• An attorney’s dilemma
• A trustee’s discovery
• A family’s wish
• An employer’s responsibility

• The challenge
  A family in New Jersey was approaching an important day: the girl’s 18th birthday. Severely mentally disabled at birth, her 18th birthday wouldn’t exactly be the same celebration of independence other new adults often experience. Still, the family hoped to provide her some sort of increased autonomy, while continuing to offer her the care and support she would need throughout adulthood.
• The success
  We set out to help the family find a solution. By working with the bank, guardian, Social Security, and Department of Disability Services, we created a budget that would allow the family to build a separate apartment connected to their home, and pay for the proper caregivers over their daughter’s lifetime. So it wasn’t only the young woman who received a new sense of independence; her family did, too.