wealthschema/archetypes/x-04-neurodiverse-disability-household
X-04EmergingAccumulationlow tax complexity

Neurodiverse / Disability Household

Household with a member who has a disability or neurodivergence, ABLE account, SSI/SSDI, special needs trust.

X-04 is the household where at least one member has a disability or neurodivergence material to financial planning — ABLE-account eligibility, SSI / SSDI interaction, special-needs-trust structuring, and Medicaid asset-test preservation are the diagnostic surfaces.

Age Range
25–55
Net Worth
$0–$100k
Cohort
Emerging

About this archetype

X-04 represents a household whose financial planning is shaped by the means-tested-benefits and asset-protection landscape that disability creates. The diagnostic surface for tax and benefits software is the interaction between Achieving a Better Life Experience Act (ABLE) accounts under §529A — available to individuals whose disability onset occurred before age 26 (raised to 46 under SECURE 2.0 for tax years 2026+), with annual contribution limits matching the gift-tax annual exclusion ($18,000 for 2024 plus additional earned-income contributions up to the federal poverty line for working beneficiaries) and balances up to $100,000 excluded from SSI asset testing — and means-tested benefits including SSI ($943/month federal benefit rate 2024 with $2,000 individual asset limit), SSDI (no asset test but with substantial-gainful-activity earnings limits at $1,550/month 2024 for non-blind), and Medicaid (state-administered, asset limits varying widely). The special-needs trust under §1917(d)(4)(A) (first-party / self-settled) and §1917(d)(4)(C) (pooled) is the dominant asset-protection vehicle for households needing to preserve benefit eligibility while holding meaningful resources.

The corpus is mass-market in income ($64k median) with a substantial asset base relative to income ($230k median net worth), 60% homeownership, and substantial credit-card and auto-loan incidence. Median age 40 with a range to 59 reflects the working-age and parent-of-disabled-adult populations the archetype is meant to cover. The structural challenge is that conventional retirement-readiness and goal-funding logic does not account for the means-tested-benefit asset-test cliffs: a household that 'should' save aggressively into a beneficiary's name has to route those contributions through ABLE or a properly-drafted SNT to avoid benefits disqualification. Caregiver-cost burden (medical, behavioral, respite, transportation) is also above base rate for the income tier.

What distinguishes X-04 from neighbouring archetypes is the asset-test and benefit-eligibility surface. HC-02 (Disability Claimant) is the closely related but distinct archetype where the disabled member is the primary earner who has transitioned to SSDI or long-term disability — the testing surface is income replacement and return-to-work pathways. X-04 is broader: households where any member's disability shapes the planning, including parents planning for a disabled adult child, households with autistic or ADHD members navigating account-management accessibility, and households whose ABLE-and-SNT structure is the central planning vehicle. Households whose primary income is caregiver-provided to an aging parent are S-04. Households whose disability is a permanent military service-connected condition are MV-03.

Defining characteristics

  • ABLE account
    §529A accounts for individuals with disability onset before age 26 (age 46 under SECURE 2.0 for tax years 2026+). Annual contribution at $18,000 (2024) plus working-beneficiary earned-income contributions; $100,000 SSI asset-exclusion.
  • SSI and SSDI
    SSI federal benefit rate $943/month (2024) with $2,000 individual asset limit; SSDI without asset limit but with SGA earnings cap at $1,550/month (2024, non-blind). The interaction with state Medicaid eligibility is the dominant test surface.
  • Special needs trust
    First-party (§1917(d)(4)(A)) and pooled (§1917(d)(4)(C)) trusts preserve Medicaid and SSI eligibility while holding meaningful assets. Third-party SNTs (typically funded by parents or grandparents) sit outside §1917 entirely.
  • Medicaid planning
    State-administered with asset limits varying from $2,000 to higher in expansion states. Look-back period under §1917(c) is 60 months for transfers; gift-tax-and-Medicaid analysis routinely conflicts.
  • Caregiver costs
    Respite care, behavioral therapy, transportation, and equipment costs above base rate for the income tier. §213 medical-expense deduction surfacing and dependent-care FSA election handling are relevant tax-software branches.
  • Disability insurance
    Private long-term disability and employer-sponsored LTD coverage interact with SSDI offsets. Households frequently misunderstand the offset mechanics — a useful testing surface for benefits-platform coverage-gap UI.

Corpus signature

n = 15 households

Aggregated across the 15 X-04 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$64k
p25–p75 $51k–$70k
Median net worth
$230k
mean $265k
Liquid net worth
$58k
median
Investable assets
$91k
median
Income distribution
$40k–50k
3
$50k–60k
3
$60k–75k
9
Net-worth distribution
$65k–290k
9
$290k–515k
5
$515k–740k
1
Goals across the corpus
Retirement15 / 15
Education funding7 / 15
Home purchase6 / 15
Emergency fund6 / 15
Debt payoff5 / 15
Liability composition
Credit cards15 / 15
Mortgages9 / 15
Auto loans8 / 15
Student loans5 / 15
  • 9 of 15 (60%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • NY, CA, TX account for 6 of 15 households — 40% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 40 (range 26–59 across primaries and spouses).
  • 7 of 15 (47%) carry one or more dependents.

