay back trust. With a third party trust, when the disabled trust member passes away, the assets may be paid to anyone the creator of the trust desires. However, donors can voluntarily agree to leave a percentage of those remaining funds to Berkshire County Arc.