The Care Girl Podcast
The Care Girl Podcast
Navigating the Complexities of Raising Special Needs Children with Kim Martin
Venture into the complex world of Medicaid, estate planning, and the intricate lines between first and third party trusts. Hear Kim's advice on how to maximize Medicaid services and her take on the balance between a demanding workload and self-care. Expect to gain insights on not just navigating the bureaucracy, but also maintaining your sanity amidst the whirlwind of responsibilities.
Finally, we'll hear from Kim about the real-life aspects of supporting special needs children. From understanding a child's strengths and weaknesses, to dealing with bullying and misdiagnosis, and even a humorous anecdote about raising her own three boys. Plus, we'll hear from a mother who started a non-profit called Shine - all aimed at offering a much-needed support system for families touched by special needs. Prepare for a compelling conversation that delves into understanding a child's individual needs and the vast resources available to families. Join us as we traverse this enlightening and inspiring journey.
Hi, we're back again with the Care Girl podcast. Today I'm here at Harrison LLP with Kim Martin, attorney Kim Martin, she is a partner here at the firm. They handle estate planning, am I correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, we're kind of a very large boutique estate planning firm.
Speaker 1:Yes, this is a very, very, very special guest that I've been trying to run down for the whole year. I finally got on her calendar back in August now in August, maybe months ago. I'm so excited that you are here. I can't wait for you to share your level of expertise on what you do. How did you get started in the field that you're in and what inspired you to specialize in the special needs arena?
Speaker 2:I've always been an estate planning attorney since I started practicing. I started my career as a tax lawyer. Then, years into that, I took time off and I had kids. My second child, my son Finn, who is now 17, was diagnosed with autism when he was two. That just rocked my world the way that that kind of diagnosis always rocks everybody's world. I think that the way I was able to feel like I had a little control over that situation was that I decided I wanted to specialize in special needs work. I reinvented my practice, basically, and now I am a special needs estate planner. That's kind of a combination between conventional estate planning and benefits planning. I love it. I love it. How long have you been here at the firm? This is my second year here, okay, okay, so relatively new.
Speaker 1:Relatively new. We are on the 20th floor. Peachtree Street is a beautiful building and it took me a while to get here. I am so, so glad that I'm here. Welcome to Midtown Atlanta. Welcome to Midtown Atlanta. I like the parking situation. I want to know your journey with your son. How did you make it through and figure out different ways, and how can you tell other parents what they are going through?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's. You know, I always find that the easy thing to tell people is how hard it is to be a special needs mom, because I absolutely had my share of waking up in the middle of the night and thinking what in the world is going to happen to him, what's going to happen to me? I don't know if I can keep doing this, and I have had my moments, I'll admit, where I just said that's it, I can't do anymore, and I kind of looked around and waited for the universe to go okay, that's okay, you can stop now. And that doesn't happen when you decide that. So you know, I think I have done this, just like everybody else does it. I've just done the best I can with every single day and just kept on keeping on, because there's really nothing else you can do. But the thing that's harder to explain to people is what a gift it is to have my son.
Speaker 2:I love it. He's just, he's this pure, beautiful human being. He is the sweetest, most honest person I've ever met. So I feel like I have had to rise to the occasion to be his mom and it's made me into a better mom and in fact, it's probably made me into a better lawyer.
Speaker 1:I love that. So what type of things do you help families? What services do you do so everyone can?
Speaker 2:know Well a lot of what I do probably the majority of what I do is I do special needs planning. So, as I said, that's a combination of doing a conventional estate plan that would involve a will or maybe a revocable living trust, but then, because we have a child in the mix that's probably going to qualify for benefits or maybe is already on benefits and we have to plan for that child, then the planning also extends to using a special needs trust and that's essentially a basket that holds assets to take care of the child in a manner that causes those assets to be an exempt resource for benefits purposes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if a family what stage does a family need special needs planning?
Speaker 2:Whenever they're ready to do an estate plan. I have families come in when their child is one. I have families come in when their children are, you know, in their teens. I have sometimes I do planning for people whose children are older than I am. Okay, so it's, I think, the sooner the better, because we never know what's going to happen. But you know it's, it's something that you should just do when you're ready.
Speaker 2:And then another thing that I do, and this is more focused on a certain age but when our kids turn 18, they are legally adults, no matter what's going on with them.
Speaker 2:So I do a lot of work with families to petition for guardianship over their children.
