Webinar Transcript (11/25/2025): Manage "ParkBridge FALL Webinar# 6: “Legal Protections for Vulnerable Young Adults: Promoting Independence While Providing Safeguards”
Host: Jonathan I. Shenkman, President & Chief Investment Officer of ParkBridge Wealth Management (Contact: jonathan@parkbridgewealth.com)
Presenter: Amy C. O’Hara, Esq., CELA, Partner, Littman Krooks LLP (Contact: aohara@littmankrooks.com)
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Jonathan Shenkman: Good morning, and welcome to the Park Bridge Wealth Management Fall Webinar Series. This program is entitled, Legal Protections for Vulnerable Young Adults, Promoting Independence While Providing Safeguards. As always, my name is Jonathan Shankman, I'm the President and Chief Investment Officer of Park Bridge Wealth Management.
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Jonathan Shenkman: In that role, I serve in a fiduciary capacity to help my clients achieve their financial objectives.
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Jonathan Shenkman: The goal of my programs is to bring professionals together to help them better serve their clients. This is done by educating attendees on the latest topics in wealth planning, and by encouraging collaboration between a client's attorney, CPA, and financial advisor where appropriate.
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Jonathan Shenkman: My practice focuses on working with high net worth families, businesses, and not-for-profits. I manage individual investment portfolios, trust accounts, corporate retirement plans, and endowments.
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Jonathan Shenkman: to help my clients achieve their financial goals. In addition to the 20 or so events that I run every year, I also do a fair amount of writing on the topics of investing and financial planning, and you can read my work in a variety of periodicals, including Barron, CNBC, Forbes, Kiplinger, The Wall Street Journal, and Trust and Estates Magazine, to name just a few.
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Jonathan Shenkman: You can see all my work on my website at parkbridgewealth.com forward slash articles, or by following me on social media at Jonathan on Money. Additionally, you can check out my weekly podcast, which is also called Jonathan on Money, and you can listen to that on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Today, we're privileged to hear from Amy O'Hara, a partner at Lipman Crooks, based in Westchester, New York.
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Jonathan Shenkman: And Amy focuses her practice on special needs planning, trust and estates, elder law, and personal injury settlement consulting. She's also a sought-out lecturer and frequently speaks to advocacy organizations on the importance of proper planning for families of children with special needs. She regularly publishes articles relating to elder law, estate and special needs planning.
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Jonathan Shenkman: Amy's is certified as an elder law attorney by the National Elder Law Foundation, as a member of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys.
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Jonathan Shenkman: She's past president of the Special Needs Alliance, a national not-for-profit organization dedicated to assisting families with special needs planning. Amy's also the president of the board of directors of Westchester Disabled on the Move, a not-for-profit organization that aims to improve the quality of life and rights for all people with disabilities. And today, Amy's gonna be speaking about legal protections for vulnerable young adults, promoting independence while providing safeguards. And with that introduction.
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Jonathan Shenkman: I'll now turn the program over to Amy.
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Amy O'Hara: Thank you, Jonathan, for having me again. So today I'm going to talk about what seems like a common sense topic, but when we have clients that call us in a panic and are in a very heightened, stressful situation, it's, it's, you know, just good to have these practical guidance
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Amy O'Hara: scenarios, whether we're attorneys or, in the financial industry or accounting industry, just to, help try to, you know, resolve some of the situation. Nothing's ideal, but,
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Amy O'Hara: you know, so I'm hoping that you'll get… get something, you know, out of… out of today. So, let me… let's see… move this, there we go.
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Amy O'Hara: So when an individual turns 18, they become an adult in the eyes of the law. They're, you know, and presumed to have capacity.
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Amy O'Hara: Parents lose the automatic authority to be able to make medical decisions or related matters. You know, when a child goes off to college, for example, and there's a medical emergency, or they end up in an emergency room, the parents think that they could just automatically
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Amy O'Hara: talk to the doctors, and that's not the case. And I'm not necessarily really talking about children that are going off to college in today's presentation, but just to hone in that when a child turns 18, they're an adult, and us as parents lose certain decision-making authority over our children.
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Amy O'Hara: The vulnerable young adults, you'll see I made the acronym VYA. I made that up. It's not anything out in the industry, but just purposes of today's presentation, if you see VYA, I mean Vulnerable young adult.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, they may lack judgment, experience, or functional capacity. Vulnerable young adults with limited judgment and dependency on caregivers are actually at a higher risk
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Amy O'Hara: Of abuse and neglect and being taken advantage of.
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Amy O'Hara: The protections that are put in place must, you know, extend beyond finances to encompass their physical well-being, their emotional well-being, and psychological. Now, the goal is always to protect their autonomy.
