About First-Party Special Needs Trusts
First-Party Special Needs Trusts is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to one mission: making first-party special needs trusts affordable, accurate, and accessible to every adult with a disability who needs one. We focus exclusively on first-party (self-settled) trusts so that every document we produce reflects deep, current expertise in this one area of disability law — rather than spreading thin across every type of estate planning.
Why We Exist
Families and individuals managing a settlement, inheritance, or sudden windfall often face an impossible choice: pay an attorney thousands of dollars, or risk losing SSI and Medicaid by doing nothing. We built this nonprofit to remove that choice.
Meet the Founder — Tom Sannicandro, JD, PhD
Tom Sannicandro, JD, PhD has practiced disability law for more than 25 years and has researched special needs planning law across all 50 states. He is the parent of an adult son with Down syndrome, which gives his work in this field both professional depth and personal urgency.
After years of practicing law, he set out to give back by making first-party special needs trust documents — the same documents attorneys charge thousands of dollars for — available to every family and individual who needs one, at a fraction of the cost, by automating the process he used with clients for decades.
Our Approach
• Built by a disability-law attorney with decades of hands-on experience
• Backed by nationwide research into special needs trust and Medicaid rules
• Delivered through a nonprofit model — affordable by design, not by accident
• Focused exclusively on first-party special needs trusts, so every document reflects specialized, current expertise
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