At the Pienkosz Financial Group of Wells Fargo Advisors, we have learned through our years of working with members of the special needs community, that countless families have questions surrounding life management concerns about the proper care and planning for their loved ones living with a disability.
It was through this desire to provide meaningful family support that one of our team’s greatest passions is working with and helping guide these very special families as clients!
Advocating for an individual living with a disability
Families living with a household member requiring special care often have a significant financial burden due to a family caregiver’s curtailed earnings power. Depending on personal and family circumstances, individuals living with disabilities also frequently require specialized support beyond those provided by government benefits.
We take pride in helping clients living with these unique life management concerns navigate planning and ultimately supporting the future needs of their loved ones.
We take pride in helping clients living with these unique life management concerns navigate planning and ultimately supporting the future needs of their loved ones.
A comprehensive approach to special needs planning
The cornerstone of our relationship with our clients’ centers on providing comprehensive investment planning services, to not only parents as clients, but also to disabled children of all ages.Focusing beyond just sustaining the parents’ lifestyle through their retirement years, our process inevitably leads us into helping families fund a means of support for their disabled children beyond their lifetimes.
Leveraging our nine wealth management disciplines as the capstone of our planning process, we emphasize balancing our clients’ current financial needs, while simultaneously helping safeguard a future legacy of support for their loved ones.
Our goal is to help parents identify a means to what we refer to as a “re-aging of their money” as they initially prepare for and then live through retirement, while simultaneously helping them navigate the complex financial landscape they face throughout their lifetimes and ultimately beyond.
Planning on who steps into your shoes?
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Planning for family members with disabilities is about preparation for multiple generations and potential life outcomes. We believe it is critically important, as part of the entire planning process, to develop a long-term strategy that helps protect not only their son, or daughter’s financial security, but also their physical well-being once the parents are no longer able. |
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Doing so requires encompassing both of our clients and their child’s lifetimes so engaging intimately with their entire extended family, whenever possible, is a critical component of our planning process. Centered on creating a plan that is engineered to incorporate the entirety of the household is about helping these families’ loved ones meet their lifestyle needs, both today and into tomorrow. |
Establishing a team of skilled professionals
Understanding the challenges that dependent children face, it is essential to surround the extended family with a trusting team of professional advisors.
To this end, we work closely with our clients to help identify and surround themselves with like-minded attorneys, tax advisors and potential trustees along with qualified caregivers, inclusive of family members.
Depending on the beneficiary’s capabilities and financial resources, professional advisors can potentially help family members with certain services and tasks, including:
- Creating and documenting a comprehensive estate plan.
- Referrals to recreational, social, and educational opportunities.
- Helping coordinate professional services including case managers, caregivers, attorneys, tax preparers, and benefit advocates.
- Assessing, purchasing, and modifying a residence or vehicle, if needed.
- Receive bills and process payments to service providers and caregivers.
- Preparing supporting tax filings, or court accountings, as required.
- Investment management services.
Helping Develop Key Special Needs RELATIONSHIPS
Wells Fargo Advisors does not provide tax or legal advice.