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Amy O'Hara: and their adulthood and their self, right? While implementing certain safeguards to protect them.
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Amy O'Hara: So, when we're spotting individual issues affecting vulnerable young adults, and I'm not in this presentation necessarily talking about individuals with intellectual or developmental disabilities, but it definitely, you know, applies a lot of this to them, especially, you know, young adults who may, have autism, but are higher functioning autism.
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Amy O'Hara: and, or have other emotional, intellectual disabilities.
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Amy O'Hara: That aside, here's some, just, some issues for spotting. Sudden changes in behavior, mood, or social withdrawal. New individuals exerting influence or isolating, the individual from their family.
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Amy O'Hara: unexplained financial activity or loss of funds, missing checks. I see, you know, I have clients come and, you know, although many young adults don't necessarily, know how to write a check. I have two, I have a 21-year-old and a 20-year-old boy, and they have, they have accounts, but I don't think they've ever written a check.
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Amy O'Hara: So, maybe that is something of the past, but we still see it from time to time. Missed medical appointments or deteriorating health, without explanation. Signs of fear, anxiety, reluctance to speak.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, about their issues or their frustrations that are going on. Inconsistency with their stories, their confusions, decline in their hygiene, and like, and there could be a new friend that they have, right? And that increased dependence on that friend for everything in their life.
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Amy O'Hara: And so, when… when clients are faced with their adult, a vulnerable young adult child, and come to me, and they say, well, you know, they'll come, and they're like, I want guardianship, I want to be able to have guardianship.
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Amy O'Hara: Well, guardianship is… is not for most people, and it is… it is… there's a level of incapacity that's needed in order to necessitate a need for guardianship.
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Amy O'Hara: A guardianship is a court-supervised process where you transfer decision-making authority from the individual themself over to the guardian, the court-appointed guardian. The guardianship can be of the person or property, or both.
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Amy O'Hara: In some states, it's referred to as conservatorship. In New York, it's here, we refer to as guardian of the person and property. And it's helpful when the individual is severely impaired and incapacitated.
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Amy O'Hara: It's not necessarily a fit for vulnerable young adults, because they don't necessarily lack that capacity of the requisite level to have the need for the appointment of a guardian.
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Amy O'Hara: It's… there's loss of autonomy in everyday life decisions, and it's costly and often difficult to modify or sometimes terminate, but… but there is an expense there.
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Amy O'Hara: And we only consider guardianship if there's no less restrictive option available.
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Amy O'Hara: for… for that person. And again, just to emphasize, you know, this is a situation where
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Amy O'Hara: Somebody is very incapacitated in order to, to, you know, have the necessity of a guardianship.
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Amy O'Hara: And, you know, and so, you know, I have to tell families that. Or there could be a situation where they come to me because their child has mental health disabilities, and they're not taking their medication, they're not being medication compliant.
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Amy O'Hara: And they think that becoming their child's guardian, they're going to be able to make their child… their adult child, take… be able to force them to take medication.
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Amy O'Hara: That is not the situation. There are special court proceedings under the mental hygiene law in New York, and the sister states would probably have equivalent, where, you can,
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Amy O'Hara: you know, have what's called an AOT order, for medication management, but that doesn't happen in a guardianship. In a guardianship, you can't force someone to be… get medical treatment without certain other protections,
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Amy O'Hara: In… in, for mental health.
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Amy O'Hara: Now… now, sometimes we look at a limited or temporary guardianship, where it's a, you know, court-ordered authority is restricted to specific decisions, whether it's certain medical procedures or… or helping with managing a settlement.
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Amy O'Hara: The… it's appropriate when the capacity of the individual is situational or fluctuating. It's less restrictive than a full… guardianship can expire automatically. So, in New York, we have two major guardianship statutes. We have Article 81 on our mental hygiene law, which is in our Supreme Court, and then we have Article 17A,
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Amy O'Hara: Which is in our surrogate's court, which is our probate court. And our 17A is designed really only, it's statutory only for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and some traumatic brain injury. And it cannot be tailored.
