How-To Guides

Every one of these started as a question somebody could not get answered on the phone.

This is the practical side of the site: applications, appeals, FOIA requests, eligibility paperwork, getting paid as a family caregiver, and what to do when a program closes with no notice. Step by step, with the forms named and the deadlines stated. Nothing here promises an outcome. It tells you what the process is and where families most often lose.

The Benefits Cliff: Work, Medicaid, and Keeping Supports

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources How-To Guides Medicaid

The “Benefits Cliff”: Work, Medicaid, and Keeping Supports How part-time work actually affects SSI and Medicaid, why the cliff is mostly a wall built by misinformation, and the federal work...

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources How-To Guides

Representative Payee Basics What a rep payee actually does, how the SSA application works, what the annual report demands, and why this narrow tool is not a substitute for a...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

What Grandparents and Extended Family Need to Know About Inheritance A plain-language guide for the relatives who love your adult and want to leave them something. Why a direct gift...

Advocacy Resources Comparison Tools How-To Guides Medicaid

ABLE Accounts vs Special Needs Trusts (and the $2,000 SSI Asset Limit) Two saving instruments, one cliff. SSI’s $2,000 asset limit has not moved since 1989. ABLE accounts and SNTs...

Advocacy Resources Comparison Tools How-To Guides Medicaid

Special Needs Trusts: First-Party, Third-Party, and Pooled Three trust structures, one critical rule about Medicaid payback, and the most common mistake families make: putting the inheritance directly into the autistic...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

Estate Planning Essentials for Families of Autistic Adults Five core documents, one attorney appointment, and the orphan beneficiary line that quietly destroys SSI eligibility if nobody is paying attention. A...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

Sibling Caregivers and the Conversation That Must Happen How adult siblings end up in caregiving roles, why the planning conversation gets postponed, and the shared structure that prevents the worst...

Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

The Letter of Intent: A Successor Caregiver’s Field Manual The single document that lets someone who has never lived with your adult know exactly how to support him next Tuesday....

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources Comparison Tools How-To Guides

Healthcare Options Without Guardianship HIPAA, healthcare proxies, durable POAs, representative payees, and supported decision making. The instruments that handle most adult healthcare decisions without ever filing a court petition. By...

Adult Transition Advocacy Resources Documentation Strategies How-To Guides

What Happens at a Guardianship Hearing Court procedure, demystified. The petition you draft, the evaluation that gets ordered, the questions the judge actually asks, and the evidence that decides whether...