Baker, J.
Timothy Robbins (Timothy) sustained catastrophic, permanent injuries from a car accident; he will require full-time care for the rest of his life. His father became his guardian, filed a lawsuit on Timothy’s behalf, and reached a settlement agreement totaling over $17 million. Timothy’s father asked that the trial court authorize the balance of the settlement agreement to be placed in a special needs trust. The trial court, expressing its disagreement with the legislative policy underlying special needs trusts, placed only $1 million into the trust and ordered the remaining funds be paid directly to the guardianship estate. Finding that the trial court exceeded the bounds of its authority and made errors of law in its ruling, we reverse and remand with instructions that the trial court direct the full, available amount of the settlement proceeds be placed into Timothy’s special needs trust.
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Special needs trusts serve public policy considerations that both Congress and our General Assembly have deemed important. Specifically, special needs trusts provide disabled people with the power to obtain additional healthcare services and equipment that are not covered by Medicaid, such as full-time care, wheelchairs if needed more often than every five years, dental work and dentures, eyeglasses if needed more often than every five years, home modifications, accessible vehicles, funerals, or anything to improve the quality of life of the disabled person. Amicus Br. p. 4-6.
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In this case, the trial court denied Guardian’s request to put the full amount of the settlement reached on behalf of Timothy into a special needs trust. Indeed, it agreed to place only $1 million into the trust, ordering that the remaining $5.75 million be paid directly to the guardianship estate.
The trial court refused to place the full amount of the settlement agreement into the special needs trust because it disagrees with the legislatively-mandated “legal fiction of impoverishment,” tr. vol. II p. 27, and disapproves of the shift of the expense to taxpayers. The trial court may well have a genuine disagreement with the policy decisions of our state and federal legislators, but it is still bound to abide by them. See, e.g., Hoagland v. Franklin Twp. Cmty. Sch. Corp., 27 N.E.3d 737, 749 (Ind. 2015) (holding that public policy is “exclusively for the General Assembly” and “the wisdom or desirability of particular legislation is not a matter for the judiciary to determine”); S. Shore Baseball, LLC v. DeJesus, 11 N.E.3d 903, 909 (Ind. 2014) (emphasizing the well accepted principle that “under our system of limited government, the legislative branch is entrusted with decisions of public policy”); Etzler v. Ind. Dep’t of Revenue, 43 N.E.3d 250, 255-56 (Ind. Ct. App. 2015) (holding that the “formulation of public policy is a task entrusted to the legislature, not the court”).
Here, there are no constitutional concerns preventing the legislature’s policy choices from being enforced. Both our federal and state legislators have made an express policy decision to allow for a “legal fiction of impoverishment” by placing assets in a special needs trust, knowing full well that it has the potential to shift expenses to the taxpayer, but trying to ameliorate that cost by requiring that any remaining trust proceeds be repaid to the State upon the disabled person’s death. While the trial court is free to disagree as to the wisdom of the legislature’s policy choices, the trial court exceeded the bounds of its authority by refusing to enforce this policy choice based on that disagreement.
The trial court also refused to place the full amount of the settlement proceeds into the special needs trust because it concluded that the trust was solely for the benefit of the Guardian and Timothy’s descendants. This is a mistake of law. As a matter of law, a special needs trust must contain a provision declaring that, upon the death of the disabled trust beneficiary, the total amount of Medicaid benefits must be paid back first, before any distributions to heirs are made. 42 U.S.C. § 1396p(d)(4)(A); I.C. § 12-15-2-17(f). Additionally, the special needs trust must be administered for the exclusive benefit of the disabled individual beneficiary for his or her lifetime. In other words, so long as the disabled individual is alive, other persons such as family members—or the guardian— cannot receive a direct benefit from the trust assets, and upon the disabled person’s death, the State gets repaid before anyone else inherits a dime. Consequently, it is a legal impossibility that Timothy’s special needs trust is designed to “benefit” either the Guardian or Timothy’s descendants, and the trial court’s conclusion in this regard was erroneous.
The judgment of the trial court is reversed in relevant part and remanded with instructions to direct that the full, available amount of settlement proceeds be placed in Timothy’s special needs trust.
Kirsch, J., and Robb, J., concur.