## Facts

- A mother’s will created a $110,000 testamentary trust for her adult son, Darrell E. Myers, Jr., who had severe mental and physical disabilities and had long received Kansas public medical assistance.
- The trust authorized the trustee to distribute income and principal for Myers’s “care, support, maintenance, emergencies and welfare” only “as my trustee deems advisable.”
- Any principal and undistributed income remaining at Myers’s death would pass to the testator’s daughter and granddaughter (or the survivor).
- After a termination for failure to submit an annual eligibility review form, Myers reapplied for medical assistance; the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS) denied the application by treating the trust as a resource available to meet Myers’s medical needs, putting him over the asset limit.
- An agency hearing officer and the State Appeals Committee upheld the denial.
- The district court reversed, concluding the trust was discretionary and could not be counted as an available resource; the Court of Appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the will created a discretionary trust or a mandatory support trust.
2. If discretionary, whether SRS could treat the trust corpus and income as “available resources” when determining Myers’s eligibility for public medical assistance.

## Decision

- The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the district court and Court of Appeals.
- The Court held the trust was a discretionary trust because the trustee’s distribution power was governed by the phrase “as my trustee deems advisable.”
- Because Myers could not compel distributions, SRS could not count the trust assets as resources available to him for medical-assistance eligibility.

## Legal Principles

- A will or trust is construed to ascertain and give effect to the testator’s intent from the instrument as a whole, so long as the intent is lawful.
- Language granting distributions “as the trustee deems advisable” generally creates a discretionary trust as to distributions, even if other portions of the instrument use mandatory terms directed to administration.
- In a discretionary trust, the beneficiary has no enforceable right to demand payments of income or principal; similarly, creditors generally cannot compel distributions the beneficiary cannot compel.
- For public-benefits eligibility, assets are not “available resources” where the applicant lacks a present enforceable right to obtain trust distributions.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that the testamentary trust gave the trustee genuine discretion over distributions and preserved a remainder for other family members; therefore, the beneficiary could not require the trust to be spent for his medical needs, and the state could not treat the trust assets as available resources to deny public medical assistance.


Myers v. Kan. Dep’t of Soc. & Rehab. Servs., 254 Kan. 467, 866 P.2d 1052 (Kan. 1994)