3B:11-21. Purposes, policies.

3. This act shall be liberally construed and applied to promote its underlying purposes and policies, which are among others to:

a. encourage the orderly establishment of community trusts for the benefit of persons with severe chronic disabilities;

b. ensure that community trusts are administered properly and that the managing boards of the trusts are free from conflicts of interest, except that an unpaid member of the managing board of a nonprofit corporation provider shall not be deemed to be in conflict as a member of the managing board of a trust;

c. facilitate sound administration of trust funds for persons with severe chronic disabilities by allowing family members and others to pool resources in order to make professional management investment more efficient;

d. provide parents of persons with severe chronic disabilities peace of mind in knowing that a means exists to ensure that the interests of their children who have severe chronic disabilities are properly looked after and managed after the parents die or become incapacitated;

e. help make guardians available for persons with severe chronic disabilities who are incapacitated, when no other family member is available for this purpose;

f. encourage the availability of private resources to purchase for persons with severe chronic disabilities goods and services that are not available through any governmental or charitable program and to conserve these resources by limiting purchases to those which are not available from other sources;

g. encourage the inclusion, as beneficiaries of community trusts, of persons who lack resources and whose families are indigent, in a way that does not diminish the resources available to other beneficiaries whose families have contributed to the trust; and

h. remove the disincentives which discourage parents and others from setting aside funds for the future protection of persons with severe chronic disabilities by ensuring that the interests of beneficiaries in community trusts are not considered assets or income which would disqualify them from any governmental or charitable entitlement program with an economic means test.

L.1985, c.424, s.3; amended 1993, c.224, s.1; 2013, c.103, s.23.