The Charities Pooled Trust is a type of trust authorized under federal law at 42 U.S.C. §1396p(d)(4)(C) as a safe harbor trust for persons with disabilities to hold assets while retaining eligibility for needs based public benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Medi-Cal.

Effective  January 1, 2011 Charities Pooled Trust now has a “Court Supervised Pooled Special Needs Trust” that complies with all legal requirements for California.  There are no minimum funding requirements.

In order to qualify as a safe harbor special needs pooled trust, the following conditions have been met:

• The trust contains the assets of individuals who are disabled;
• The trust is established and managed by a nonprofit association;
• The trust maintains separate accounts for each beneficiary but pools the assets by an asset allocation model for aggregate investing and management discount purposes;
• The separate account is established solely for the benefit of the disabled individual;
• The separate account is established by the disabled individual’s parent, grandparent, legal guardian, the disabled individual himself or herself, or a court; and
• To the extent that amounts remaining in the individual’s account upon the individual’s death are not retained by the trust, the trust pays to the state from such remaining amount in the account an amount equal to the total amount of medical assistance paid on behalf of the individual under Medi-Cal

Charities Pooled Trust maintains a professional management team including nationally recognized financial service institutions and professional trustees. Charities Pooled Trust also accepts cases with annuities and Medicare Set-Asides .

How could this effect your practice?

You can now place clients of ANY AGE with any amount of funds in a professional managed trust that is court ordered and\or court supervised at a low cost while still maintaining your client’s eligibility for MediCal & SSI.

• Enrollment $1500
• Trust accounts less than $100,000 pay $1,000 annually
• 1.5% or less for larger trust accounts