Speaker 2:So that's when you go to a court and you ask the court to find that the child lacks the capacity to make decisions about their own care, and then, if the court does find that that's the case, then they will name somebody, usually a parent, as the guardian for that child. Okay, and then the third thing that I do is this very specific thing I work in consultation with divorce lawyers if there's a child that has special needs in a family where there's a divorce happening. And the reason that they need me to work with them is because child support is considered income to the child by social security. So if we have child support being paid directly for the benefit of a child who's looking to get on SSI or Medicaid or usually both social security, once the child is over the age of 18 they'll disregard the first $20 of that child support payment every month and only $20 it's a personal allowance, okay, it's like the toothpaste money, it's shampoo money, it's, you know, just random.
Speaker 2:So they let the child have this $20 monthly personal allowance that they don't pay attention to, but all the rest of the child's support will offset SSI, dollar for dollar every month. So SSI is this year, in 2023, it's $914 a month. So if we have a thousand dollars a month, let's say getting paid in child support, and we disregard $20, that leaves us with $980 and that's going to completely wipe out the $914 a month of SSI because of the child support. Yep so this is.
Speaker 1:This is for, like you know, a mom who's now a single mom and taking care of an adult child who may have special needs and that issue can disqualify the child from getting SSI.
Speaker 2:And in Georgia, if you don't have SSI, you also don't have Medicaid. So that's fixable. There are, there are, things you can do about it, okay, so that's your, that's your niche, and kind of like figuring it out.
Speaker 1:She's a ninja on figuring those things out. Okay, yeah, we're not gonna, we're not gonna give all the tea on that because you know it's a very detailed. But I think that that's very unique because I get so many calls. As you know, I do in home care for mid-bifiddle kids and adults, particularly more kids and I get so many calls like my child is 18, you know, we can't get Medicaid, we can't do anything and the families are struggling because everybody still has to work and they can't take care of the child. I mean, they can't take care of the adult fully due to they don't have the cash for care. So that that is the issue in the problem and I think that there needs to be a little bit more awareness and a little bit more care in in the sense of like people caring more about, you know, special needs kids, because I feel like the elderly and special needs are are just underserved oh, absolutely underserved.
Speaker 2:We're so short on resources and it doesn't help that the state of Georgia doesn't fund its Medicaid waiver, so we we take the federal money that every state gets for Medicaid, but that's it. Most other states supplement the Medicaid funds and they put more money into it right and Georgia we don't do so that's why the the waiting lists are it's just over 7,000 people are on the regional planning list for Medicaid, so what so?
Speaker 1:what other resources do those families?
Speaker 2:have. Well, I mean, there are lots and lots of different kinds of Medicaid. There are over 30 kinds of Medicaid, so when I say Medicaid, it's almost meaningless, right? But so, assuming though that your child meets the definition of disabled and they don't have too many resources, they can't have more than $2,000 in non-exempt resources and they can't have income like the child support, which you wouldn't think of as income, but it is as far as social security is concerned. So, assuming they pass the income test and the resource test and they meet the definition of disabled, then they should qualify for SSI, and in Georgia, if you qualify for SSI, you also qualify for the type of Medicaid that is, medical insurance, right right.
Speaker 1:Well, if your income is just extremely high you know you have your doctor's, surgeons and all kind of people who you know have a high income then that's not your ideal family, right.
Speaker 2:Oh no, I work with those families all the time. Because we're not looking at the family's resources, we're looking at the child's resources.
Speaker 2:So I actually have very wealthy families who come to me to because they they feel like you know, my child is entitled to these benefits and I want them to get them. So we can't put money in the child's name. But and this is where we go back to the special needs planning the way that we could leave money to take care of that child and keep them qualified for benefits is to do an estate plan that includes a third party special needs trust. So then the wills would say I leave everything for this child to the blah blah, blah special needs trust and it just sits there. It's essentially a basket and it will hold whatever you put into it.
Speaker 1:And so they're able to touch that at what point or whenever they need it, Okay or want it and it doesn't just have to pay for needs.
Speaker 2:I mean, a special needs trust can pay to buy the child's plane ticket to go on a vacation, you know, to buy them a computer or a video game, or you know it can be for fun things too. But the important thing is the source of the funds. So it's the type of trust that you would use in an estate plan. Is the third party special needs trust, and it's called that because it's designed to hold third party money meaning money that belongs to anybody except the child.
Speaker 2:So it can hold mom and dad's money, it can hold grandma and grandpa's money, it can hold money from a friend who wants to be nice and make a gift to the child, but we can't put the child's money in there. So there's another type of special needs trust and this is this is the trust we would use when we're doing our planning for child support. Among other things. It's called a first party special needs trust, or sometimes you'll hear it called a self settled trust, or sometimes it's called a D for a trust. Okay, it's all the same thing, but it's called a first party trust because it holds first party money and that means money that belongs to the child. So if the child inherits money from somebody directly, that's a problem that that's going to put them over the $2,000 means test. We can put that money into a first party special needs trust and, just like the third party trust, it's an exempt basket. The difference is the first party trust has a Medicaid payback at the end of the child's life.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's why I read it.
