The Waskul settlement changed Michigan self-determination. Are you using your new rights?

A federal judge signed something in 2025 that quietly changed what a Michigan family is entitled to argue about. Not what services exist. Not how long the waiting list is. Something narrower and, if your adult child is in self-determination, considerably more useful: whether the number on your budget is actually big enough to buy the services your plan says your adult child needs.

What the case was about

Derek Waskul, Cory Schneider, Kevin Wiesner, and Hannah Ernst are the named plaintiffs, along with the Washtenaw Association for Community Advocacy. The case ran for years in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan against Washtenaw County Community Mental Health and the state.

The core complaint was simple enough to explain at a kitchen table. Families in self-determination arrangements were given individual budgets that were not large enough to purchase the services their own plans of service said they needed. The budget said one thing. The plan said another. Nobody had to reconcile them.

That is the specific problem the settlement addresses. Not whether your adult child qualifies. Not whether the service exists. Whether the money attached to the service is enough to actually buy it at a rate a human being will accept.

The three things that changed

One, there is now a rate floor. Self-determination Community Living Supports is set at $31 per service hour for one-to-one support, with group rates scaling down proportionally. Overnight Health and Safety Supports is set at $21.70 per hour, which is 70% of the CLS rate. Both adjust annually for inflation using CPI-W beginning in state fiscal year 2026.

Before this, rates varied by region in ways nobody could explain and families could not challenge. Now there is a number, published, that your arrangement can be measured against.

Two, budgets have to be built, not assigned. The settlement requires that individual budget components be constructed separately based on each recipient’s Individual Plan of Service. Staff wages calculated to be sufficient for medically necessary services. Activity fees, transportation, and other components costed separately. Person-centered planning must actually discuss those components. And a fiscal intermediary is prohibited from making the final budget determination, which closes a loophole families have been falling through for years.

Three, and this is the one nobody told you, an administrative law judge can now order a budget. Not send it back. Not recommend. If the proofs establish that a service is medically necessary, consistent with law, and required by the plan of service, the ALJ has authority to reverse the determination and require a specific budget or authorization. The ALJ can also reverse a termination of a self-determination arrangement that lacks good cause.

The part with a clock on it

Here is where I stop being pleased and start being blunt.

Every provision of this agreement expires on September 30, 2029, except a narrow section about claim merger. That is the sunset date, written into the settlement.

Four budget cycles. That is what you have. After that, the rate floor, the costing-out requirement, the written justification obligation, and the ALJ’s authority to order a budget all revert to whatever Michigan chooses to keep, which historically has been whatever Michigan is forced to keep.

So the honest advice is not to feel reassured. It is to use it. Every family who wins a budget appeal under these provisions builds a record. Every record makes it harder to argue in 2029 that the protections were unnecessary. The people who fought this case for years did not do it so the rights could sit unused in a PDF on a state website.

What families are actually getting wrong

I have talked to a lot of parents about this settlement in the last year, and the same three mistakes keep showing up.

The first is assuming it does not apply to them because they are not in Washtenaw County. The minimum fee provisions reach Habilitation Supports Waiver self-determination recipients of CLS and OHSS statewide. Ask whether it applies to your arrangement. Do not assume.

The second is accepting a budget total without components. If you cannot see the wage line, you cannot tell whether the wage line is enough, and the entire settlement is built on the premise that you are entitled to see it and argue about it.

The third is missing the deadline. Michigan gives you 60 calendar days from the date of an Adverse Benefit Determination notice to file a local appeal, and 10 calendar days if you want services to keep running while you argue. The best legal rights in the state disappear on day 61. I have watched it happen.

Your practical next steps

This week. Email your supports coordinator and ask for your adult child’s current CLS budget broken out by component, along with the hourly rate being used for staff wages. Ask in writing. Save the reply.

When it arrives. Compare the hourly rate to $31 for one-to-one CLS and $21.70 for Overnight Health and Safety Supports. If it is lower, ask in writing for the basis. If there is no component breakdown at all, that is itself a settlement issue.

At the next planning meeting. Require that wages, transportation, activity fees, and training be discussed as separate components, as the settlement requires. Ask that any service you requested and did not receive be listed separately with a written reason. Take notes with the date.

If the budget is cut. Read the date on the notice. Count 10 days forward and request continuation of benefits. Count 60 days forward and file the appeal. At hearing, say the words out loud: you are asking the administrative law judge to reverse the determination and require a specific budget, which the settlement gives them authority to do.

None of this was inevitable. Michigan could have costed out these budgets properly at any point in the last twenty years. It took four families, an advocacy organization, and years of federal litigation to make it a requirement. The least the rest of us can do is use it before 2029.