The goal of this Project is to create important legal tools that would serve to advance the freedom and the rights of people with disabilities and specifically addressing the plight of people with IDD. To this end we introduce the Autistic [IDD] Defense Fund and two Empowerment Trusts, namely The Generosity Trust and The Circle of Support Trust.
The Autistic Defense Fund‘s primary intention is to fight Guardianship cases, but it is also envisioned to address other challenges such as illegality of family exclusions, the violations of the rights of IDD children, the segregation and restrictive environments in special education, the abuses of ABA practice, the loopholes in the definition of Community settings, the corruption of MFP intent, the slavery of sheltered workshops, and other causes that are at large or may arise.
The Autistic Defense Fund would be structured as a pooled trust of a hybrid type where an account would be established for an individual and donations and deposits can be made on behalf of this individual by third parties and by the individuals themselves; generally the account would be established for a person who is under guardianship or in danger of it. The funds in person’s account are intended to be used on behalf of this person as the need arises. The Fund wouldn’t initiate a lawsuit on behalf of the individual, but when there is request by a challenging party who wants to bring this suit, the Trust would fund their effort from the person’s account and may borrow from other sub-accounts and/or from the general purpose accounts as needed [see below].
The Autistic Defense Fund may also initiate lawsuits for specific causes in line with it’s mission and to this effect would be seeking donations that may be made across the board to any causes approved by Defense Fund’s management and would also seek to enlist talented lawyers and legal experts who would become affiliated with the Autistic Defense Fund and would be paid by the Fund for their services or would provide their services pro-bono or on a pay forward basis.
The fund will be also seeking help, participation, and affiliation with The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund (DREDF) as well as other Civil Rights Defense Funds and Leagues. The Autistic Defense Fund would reciprocally extend legal and financial help to Mentally Ill, and to Seniors in similar civil rights matters.
The Autistic Defense Fund is envisioned to begin as a Rhizome project and is expected to evolve into individual non-profit organization or alternatively into a separate full fledged Program of Divergent Labs. At this initial stage the project is seeking to form a team of legal experts to define the said Autistic [IDD] Defense Fund according to the laws and governing regulations pertaining to such matters.
The Generosity Trust is a novel idea. It is established for the purpose of enabling generosity as well as for cultivating a generosity virtue in children by the guided practice of being generous. Just as importantly it has a great ‘Quality of Life’ value for Disabled adults and Seniors.
The beneficiaries of this trust would be originally defined by the Grantor and may include various named charities and their programs as well as various individuals selected by the Grantor. Trustees of the trust will have a discretion to add new charities and new individuals every year and so does the Grantor(s) during their lifetime. This trust can be created for trustees of any age. For example it can be created by parents for their child so that child would learn [as a trustee] how to be generous with friends and family – a very important skill in our society.
The Generosity Trust may be defined as individual trust but it makes a lot more sense as a Pooled Trust in which case the Fiscal co-trustee would commonly be a Financial Institution [we are currently evaluating the PNC Financial Management Group – a bank in Pennsylvania which is also a fiscal Custodian of ABLEnow]. The pooled Generosity trust would work similarly to the way most pooled trusts work but will be highly automated by employing the expert rules based software [see Assistive software].
Note that this trust also works very well both for NT children but also for autistic children, children with Down Syndrome, and commonly for all the children diagnosed as IDD – and not only as a ‘virtue teaching’ tool, but also as a ‘Quality of Life’ practice for Disabled adults. Thus the Trust would be a great breakthrough for Disabled adults deprived of the virtue of gifting [by Medicaid arrangements]. By naming a Disabled person a trustee of their individual Generosity account [or a co-trustee in the case of a pooled Generosity Trust] – Grantors would allow this virtue to their disabled child in a universal manner without a jeopardy of loosing Medicaid and other limiting services and benefits they may be entitled to and to which they otherwise qualify for. Seniors as well would be able to establish a Generosity trusts account for their own use [as trustees] in a later years when their expected [limited] income may prevent them from being generous – the virtue they may have practiced and continue to value.
