Estate Planning - Living Wills and Durable Powers of Attorney For Health and Finance

Estate planning frequently involves more than just having a Will. Living wills as well as durable powers of attorney for health care and finance protect your estate in case your are incapacitated, but not deceased.

A living will permits you to express your wishes regarding resuscitation and life maintaining measures in the event you later become incapable of communicating your desires. It can help you try to avoid what some believe to be an undignified existence by allowing you to decline medical treatment, food, and water if these things are "artificially" keeping you alive. The choice is yours to make and physicians will honor your wishes if the proper documents are submitted.

A durable power of attorney for health care, on the other hand, allows you to appoint another person to make decisions for you regarding your medical care in the event you cannot. This power is broader than the living will. It, too, covers situations where you may be terminally ill and need resuscitation or other life maintaining measures to stay alive. Your agent, or attorney-in-fact, can decline these treatments if you give them that power. It also applies to situations where a health care decision is required but you cannot make that decision yourself (i.e., you are unconscious as a result of injury). Your agent could authorize or decline medical treatment on your behalf.

A durable power of attorney for finance allows you to appoint another person to make decisions for you regarding your real and personal property. This power is broad and covers situations where you are terminally ill or unconscious as a result of injury, but still living. Your agent, or attorney-in-fact, can manage your financial affairs as you so wish.

If you decide to create either a living will or a durable power of attorney for health care and/or finance, you will need to consider several things before you complete the documents. You will have to provide the name and contact information for the individual(s) that you nominate to make decisions for you in the event that you cannot make them.

Be sure to inform the person you nominate of your wishes. You can permit or refuse to permit donation of your organs for transplant. You can also permit or refuse to permit donation of your body for scientific or educational purposes. Some people wish to spend their last days at home rather than in a hospital. Some people wish to nominate one person to act as their attorney-in-fact for health care and another for their finance. You can express your wishes regarding these issues in these documents. Finally, you can express your wishes about funeral arrangements.

Please consult with an attorney if you desire to execute or have questions regarding estate planning documents.

Tips in Making a Family Tree for Your Estate Plan   Retirement Planning: It's About More Than Just Finances   Preparing and Writing Your Own Living Will   Planning For Your Personal Effects   How to Avoid a Guardianship   

Need Legal Advice on Wills and Trusts?

If you're putting your life in order, and preparing to look after both your assets and the people that you love and care for, then it is a good idea to seek legal advice on wills and trusts. It makes financial sense to create a plan and provide documentation to ensure that your assets are shared out in the way you prefer.

If you are not married, or have had a civil union, but want to leave your partner your assets, or want to specify specific mementos for them to own, then you'll need to write this down. The law will distribute your assets according to who is your closest kin by law if you haven't supplied information that supersedes this. It's important to make sure you've provided for your partner in this eventuality.

Alternatively, if you have been married or in a civil union and you are no longer, you may want to instruct that your previous partner receives nothing, or less than they would have before.

It can also help protect your assets from extra taxes and costs, leaving the people you are passing it onto in a better financial position.

Even if you are married or are in a civil union without children, and it all looks straight forward, you still may need legal advice on wills and trusts. Your asset disbursement can be contested and legal proceedings can eat away at your assets, and prolong the length of time before the assets are moved from your estate to the people or organisations you would have passed them onto.

For some, succession planning is not just about writing a will, but is also about establishing a trust that can look after assets regardless of your health in later years, and protect your interests and those of your family from others who may have influence over the outcome. This can include ex married or civil union partners of your offspring.

We can spend our lives building up our assets and creating something from what we were given, be it our own inheritance, or from the education and inspiration from the people who have influenced us. Protecting all that you've built so that the next generation can expand on it and/or pass it on again, is an excellent reason to seek legal advice on wills and trusts. Your assets and your loved ones will both benefit.

Tips in Making a Family Tree for Your Estate Plan   Retirement Planning: It's About More Than Just Finances   Preparing and Writing Your Own Living Will   How to Avoid a Guardianship   How to Include Your Pets in Your Estate Plan   

Trust Planning: Wills Vs Trusts

Wills vs Trusts: which is best for you?

A trust is basically a legal contract that transfers property and assets from one person, the grantor, to another person or group of person, the beneficiaries, through the trustee. The GRANTOR is the person with the property or asset to transfer. The TRUSTEE takes care of the assets and or property for the benefits of the BENEFICIARIES. This is often done while the grantor is still alive, hence, the name Living Trust.

A will, on the other hand is a deed that states how you would like your property, assets and other effects managed and distributed or divided upon your death. There is also PROBATE, the process in which the will is submitted to a court for administration after your passing and for accomplishment. The EXECUTOR of the will, usually a person named in the will and usually a lawyer, is the person responsible for managing the affairs of the estate as it goes through probate. The court will then supervise your estate and the distribution of your assets as descried in your will with specifications on the requisites for transfer of your assets.

Choosing: pros and cons

When looking at wills vs trusts, trusts seem to have the upper hand. Trusts, as stated above, are acted upon while you are still alive, thus giving you the opportunity to supervise the transfer of ownership of assets and property personally. With living trusts, there are revocable and irrevocable trusts. The revocable trust can be changed at anytime if the grantor is not satisfied or is having second thoughts about the beneficiary or the trustee. Irrevocable trusts cannot be changed, well not without a lengthy process, so the grantor should be careful when trust planning an irrevocable trust.

When it comes to a will, given that you will be dead by the time the will is executed, you can not oversee the transfer yourself. Although the will is very specific in what you want done, it usually takes a long time to process. The probate, for one thing, takes a lot of time, and also requires a lawyer which incurs cost to your estate.

So, in the comparison of wills vs. trusts, the living trusts come out as the strong and practical choice. But in choosing which is best for you is up to you. The trick is to research more and finding out more about them in other wills vs trusts comparison.

It all comes down to careful planning.

Tips in Making a Family Tree for Your Estate Plan   Retirement Planning: It's About More Than Just Finances   Preparing and Writing Your Own Living Will   Planning For Your Personal Effects