Collaborative Guidance for Every Stage of Your Loved One’s Life
Whether you’re just starting to plan or navigating complex transitions, our team provides specialized guidance tailored to your family’s journey, so you can move forward with confidence.
Key Milestones We Support
Getting Started: We help you make sense of what’s urgent and what can wait. Our team works with you to prioritize financial tasks, identify what can be delegated, and offer a clear, supportive path forward.
Transition to Adulthood: We guide families through critical transitions like SSI eligibility, Medicaid enrollment, and establishing guardianship. We also connect you with trusted professionals to support legal and care decisions.
Planning for Aging Caregivers: As parents age, planning becomes more complex. We help you build a retirement and estate plan that includes your dependent’s lifelong needs, helping ensure continuity of care, housing, and financial security.
It’s been my honor to work with many families like ours to help ensure that all the legal and financial supports are in place to allow their children to have what we’d want for any child: a chance to live a good life, with their share of joys and sorrows, as well as opportunities to be themselves and make their unique contributions to a community that includes and values them.
Specialized Services for Families with Dependents with Special Needs
- Financial planning for special needs diagnoses
- Special needs trust planning
- ABLE account coordination
- Tax-smart strategies for funding and maintaining trusts
- Estate planning and legacy documentation support
- Investment management to support long-term needs
- Benefit eligibility strategies monitoring
- Continuity of care planning
Mercer Advisors is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice to clients. All estate planning document preparation and other legal advice is provided through select third parties unaffiliated to Mercer Advisors. Tax preparation and tax filing are a separate fee from our investment management and planning services.
A Team Approach to Lifelong Special Needs Planning
For 40 years, Mercer Advisors has helped families, including those with special needs, streamline financial planning, investment management, tax, estate, and insurance strategies—so that you can spend more time focusing on what matters most.
A Family Office for Your Family
We’ve adapted the sophisticated, time-tested strategies used by ultra-high-net-worth individuals to help more families take control of their financial future.
A unified in-house team
of planners, investors, accountants, and estate strategists that designs — and executes — your financial plan.
A hand-picked advisor
who is focused on serving you, not on finding new clients.
An institutional-grade portfolio
personalized to you and managed by a team of 100+ investment professionals, not just one advisor.
A boutique fiduciary with national strength
that combines intimate service and sophisticated capability, and only acts in your best interest.
Mercer Advisors offers the strength of a large national firm with the personal touch you expect from a local office.
TRUST WE HAVE EARNED
Read Reviews from our Clients
Helping families like yours for 40 years and counting.
Frequently Asked Questions
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To set up a special needs trust, consult an estate planning attorney experienced in disability law to draft a trust document that complies with federal and state regulations. You’ll need to choose a trustee, decide on the type of trust (first-party or third-party), and fund it with appropriate assets.
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Special needs trusts are typically taxed as either grantor or non-grantor trusts, depending on how they are structured. Income retained in the trust may be taxed at higher trust tax rates, while distributions used for the beneficiary’s benefit may shift the tax burden to the beneficiary, often at a lower rate.
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We believe in simple, transparent fees. As a fee-based fiduciary, we can remain focused on doing what’s best for you, not commissions.
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Yes, if not properly structured, a trust can disqualify a beneficiary from receiving SSI or Medicaid. However, a correctly drafted special needs trust is designed to supplement, not replace, government benefits, preserving eligibility while providing additional support.
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The trustee should be someone trustworthy, financially responsible, and knowledgeable about government benefit rules. This could be a family member, a professional trustee, or a nonprofit organization. It’s crucial they understand how to manage the trust without jeopardizing the beneficiary’s public benefits.
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At Mercer Advisors, the phrase “unified in-house team” refers to our integrated group of professionals — financial planners, investment managers, tax advisors, estate strategists, insurance specialists, and other professionals — who collaborate to design and execute your comprehensive financial plan. This unified approach helps ensure all aspects of your financial life are working together.
*Company statistics as of 7/31/25. Client assets refers to client assets under management (AUM) and client assets under advisement (AUA) as well as assets gained from recent acquisitions where the advisory agreements have been properly assigned to Mercer Global Advisors, but the custodial accounts have yet to be transferred and/or the accounts have yet to be migrated to Mercer Global Advisors’ portfolio management system.
Mercer Advisors was ranked #1 for RIA firms with up to $70 billion in assets under management. The Barron’s 2025 top RIA ranking is based on a combination of metrics – including size, growth, service quality, technology, succession planning and others. No fee was paid for participation in the ranking, however, Mercer Advisors has paid a fee to Barron’s to use the ranking in marketing. Please see important information about the ranking criteria methodology here.