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Amy O'Hara: But we're having situations where we have, high-functioning, adults, with,
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Amy O'Hara: young adults with autism, and in Westchester, for example, I've had… we've had a situation where sometimes they'll actually do a temporary guardianship in 17A, and it'll expire in 2 years or 3 years to give the young adult the ability and the time to have maturity and more education and more training. And so they're doing that from time to time on a very limited
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Amy O'Hara: case-by-case basis, and I'm aware of other counties doing that as well. But our 17A cannot be tailored. We do have the 81, which is more complex and more costly for clients in our Supreme Court, and there is the ability to appoint what's called a PING, a person in need of a guardianship, which is more of a limited guardianship tailored for what those individuals
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Amy O'Hara: But, you know, practically speaking, a lot of times with our vulnerable young adults, guardianship is not appropriate, and certainly not the least restrictive alternative for them. And so, what do we look then? We look at, you know, can they sign, a supported decision-making agreement, a power of attorney, where they delegate financial authority, healthcare proxy to help with medical decision-making and other advanced directions
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Amy O'Hara: So with supported decision making, in practice, this is an agreement, it's a formal, or it can be an informal agreement, that allows
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Amy O'Hara: the vulnerable young adult to choose their supporters, which are trusted individuals to help them with making and communicating certain decisions and understanding them. The supporters are not making the decisions.
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Amy O'Hara: But they're helping support the individual. It's intended to, you know, promote autonomy, with, with the young adult, or not necessarily a young adult, because supported decision-making can happen at any stage, age in life, post-18.
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Amy O'Hara: But I will say, in practice.
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Amy O'Hara: This is, generally new. We have, there's several states that have supported decision-making laws. In New York, we have a new law, and it's complicated in that many providers are, are under, you know, unaware of supported decision-making and what it is.
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Amy O'Hara: And it… so it's lack of recognition. I had a colleague that went to Chase Bank with, a supported decision-making agreement with the young adult and the, the supporter, and… and Chase basically laughed at them, right? Like, what is this? So, so, you know, I… I'm,
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Amy O'Hara: in addition to a supported decision-making agreement, you need some legal documents. Legal arrangements, including power of attorney and healthcare proxy, I'm finding, properly speaking.
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Amy O'Hara: In, in practice.
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Amy O'Hara: So, power of attorney. This…
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Amy O'Hara: Probably all of us on the call understand what a power of attorney is, and it's not necessarily just for your estate planning to, you know, add into your estate planning file for when you're doing your estate planning, but it becomes a powerful tool in helping young adults in managing their financial and legal affairs, and being able to
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Amy O'Hara: talk with the Chase Bank representative, or the financial advisor, or the accountant, or deal with, perhaps a legal matter, or dealing with a lease.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, the power of attorney can be broad or limited and tailored to specific authority. I'm generally not a fan of limiting the power of attorney. I think that making it as broad as possible in the event that any individual becomes incapacitated, we have, we have a broad authority to be able to make
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Amy O'Hara: Power is not necessarily that we need now, but perhaps in the future.
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Amy O'Hara: The… and so all powers of her attorney, when we're dealing in this situation, should be, durable, so that they survive any type of incapacity.
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Amy O'Hara: Excuse me.
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Amy O'Hara: And powers of attorney, you know, provide flexibility without removing, the young adult's legal rights. They can be revoked. Any of these legal documents outside of a guardianship can be revoked, so we're always mindful of undue influence and, and, you know, and…
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Amy O'Hara: You know, negative situations in the young adult's life.
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Amy O'Hara: But again, it's, it's, it's, I think it comes down to education, training, and, and, the young adult.
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Amy O'Hara: Healthcare proxy. So this, again, we're all familiar with what healthcare proxies do, but it could be tailored, and so that perhaps it doesn't… the healthcare proxy, you know, often says it goes into effect when I'm unable to make my own medical decisions. Well, you could tailor it a bit that, perhaps the healthcare proxy, you know, I'm appointing my mom to help me with medical
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Amy O'Hara: to be able to communicate with the doctors. You don't have to just take the form that your particular state issues, but you could tailor it a bit to the situation, and allow a loved one, whether it's a family member, a close friend, to be able to be the eyes and ears and communicate with the doctors. Again, being somebody's healthcare proxy, you can't force them.
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Amy O'Hara: to take medication, and that's just a big stress that I see from clients a lot. It does not remove having a healthcare proxy for any of us, doesn't remove our own ability to make our medical decisions.
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Amy O'Hara: And… and other documents, so Psychiatric Advanced Directive, this is a important document for many of our clients, and,
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Amy O'Hara: it's a psychiatric Advanced Directive, sometimes it's referred to as a PAD, and it allows a young adult to outline, or an adult, outline preferences for mental health treatment. It can specify preferred medications, hospital preferences, crisis interventions, and treatments to avoid.
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Amy O'Hara: It allows the appointment of a mental health care agent. It could be the same as your healthcare proxy, and oftentimes it is.
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Amy O'Hara: To make decisions during periods of instability or incapacity.
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Amy O'Hara: This is particularly valuable for young adults with conditions such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, or other mood and behavior disorders.
