Moving to a New State? Be Sure to Update Your Estate Plan

Although you likely won’t need to have an entirely new estate plan prepared for you, upon relocating to another state, you should definitely have your existing plan reviewed by an estate planning lawyer who is familiar with your new home state’s laws. Each state has its own laws governing estate planning, and those laws can differ significantly from one location to another.

Given this, you’ll want to make sure your planning documents all comply with the new state’s laws, and the terms of those documents still work as intended. Here, we’ll discuss how differing state laws can affect common planning documents and the steps you might want to take to ensure your documents are properly updated.

 

Last Will and Testament
The good news is, states will generally accept a will that was executed properly under another state’s laws. However, there could be differences in the new state’s laws that make certain provisions in your will invalid. Here are a few of the things you should pay the most attention to in your will when moving:

 

Your executor: Consider whether or not the executor or administrator you’ve chosen will be able to serve in that role in your new location. Every state will allow an out-of-state executor to serve, but some states have special requirements that those executors must meet, such as requiring them to post a bond before serving. Other states require non-resident executors to appoint an agent who lives within the state to accept legal documents on behalf of the estate.

 

Marital property: If you are married, give special consideration to how your new state treats marital property. While a common-law state might treat the property you own in your name alone as yours, community-property states treat all of your property as owned jointly with your spouse. If your new state treats marital property differently, you might need to draft a new will to ensure your wishes are honored.

 

Interested witnesses: Another important role under your will to consider when moving to a new state is an interested witness. An interested witness is someone who was a witness to your will who also receives a gift from your will. Some states allow interested witnesses to receive the gift, while other states do not allow such gifts. And still other states allow such gifts provided the witness is a family member.

 

Revocable Living Trust

A valid revocable living trust from one state should continue to be valid in your new state. However, you need to make certain that you transfer any new assets or property you acquire, such as your new home, to your trust, so that those assets can avoid the need to go through probate before being distributed to your heirs upon your death.

 

Power of Attorney
A valid power of attorney document, such as a durable power of attorney, medical power of attorney, or financial power of attorney, created in one state is likely to be valid in your new state. However, in some cases, banks, financial institutions, and healthcare facilities in your new state may not accept a power of attorney document if it’s unfamiliar to them. Also, simply as a practical matter, it may be a good idea to have your power of attorney agent live in the same state you do, so keep that in mind as well.

 

Beneficiary Designations
If you have accounts with beneficiary designations, such as 401(k)s, life insurance policies, and payable-on-death bank accounts, these should be valid no matter which state you live in. That said, you should still review these documents when you move to ensure that your address and other personal information is updated.

 

Keep Your Plan Current
As with other major life events, such as births, deaths, marriage and divorce, moving to a new state is the ideal time to have your plan reviewed by a professional.

With people living longer than ever before, more and more seniors require long-term healthcare services in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. However, such care is extremely expensive, especially when it’s needed for extended periods of time.

Traditional healthcare insurance doesn’t cover such services, and though Medicare does pay for some long-term care, it’s quite limited, difficult to qualify for, and requires you to deplete nearly all of your assets before being eligible (though proactive estate planning can help shield your assets). To address this gap in coverage, long-term care insurance was created.

Intensive Care

First introduced as “nursing home insurance” in the 1980s, this type of insurance is designed to cover expenses associated with long-term skilled nursing services delivered in a nursing home, assisted living facility, or other senior care setting, though some of today’s policies cover care delivered in your own home as well.

Such intensive care is required when you are no longer able to care for yourself, often in the later stages of your life. These policies cover the cost of skilled nursing services that support you with basic self-care tasks, such as bathing, feeding, dressing, walking, and using the bathroom. These are known as activities of daily living (ADLs).

Before your coverage kicks in, most policies require that you demonstrate you have lost the ability to engage in at least two or three ADLs. Most policies also have a deductible, or elimination period, which is a set number of days that must elapse between the time you become disabled (eligible for benefits) and the time your coverage kicks in.

Many policies offer a 90-day elimination period, but others can be longer, shorter, or even have no elimination period at all. Of course, the shorter the elimination period, the more expensive the premium.

