Most families do not need to follow every new court decision, Medicaid rule, tax election, or change to federal retirement law.
That is our job.
What families do need to know is when one of those changes could affect a decision they are making right now.
After reviewing materials from the 2026 Elder Law Institute and additional training on post-death tax and estate planning, our team identified several developments that deserve attention. Some affect people planning for a loved one with special needs. Others may matter to families navigating Medicaid, administering an estate, or ensuring an existing estate plan still works as intended.
Here are five groups of people who should be paying particular attention.
1. If You Have a Loved One With a Disability
One of the biggest developments involves ABLE accounts.
Beginning in 2026, eligibility expands so that an individual’s disability must have begun before age 46 rather than before age 26.
That may sound like a small change, but it could open the door for individuals and families who previously did not qualify.
ABLE accounts can be an important part of special needs planning because they may allow an individual with a disability to save and use money for qualified expenses while preserving access to certain public benefits.
For families who were previously told that an ABLE account was not an option because of the individual’s age when the disability began, it may be time to revisit that conversation.
The important question is not simply, “Can we open an ABLE account now?”
It is, “How should an ABLE account fit into the rest of our planning?”
That may include a Special Needs Trust, beneficiary designations, public benefits, housing assistance, family support, and the long-term financial needs of the person you love.
2. If a Retirement Account Will Eventually Benefit Someone With Special Needs
This is an area where families can have excellent intentions and still create an unintended problem.
You may have spent years carefully creating a Special Needs Trust to protect a child or loved one with a disability.
But then there is the IRA.
Or the 401(k).
Or another retirement account with its own beneficiary designation.
Those beneficiary forms matter.
Retirement accounts are governed by their beneficiary designations, and coordinating those designations with a Special Needs Trust can involve additional rules involving inherited retirement accounts.
That means creating the trust is only part of the job.
The beneficiary designation needs to work with the trust and with the rest of the estate plan.
This is one reason we place so much emphasis on follow-through. A beautifully drafted estate plan cannot accomplish what you intended if the assets never make it to the right place.
If your estate plan includes a loved one with special needs and you have significant retirement assets, this is worth reviewing.
3. If You Are Helping an Aging Parent
Families helping aging parents already have enough to manage.
There may be medical appointments, medications, housing decisions, caregiving, finances, insurance, and questions about whether additional care will eventually be needed.
Medicaid adds another layer of complexity.
There are upcoming changes involving Medicaid eligibility and administration that could affect how families prepare, when applications should be submitted, what documentation will be needed, and how much room families have to correct problems after the fact.
Pennsylvania is also continuing to develop options involving Medicaid-funded assisted living, which raises another set of practical questions.
Which facilities are actually participating?
Is there availability?
What level of care is being provided?
How does the program work in the real world, not simply on paper?
Those are the questions families need answered.
There are also Medicaid programs beyond traditional nursing home Medicaid that may help certain individuals, including programs connected to disability, employment, Medicare costs, and other circumstances.
The difficulty is that most families do not know which questions to ask.
That is why waiting until a parent is already in crisis can make everything harder.
If you are starting to notice that Mom or Dad needs more help than they used to, that is often the right time to begin learning about the options available.
4. If Your Spouse or Parent Recently Died
Families understandably want to get things handled after someone dies.
- Close the accounts.
- Transfer the assets.
- Distribute the inheritance.
- Sell what needs to be sold.
- Finish the estate.
But moving too quickly can sometimes eliminate options that should have been considered first.
There may be decisions involving inherited retirement accounts, tax elections, disclaimers, portability between spouses, cost basis, business interests, trusts, and other assets.
Some of those decisions have deadlines.
Others can be affected by whether an asset has already been distributed or accepted by a beneficiary.
That is why we believe one of the most important parts of probate and trust administration happens before significant distributions are made.
A family may be asking, “How quickly can we get this money distributed?”
Our first question may need to be, “Is there anything we should review before we do that?”
Estate planning does not necessarily end when someone dies. In some situations, there are still important planning decisions available to the family afterward.
5. If You Are Serving as an Executor or Trustee
Being named executor or trustee can feel like an honor.
Then the work begins.
Suddenly you are responsible for property that is not yours, money that belongs to an estate or trust, deadlines you may never have heard of, beneficiaries who want answers, and legal duties that can create personal consequences if handled incorrectly.
Executors and trustees may need to address issues involving distributions, taxes, creditors, conflicts of interest, business interests, retirement accounts, notices to interested parties, and the eventual closing of the estate or trust.
And one of the biggest mistakes a fiduciary can make is assuming that every reasonable-looking decision is automatically a legally appropriate one.
You do not have to become an estate administration expert overnight.
You do need to understand your role before making major decisions.
That is especially important before distributing money, selling property, transferring business interests, or taking actions that may be difficult to reverse.
You Do Not Have to Keep Track of Every Change
Estate planning and elder law continue to evolve.
Some developments require immediate action. Others deserve a closer look. Still others simply need to be monitored until the law becomes clearer.
Our responsibility is to know the difference.
When our team attends continuing education programs or reviews new developments, we do not want that information sitting in a binder on a shelf. We ask a much more practical question:
Does this change anything we should be doing for the families we serve?
- Sometimes the answer means updating a checklist.
- Sometimes it means reviewing a beneficiary designation.
- Sometimes it means slowing down before an estate distribution.
- And sometimes it means reaching out to a family because an option that did not exist for them several years ago may be available today.
You do not need to understand every new development in estate planning, Medicaid, special needs planning, or estate administration.
You need to know whether the changes affect your family, your plan, or the decisions you are about to make.
If any of the situations above sound familiar, the next step is to learn what applies to your circumstances before making a decision that may be difficult to undo.
Register for a free Bellomo & Associates workshop to better understand your options and what your family should be thinking about next.