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Amy O'Hara: And it helps avoid involuntary treatment conflicts. You know, and we do this in terms of we outline all the medications. We outline what medications have been used in the past and may not have a positive effect. Treatment locations, in terms of hospitals, who their psychiatrist is and therapists. We outline all of these in this type of document.
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Amy O'Hara: So,
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Amy O'Hara: Preventing financial exploitation. This is one of the most common threats to young adults, and warning signs can include
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Amy O'Hara: Account changes, increased or erratic spending, new relationships, influencing their decisions.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, we want to consider social media influences. There's… there's online gaming now, online gambling, where we have seen a lot of money spent and lost, to various social media influences.
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Amy O'Hara: Our clients for their children.
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Amy O'Hara: And so, how do we prevent this? You know, again, I will say, and this is my last bullet point here, of course this is a careful balance of a person's autonomy, and their safety, right? Because, not necessarily, like, you know, my 21-year-old son. I don't know his passwords, I don't know his… his multi-factor authentication, but
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Amy O'Hara: you know, I… he… he has been educated, and he is fortunately not vulnerable, but… and… and so it's… it's a matter of… of… of having that autonomy, but also protecting your child when it's needed. And… and, you know.
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Amy O'Hara: Know the passwords. Review credit reports and freeze credit. Do it with the child. It's not like going behind their back and doing this. You know, create passwords and be able to freeze this.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, set up bank account alerts and monitoring, and again, educate and train, and it's a constant, just not one conversation. But having that education and training that could go on for years, for them to, you know, be able to be protected.
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Amy O'Hara: And so what do we… what else do we do? We look at protective trust.
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Amy O'Hara: So, if I have a client who, they're not needing any type of government benefits, but let's say they have a custodial account that it matures at age 21, or they have other assets, we'll set up revocable trusts, and where maybe the parent can be the trustee, or maybe they're a co-trustee with their child, and we're, you know, protecting it that way. Yes, it can be revoked.
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Amy O'Hara: And that's always, you know, just a possibility here. You know, we will do special needs trusts, of course, if public benefits are necessary, but we only need that type of trust if we're going to rely on means-tested government benefits, such as SSI, Medicaid.
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Amy O'Hara: Or state, agency programs, and, and then…
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Amy O'Hara: irrevocable trust for non-special needs, you know, young adults. Looking at the estate planning, putting protections in place for, you know, a family's estate planning so that they don't get the assets outright.
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Amy O'Hara: and power of attorney, which we talked about, ABLE accounts. Again, ABLE accounts, somebody has to have a significant disability in order to qualify for an ABLE account.
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Amy O'Hara: And not every vulnerable young adult will qualify on the disability level for that. But what's nice about ABLE accounts is you can, put assets, up to $19,000 cash into this type of account.
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Amy O'Hara: And it could be used for disability-related expenses, which is very broadly defined.
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Amy O'Hara: There's other one, other item that I don't have on, this, this slide, but it's called a TrueLink card, and it's a prepaid debit card where you could fund money into this account, into… and you could look at TrueLink Financial, you could put
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Amy O'Hara: $500, but you could put… it can't be used to buy cigarettes or alcohol. It can't be used at this convenience store or, online. Like, it could be used at gas station or grocery stores, or… so you could put parameters on how that money could be spent, and it's been a remarkable, life…
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Amy O'Hara: you know, helping, financial kind of credit card for families. So again, that's TrueLink Financial, I think.com is their website.
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Amy O'Hara: Representative payee for individuals who need SSI, or Social Security disability benefits. A, an individual can… a parent oftentimes can become the representative payee to handle, that money, coming in from the Social Security Administration.
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Amy O'Hara: So, let's take a case study here. We have Mia.
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Amy O'Hara: And this is a fairly common situation that I'll see a couple times a year. So Mia's 25 years old, and she has fetal alcohol syndrome. She was adopted as an infant and grew up in a loving and secure home. She's friendly and outgoing, you know, some may say too friendly, right? She's too trusting.
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Amy O'Hara: She has supported employment at Trader Joe's. She was…
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Amy O'Hara: exploited financially by a friend, right? Like, a friend, in that, she… they had her open up credit cards and, and, and buy things, you know, all different types of things on… on credit cards. And…
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Amy O'Hara: So, what did we do? We established legal documents for Mia, power of attorney. She didn't have the disability that we would, you know, even consider a guardianship here. You know, power of attorney, healthcare proxy, a HIPAA. We set up… or the parents set up a joint bank account. They froze her credit, and so they… they… so that there could be no, unless if it was released, they couldn't open up a credit card, or a credit card couldn't be
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Amy O'Hara: opened up, she couldn't be unduly influenced right there. Mia was getting Social Security disability because her father, was retired, and so she had the level of disability where she was eligible for the Social Security disability, and then… so mom became the representative payee on that. And it was a matter of setting up education and training for Mia.