Speaker 2:That's Medicaid keeps track of all the money they spend to take care of you if you're on Medicaid for your whole lifetime Interesting.
Speaker 2:And at the end of your life they basically just present your estate with a bill. They say we've spent this much money to take care of you and we want you to pay us back to the extent that you have any money. So typically if you're on Medicaid you have to pass the $2,000 means test. So you probably don't personally have a whole lot of money. But if you have money in a first party special needs trust, then that trust has to reimburse Medicaid to the extent that there's anything in there. So that's why we don't want to go out of our way to put money in a first party trust. And if we do put money in a first party trust, that's the first money that we want to spend.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then the third party is what they can't do, they can't trust it.
Speaker 2:No Medicaid payback for a third party trust. So that's why we want to put mom and dad's money in the third party trust, Because then at the end of the child's life, if there's any money left in the third party trust, it goes wherever they say it goes. So if there are other siblings in the family it could go to them. Sometimes people want it to go to a charity, but it goes wherever people want it to go.
Speaker 1:But that strategy keeps it, helps them get to keep those. If I benefit, send Medicaid. Yes, I love that. I love that. That's a gym. You all get help. You caught it, because I caught it, that's that's. That's amazing. I think that that is so important. Now back to a state planning. I don't, I don't really know what a state planning is. Can you kind of break down what that is Sure?
Speaker 2:Well, a state planning is just planning to dispose of your assets when you die. Okay, so it's a will or a trust, and it's it. You know it can be very simple. It can be really complicated Depending on your line and if you get a whole lot of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but it's kind of like the like weirdest thing that you've ever like come across somebody left, left, left a family member. Have you come across any things? Just like a teddy bear or like, just like very sentimental.
Speaker 2:I had a knitter leave her yarn stash just to a charity. She had $20,000 worth of yarn. And yeah, that's what I did. When she said so, she said she had, she had a yarn stash that was worth $20,000 and I said how in the world do you get $20,000 worth of yarn? But a lot of it was a hand spun or silk or really nice yarn, and she was a weaver and a knitter and she left her yarn stash to a charity that makes hats for um babies.
Speaker 1:I love it, so that was nice.
Speaker 2:That's very funny so that was an interesting request.
Speaker 1:I've had people.
Speaker 2:I've had people that wanted to be cremated and have their ashes mixed with their pets ashes and then have all the ashes spread on a beach. So they're like all these big elaborate plans. You have to cremate the dog and save the dog's ashes. Somebody needs to know where to find the dog you can mix us all together.
Speaker 1:Where's the dog? Where's my ashes? That's amazing. I love that. So I saw on your bio that you are on the board of many, many, many things. Um, what, what role do you play and how do?
Speaker 2:you do it all. I think the key is never stop moving. Honestly, you just cannot stop. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what would happen if I stopped.
Speaker 1:Right, right.
Speaker 2:I do want to stop.
Speaker 2:That's my motto yeah, but, um, being on the board, I'm on the board of a lot of 501c3 organizations that all help special needs families or special needs kids or adults in one way or another. Um, so I each organization kind of has a different use for its board members. So, um, sometimes they want me to come and speak to their families and educate them about the kind of stuff that we're talking about right now. Sometimes they want to understand how they can structure themselves so that they can be paid by Medicaid instead of getting paid out of pocket by the families. Um, you know, sometimes they just want the board as a as a whole to approve decisions that get made or, you know, provide guidance about the direction that the organization is going to take. I love that. I love that. I saw that.
Speaker 1:I saw that I was like, how does she do all of that? And and your, your, your mom, and all that good stuff and so do you? Do you make time to take care of yourself? You know I'm the care girl. I, yeah, I try very hard.
Speaker 2:I really I try to get up every morning and walk with weights, because it's a way to do strength training and endurance training at the same time. Okay, that's a great experience to you.
Speaker 1:I like it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I try, and I'm not saying that I do it every day because I don't do it every day, but I try very hard to do that. I get a lot of bang for my buck because a lot of times I'm able to kind of do one thing that serves more than one purpose. So a lot of my close friends are special needs moms, and a lot of them are people that work in organizations that are fantastic, organizations that I need to know about for my son, yeah.
Speaker 2:so if I'm socializing with a mom who's a benefits guru at the Bobby Dodd Institute, then fantastic. And if I'm, if I'm working at my son's school, he's at a special need school, so 100% of the people at that school are potential clients. So see, she's spoken.
