Making Long-Term Care and Incapacity Plans
An essential part of any estate strategy is long-term care planning. Family members may find it difficult to manage your assets and make personal and medical decisions on your behalf if you don't have a proper plan. A well-drafted plan consists of legal documents that give people the authority to decide how to manage their assets. This allows the person to safeguard their belongings and lessens the likelihood of acrimonious legal disputes between family members.
Permanent Power of Attorney
Irreversible Living Trust
To make sure that their assets pass to their loved ones after death, many people draft an estate plan. But the potential for incapacity should also be considered in a thorough estate plan. For this reason, one essential element of an incapacity strategy is a living trust.
You can designate yourself as the trustee of your own living trust while you are still living by creating a revocable living trust. The assets you transfer into the trust are fully accessible and under your control. But in the event of your incapacitation, the assets of the trust are managed by your designated replacement trustee, without the need for a court order or the involvement of any other parties.
The fact that the assets you transfer into a revocable living trust are not counted against you in the event that you qualify for Medicaid is another advantage of having one. If you think you might require long-term custodial care in the future, this can be extremely beneficial.
Decision-Making Documents for Healthcare
Documents designating a proxy to make medical decisions on your behalf in the event that you are unable to express your desires yourself are the next essential component of a successful estate plan. This is referred to as a "living will" or health care directive.
Your family members and medical team will be left wondering what you want when you don't have a fully drafted healthcare directive, which can cause disagreements and even impasse over possible treatments. This can be especially harmful in times of stress, like an unexpected illness or hospital stay.
Furthermore, in the absence of a correctly executed Health Care Directive, privacy concerns may prevent your loved ones from accessing your medical records unless they have obtained a HIPAA authorization, sometimes referred to as a Release of Information. Our New York estate planning company assists people in creating their financial and health care directives. In the event of any life-altering occurrences, we also evaluate these records to make sure they stay current.
Living Will
Although it is a fact that needs to be faced, nobody likes to think about the possibility of becoming incapacitated. If you are unable to speak for yourself, you can communicate your desires regarding life-prolonging procedures through an advance healthcare directive, sometimes known as a living will. Frequently, this is paired with a health care power of attorney, also referred to as a "health care proxy," so that your designated representative can make medical decisions on your behalf.
For a living will to be enforceable, it must be in writing and signed by both you and a witness. Having this paperwork in place can save the time and money of a court-supervised probate process, as well as protect your family members from being obliged to give you medical treatment that you would have chosen not to get.
By facilitating the transfer of power over your trust assets to your successor trustee in the event of your incapacitation or death, a revocable living trust also provides a significant advantage for incapacity planning. With the use of FindLaw's do-it-yourself estate planning tools, you can create a living will that complies with state law.
