Carol S. Battaglia has been in private practice as a solo practitioner for over 20 years. As part of her estate planning practice, she routinely works with families who have disabled family members to create estate plans using special needs trusts. She also assists trial lawyers in establishing court-created special needs trusts, designing structured settlements and implementing other strategies to receive an injured party’s settlement funds while maintaining eligibility for government assistance benefits. Ms. Battaglia is a member of the sections on Estate Planning, Probate, and Trust Section of the San Diego County Bar Association, and the Estate Planning Council of San Diego. She is also the Southern California member of the Special Needs Alliance, which is a national network of lawyers dedicated to Disability and Public Benefits Law. She has been working with the Special Needs Trust Foundation of San Diego since 2002 on their project of adding self-settled special needs trusts to their program for which she wrote the master trust agreement. Currently, she is the author of a chapter in the CEB’s new book on Special Needs Trusts. She is a frequent speaker and author on special needs trusts and other means of maintaining needs based public benefits. The national attorney’s directory, Martindale-Hubbell, gives Ms. Battaglia it’s highest rating of A/V.