Speaker 1:You're very smart. You're very smart. I love it, my life and my work.
Speaker 2:I'll just roll up.
Speaker 1:It roll in one little ball, one little roll. So you, you've been in close contact with those other mothers and families. What do you say? One thing that people can do to make the special needs of kids with special needs lives a little bit better. One thing I can say is, when someone needs help, don't just stare, don't just record a video, you know. Don't don't just turn the other cheek because I'm one person like I'm gonna run, I'm gonna go run across the street, go ahead. Somebody like I do that, but you don't see that type of sugary anymore, you don't?
Speaker 2:neighbors don't take on each other, you know yeah, I think something that I had to learn how to do as a mom and that has served me really well is you know that saying it takes a village to raise a child. I always feel like if you're raising a child with a disability, you don't need a village, you need an army, and so I would say my best advice for any special needs parent is build an army, build yourself a network of resources and become part of other people's networks, because you can't do it by yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I spoke to a mother who started a nonprofit called Shine and I just was giving her the resources that my company provides, the gap and all that stuff and she quit her job. She has two twins with autism and it was so funny. She was just like, yeah, I can't, nothing works for me, like I have to be here with my kids. So she just she was an inspirational online and I saw her and I said I really like how you know, how she? She said something about, oh, the job wants me to do this, but I have these two over here doing that and just kind of, I think, coming at it from a different perspective like you said, your son is the most honest, sweetest person that you know like just kind of really seeing the child for who they are and I get it, it's hard when your environment may clash with the situation so kind of seeing the beauty of that child and really just understanding like you know, hey, what is he good at? What can we nurture? Versus like I'm so stressed out, this is so hard and I mean parenting is hard. I have three boys. I don't know if you know that I have a 16 year old boy in eight and nine, you know, and they're all rambunctious. So I mean, even myself I find myself a little stressed at times and but I just really would have helped me lately. I really just just started just observing them more and just like, this is so smart and so cute and they, they, they try to get away with this.
Speaker 1:And I had my son's, my middle boy named Nathaniel. He had to turn in his device at the end of the night because it was time to go to bed and he switched out the device with an old phone and put his phone cover on the old phone. So he got a little smart but he forgot to get the. He forgot to get the, that phone and take it, you know, with him because I put it. I let him put his backpack because I like a track where they are. Anyway, you know how moms eat. So when he got home I said, oh, so you, you switched out the phones. Like what are you talking about? I said, look up there in the case, mom. Oh, my goodness. But it was hilarious Because I called his dad and I told him that he was laughing so hard.
Speaker 1:I said, yeah, he, he had to write a hundred times. I won't, I won't. I won't do that again. Like you know, I'm not a type of person that it was funny to me, but I'm going to let you know, like, hey, you need to understand, like you can't, you have to be honest and that's one thing I want to do is raise honest kids, and just you know. But I always teach them if somebody is being bullied, anybody with special needs is being bullied, something's happening to someone, don't just be a stand by person, go in there and you know I'm not going to say fight to the nail, but just just be a nice, be a good person.
Speaker 1:My youngest child he went through a lot of things. They said that he had autism, they said that he had ADHD and all that. But he had chronic ear infections for about two years. You know back to back. So I had to take him to an ENT, take him to a natural path. All of that. His tonsils were four times too big. Wow, way too big. They had to take the tonsils out. He, he had sleep apnea, all of that. He sat in his car seat after that surgeon at Chowa To those times that he said I can hear you, he couldn't hear you, he couldn't hear me because of the fluid in his ears. So a lot of times parents like we think that you know, we do follow what the doctor say say, or we do follow what the teacher say, but we're not doing our research either, because sometimes it's a misdiagnosis. Have you seen that happen?
Speaker 2:Sure, well, I mean, I just, I know a lot of moms who have that story yeah.
Speaker 2:I know of a mom whose son he's I mean, he's an adult now, he has a PhD, he's married, he's doing great, but he's deaf, and they didn't figure it out for a long time, because he figured out how to pass the hearing test even though he couldn't hear, and so she was told to put him in an institution and basically just leave him there, and she was like no, I'm not going to do that, something is not right here. And she finally figured out that he was deaf and she, you know, he learned sign language, he got you know all the different kinds of help that he needed, and turned out to be a perfectly smart Kid, and very smart In fact, and that was the problem is that he was smart enough to figure out how to pass the hearing test Right when he couldn't hear. So if she had listened to the specialists, who knows he'd probably be sitting in an institution right now and nobody would understand that he was just deaf.