Additionally, long-term care policies typically come with a predetermined benefit period, which is the number of years of care it will pay for. A benefit period of three to five years, for example, is a quite common duration for such policies. Most policies also come with a cap on the dollar amount of coverage that will be paid for care on a daily basis, known as a daily benefit amount.

Getting Covered

Obviously, the younger and healthier you are when you buy the policy, the cheaper the premiums will be, so the sooner you invest in coverage, the better. In fact, most policies exclude certain pre-existing conditions, so if you wait until you become ill, it can be impossible to find coverage.

Increasing Premiums, Decreasing Benefits
With the elderly population booming, there has been a surge in demand for long-term care services, which has led to a marked increase in the cost of such policies. At the same time, many insurers have been cutting back on the benefits their policies offer.

If you are looking to purchase long-term care insurance, you should speak with multiple insurance providers and compare their benefits, care options, and premiums. Different companies may offer the same coverage and benefits, but they can vary dramatically in price. Always ask about the insurance company’s history of rate increases, including the amount of the most recent increase.

Choose Wisely

For the best chances of success when shopping for a policy, get help from a fee-only planner, who is not compensated based on your choice of coverage. When meeting with an insurance provider, you must get answers to following three questions about your policy:

  1. How long is the elimination period before the policy begins paying benefits?
  2. What capacities, or ADLs, must you lose before coverage kicks in?
  3. How many years of care are covered?

Buying long-term care insurance should be a family affair, because you are going to need your family members to advocate for you and file a claim for the policy when you need to use it. Given this, make sure your family knows what kind of policy you have, who your agent is, and how to make a claim.

What’s more, you should pre-authorize the right person to speak to the insurance company on your behalf, and not just rely on a power of attorney. That said, you should definitely have a well-drafted, updated, and regularly reviewed power of attorney on file as well.

Keep Your Policy Updated

Once you are in your 40s, your long-term care policy should be reviewed annually to evaluate new insurance products on the market and update your policy based on your changing needs. And whatever you do, once you have a policy in place, make sure you don’t miss a premium payment, because if you stop paying, even for a short period of time, you’ll lose all of the money you invested and will have no access to the benefits when you need them.

Do your parents have an estate plan? Is it up to date? No matter how rich or poor you or your parents are, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, you need to be asking these and several other questions. When your parents become incapacitated or die, their affairs will become your responsibility, and it will be impossible to ask them to clarify anything. So, if you do not know whether they have estate planning in place to help you best support them, read on.  

The Best-Case Scenario

In a best-case scenario, your parents have an updated estate plan, and they’ve walked you through it. They have provided an inventory of their assets that’s easy for you to find listing out everything they own and how it’s titled. Ideally, the plan also includes directions on how to handle their non-monetary assets, and a video, audio recording or written stories that pass on their values, insights and experience. On top of all that, it’s best if they’ve introduced you to the lawyer who set it all up, so you know who to turn to when the time comes.

Less-Than-Ideal Scenarios

If that’s not the case, you could have some holes to fill. If they’ve not done any planning at all, now is the time to encourage them to get it done and support them in any way you can. If they already have a completed plan, it’s likely that it has been sitting on their shelf or in a drawer for years, not updated, with no inventory of their assets and no way to capture and pass on their intangible assets. Even worse, their lawyer could have been using outdated systems that are no longer recognized, which can lead to trouble down the road.

It’s also possible that if they’ve never updated their estate plan, it no longer tracks with their current assets, and may even require complex actions that are no longer necessary upon their death. Worst of all, you may have no idea what your parents own or how to find their assets, and at their incapacity or death you’ll be left with a mess, even though your parents had good intentions and thought their planning was handled.

The Worst-Case Scenario

In a worst-case scenario (which we see more frequently than we’d like), your parents may have worked with someone who exerted undue influence over their decisions. This person may have led them to write something into their plan that they either didn’t really want to or wouldn’t otherwise have chosen if they understood all their options.  

Either way, it’s critical for you to know who your parents have worked with to create their estate plan, and how and why they made the choices they did. If you aren’t in the know, now is the time to find out. 

