## Facts

- Louis Rosenberg’s 1976 will left Mary Rosenberg about $157,000 outright and created a testamentary trust funded at about $65,000 “solely for the benefit” of Mary during her lifetime.
- Trust terms required the trustee to pay net income to Mary quarterly and authorized the trustee, in his sole discretion, to invade principal for Mary’s “comfort, welfare, and maintenance and support,” including medical and surgical expenses and other unusual needs.
- Upon Mary’s death, any remaining trust property passed to Louis’s then-living issue per stirpes.
- Mary entered a nursing home in 1987 and used nearly all of her outright inheritance to pay for care through 1992.
- In February 1992, Mary applied for Medical Assistance; eligibility required resources below roughly $2,400–$2,500.
- About $55,000 in trust principal remained, and the Department of Public Welfare treated the principal as an available resource and denied benefits.
- The Commonwealth Court affirmed the denial; Mary died during the proceedings, and her estate continued the appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

## Issues

1. Whether the trustee had discretion to preserve the trust principal for remaindermen such that the corpus was not an “available resource” for Medical Assistance eligibility.
2. Whether a testamentary trust authorizing discretionary invasion of principal for a spouse’s support and medical expenses makes the corpus countable in determining Medical Assistance eligibility.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania affirmed.
- The trust principal was an available resource to Mary because the trustee was empowered to use principal for her support and medical needs.
- The trustee could not treat preservation of principal for remaindermen as controlling where Mary had needs within the trust’s stated purposes.
- The Department of Public Welfare properly counted the trust corpus and properly denied Medical Assistance due to excess resources.

## Legal Principles

- A testator’s intent, as expressed in the will and informed by relevant circumstances, controls interpretation of a testamentary trust.
- When a trust is created solely for a life beneficiary and permits discretionary invasion of principal for the beneficiary’s support, maintenance, comfort, and medical expenses, the corpus is ordinarily viewed as available to the beneficiary.
- Remaindermen’s interests are subordinate to the life beneficiary’s beneficial interest when the trust’s terms prioritize the beneficiary’s welfare; any remainder is contingent on what is left after authorized expenditures.
- Courts will not infer an intent to preserve trust assets to shift a beneficiary’s care to public assistance absent clear language or strong evidence supporting that intent; broad support and medical-expense provisions support availability.
- For Medical Assistance resource determinations, a trust corpus is “available” when the trustee has authority to apply principal for the applicant’s benefit to meet needs contemplated by the trust.

## Conclusion

Because the trustee had broad authority to use trust principal for Mary Rosenberg’s support and medical care and the trust was established for her sole benefit during life, the remaining corpus was an available resource for Medical Assistance eligibility, and the denial of benefits was upheld.


Estate of Rosenberg v. Dep’t of Pub. Welfare, 679 A.2d 767 (Pa. 1996)