Speaker 1:Since olden times I don't know what olden times are, but I'm gonna say olden times they have treated Children that were different and they want to make put them in an institution or they want to, you know, put them somewhere, and that's odd to me. I think that that's odd. If anything, let them interact with everybody, right, you know, and that's, that's that's. I'm gonna come back to my, my original point on my child. I knew, you know, I had a brother who had Terec syndrome and had some things going on. He with special education and and all that he's doing.
Speaker 1:What he's doing, well, not just about his first house, and you know, he's a, he's a deacon in church and IT professional, so I mean real estate agent like he, he did amazing. So he did need all of those different things. He needed medication and all that. So when I saw those things going down my youngest son, I was like, okay, well, we, this happened in our family. But I, I made sure that I got him tested for everything. But I, when I was looking at him, like this man pays attention to everything, he does this, so it didn't, it didn't click to me I was like, okay, it's not the same thing that my brother was going through. It's something else you know always had always congested always. You know things going on with him right and as a mother you have to follow that instinct in your heart that something's not right you know.
Speaker 1:And after that, you know, he got better but he got thrown out of like four day cares. Wow, he got. He got threw out of four day care. They said something wrong with your child. He's bad, he's this. He has sleep apnea. So that means that he wasn't sleeping well because he would stop breathing in asleep. So he was exhausted and tired. So well, he just wants to sleep.
Speaker 1:That's like he's not sleeping at night, you know, and I mean I literally was in tears because I was just like nobody's trying to help me. They kept trying to bring people in and test them and do all this stuff because, of course, money I mean schools get money for for the children you know, children that are special needs as well. But my thing, can we actually Make them happy and keep them in a? Can they be safe and in not just be a number? You know, that's, that was my main thing and and he's caught up now and he's still a little behind in reading the things of that nature.
Speaker 1:But I don't want to be hard on him and just drill him, drill legit. I want him to move at his own pace, because a lot of times we just we force. And and one thing about me as an adult I remember my mother just really being, you know, linear with oh Go, you can do that with your brothers, you can go through that, and that kind of made me who I am today and I like being creative. So I think that every child Special needs or non-special needs, they have something special about them that we all can discover. But a lot of times we haven't, we haven't, um, really really looked at ourselves in the face and figured out who we are as parents and as in ourselves. So a lot of times we are in survival mode parenting right?
Speaker 2:Well, I think I think our children Make us into the parents that they need us to be, so we may start out as One kind of parent, but we are probably not going to finish that way. So I think you just have to listen to your child and figure out what kind of a mom they need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with it, mom or daddy they need. I agree. Where can everybody find you? I know you're working on a YouTube channel. I found you on LinkedIn. Let's give us all of your accolades over. You are oh.
Speaker 2:Wow. Well, I mean, the best thing to do really is probably just look for my website, the firm website. Okay, the firm name is Harrison LLP, and so you can look at my profile on the website if you're looking for, you know, a bio or credentials or whatever. And then the firm made me this YouTube channel. I Do not actually know how to post anything on the YouTube channel, but there's someone who does so. Somebody's posting things on there for me. But If you go to YouTube and you look, you do a search for Kim Martin special needs law, that'll take you to the channel and that has a bunch of workshops that I've done, mostly for parents. There are a few thrown in there where I'm speaking in front of lawyers and we're trying to figure out how to move those to a different section.
Speaker 2:Okay, so you need a really gonna be helpful to parents, but but most of the talks are just designed to educate families about All kinds of things about benefits and how they work and Guardianship and what happens when your child turns 18? Yeah, special needs planning and you say you do workshops for different.
Speaker 1:I know you were on the board for the cops special special needs, cobb.
Speaker 2:Okay, I saw a few of those works and their workshop are great that they're amazing.
Speaker 1:So I'm do. Is that on on the what companies website as well, or do you kind of post that on your LinkedIn?
Speaker 2:more. That's probably more likely to be on LinkedIn. Okay, okay, kim.
Speaker 1:Martin on LinkedIn yeah, follow, get her followers up. She's gonna be in force or on LinkedIn and you too.
Speaker 2:All this, all this online stuff, you got it.
Speaker 1:You got it, I found you I found you so I just want to thank you for coming on and I appreciate you, I know you're about to head out of town and and paint the town red and all that good stuff. But I just really appreciate you having me on and I hope that this helps, even if it's one family like. I'm gonna send this to all my parents and I can't wait to.
Speaker 2:For them to meet you. Thank you so much. Well, thank you and thank you for being such a great resource for families too. You're part of the army.
Speaker 1:Yes, I am a part of the army Hi.