If your parents are already discussing these matters but have not yet included you, you can ask them to schedule a family meeting with their existing attorney. On your parents’ request, that attorney should look forward to walking you through your parents’ planning, the choices they made, and how you will be impacted in the event of their incapacity or death.

You want to develop a relationship with their estate planning attorney now. This advisor can be one of the most important supporters of you and your parents during your time of need. It’s a relationship you will want to establish before you need it, so you won’t be scrambling during a time of crisis.

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

In the first part of this series, we discussed the early warning signs of diminished financial capacity in the elderly. Here, we’ll discuss planning strategies that can protect your loved ones from incapacity of all kinds. 

With more and more Baby Boomers reaching retirement age each year, our country is undergoing an unprecedented demographic transformation that’s sure to challenge our society in many ways. There’s been lots of talk about whether Baby Boomers will have enough savings for retirement and the strains the generation will put on Social Security and Medicare.

But there’s another issue that’s getting far less attention—the coinciding increase in the prevalence of dementia.

Along with swelling senior population, the nation is expected to see a corresponding rise in those suffering from age-related dementia—cases of Alzheimer’s alone are expected to double by 2050. While the cognitive decline from dementia affects nearly every mental function, many people aren’t aware that one of the first abilities to go is one’s “financial capacity.”

Financial capacity refers to the ability to manage money and make wise financial decisions. A decline in financial capacity not only makes seniors more likely to mismanage their money, but it also makes them easy targets for financial exploitation, fraud, and abuse.

Last week, we listed six warning signs of a decline in financial capacity. Here we’ll discuss estate planning strategies that can help protect your elderly loved ones and their assets from the debilitating effects of dementia and other forms of incapacity.

Reducing the risks
Taking steps to reduce the risks of diminished financial capacity is vital, but stepping in to help manage an aging parent’s money without threatening their sense of independence and privacy can be a real challenge. Even if they’re aware of their own impairment, many are reluctant to ask for help, and some may even deny there’s a problem.

Ideally, you should address the potential for dementia and other forms of incapacity with your senior family members well before any signs of cognitive decline appear. Waiting until they start showing signs of dementia will only exacerbate the complications and could even invalidate planning efforts.

Start by having a heart-to-heart conversation with your loved ones about the risks involved with incapacity, and how estate planning can help protect them. Approach the subject with care and compassion. Reassure them that your goal is to make certain they retain as much control over their lives as possible—and talking about the issue early on is the best way to do that.

For example, you should let your aging parents know that if they become incapacitated without proper planning, you’ll have to go to court and petition to become their legal guardian. This process is not only quite costly and emotionally taxing, but there’s a possibility that the court could appoint a professional guardian, rather than a loved one such as yourself.

A court-appointed guardianship would mean that a total stranger would control all of their affairs—financial and otherwise—which is something they likely wouldn’t want. Professional guardianships also open the door for potential exploitation and abuse by unscrupulous guardians, which is something that’s on the rise given the sharp uptick in the senior population.

However, unless you have the legal authority to make your parents’ financial decisions, your ability to manage their money will be seriously limited. You might be able to work together with them for a while without such authority, but at some point, their cognitive impairment will likely reach a stage where you’ll need to assume full control—and that’s where estate planning comes in.


Put a plan in place
The best option would be for your aging loved ones to put in place a comprehensive plan for incapacity as soon as possible. This way, they can choose exactly who they want making their financial, medical, and legal decisions for them if and when they’re no longer able to do on their own.

There are a number of planning tools that can be used in an incapacity plan, but a will alone is sufficient. A will only goes into effect upon death, so it would do nothing should your elderly parents become incapacitated by dementia.

While a will is important in planning for death, your parents should also put in place planning tools specially designed for incapacity. One such tool is durable financial power of attorney. This document would give you (or another person of their choosing) the immediate authority to make decisions related to the management of their financial and legal affairs in the event of their incapacity.

The downside of financial durable power of attorney is that it sometimes is not accepted by banks and other financial institutions, and you might still end up needing to go to court to get control of your parents’ affairs.

