Shortcut helps parents start financial planning for disabled children. Responding to recent data suggesting many parents with special needs children lack financial planning resources, MetLife’s Division of Estate Planning for Special Kids (MetDESK) has unveiled a free-of-charge web-based calculator to help guardians estimate the long-term financial needs of children with mental, physical or emotional disabilities.

“MetDESK’s primary goal with this new Special Needs Calculator is to provide a self-service tool that will help close the gap [in] information,” says MetLife v.p. and MetDESK founder Nadine Vogel.

Nowhere to turn

Disabled people often require lifelong financial guardianship and assistance, legal letters of intent and special needs trusts to maintain their eligibility for government benefits. “These issues are important in view of longer life expectancy, in some cases, and a lifelong dependence on advanced and expensive medical care,” MetLife says in a press release, citing a U.S. Census Bureau estimate that more than one in 10 Americans between the ages of 16 and 64 suffers from “some form” of physical, mental or emotional impairment.

Yet advice for parents seeking to ensure the financial welfare of their disabled children is so difficult to come by that 85% of the parents surveyed in the MetDESK study, Torn Security Blanket: Children With Special Needs and the Planning Gap, turn to their physicians for help.

The study also found that overworked guardians are hard-pressed finding time to start planning for their children’s financial security. Although 27% of parents with special needs children expect their afflicted children to be a lifelong financial dependents, only 29% have done no long-term financial planning on behalf of their disabled charges. That makes sense to Vogel, a mother of two special needs children. “In addition to their daily work, many parents are spending 40 hours each week caring for their child with special needs,” she says.

Half an hour

The new calculator is designed with that in mind. “The beauty of the MetDESK Special Needs Calculator is in its simplicity,” says Vogel. “Parents can begin closing the financial planning gap in less than 30 minutes.” The interactive calculator determines the amount of money needed to sustain a disabled person throughout his life by comparing anticipated cash flow and savings against projected future expenses including housing, education and personal needs, says MetLife. It factors in medical, dental or recreational expenses by projecting costs less projected government benefits. Then the calculator estimates the amount needed to secure the child’s financial future and shows if there’s a shortfall – and where that exists, the calculator directs parents to other resources, including a toll free number, a local MetDESK specialist and non-profit organizations.

And though wealthy families might not need the calculator, Vogel emphasizes that they shouldn’t assume their special needs children will be adequately provided for just because there’s enough money on hand. “Sometimes people with less are able to specify the exact provisions they want to make for their children; [sometimes] wealthier parents assume their money will address the needs of their children when they’re gone.” –FWR

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