The U.S. Department of the Treasury has announced that Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients will have the $1,200 emergency COVID-19 relief checks automatically deposited in their bank accounts just as they would normally receive their SSI benefit. Meanwhile, the Internal…
By Matt Keister, Esq. The closing of schools due to COVID-19 has raised many legitimate special education law concerns and questions among families of children with special needs. Several of these issues are particularly important and deserve some consideration: Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) First, the question of whether schools can meet the continued requirement of…
Having enough financial resources to support someone with special needs is an ongoing worry for many families. If resources are short, one increasingly popular option is to set up a crowdfunding campaign through such outlets as GoFundMe or Kickstarter. While…
Just before the end of 2019, Congress passed and the President signed a spending bill that includes significant changes to retirement savings accounts. Known as the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, this legislation changes rules around retirement…
Advocates are warning that a little-noticed proposed rule change could result in hundreds of thousands of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients, many of them children, losing benefits. The change would subject millions of recipients to a more frequent…
It is possible that an individual, once diagnosed as a person with special needs, sometime in the future will no longer qualify as “disabled” according to IRS regulations. The individual’s condition might have improved through remission or medical treatment, for…
Paying for day care is one of the biggest expenses faced by working adults with young children, a dependent parent, or a child with a disability, but there is a tax credit available to help working caregivers defray the costs…
Thanks to recent changes in the tax law, families can now make limited transfers from existing 529 accounts to ABLE accounts with no tax consequences. Families with special needs children may be thinking about rolling existing 529 funds into ABLE accounts. Perhaps on…
As the number of passengers traveling with service and emotional support animals continues to increase, the federal government has provided some much-needed guidance on airlines’ responsibilities to accommodate people with disabilities. In the past year, multiple major airlines have been…
More than 420,000 people with disabilities nationwide are being paid less than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, according to the Department of Labor (DOL). Some of these workers have been performing the same routine tasks for decades,…