For the second time inside of a month, an ElderLawAnswers member attorney has been featured on NBC's Today Show. Last month, it was Massachusetts attorney Hyman Darling. This month it's Ohio attorney Laurie Steiner, who was mentioned on the April 12, 2010, show no fewer than three times.
The show's "Mini Money Makeover" segment was on how to plan for the financial future of your special needs child, and it featured an Ohio mother, Sara George, who has a 30-year-old son, Brad, with Down syndrome. After she was involved in an auto accident, Ms. George began to wonder what would happen to Brad if something were to happen to her or to her husband, Chuck. Special needs children, more than other children, need help once their parents die. Ms. George said that up to that point, she hadn't even made a will.
By chance, Ms. George saw a post on the Today Show's Facebook page by the show's financial editor, Jean Chatzky, and Ms. George asked her for advice. Ms. Chatzky then contacted our sister organization, the Academy of Special Needs Planners (ASNP), for help in locating an attorney with the qualifications to assist the George family in creating an estate plan that would protect Brad and their other children. The only catch was that the attorney would have to be willing to do the work for free.
ASNP put the Today Show in touch with Steiner, who is a member of both ASNP and ElderLawAnswers and is with the firm of Budish, Solomon, Steiner & Peck in Beachwood, Ohio. Steiner agreed to help the Georges and drove 140 miles round trip to meet with them. ("We want to help people, and if that means driving a bit, so be it," Steiner told us.) At the meeting, the Georges executed estate planning documents that included a special needs trust that will protect Brad financially should anything happen to his parents.
"Laurie Steiner did a wonderful job for us and we're really pleased," Ms. George said on the show. "Chuck and I didn't like to think about the fact that we might not always be around to take care of [Brad], but at least now we know he'll be financially taken care of."
"There are good attorneys in this world!" said Today Show co-host Hoda Kotb at the segment's conclusion.
To view the three-and-a-half minute Mini Money Makeover segment, click here.
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