Trustee Practice Working Together The purpose of a supplemental needs trust is to enhance the education and overall quality of life of the beneficiary child. This can only be done with the parent(s)/guardian's help and guidance. If a child has unmet needs the trust is usually available to assist. It is the parent who has the knowledge and understanding of a child's every day life and needs. As trustee, I strongly encourage a child's parent(s)/guardian to use the trust to give his/her child the skills to make the child's own best way in life. As trustee, my office is always available to consider requests that comply with the requirements of the trust document and that can be appropriately verified. Invest in the Child As a trustee, my goal and fiduciary responsibility is to serve the best interests of children for whom trusts have been established and this includes, when appropriate and with the parent/guardian's assent providing for advocacy for the child's educational and psychological/social needs through trust funds. On an ongoing basis trust families are receiving monthly budget checks to help with the daily costs of life, payments for tutoring, summer schools and counseling. We have helped families purchase homes thus enhancing the child's quality of life while doing this in a way to protect the trust corpus. School clothes are a regular expenditure. College application costs and payment for SAT preparation courses have been allowed and served a child who otherwise would not have had the same opportunity. Homeless families have been provided emergency payments for first month rent and security deposit thus getting a number of children off the street whose families otherwise would not have been able to gain housing. Likewise a number of families have been able to move to better neighborhoods because of relatively minor such payments to allow a move to a better neighborhood. A move can be critical particularly for adolescents and the potential exposure to violence and gangs in certain neighborhoods. When appropriate and within the trust means automobiles have been purchased or the purchase has been assisted with which can result in a significant increase in a child's quality of life. Vocational schools and other schooling is paid for every month from different trusts. Testing for appropriate educational payments and significantly increased special education services are regularly obtained through advocacy. In one particular case a child who had been expelled was finally given appropriate testing and transferred to a private day school where he flourished as a role model for other students. This child has gone to overnight camps in the summer and developed a strong mentoring bond with his case worker. Other children have gone from childhood to adulthood and have ended up in prison. The supports of the trust and the encouragement and constant advocacy towards vocation have continued for each child. The spectrum of children served by my trust practice runs the gamut from college scholarship students to children who have become adult inmates. The obligation of the trustee remains the same in each instance with the hope and promise burning just as bright for each child. To achieve this goal, an ongoing support system is designed and implemented that will continuously identify and provide the range of services that will lead to school success and a personally fulfilling, socially productive life. As a trustee I operate on the principle that for a child to fully realize the benefits of a trust, it is a multidisciplinary approach that is most effective. The investment aspect of this includes sound investment, disability planning and tax advise with a diversified conservative investment approach. Protecting the child's money allows the trustee, acting in concert with the child's parent(s)/guardian to, when appropriate, work with a team of educational, medical, psychological, vocational, and social support specialists who can formulate, set in place, continuously review, and revise a comprehensive education and treatment plan can best help to ensure that the child will to the fullest extent possible succeed in school and attain the highest vocational capability. In exercising my responsibilities as trustee I recognize that the only way to serve the child's best interest is to respect and work closely with the most important individuals in the child's life-his or her parents (or guardian). At the outset I meet with the child's parent(s)/guardian and explain my role as trustee and the trust document. Educational Advocacy and Other Services As trustee of a supplemental needs trust, I am required to maximize a child's public benefits including Special Education Services. I want to make sure your child is receiving every public educational benefit they are entitled to. To achieve this I have assembled a team which includes an experienced special education attorney, a clinical psychologist and case workers. This is the most important aspect of our work together. The costs for these services are paid directly from the trust at their usual rate for the services rendered. Milne Law Offices receives no compensation directly or indirectly as a result of services provided by any of the consulting staff. In the past we have gotten children public benefits including testing, private school placements and other services worth in some cases tens of thousands of dollars. Services that are obtained or paid for include counseling, mentoring, tutoring, advocacy, summer school, and testing for purposes of obtaining services and appropriate placements. This can be costly but, most importantly, we are giving your child a truly "appropriate" placement at the earliest possible age. For each child the tangible results of advocacy for the child will be documented i.e. additional special educational services, summer placements, after school placements, enrollment in extracurricular activities. The more important objective is, through accessing services and programs for the child and providing additional support for the child's family, to fulfill the purpose of our civil justice system to make the victim whole. Monthly Accountings The parent(s)/guardian will receive free of charge, on a monthly basis an accounting of the child's trust account. This enables the family, on a monthly basis to monitor their child's trust fund. The account statement you receive every month is an accounting under the terms of the trust. Families are advised to read these statements carefully. The monthly accounting advises the monthly beginning and ending balance, a listing of all checks drawn on the account including the payee and amount, and each investment of the trust. As trustee, my billing rates are intended to allow even very modest trust amounts to be economically feasible in the best interest of the child. A trustee is generally allowed to charge "reasonable compensation equal to the customary and prevailing charges." The annual fee charged to your trust is determined by the trust size, the facts and circumstances of your trust and other legally relevant factors. For guidance, a survey of trustees in the Boston area, as set forth in the 2001 Edition of Loring: A Trustee's Handbook, states that minimum annual fees of trustees surveyed is in the range of $1,500 to $7,500. On larger trusts many trustees charge 1-2% of the money in the trust and a percentage of income earned. According to all of these benchmarks you will see that my fee is reasonable when compared to these prevailing trustee charges in this geographic area. As trustee I encourage families to review carefully my fee as shown in the monthly statement which is usually drawn in January and/or July each year. Also, as a trustee I maintain a liability policy with limits of $1,000,000.00 per claim and also a fidelity bond which provides $1,000,000.00 in coverage. In general the liability policy protects the trust beneficiary from professional negligence and the fidelity bond provides protection for theft. The cost of this protection is part of my firm's overhead costs and is not an additional charge to your trust When the focus of the earlier litigation has been on developing an educational/health care plan for the child and the settlement or recovery is used to implement that plan, the sum total of the experience thus becomes a vehicle of personal and social empowerment for both the child and the family. At the same time the follow-through on trust provisions makes good the basic premise of responsible litigation that it serve to heal rather than further scar the child's world and that there is guaranteed ethical and socially responsible use of settlement money.

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