A revocable living trust is a MUCH better estate planning tool to transfer control of your parents’ financial assets to you without court intervention should they become incapacitated. A revocable living trust, created while your parents have capacity, can plan for the transition of their assets to your care and control in a way that feels safe and secure to them. Bring your parents to meet with us for a Family Wealth Planning Session to learn more about how this would work.

Yet having the legal authority to make your parents’ financial and legal decisions is just part of an overall incapacity plan. They’ll also need to put in place planning strategies designed to address their healthcare decisions and medical treatment like medical power of attorney and a living will. 

We can help your aging parents and other senior family members develop a comprehensive incapacity plan, customized with the specific planning vehicles to match their unique needs and life situation.

Don’t wait until it’s too late
While incapacity from dementia is most common in the elderly, debilitating injury and illness can strike at any point in life. For this reason, all adults age 18 and older should have an incapacity plan. Moreover, such planning must be addressed well before cognitive decline begins, as you must be able to clearly express your wishes and consent for the documents to be valid. Given this urgency, you should discuss incapacity planning with your aging parents right away.

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

With more and more Baby Boomers reaching retirement age each year, our country is undergoing an unprecedented demographic transformation that’s been dubbed “The Greying of America.” This population shift stands to affect many aspects of life, especially your relationships with aging parents and other senior family members.

By 2060, the number of Americans aged 65 and older is projected to nearly double from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million, which will account for 24% of the total population. And as early as 2030, the number of those 65 and older is expected to surpass the number of children (those under age 18) for the first time in history.

Coinciding with the boom in the elderly population, the number of Americans suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia is expected to increase substantially as well. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that the number of Americans with Alzheimer’s disease will double by 2060, when it’s expected to reach 14 million—more than 3% of the total population.

A decline in financial capacity
Although Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia in older adults, it’s not the only one. In fact, the National Institute on Aging estimates that nearly half of all Americans will develop some form of dementia in their lifetime. And while the cognitive decline brought on by dementia affects a broad array of mental functions, many people aren’t aware that one of the first abilities to go is one’s “financial capacity.”  

Financial capacity refers to the ability to manage money and make wise financial decisions. Yet cognitive decline brought on by dementia often develops slowly over several years, so a diminished financial capacity frequently goes unnoticed—often until it’s too late.

“Financial capacity is one of the first abilities to decline as cognitive impairment encroaches,” notes the AARP’s Public Policy Institute, “yet older people, their families, and others are frequently unaware that these deficits are developing.” 

Ironically, studies have also shown that the elderly’s confidence in their money management skills can actually increase as they get older, which puts them in a perilous position. As seniors begin to experience difficulty managing their money, they don’t realize they’re making poor choices, which makes them easy targets for financial exploitation, fraud, and abuse.

Watch for red flags over the holidays
Now that we’re in the peak of the holiday season, you’re likely spending more time with your aging parents and other senior relatives. This provides an ideal opportunity to be on the lookout for signs that your loved ones might be experiencing a decline in their financial capacity. The University of Alabama study “The Warning Signs of Diminished Financial Capacity in Older Adults” identified six red flags to watch for:

1. Memory lapses: Examples include missing appointments, failing to make a payment—or making multiples of the same payment—forgetting to bring documents or where documents are located, repeatedly giving the same orders, repeatedly asking the same questions.

2. Disorganization: Mismanaging financial documents, and losing or misplacing bills, statements, or other records.

3. Declining checkbook management skills: Forgetting to record transactions in the register, incorrectly or incompletely filling out register entries, and incorrectly filling out the payee or amount on a check.

4. Mathematical mistakes: A declining ability to do basic oral or written math computations, such as making change.

5. Confusion: Difficulty understanding basic financial concepts like mortgages, loans, or interest payments, which were previously well-understood.

6. Poor financial judgment: A new-found interest in get-rich-quick schemes or radical changes in investment strategy.

Managing diminished financial capacity

If you notice your parents or other senior family members displaying any of these behaviors, you should take steps to protect them from their own poor judgement. It’s vital to address their cognitive decline as early as possible, not only to prevent financial mismanagement and exploitation, but also to ensure their overall health and safety.

