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Families, financial advisors, accountants and other lawyers seeking assistance in planning for people with special needs know to reach out to Mary for her experience, advocacy and creativity as well as sound legal advice.
Mary’s practice focuses on special needs and estate planning for people with disabilities and their families, including asset protection and management, public benefits counseling, guardianship and alternatives, and other legal issues arising from disability and aging. Mary works frequently with personal injury attorneys when a plaintiff receiving public benefits receives a settlement or jury award, to counsel on the options for preservation of assets while protecting eligibility for benefits. Mary serves as trustee for many special needs trusts; she also serves as counsel for other trustees. Mary was the first Executive Director the First Maryland Disability Trust, Inc., a nonprofit trust company serving people with disabilities.
As an advocate, Mary was instrumental in Maryland’s enactment of protections for special needs trusts in 2011, now under the Maryland Trust Act. From 2013-2018, Mary led the national Special Needs Trust Advocates in meeting with the Social Security Administration; the Advocates’ efforts culminated in a significant update in that agency’s rules affecting special needs trusts in 2018. She served on Governor Larry Hogan’s (Maryland) ABLE Task Force in 2015. As the President of the national Special Needs Alliance (SNA), Mary and the SNA’s public policy committee recently advocated successfully for a small but mighty change in the federal tax law allowing a charity to be named as an ultimate beneficiary of a special needs trust funded with retirement accounts without adverse tax treatment.
As an educator, Mary has been a frequent and popular speaker for the Maryland State Bar Association and the Stetson College of Law Special Needs Trust Conference, as well as public and private schools, government offices and non-profit agencies serving people with disabilities on special needs planning, guardianship and alternatives and public benefits eligibility. She has served as an adjunct professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Mary previously worked with another Maryland law firm, and managed her own practice for many years before joining Bowie & Jensen.
Prior to becoming an attorney, Mary worked in health insurance and managed care for Kaiser-Permanente and the Columbia FreeState Health Plan.
Mary enjoys travel, gardening and aspires to master the modern pentathlon.
Bowie & Jensen embraces the idea that we have a responsibility to give back to the communities that give so much to us. The idea of giving back is an essential component of the law firm and allows our lawyers and staff to work with the community as partners, family and friends.