Do special needs financial "trusts" actually fool the government?

How can they "fool" the government if they are legal and are actively involved with state legislatures? They are lifesavers for those who have just a bit too much for help and way too little to pay out of pocket.

You are right, it makes no sense now to flog myself with speculations & regrets. Appreciate your input & all the best w/ your mom~!

Two points - first, my son has a special needs trust. It was never my intent to fool anyone but to have a safety net in place for him should something happen to me or my husband and we could no longer care and/or provide for him. As far a fooling the government- taxes still need to be filed yearly on any special needs trust if the trust is generating any income - so I'm willing to bet with the IRS involved, the government has a pretty good picture as to what's going on.
Second - in regards to your decisions as POA and your mothers assets - what's the point in second guessing now? What's done is done. I am DPOA for my mother. When it became necessary for my mom to have 24/7 care I decided to place her in a nursing home - it was a tough decision but along with my brothers, we believe it to be the right choice. The thing is - my mom didn't want to go into a nursing home. Mom wanted to stay in Assisted Living with 24/7 paid caregivers in addition to the high cost of AL. Could we have done that? Yes - but mom would have run out of money at a little over two years. Then mom would have been at the mercy of Medicaid instead of having her own room with a sliding glass door that goes into a private landscaped courtyard complete with rock sculpture fountain - shared with only five other residents of the 35 at her beautiful, new nursing home. I ask myself every now and then if I made the right choice. I mean, would mom even make it another two years? And given moms current mental and physical condition would she have been able to notice any difference? As it is, mom is about to hit the one year point - she is on hospice but just got an extension having surpassed the initial six months - if I had gone with what she wanted half her money would be gone - with no immediate end of life in sight. You can't keep second guessing your choices and decisions - as long as you did what you did with your mothers best interest at heart - leave it alone and move on.

Joliandra, you are correct, inheritors won't inherit a thing now. This is sad, but very common. As we live so much longer, most of us need all our resources to take care of ourselves, and being able to leave much -- or anything at all -- to heirs is getting rare.

I hope that your mom has at least taken care of her burial/cremation expenses. If not, that could be something she spends down her remaining funds on.

Could you have put some money aside in a way that it was available for family to inherit while taxpayers paid for Mom's custodial care? I don't know, and I'll be interested to see if others have direct experience with that.

Wondering about whether inheritors won't inherit a thing now.

I'll be interested to see answers to your question about what "should" have been done in the past.

But no matter what you'd done a few years ago, she'd still be 96 now and still be needing custodial care. She will now need to be on Medicaid soon. If you'd done things differently, maybe she would have been on Medicaid a few years ago. How would she be better or worse off?

Are you wondering if you should have tried to protect her assets so that family could have inherited something? Or are you thinking that she would somehow be better off now?