Representative household

X-04-seed-9
David W.Domestic partnership·Savannah, GA

David and Erica are a mid-fifties domestic partnership in Savannah sitting at the corpus income median ($64.5k) with net worth ($512k) well above the median ($230k), driven primarily by accumulated home equity against $198k of total liabilities. The seed does not encode an ABLE account, a special-needs trust, SSI/SSDI income, or a Medicaid flag on any member — the only disability-coded field is a standard long-term-disability insurance policy of the kind any W-2 employee may carry. This household represents the X-04 testing posture for the planning surface rather than a directly-coded disability case: buyers building ABLE/SNT/SSDI/Medicaid workflows should treat the rep as a structural placeholder and apply their own overlays, since the v3 corpus does not surface those features as discrete fields. The diagnostic flag pattern (debt-payoff on track, retirement off track at a $1.25M target) is consistent with a mass-market mid-career household where retirement-savings capacity is constrained, but the archetype's defining benefits-eligibility surface is not exercised numerically in the seed.

Combined income
$64,498
Net worth
$512,409
Liquid NW
$186,069
Ages
50 / 55
Top goals on this household
Retirement
$1,249,800
Debt payoff
$1,659

Schema fields covered

Every X-04 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
longitudinal.monthly[].net_cash_flow
longitudinal.monthly[].savings_rate
stress.scenarios[]
liquidity.months_of_expenses

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on X-04 most heavily. Benefits-administration and government-services platforms use it for SSI / SSDI eligibility logic, ABLE-account contribution-cap modeling under both the standard and working-beneficiary tiers, and Medicaid asset-test compliance flows where contribution and gift transactions need pre-clearance against §1917(c) 60-month look-back rules. Wealth-platform engineering teams supporting special-needs-planning advisory practices use it for SNT funding workflows (first-party, third-party, pooled), beneficiary-designation routing to trust rather than individual, and integration with state-level ABLE program providers. Tax-software vendors use it for §213 medical-expense deduction handling on above-base-rate medical and behavioral-therapy costs, dependent-care FSA election logic for disabled-dependent qualification, and the Credit for the Elderly or Disabled under §22.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01ABLE-account contribution-cap modeling under §529A with annual exclusion plus working-beneficiary earned-income additions to the federal poverty line.
  • 02SSI eligibility flows against the $2,000 individual asset limit and the $100,000 ABLE-balance exclusion.
  • 03SSDI substantial-gainful-activity testing at the $1,550/month (2024) earnings threshold for non-blind beneficiaries.
  • 04Medicaid §1917 look-back-period transfer pre-clearance against the 60-month rule.
  • 05Special-needs-trust funding workflows for first-party (§1917(d)(4)(A)), pooled (§1917(d)(4)(C)), and third-party SNTs.
  • 06§213 medical-expense deduction handling on above-base-rate behavioral-therapy, durable medical equipment, and transportation costs.
  • 07Beneficiary-designation routing to SNT rather than individual on retirement, life-insurance, and brokerage accounts.
  • 08Accessibility-aware account-management UI for autistic, ADHD, and cognitively-divergent users.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

X-04 is broader than HC-02. HC-02 (Disability Claimant) specifically models the household where the disabled member was the primary W-2 earner and has transitioned to SSDI or LTD income — the test surface there is income replacement and return-to-work. X-04 covers the wider population of households where any member's disability shapes planning, including parents of disabled adult children and households with neurodivergent dependents who do not draw SSI / SSDI directly. Caregiver-for-aging-parent households are S-04, not X-04. Military service-connected disability with VA benefits and TDIU eligibility is MV-03. UHNW households where the disability planning is mediated through dynasty trusts and private foundations belong in H-03 with X-04 overlay. The corpus is written with respect for the demographic and stays focused on the technical and regulatory testing surface — accessibility-aware UI design is a relevant but separately scoped product question.

Calibration notes

Income and net-worth bands during v3 synthesis were anchored to mass-market segments of the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances filtered for households reporting a disabled member, supplemented by Social Security Administration and Census Bureau ACS disability-prevalence statistics by age band. ABLE-account holding rates and SNT prevalence were informed by ABLE National Resource Center and Special Needs Alliance published industry data; no published probabilistic prior on SNT funding amounts by household income was used. State distribution (NY, CA, TX concentration) reflects mass-market population concentration; ABLE program availability varies state-by-state but the corpus does not model program-specific feature differences. Per CLAUDE.md §9 the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code, so calibration claims are descriptive rather than reproducible.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the X-04 archetype represent?+

X-04 — Neurodiverse / Disability Household represents a mass-market household with one or more members whose disability or neurodivergence is material to financial planning. Median income $64,498, median net worth $229,733. The defining planning surface is ABLE-account eligibility, SSI / SSDI interaction, special-needs-trust structuring, and Medicaid asset-test preservation.

What benefits-eligibility features does X-04 exercise?+

ABLE-account contribution caps under §529A including the working-beneficiary earned-income tier, SSI $2,000 asset-limit testing against the $100,000 ABLE exclusion, SSDI substantial-gainful-activity earnings testing at $1,550/month (2024), and Medicaid §1917 look-back-period compliance.

How is X-04 different from HC-02 (Disability Claimant)?+

HC-02 specifically models the household where the disabled member is the primary earner who has transitioned to SSDI or LTD — the diagnostic surface is income replacement. X-04 is broader: any household where any member's disability shapes planning, including parents planning for disabled adult children and households with neurodivergent dependents.

Which trust types apply for this archetype?+

First-party (self-settled) special-needs trusts under §1917(d)(4)(A), pooled SNTs under §1917(d)(4)(C), and third-party SNTs (typically funded by parents or grandparents and outside §1917 entirely). Each has different funding-source, distribution, and Medicaid-payback characteristics that downstream products must model.

How were X-04 households generated?+

Deterministically from a seeded sampler (Mulberry32 PRNG) in src/lib/generation/, with disability-status, ABLE-eligibility, and SNT-presence flags applied as overlay attributes. Per-domain version constants are surfaced in each household's _meta block.

Is the X-04 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped 1,451-household v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (drift confirmed 2026-05-09). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

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