Current Issues in Special Needs Trusts/Planning for Disability from Birth to Age 64
THANKS TO OUR GENEROUS SPONSOR ELWYN INSTITUTE
TIME: 5:00 to 5:45 p.m. Registration and Cash Bar
5:45 to 6:15 p.m. Dinner
6:15 to 7:15 p.m. CLE Seminar/Program
Our November Program, Current Issues in Special Needs Trusts/Planning for Disability from Birth to Age 64, is presented by Dennis McAndrews and Lesley Mehalick from the McAndrews Law Offices, a Special Education, Disability and Estate Planning Law Firm serving Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Washington. They are nationally recognized experts in the field of special needs planning. The program will cover the transition from secondary school into adulthood which is a time of critical importance for adolescents and young adults. By properly utilizing the secondary school transition system, as well as the MH/ID/autism adult service programs, productive, meaningful, and fruitful lives can be realized for individuals with disabilities. However, careful and insightful advocacy is always necessary and this program will provide the tools for such advocacy.
Dennis C. McAndrews is the Founder and Managing Partner Emeritus of McAndrews Law Offices, P.C., which he founded in 1982. He regularly represents families and individuals in a variety of areas, including Special Education, Estate Planning, Estate Administration, Special Needs Trusts, Guardianship, Post-Litigation Planning, Personal Injury Settlement Planning, Title IX Representation, Right-to-Treatment cases and Abuse cases. He has developed a national reputation in each of these fields during his 40 year legal career, receiving the highest professional ratings for his competency and ethical standards, as well as multiple awards for representation of vulnerable individuals. He is a member of the Pennsylvania Bar Association’s Elder Law Section Council and served as Executive Director and Staff Counsel to two select committees of the PA State Senate which evaluated Pennsylvania’s system of care for persons with disabilities and drafted proposed legislation designed to modernize Pennsylvania’s legal basis for the provision of care to the intellectually disabled. Dennis received his degrees from Villanova University School of Law, Juris Doctor, 1978, Villanova University, B.S. (Education), (cum laude) May, 1975 and Villanova University, B.A. (Political Science), (cum laude) May, 1975. Mr. McAndrews is the playwright/actor of a one-man play “If JFK Survived Dallas” in which he portrays President Kennedy as an elder statesman. He has presented at the Kennedy Summer School in Ireland, in Texas on the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy, and across the East Coast.
Lesley Mehalick, JD, LLM, is a shareholder of McAndrews Law Offices and the supervising partner for the firm’s estates and trusts department and an Adjunct Professor of Taxation and Special Needs Planning at The American College of Financial Services. She concentrates her practice in the areas of estate planning, special needs planning, guardianships, special needs trusts, estate administration, and elder law planning. Ms. Mehalick regularly assists families in qualifying clients for public benefits, preparing special needs trusts, bringing guardianship proceedings, and carefully crafting an estate plan that maintains a disabled family member’s eligibility for essential public benefits. She regularly appears in Orphans’ Court and is a frequent lecturer to both attorneys and families on these topics. She holds an LLM in Taxation and a Certification in Estate Planning from the Villanova University School of Law, Graduate Tax Program, and she received her JD from the George Washington University Law School, where she served as the Executive Articles Editor on the American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal.
