Children that are injured at birth due to medical negligence may require continued medical care – and sometimes that care may be needed for the rest of their lives. Attorneys who handle birth injury cases use experts to create special financial plans to accommodate those needs – the most common of which are special needs trusts and life care plans.

Special needs trusts

As the name suggests, special needs trusts are created to meet the special needs of the child. Jeff Milman, an attorney who has been practicing medical negligence law for 26 years and member of the Advocate Law Group, explained the concept:

What happens in a lot of cases, unless you’re particularly well-funded through private insurance, parents will apply for government benefits such as Medi-Cal and sometimes Medicare. There can be regional centers that take care and provide education for the children.

One of the goals when you settle a case is to bring in an attorney who specializes in special needs trusts and as part of any settlement, to the best of our ability, shield the money that the child and parents get so that their ability to obtain government benefits is not cut off. That is a special needs trust.

These settlements are overseen by a judge; we call it a minor’s compromise. The judge has to make sure that the money is handled properly, that nobody’s absconding with it and that the amount of the settlement is fair. So, there’s a second set of eyes watching what’s going on.

Life care plans

A life care plan is created to provide for the child’s foreseeable and unforeseeable expenses. Milman explained how these work:

A life care plan is usually created by a certified nurse. He or she interacts with the treating physicians of the child, the pediatrician, as well as experts that we retain for purposes of the case such as the pediatric neurologist, a pediatric physical medicine expert and a rehabilitation expert. The goal is to set forth all of the future medical care needs down to Band-Aids and medicines that this child may need over the course of his or her lifetime.

The life care plan is for the baby’s lifetime. We get an economist who will basically evaluate that life care plan and put the figures in today’s dollars. So for example, you may have a life care plan that deals with $12 million of needs of this child through age 75. However, the present value, meaning the amount that it would cost to write a check to let the money grow and cover all that may be say, $3 million. Of course, the other side will have competing experts that will say that our numbers are inflated, so we get to fight about that.

Complex issues require an experienced lawyer

It’s clear that the complexities of birth injury cases require an experienced lawyer. According to Milman, “This is a high specialty area and I’ve seen a myriad of times where the attorney handling the case gets in way too deep, runs out of money, has hired the wrong experts or doesn’t have experts at all. If you are a consumer and you’re contemplating bringing one of these cases, make sure you find an attorney that is up to the challenge of handling this and ask them point blank, what percentage of their practice is medical negligence? Have they handled birth injury cases? What has been their track record?”

If your child was profoundly injured or died as the result of medical negligence, contact an attorney whose practice focuses in this area of law for help. To contact an experienced attorney near you, please click here.