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Amy O'Hara: She retains the autonomy, but we have the structured safeguards and ongoing support for her.
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Amy O'Hara: It's, you know, and also we did comprehensive estate planning for Mia. You know, what's, what's, you know, not only the trust, in terms of coordinating their, Mia's inheritance into a protective trust, but who are… are those supporters and caregivers for Mia in the… when mom and dad can no longer do it? Who's going to be her circle of support? And that's certainly something
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Amy O'Hara: you know, that has to be revisited and looked at, every few years. So when we're looking at best practices here.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, we always begin with the presumption of capacity. You know, guardianship's not the knee-jerk, reaction, or, not reaction, but, response or answer.
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Amy O'Hara: And we evaluate the least restriction option, least restrictive options. We tailor plans to the young adult's needs, abilities, and risks. We review and revise the documents regularly, so I was just mentioning with me as parents.
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Amy O'Hara: You know, who's that circle of support? It may change. We want to make sure the trust is flexible, that is going to meet Mia's lifelong needs, well beyond when mom and dad are no longer here, and we want to be able to have the ability to be able to change trustees, appoint, you know, perhaps have a committee, a trust protector, in a way of not necessarily, you know.
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Amy O'Hara: Maybe we're dealing with a corporate trustee, and the trust protector could be the eyes and ears on Mia's behalf.
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Amy O'Hara: We want to educate fiduciaries on their responsibilities and liabilities, and encourage families and help put in that multidisciplinary support system. And, something that, you know, will need to be reviewed from time to time.
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Amy O'Hara: I did,
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Amy O'Hara: list some… and this is in the PDF, but here's some resources for you. The Social Security Administration regarding representative payees, the state disability, agencies.
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Amy O'Hara: If you're not in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, which is the regional area here, certainly you could, just search or Google, whatever state it is, developmental disability agency. And here's the national resource for, psychiatric advance directives. So you could get various templates or other ideas. New York, we don't have a law.
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Amy O'Hara: On a psychiatric Advanced Directive, but, we have used them successfully, where medical providers have honored them, and, and they… this is a, excuse me, a good… a good resource.
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Amy O'Hara: Here's the credit freezes that I mentioned before. Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, you can find all the links at this
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Amy O'Hara: this link here, for these various, agencies. The ARC, the Special Needs Alliance for Attorneys throughout the United States, NAMI, there's some good support, supports and, and sources, for… at NAMI, that's the National Alliance of Mental Illness, and just to mention the last,
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Amy O'Hara: one is the TrueLink Financial, again, has been a great resource for clients. And with that, thank you.
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Amy O'Hara: Thank you, Jonathan, for having me.
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Jonathan Shenkman: Great, thank you so much, Amy. If anyone has any specific questions, new business opportunities, any other issues you'd like to discuss, you can feel free to reach out directly to Amy or myself where appropriate, and I'll be sure to include her contact information in the follow-up email to this program.
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Jonathan Shenkman: And as I mentioned at the onset, the goal of these programs is to stay up-to-date on timely wealth management-related topics, and to collaborate where appropriate. And I think we can all agree that the clients who are best prepared are the ones who are served by a team of knowledgeable advisors.
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Jonathan Shenkman: Three more quick items before I let you go today. First, my next webinar is Thursday, December 4th, on the final countdown, 2025 last-minute wealth planning ideas.
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Jonathan Shenkman: Featuring yours truly, Jonathan Shankman, President of Park Bridge Wealth Management, based in New York, but serving clients across the country, and I'll be sure to send out an invitation to this program in the coming days. In the meantime, if you have a friend or colleague who would find these webinars to be of interest, they can subscribe to my webinar distribution list.
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Jonathan Shenkman: by emailing me with the word webinar in the subject line. My email is jonathan at parkbridgewealth.com. Second, you could follow all my work on X and Instagram at Jonathan on Money by connecting with me on LinkedIn. You could also listen to my weekly podcast called Jonathan on Money, which is available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can watch my practical planning videos, which I post several times a week on the YouTube channel, Jonathan on Money, as well. And third, please take 30 seconds to fill out my survey at the end of this program.
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Jonathan Shenkman: It helps me improve my webinars and provide timely and interesting content to attendees. I thank you in advance for that. And with that, this concludes today's session. Please stay safe and healthy, and have a wonderful day, everybody.