Disability rights are civil rights. Our office provides legal representation for children with disabilities. We provide assistance primarily in the areas of Special Education, Disability Services, and Special Needs Trusts. We have a deep commitment to helping families within our community and to disability justice.
My goal is to be your advisor who helps you make the very best decisions on behalf of your child with disabilities throughout your lifetime and for when you are gone. My sole focus is to help you create the very best for your child, given your circumstances.
I am not a traditional lawyer.
If you’ve worked with a traditional lawyer before, you know that there is a certain method and rigidity to working with them (hourly billing only, anyone?) My personal experience with lawyers is that they are inaccessible.
My passion for helping parents like you came from when I was a 26 year old and my son was in a special education class and I received a phone call from the assistant principal who wanted my approval to create a padded room in the front of the school. A padded room to keep my son in as he waited for the bus, alone and isolated from everyone else.
Now, I was a new mom and this was my only child, but I knew this was wrong. But at the time, I had closed my business to devote my time to my son’s disability needs and my ex-husband was going to graduate school. We had no money for a lawyer and each one wanted a hefty retainer.
Despite my young age, I had already owned a business, had founded a nonprofit and had done a lot of community organizing. I just needed someone to talk to and get direction.
No one would just advise me and help ghost write items for me and assist me with going through the process myself.
That never happened and I spent the next few years—thousands of hours and hours--educating myself around disability and special education.
I Am Not A Lawyer Who Just Provides Documents
Later I became a parent advocate and worked for several law firms--private and not-for-profit.
When I decided to get a special needs trust for my son, I paid a law firm I knew very well for the paperwork. I did receive a discount because of our relationship, but I just recently found this trust in a binder on a dusty shelf. There is absolutely no information or follow up or even assurance of my assets being titled correctly to this trust.
It is useless.
This is not the type of life planning I do.
The Importance of Planning As A Parent
When you don’t plan ahead to determine your own desired outcomes, the law – basically a total stranger to you – dictates what happens to your children.
The reason I do estate planning is one that is near and dear to my heart: one of my son’s caregivers died six weeks after she felt a swollen lymph node in her throat. She was a single parent without a well-crafted legal plan for her own disabled child, and his future was suddenly so uncertain. This situation was heartbreaking for everyone, and one I want to help families avoid.
I want to make legal services available to all families. I offer various types of fee arrangements and am as transparent as possible.
We assist with all aspects of Special Education, including:
Counseling you on your child’s education plan, based on their needs
Assisting with obtaining an expert assessment, which helps guide your child’s special education plan
Representing your child at IEP meetings, mediation, and due process hearings
IEP review and strategizing
Representation in other disability matters:
Regional center services
Department of Rehabilitation services
Social Security Administration
IHSS (In-Home Support Services)
IPP review and strategizing
Advanced Care Directives
Wills
Power of Attorney (medical and financial)
Special Needs Trusts
Living trusts
Creating a unique GPS Family Protection Plan©, a life planning resource that encompasses the needs of the whole person with a disability.
Although I am a lawyer, I identify most as a parent of a child with disabilities—because my life was forever changed after my son was diagnosed with disabilities.
As a parent, I know the difficulties I have faced—and which my son and all people with disabilities face—in accessing critical special education, regional center, insurance, and government services. As a divorced mother, a woman of color/Latina, and a person from a working-class background, I am also aware of the added pressures that come into play when attempting to accesses such services, and the barriers that are present for families.
My passion is access to justice for people with disabilities and their families.
…read more here
GPS Law Office, PC
6141 York Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90042
Our office is located in the Highland Park area of Northeast Los Angeles, on York Blvd.
The front entry of GPS Law Office, which faces out onto York Blvd in Highland Park.
-Carrie Ann Lucas, Disability Activist
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