One of the most persistent worries that occupies the minds of parents of children with profound special needs is: who will take care of their child once they have passed or are no longer able to care for them?
Lexington resident Pooja Arora has a teenage son, Ishaan, with severe autism and a complex medical history, who cannot speak or consume solid foods and will require a caregiver for the entirety of his life.
“My entire life revolves around who’s going to take care of Ishaan if something happens to me and my spouse,” Arora said. “There’s always that worry about your children, whether they have special needs or not, but that worry never leaves you when you are dealing with children this vulnerable.”
Ishaan’s condition changed as he got older. “When he was little, it was different. As a toddler, he would use my hands to [tell me] his needs, such as by dragging me around. But as he grew up, he started to get these really bad headaches where he would just scream out of pain, and he’d hurt others and himself. Living through that season required everything I had—emotionally, physically, and professionally,” Arora said.
Arora put her career as a lawyer on the back burner and became a stay-at-home parent so she could devote all her time to caring for Ishaan.
Ishaan attended the Lexington Public School (LPS) system until he was eight, at which point LPS could no longer adequately meet his profound needs. He transferred to the New England Center for Children, a residential program for autistic children based in Southboro, Mass., where he currently receives intensive therapy from expert caregivers.
Arora says it was incredibly difficult to part with her son, but she recognized the legitimacy of the recommendations she received from Ishaan’s medical team and LPS. “Ishaan is the center of my life, and was very dependent on me, so it was very hard, being a parent, to send him away. We made the gut-wrenching decision to send him to his current school,” Arora said.
“I was devastated, and I just wanted to [redirect] all those emotions into something positive and meaningful.”
Once Ishaan had successfully transferred, Arora returned to law school. She already had a law degree from the Army Institute of Law, a law school in Punjab, India, though she had to complete prerequisite courses at the Massachusetts School of Law to sit for the Massachusetts Bar Exam. After obtaining her Massachusetts license, she further specialized in estate planning and special needs law at the Western New England University School of Law. Upon graduation, Arora committed herself to becoming an estate planner, first at other law firms, and then at her own firm.
This was the genesis of My Special Legal Planning, Arora’s Lexington-based firm established in August 2024, where she has translated what she learned from raising Ishaan into something that could benefit parents with similar experiences.
My Special Legal Planning specializes in helping the families of children with significant disabilities piece, including what will happen to their child once they cannot care for them anymore, offering answers to parents’ concerns of who will take care of their children once they are incapable of doing so.
Estate planners do not only give their clients a plan—they provide them with comfort in a functional future and solace in the knowledge that their children will always be safe, no matter what happens, Arora says.
The documents produced during estate planning contain numerous moving parts and are often quite complex, so if they are completed improperly, repercussions could be catastrophic. Some individuals with severe disabilities are unable to function without a legal guardian to make medical and general decisions on their behalf; thus, it is imperative for parents to outline a guardianship plan for their children in a will, with the help of an estate planner, to ensure that someone will always be there to take care of them, Arora explains.
Arora did not have a very positive experience with her own estate planner. Throughout the process, she says, she was not made aware of how the various parts of the plan worked together or what the plan would look like in effect. Arora said she felt “unsettled” as she walked away with her plan for Ishaan in hand. In her personal practice, Arora says she makes an effort to communicate a great deal with her clients.
Arora now aims to differentiate herself from many other estate planners — she was once in her client’s shoes herself and fully understands the constant pursuit of peace of mind, clarity, and security as the parent of a child with special needs, she says.