The Generosity Trust is a great instrument specifically when a person is required by Medicaid to not have any assets and are being specifically disallowed from making any gifts including gifts to charity. In all these cases being a co-trustee of a pooled Generosity Trust would circumvent this [unfathomable] restriction.
Very importantly the rules of the trust would address the situation when a disabled trustee is under Guardianship; in this case making sure that Guardianship would not preclude the named Trustee from performing their function and duty, but every effort would be made to ensure that this function is unhindered. Specifically if the person enrolled in a pooled trust falls under Guardianship or is institutionalized it will be the responsibility of Fiscal Co-Trusty to address this matter to an official “Circle of Support”* that may be established at either this time or the time of enrollment.
*Circle if support is a trusted group of people chosen by the individual. It may include one member of the immediate family, and may not include any charity in which a parent is a director or an executive. To note: Circle of Support is not excluded from qualifying to be on a list of Trust beneficiaries.
The Circle of Support Trust is a Grantor trust established for a group of beneficiaries [which for our purposes would include a “vulnerable child”]. It may contain a real estate property to share and use, the corporate assets, as well as the liquidity that may be invested.
The trust would distribute dividend to beneficiaries as they come of age. The distribution of the dividend would occur equitably to personal account of the qualifying [by age] beneficiary as long as the beneficiary is self sustaining [no reliance on government assistance that imposes restrictions in regard to dividend distribution].
In the event that a particular beneficiary is not self-sustaining but is not under Guardianship or involuntarily institutionalized the trust is designed to augment the way the dividend is distributed to a beneficiary. For this case Grantor [and subsequently the Trustee per Grantor’s guideline] would specify how the dividend is distributed across specific accounts of this individual [such as ABLEnow, SNT, other] and in which proportion these accounts would be receiving the dividend so not to affect the eligibility of the individual to Government benefits when and if it is needed and preferable [this function may be automated by assistive expert software]
However if any of the beneficiaries [of adult age] fall under guardianship or become involuntarily institutionalized then the dividends to all and each of the beneficiaries are cancelled until the individual’s freedom is fully restored. The sum of the cancelled dividend for the year would be given instead to the charity specified by the Grantor [and specifically to The Autistic Defense Fund which Rhizome Program plans to create and manage initially].
In addition to this per Circle of Support Trust’s dividend distribution rules – a specified part [%] of the dividend generated by this trust will be deposited to beneficiary’s account in The Pooled Generosity Trust where this beneficiary is a co-trustee; this account may be established for every beneficiary [Grantor’s option] but as a rule is envisioned for every ‘not self-sustaining’ beneficiary . The Circle of Support Trust is in this way acts as a central trust that works best in conjunction with Defense Fund and The Generosity Trust .
This project is in a process of establishing a version of “The Circle of Support Trust” – which is envisioned to serve as a boilerplate trust of this kind. This trust would be naming a group of extended family members [grandchildren in this first incarnation] as the beneficiaries in the Grantor trust set by a family member [a grandparent(s) in this case]. By way of participation in a trust and the shared use of the trust’s real estate the beneficiaries are expected to develop an informal primary ‘Circle of Support’ for each other and specifically for their vulnerable members.
The project would also define the required supportive software and interface with our software team in developing this software. Subsequently the project would make business arrangements with Custodial parties to offer and promote these legal instruments and to create Advisory Service to this regard.
The project is seeking to form a team of legal experts to define the Autistic Defense Fund and the said Empowerment Trusts according to the laws and governing regulations pertaining to such matters. The project is also seeking Grants and Donors to support this work and savvy business oriented professionals and entrepreneurs. The project is expected to evolve into individual business entities including a non-profit organization or alternatively a full fledged Program of Divergent Labs, presenting the original team with great opportunities as it matures.
The project is in a state of definition and recruitment. For participation and to contribute useful resources contact echolaliaproduction@gmail.com
Next: Project 5 – Transition to universally available services