There are several estate planning tools that can be put in place to help your aging parents and other senior family members protect themselves and their assets from the debilitating effects of dementia and other forms of incapacity. In part two of this series, we’ll discuss the specific planning tools available for this purpose, and provide some guidance on how to address this sensitive subject with your elderly loved ones. 

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

Elder abuse can take a wide variety of forms, but I think the worst of the worst is caused by unscrupulous adult guardians appointed by a court to care for seniors who are no longer able to care for themselves. And though you may not want to believe such a thing could happen, you need to know that without the right planning in place, even the seniors in your own family could be at risk.

In fact, there are currently 1.5 million American adults under guardianship, with an estimated 85% of them over age 65. All told, these guardians control nearly $273 billion in assets. And a 2010 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found hundreds of cases where guardians were involved in the abuse, exploitation, and neglect of seniors placed under their supervision.

Exploitation disguised as protection
Although most of the reported abuse was committed by family members, an increasing number of elder abuse cases involve professional guardians.

These predatory guardians search for seniors with a history of health issues, and they’re often able to obtain court-sanctioned guardianship with alarming ease. From there, they can force the elderly out of their homes and into assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. They can sell off their homes and other assets, keeping the proceeds for themselves. They can prevent them from seeing or speaking with their family members, leaving them isolated and even more vulnerable to exploitation.

What’s more, though it’s possible for a guardianship to be terminated by the court if it can be proven that the need for guardianship no longer exists, a study by the American Bar Association (ABA) found that such attempts typically fail. And those family members who do try to fight against court-appointed guardians frequently end up paying hefty sums of money in attorney’s fees and court costs, with some even going bankrupt in the process.

An open door for potential abuse
Obviously, not all professional guardians exploit the seniors (known as wards) placed under their care. But with the combination of the exploding elderly population—many of whom will require guardians—and our overloaded court system, such abuse will almost certainly become more common. Indeed, as the swelling aging population strains court resources, strict oversight of professional guardians is likely to become increasingly more difficult, enabling shady guardians to more easily slip through the cracks.

Facing these facts, it’s critical for both seniors and their adult children to take proactive measures to prevent the possibility of such abuse. Fortunately, there are multiple estate planning tools that can dramatically reduce the chances of you, or your elderly loved ones, being placed under the care of a professional guardian against your/their wishes.

What’s more, because any adult could face court-ordered guardianship if they become incapacitated by illness or injury, it’s crucial that every person over age 18—not just seniors—have planning vehicles in place to prepare for their potential incapacity.

Should you become incapacitated and not have the proper planning vehicles in place, your family would have to petition the court in order to be granted guardianship. And it’s this lack of planning that leaves you vulnerable. In most cases, the court would appoint a family member as guardian, but this isn’t always the case.

If you have no living family members, or those you do have are unwilling or unable to serve or deemed unsuitable by the court, a professional guardian would be appointed. And in certain cases, particularly when your family doesn’t live close by, guardianship can be granted without your loved ones—or even you—being aware of it. 

A total loss of autonomy
Once you’ve been placed under court-ordered guardianship, you essentially lose all your civil rights. Indeed, whether it’s a family member or a professional, guardians have complete legal authority to control every facet of your life.

Given the extreme power guardianship affords, courts are supposed to exercise tight oversight over adult guardians, yet the reality is that only cursory supervision is provided. What’s more, courts often don’t even keep complete records of guardianship cases, and those that do typically keep those records sealed from public view.

With no real system in place to prevent abuse by professional guardians, it’s up to you to protect yourself and your elderly parents through proactive estate planning.

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

When it comes to estate planning, most people automatically think about taking legal steps to ensure the right people inherit their stuff when they die. And these people aren’t wrong.

Indeed, putting strategies in place to protect and pass on our wealth and other assets is a fundamental part of the planning equation. However, providing for the proper distribution of our assets upon death is just one part of the process.

And it’s not even the most critical part.

Planning that’s focused solely on who gets what when you die is ignoring the fact that death isn’t the only thing to be prepared for. You must also consider that at some point before your eventual death, you could be incapcitated by accident or illness.

