2026 National Conference on Special Needs Planning and Special Needs Trusts

Main Conference
Thursday, October 22, 2026

8:00 a.m.-8:20 a.m.

Welcome and Announcements and TEAM Introduction
Becky Morgan and TEAM

8:20 a.m.-9:10 a.m.

Are the Machines in Charge? Using AI to Review Trusts and Other Things…
Mason Clark
[Description coming soon]

9:10 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

SSA Update
Kathleen Romig
[Description coming soon]

10:00 a.m.-10:25 a.m.

Break and Visit with Sponsors and Exhibitors
Sponsored by Prudent Investors

10:25 a.m.-11:15 a.m.

[Title coming soon]
Craig Reaves
[Description coming soon]

11:15 a.m.-12:05 p.m.

The POMS Problem: Deference, Distribution Decisions, and the Reality of Special Needs Trust Administration
Tara Anne Pleat and Ed Wilcenski
Special needs trust administration frequently turns on language in the Social Security Administration’s Program Operations Manual System (POMS), yet the guidance is often opaque, internally inconsistent, and applied unevenly. How much weight should POMS carry when interpreting trust terms or evaluating distributions? This session will examine the limits of POMS and agency deference, including existing scholarship on the role of administrative guidance in trust interpretation. The presenters will explore how trustees, attorneys, and courts navigate conflicting guidance and offer practical strategies for administering and defending distributions when federal guidance and state oversight collide.

12:05 p.m.-1:30 p.m.

Lunch
Sponsored by Key Bank

1:30 p.m.-2:20 p.m. Breakout Session 1

Tax Law Update
Bob Brogan
[Description coming soon]
The Bot, the Trust, and the Benefit Threat: Responding to AI-Driven SSA Scrutiny
Victoria Blair and Bridget Swartz
As SSA increasingly relies on AI-assisted review tools to evaluate special needs trusts, practitioners are seeing trust agreements scrutinized in new, and sometimes deeply flawed, ways. This session will examine a real-world pooled special needs trust review in which SSA challenged and attempted to dismantle key provisions of the trust agreement, imposed numerous requested changes, and ultimately got critical issues wrong. We will discuss the legal and practical response to SSA’s demands, strategies for defending compliant pooled trust language, and lessons learned for trustees, counsel, and advocates. The session will also explore how these AI-driven review issues may spill over into individual (d)(4)(A) trusts and Medicaid eligibility reviews, with practical guidance for anticipating challenges before they become benefit-threatening problems.
SSI Update
Kathleen Romig and Jennifer Burdick
A review of recent SSA policy changes and initiatives from the past year.

2:25 p.m.-3:15 p.m. Breakout Session 2

Veterans Benefits Law: An Overview
Hon. Michael Allen
This session will provide an overview of veterans benefits law. It is designed to highlight information necessary for practitioners to identify veterans benefits issues for clients they are advising on other matters. The presenter intends to provide ample time for questions.
Moving the Beneficiary to Another Country
Benji Rubin
[Description coming soon]
Demystifying Social Security’s Childhood Disability Benefit
Christopher Smith
For families raising a child with a disability, few benefits are as valuable as Social Security’s Childhood Disability Benefit (formerly known as the Disabled Adult Child (DAC) benefit), and few are as complicated to understand and explain. This session shows who qualifies, how the benefit is calculated, and the costly mistakes that quietly disqualify families every day.
[Title coming soon]
Mason Clark
[Description coming soon]

3:15 p.m.-3:30 p.m.