SNN Presents: Legal and Financial Planning for Your Child with Special Needs

We learned from SNN Shares: Transitioning to Adulthood earlier this year that there are certain legal and financial implications when our children turn 18. While they are legally adults based on their chronological age, their rights and responsibilities may be different given their disabilities. In this event, SNNHK parent Lilian Ma will share with us practical challenges she faced in planning for her adult child and her experience with the Special Needs Trust (SNT), while lawyers from Rita Ku & Solicitors will talk about: 

• Special needs, mental incapacity and guardianship
• Documents and tools in legal and financial planning for disabled family members: Will, Enduring Power of Attorney, Advance Directive, Special Needs Trust, etc.
• Practical considerations: costs, when and how to start the process 

Join us to get informed! 

SPEAKERS

Sharon Ser – Partner, Rita Ku & Solicitors

Sharon is a family law expert who has resided in Hong Kong for over 3 decades. She has extensive experience in both contentious and non-contentious family matters. Sharon has handled many international divorce cases and has also increasingly worked with people who need assistance in the wider family and family office arena in advising on how trusts best operate within such an environment and handing big picture family issues.

Innovation and proactive development of important legal issues is a passion of Sharon’s, and she has a track record that includes heading the team on several leading Court of Appeal family cases.

Sharon is frequently invited by various international associations, conference organisers, and banks to give talks on family law issues. She has been ranked as a Band 1 lawyer on Chambers Asia-Pacific for many years, and has been recognised as a Preeminent Lawyer on Doyle’s Hong Kong Family & Divorce Lawyers since 2019. In 2020 and 2021, she is recognised by Benchmark Litigation as one of the Top 100 Women in Litigation in Asia-Pacific.

Sarina Cheung – Associate, Rita Ku & Solicitors

Sarina is an associate of RKS specializing in wills and probate, trust, mental health law and related applications and estate administration and litigation.

Prior to entering the legal industry, Sarina headed the Department of Probate Services in a well-established and reputable trust and banking corporation in Hong Kong and had accumulated over 10 years of experience there as a trust and estate practitioner. She led her team to involve in major trust and probate administrations and was well trusted by her peers and her clients as being professional, passionate, and strategic. In 2018, she made a big career move to be qualified as a lawyer. She was trained in an international law firm specializing in private clients, and stayed there for a year before moving to RKS.

Lilian Ma – Parent, and Certified Financial Planner, Senior Unit Manager at Manulife Hong Kong

Lilian’s son has multiple disabilities but is a contented and happy young man. He graduated from school last year and is currently attending a day program extended to school graduates.

Lilian has over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry in Canada and Hong Kong. While working at Manulife, Lilian is also the founder of JLM WELLNESS and website www.12minerals.com, and the Hong Kong Representative of the Institute of Biochemic Medicine (Asia Pacific). Lilian is interested in estate planning for families of disabled children and is a former committee member of the Guardianship and Estate Management Policy Monitoring Group in Hong Kong. Lilian is also volunteering at the Haven of Hope Sunnyside Enabling Centre which serves disabled young adults graduating from special schools across Hong Kong.