Incapacity can be a temporary event from which you eventually recover, or it can be the start of a long and costly event that ultimately ends in your death. Indeed, incapacity can drag out over many years, leaving you and your family in agonizing limbo. This uncertainty is what makes incapacity planning so incredibly important.

In fact, incapacity can be a far greater burden for your loved ones than your death. This is true not only in terms of its potentially ruinous financial costs, but also for the emotional trauma, contentious court battles, and internal conflict your family may endure if you fail to address it in your plan. 

The goal of effective estate planning is to keep your family out of court and out of conflict no matter what happens. So if you only plan for your death, you’re leaving your family—and yourself—extremely vulnerable to potentially tragic consequences.

Where to start
Planning for incapacity requires a different mindset and different tools than planning for death. If you’re incapacitated by illness or injury, you’ll still be alive when these planning strategies take effect. What’s more, the legal authority you grant others to manage your incapacity is only viable while you remain alive and unable to make decisions about your own welfare.

If you regain the cognitive ability to make your own decisions, for instance, the legal power you granted others is revoked. The same goes if you should eventually succumb to your condition—your death renders these powers null and void.

To this end, the first thing you should ask yourself is, “If I’m ever incapacitated and unable to care for myself, who would I want making decisions on my behalf?” Specifically, you’ll be selecting the person, or persons, you want making your healthcare, financial, and legal decisions for you until you either recover or pass away.

You must name someone
The most important thing to remember is that you must choose someone. If you don’t legally name someone to make these decisions during your incapacity, the court will choose someone for you. And this is where things can get extremely difficult – and costly – for your loved ones.

This potential turmoil and expense can be easily avoided through proper estate planning. An effective plan would give the individuals you’ve chosen immediate authority to make your medical, financial, and legal decisions, without the need for court intervention. What’s more, the plan can provide clear guidance about your wishes, so there’s no mistake or conflict about how these vital decisions should be made.

What won’t work
Determining which planning tools you should use to grant and guide this decision-making authority depends entirely on your personal circumstances. There are several options available, but choosing what’s best is something you should ultimately decide after consulting with an experienced lawyer.

That said, we can tell you one planning tool that’s totally worthless when it comes to your incapacity: a will. A will only goes into effect upon your death, and then it merely governs how your assets should be divided, so having a will does nothing to keep your family out of court and out of conflict in the event of your incapacity.

Don’t let a bad situation become much worse
You may be powerless to prevent your potential incapacity, but proper estate planning can at least give you control over how your life and assets will be managed if it does occur. Moreover, such planning can prevent your family from enduring needless trauma, conflict, and expense during this already trying time.

If you’ve yet to plan for incapacity, we can counsel you on the proper planning vehicles to put in place, and help you select the individuals best suited to make such critical decisions on your behalf. If you already have planning strategies in place, we can review your plan to make sure it’s been properly set up, maintained, and updated. Contact us today to get started.

Dedicated to empowering your family, building your wealth and defining your legacy,

dementia 91024As senior citizens continue to age, the likelihood increases that they will become physically or mentally incapacitated. Hopefully, people in such a situation have family members who step in and help keep their affairs in order. That is not always the case, however. If no one steps in to help, courts may be petitioned to appoint someone-a guardian-to look after that person’s very existence. This often happens when a person becomes incapacitated by illness and cannot make decisions.

What Can I Do?

For medical situations, a medical power of attorney – a document that identifies a person of your choosing (your agent) to make decisions for you in the event of your incapacity – should be executed. Your agent can be family member or friend. The key is to make sure it is someone you trust.

A power of attorney can also be used to appoint someone to deal with non-medical issues. This document can be set up to either take effect immediately, or only at such time as you are unable to make your own decisions. The former is known as a “durable” power of attorney, while the latter is a “springing” power of attorney. The durable power of attorney is the more effective of the two in that it requires no consideration of whether a person lacks the capacity to make decisions.

Also, consider setting up a trust to administer your assets as you age. Unlike a power of attorney, with a trust, the trustee has sole control of your assets. And there are further legal steps you can take, such as establishing a limited liability corporation or a family limited partnership to manage your assets.

