Special Needs Planning · Pennsylvania
Special needs financial planning in Pennsylvania
Plenty of our client families sit just up I-83 in Pennsylvania. We're registered in the Commonwealth and do this planning over video, so York, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are all the same distance from our conference room.
Special needs planning runs on federal rails: SSI's $2,000 resource limit, ABLE protections, trust rules. Pennsylvania adds its own switches on top, including a state tax deduction for PA ABLE contributions and inheritance-tax treatment that makes account choice genuinely consequential.
We help Pennsylvania families coordinate the whole picture: the right ABLE program, trusts drafted by PA attorneys and actually funded, the turning-18 sequence, and a plan that supports your child without sacrificing your own retirement.
Pennsylvania's ABLE program: PA ABLE
Pennsylvania's PA ABLE program comes with unusually strong perks: contributions are deductible on Pennsylvania income tax returns, account growth is exempt from PA inheritance tax, and balances are protected from PA creditor claims. For most Pennsylvania families it's the program to beat.
Written by Colin Meeks, CFP® · Registered to serve Pennsylvania residents · Last updated August 6, 2026
The guides Pennsylvania families use most
ABLE Accounts→
The $2,000 SSI resource limit puts families in a straitjacket: help your adult child save, and you can cost them their benefits. ABLE accounts exist to cut that knot.
Special Needs Trusts→
A trust is how grandparents leave an inheritance, how life insurance pays out, and how larger money supports your child for decades, all without touching benefit eligibility. It's also the document most families get drafted and then never actually fund.
Turning 18→
Nothing about your child changes on their 18th birthday. Everything about the rules does. Families who start at 16 or 17 walk through this calmly. Families who start at 18 spend a year untangling.
Common questions from Pennsylvania families
Occasionally, southern PA families sometimes drive down to the Parkville office, about an hour from York. Most choose video for everything, which works just as well and skips I-83 traffic.
The first call works the same from Pennsylvania.
Fifteen minutes, complimentary, over video or phone. Tell us your situation and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.
Prefer the phone? Call 410-663-0700 and ask for Colin.