All of these processes will prevent the need for a court to appoint a guardian for you if you become incapable of managing your own affairs. Those of us who are in our senior years should

recognize the increasing chance of the need for someone else to make decisions. And those of us who have elderly parents or loved ones should help them think about these issues. The time to plan for potential incapacity is now. Once someone becomes incapacitated, it’s simply too late.

Dedicated to your family’s wealth, health, and happiness,
Marc Garlett 91024

Long-term care 91024Have you thought about the possibility that you or your spouse could become incapable of handling your own medical or financial affairs? Avoiding the need for a conservatorship – the process whereby someone is appointed by a court to assume responsibility for the property or the personal welfare of an incapacitated adult – is important.

A serious illness or accident can happen suddenly at any age. And, as Americans are living longer than ever, we have a greater likelihood of experiencing senility, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or a host of other ailments during our golden years, any of which will affect our ability to make sound decisions about healthcare, or to pay bills, write checks, make deposits, sell assets, or otherwise manage our affairs.

The best way to avoid the need for expensive and burdensome conservatorship proceedings is through estate planning tools like these:

Durable Financial Powers of Attorney — Executing a durable power of attorney enables you to name a conservator to act on your behalf if you become incapacitated. The conservator is empowered to handle all your financial and business affairs in case you cannot do so yourself. Although it can become effective immediately, it only becomes active if or when you become incapacitated. To be valid, it must be executed prior to any incapacitation.

Advance Health Care Directives — Executing an advance health care directive designates someone to serve as your agent for making health care decisions in the event of your incapacitation. This can include temporary hospitalizations or end-of-life care, and your choice should be someone you trust to honor your wishes when it comes to your medical care. This document must also be executed prior to any incapacitation to be valid.

Revocable Living Trusts — Executing a revocable living trust avoids the need for conservatorship proceedings by designating a successor trustee to serve during a period of incapacity. You can serve as co-trustee along with a trusted person or financial institution of your choice. If you become incapacitated, the co-trustee you have designated will take over the management of your assets held in the trust. Remember though, this is only valid if your property is properly titled in the name of your Living Trust before incapacity.

One of the main goals of my law practice is to help families like yours plan for the protection of yourself and your loved ones. If you’re ready to start thinking about your own estate planning, call my office today to schedule a time for us to sit down and talk.

To you family’s health, wealth, and happiness,
Marc Garlett 91024

Dementia 91024Maria Shriver knows the devastation of Alzheimer’s disease firsthand. Her beloved father Sargent Shriver, founder of the Peace Corps and one-time candidate for Vice President of the United States, died of the disease in 2011 after being diagnosed in 2003.

Often called “the long goodbye,” Alzheimer’s disease affects more than five million Americans and its prevalence will continue to grow as the population ages. Shriver recently reported for NBC.com on the five things Alzheimer’s or dementia victims should do once a diagnosis has been confirmed, and she is spot on:

1. Execute powers of attorney and advance medical directives. These allow for the designation of a trusted person or persons to make financial and medical decisions before cognitive impairments worsen.

2. Create an estate plan. If you do not have a written plan that designates how your assets will be distributed upon your death, you need to create one. If one exists, check it over for any necessary updates to beneficiaries or the addition of any assets acquired after the original plan was made.

3. Create an asset preservation plan. Asset preservation is usually critical for those diagnosed with Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia. An estate planning attorney and/or a financial planner can help preserve assets for future long-term care.

4. Communicate. Once diagnosed, you should have a conversation with your family about your decisions for your care. Let them know where important documents are stored. As part of your legacy planning, we can help you capture and pass on your own story and wishes for your loved ones through a special recording we provide for each of our clients.

5. Do it sooner rather than later. Alzheimer’s and other dementia diseases are progressive illnesses, so prompt action is necessary to put these protections in place for you and your loved ones.

More information and inspiration on dealing with Alzheimer’s and other dementia diseases can be found at MariaShriver.com.

Call my office to schedule a time for us to sit down and have a Family Estate Planning Session, where we can identify the best ways for you to ensure your legacy of love and financial security for your family.
Signature - Marc